TEE PROPOSED INLAND SEA IN ALGERIA. 667 



the desert. If there ever was a great river flowing into it, its bed has 

 been obliterated by the shifting sands. 



At a later date Tritonis appears as three connected lakes, called, 

 respectively, Libyca, Pallas, and Tritonis, which some recognize in the 

 Shotts Melrir, El-Rharsa, and El-Jerid, It is probable that the mouth 

 became gradually blocked up with sand, and the lake, no longer 

 receiving sufficient water from the Mediterranean to supply the waste 

 from evaporation, separated into several smaller seas, which, by con- 

 tinued desiccation, became transformed at last into their present con- 

 dition. When this took place can only be conjectured, but it was 

 probably in the early centuries of the Christian era. The Arabs pre- 

 serve the tradition that Shott Es-Selam was a lake at the time of the 

 Mussulman conquest. They also aver that the lake bed has not been 

 covered with water during the past hundred years. 



Although it has long been known that this desert basin was lower 

 than the Mediterranean, nothing was positively settled in regard to it 

 until 1873, when Captain Roudaire, a staff officer of the French army 

 in Algeria, ascertained the altitude of Biskra, and by a series of level- 

 ings from that point proved that the western extremity of Shott 

 Melrir was twenty-seven metres, or nearly eighty-nine feet, below the 

 level of the sea. The publication of his investigations and an exhaus- 

 tive discussion of the probabilities of success in reopening the ancient 

 lake, in the Revue des Deux Mondes (May, 1874), aroused interest in 

 the project in hope not only of reclaiming the country, but also of 

 opening a commercial avenue to Southern Algeria. The French liave 

 long sought to deflect the caravan trade of Middle Africa, which is 

 now mostly monopolized by Morocco and Tripoli, to Algiers, but in 

 vain, the increase in prices to be obtained in Algiers not being suf- 

 ficient to compensate for the increase in distance. But with an inland 

 sea the circumstances would be changed. The country around it 

 would resume its ancient character of a littoral province, and the 

 caravan routes of the Sahara would converge toward a port estab- 

 lished on its southern border, whence the gold dust, ivory, gums, and 

 ostrich feathers of Soodan would be shipped. directly to Europe to the 

 detriment of the Mohammedan markets. Tougourt, too, the French 

 military post in southern Algeria, now distant nearly two hundred 

 and fifty miles from the port where its provisions are landed, would 

 then be only about forty miles from the sea. 



Captain Roudaire discusses also the probable climatic changes 

 which would ensue from reopening the Bay of Triton. He argues 

 that the northwest winds, which prevail in summer, would be less 

 violent than now, and the southwest winds, which blow during the 

 remainder of the season, would be charged with vapor and cause a 

 greater fall of rain in Algeria, Sicily, and South Italy, without mate- 

 rially modifying the climate. Tl)is increased rainfall would restore 

 tlie land to its ancient fertility, and the region of the shotts would 



