Sahara | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 6, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 10.

Sahara.

SAHARA is the name given to the immense tract of the continent of Africa which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the river Nile, a distance of more than 3,000 miles, and from the base of the Atlas Mountains to the borders of Soudan. Formerly this region was believed to be a huge sandy plain, dotted over here and there with speck-like oases; but it is now known to consist mainly of plateaus; some of them of very considerable elevation; and the table land in the interior is much more fertile than was supposed, though in the west there is an area equal to that of the Mediterranean, covered with trackless sands, which are prolonged as sand-banks for miles into the Atlantic Ocean. A portion of this area, which is believed to be on a lower level than the bed of the ocean, it has been recently proposed to flood from the Atlantic, so as to furnish a water-way into the interior; and it has also been proposed to open a channel from Gabes, on the coast of the Mediterranean, to the great marsh lakes of Southern Tunis, the effect of which would be, it is said, to convert those lakes into a great inland sea, fifteen times as large as the Lake of Geneva. A considerable caravan trade is carried on across the Sahara, between Morocco, Tripoli and Soudan; and the French Government have had it in contemplation to construct a trans-Saharan railway to unite Algiers with the Senegal and Niger regions.

In the course of the works connected with this proposed railway, remains have been discovered buried in the sand which prove the Sahara to have been at one time much more populous than it is now, and its trade much more extensive. The existing population, which is entirely nomadic or pastoral, is estimated at from three to four millions. The chief mineral product is salt.