UNDERGROUND WATERS AS SOCIAL FACTORS. 617 



Bionnc, and some fifty others. Around these springs, not far from 

 arid and almost desert regions, are situated villages which gratefully 

 borrow their names from the waters to which they owe their life ; a 

 kind of paternity which is not rare. In France numerous places, such 

 as Fontainebleau, Fontanat, Fontanille, Fontvannes, Fontoy, Fonte- 

 noy, and Fontanay, derive theii* names from the Latin words /b;2S and 

 fontaneticm, and some names are ic-peated many times. The same 

 fact is apparent in Italy and Spain, where more than eight hundred 

 names have the same origin ; also in Germany, where the forms Brun, 

 Bronn, and Born occur. The city of Paderborn is built upon forty 

 springs which give rise to the Pader. Kot far away is Lippspring, a 

 word expressing the origin of the Lij^pe. This word " spring " in 

 England and the United States, and " ain " in the north of Africa, con- 

 vey the same idea. Eau, Aix, Aigues, Acqua, Aqua, and Waters, figure 

 likewise in many words, with the signification of spring- water. 



Xothing more clearly exemplifies the attractive force of subterra- 

 nean waters than those collections of tilled-lands and habitations among 

 the oases that are scattered over deserts. Strabo compared the Sahara 

 to a panther's skin, the ground of which is the desert, while the black 

 spots correspond with the somber verdure of the oases. These spots 

 are aggregated in groups, like archipelagoes in the sea, in a zone of that 

 desert which is confined between the thirtieth and thirty-seventh degrees 

 of latitude. Algeria contains more than three hundred of them. Cer- 

 tain rainy regions, like Mount Atlas, send water by underground routes, 

 which reaches them through sandy beds contained between impermea- 

 ble strata of clay, and is thus protected against evaporation. Some- 

 times, when the water-sheet is not very deeply situated, it is utilized by 

 digging holes where the roots of the palm-trees have grown down 

 toward it. At many other points the water, impelled by the pressure 

 upon it, opens a passage to the surface, and gives rise to springs or 

 natural artesian wells. These appearances of water in the midst of 

 arid and desert steppes constitute centers around which a life has de- 

 veloped itself under the protection from the sun and the simoom af- 

 forded by the palm and fruit trees. From a very remote epoch the 

 natives have known how to imitate nature by opening issues for the 

 interior water-sheet ; but the perilous labor of digging was not in- 

 viting to workmen, and many of the ancient wells have become ob- 

 structed. The villages have become depopulated for want of water, 

 the oases have shrunk, and gradually the desert has resumed the pos- 

 session of the soil. 



The first well bored after the French occupation of Algeria, at 

 Tamema, spouted on the 19th of June, 1856, and was blessed by a 

 marabout under the name of the Fountain of Peace. Numerous other 

 borings revealed the existence of an underground river lying for a dis- 

 tance of a hundred and thirty kilometres beneath the wady Rir. At pres- 

 ent one hundred and seventeen bored wells, together with five hundred 



