Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/686

666 spurs of the main chain of the Atlas, partly in the province of Constantine in Algeria, and partly in Tunis. Its western extremity is in latitude 34° 30' N, longitude 5° 65' E., and it extends thence eastward two hundred and thirty-five miles to within about thirteen miles of the foot of the Gulf of Cabes, or Gabes, in the Mediterranean, anciently the Lesser Syrtis, from which it is now separated by an isthmus of sand. The breadth of the depression is about thirty-seven miles. Within these limits lie several connected lake-beds, called by the Arabs shotts or sebkas, shott signifying properly the bottom of a lake left dry by evaporation, and sebka a saline marsh. The largest of these are Shotts Melrir, or Melgig, whose eastern extremity is called Es-Selam, El-Rharsa, or Gharsa, and El-Jerid, or Fejej. About one-half is in French territory, the Tunisian boundary line cutting the western bank of Shott El-Rharsa.

This great depression is supposed to mark the site of the lake of Triton, or Tritonis, mentioned by Herodotus, Scylax, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, and other ancient writers, and around which were localized the Greek divinities Poseidon and Athena, and the Argonautic myth. Into it was driven the good ship Argo, when blown from her course around the Malean promontory by an adverse wind. Jason, lost among the shallows, propitiated the local divinity, Triton, son of Poseidon, by presenting him with the brazen tripod, whereupon the god, filled with prophetic heat, foretold that a hundred Grecian cities would spring up around Tritonis whenever a descendant of the Argo's crew should seize and bear away the precious gift. Through the foresight of the subtle Libyans, who hid the tripod, the prophesy was unfulfilled, but many noble cities were afterward built north and east of Tritonis, and along the coast of Syrtis Minor. Indeed, so numerous were they, and so flourishing as trade-centres, that the country was named Emporia. All the ancient writers agree in praising it for its wonderful riches and fertility. Says Scylax: "This region, which is occupied by Libyans, is most magnificent and fertile; it abounds in fine cattle, and its inhabitants are most beautiful and wealthy." It was within the dominion of Carthage, and here were the storehouses and granaries from which Rome's great rival supplied her troops.

But now all is changed. The drying up of the ancient sea has deprived the land of its moisture, and the once fertile plain between the mountains and the north bank of the shotts is, with the exception of a few oases, a sterile waste. Nothing remains to tell of former greatness but ruins, which are said to be scattered over the country far up into the mountains.

Herodotus, the most ancient writer by whom Tritonis is mentioned, says that it was fed by the great river Triton; but modern research has failed to identify it, there being now but a few rivulets which enter it from the mountains on the north, or lose themselves in