VISIT TO EASTERN PROVINCE.

239

CHAPTER IX.

ALGERIA is more than almost any country dependent on the sea for its communications. The littoral may be described in general terms as an aggregation of small provinces, insulated from each other by mountain ranges of difficult passage. These are formed by the several parts of what is called the Northern, or Little Atlas. It is not so much a chain of mountains as a chain of buttresses, supporting the northern side of an elevated plateau, which extends over a space of various breadth, but always considerable, to the south. The southern boundary of this plateau is formed of a similar chain of mountainbuttresses, which appears on the maps under the imposing title of the Great Atlas, although, except in one part, its summits are by no means so high as those of the so-called Little Atlas. This latter starts from the sea-board of Algeria, just to the west of Bougie, and runs west-south-west, forming, first of all, the craggy mass of Great Kabylie, in the southern portion of which are the peaks of Djerjera,

240

THE ATLAS RANGES.

already so often mentioned.

Continuing its course at

a diminished elevation, and throwing off from itself those lower hills which form the valleys of the Sebaou, the Isser, and the Boudouaou, and are crossed by the road from Algiers into Kabylie, the Little or Northern Atlas attains its extreme southern point shortly before it reaches the meridian of Algiers, from which its direct distance is there about fifty miles. It now takes a turn to the west-north-west, closely approaching the sea in the neighbourhood of Cherchell; and after two more sweeps of similar shape but smaller extent, it terminates at Cape Ivi, the northern boundary of the Cheliff, at its embouchure near Mostaganem.

The Great, or more properly Southern Atlas, starts from the seaboard at Cape Roux, which is the boundary of Algeria towards Tunis, and runs in a general west-south-west direction quite into the territory of Morocco. It is supposed by geographers -although it has never been accurately traced-to terminate in a mountain mass on the shores of the Atlantic, of which the most fabulous accounts were prevalent in antiquity, and to which the name was given which has since been extended to the whole series of elevations. So far, however, as it is comprised within the limits of Algeria, which it divides into two nearly equal portions, the Great Atlas is not a chain at all. Its mountainous character is confined

THE MIDDLE ATLAS.

241

to a peculiar assemblage of craggy elevations, sixty or seventy miles in diameter, called the Aurès, situated between the meridians of 5° 45′ and 7° east. Here the peaks are some of them 7,000 and 8,000 feet in height, and one has been estimated at no less than 9,373 feet. But to the west of this boss, the mountainous character of the Southern Atlas is much less clearly marked. It assumes, for the most part, the features of a high plateau with irregular elevations; but it retains throughout one important characteristic, namely, that the streams which issue from its southern side all lose themselves, sooner or later, in the sands of the Desert.

The Middle Atlas is a name that has been given to two ranges which may be described as connecting the Northern with the Southern Atlas. The one of these leaves the former a few miles to the north-east of the point noticed above as being the one where it is farthest removed from the seaboard, and takes a course nearly due east, with only one gap in the rampart which it forms, until it meets the Southern Atlas between the Aurès and the sea. The other, rising direct from the south-west bank of the Cheliff, where that river takes a turn near Médéah, sweeps to the south-west, and ultimately strikes the Southern Atlas at an acute angle considerably within the boundary of Morocco. Thus, if the Northern Atlas be regarded as constituting the two sides of a

R

242

ELEVATED PLATEAU.

depressed triangle of which the seaboard is the base, the lines of the Middle and Southern Atlas may be described as forming another larger triangle of similar shape, but in exactly the opposite position.

This distinction of the mountains of Northern Africa into separate ranges, has, it should be observed, no foundation in their geological character, which is identical for all. It is, however, a convenient distribution for the purpose of giving a general idea of the peculiarities of the region which they intersect. It has been remarked that all the drainage to the south of the Great Atlas is ultimately lost in the sands of the Desert it may be also noted that the whole of that from the northern sides of the Little and Middle Atlas finds its way to the sea. But with the streams which spring from the southern inclines of the Middle and the northern inclines of the Great Atlas,-in other words, with the internal waters of the larger of the two triangular areas just mentioned,-the case is much more complicated. There are two, and only two, outlets for these. The first is furnished by the river Cheliff; the second by the river which at its embouchure (between Djidjelli and Cape Bougaroni) is called Oued-el-Kebir (the Great River). If the channel of the former were to be interrupted by a dyke in the neighbourhood of Médéah, and that of the latter to be similarly intercepted in the neighbourhood of Constantine, the whole of the space between

REGION OF MARSHES.

243

the Middle and the Southern Atlas would be converted into an immense lake.* Whatever watercourses between these two ranges do not fall into one of the two streams just mentioned, necessarily find their termination in marshes and pools, which vary greatly in their dimensions at the different seasons of the year, and tend-partly by the rank vegetation which under such circumstances soon forms a jungle, partly by the miasma which an all but tropical sun evokes from the exposed mud-greatly to curtail the space over which human industry can be profitably employed. To that portion of Algeria in which the soil is subject to the conditions just described, the French give the name of Landes. These landes, or elevated steppes, constitute a kind of middle link between the Tel, or hill country, and the Sahara, the former of which may be regarded as universally susceptible of cultivation under favourable circumstances, and the latter as altogether hopeless.

Two points have been mentioned as marking the only outlets existing for the waters of the central portion of Algeria. The extent of surface drained

* The state of things here supposed may be illustrated by the condition of the plain of Thessaly before the gorge of Tempe was formed; by that of the plain of Bohemia antecedently to its drainage by the present channel of the Elbe in Saxon Switzerland; by the basin of the Rhine between Basle and Bingen previous to the convulsion which tapped the vast accumulation of waters by forming the channel which now extends from St. Goar to the Drachenfels ; and by several portions of the valley of the Rhone.