126 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



and sometimes further towards the south. It became the custom 

 (in the first century of our era, when the Roman arms penetrated 

 into the interior of Mauritania and Numidia), to give the name of 

 Atlas to the African chain of mountains which runs from west to 

 east almost parallel with the coast of the Mediterranean. Pliny 

 and Solinus were, however, very sensible that the descriptions of 

 Mount Atlas given by the Greek and Roman poets were not appli- 

 cable to this long mountain chain; and they therefore thought it 

 necessary to transfer the Atlas, of which they gave a picturesque 

 description in accordance with the poetic legends, to the terra inr 

 cognita of Central Africa. According to what has been said, the 

 Atlas of Homer and Hesiod can only be the Peak of Teneriffe ; and 

 the Atfls of the Greek and Roman geographers must be in Northern 

 Africa." 



I will only add the following remarks to this instructive discussion 

 by Professor Ideler. According to Pliny and Solinus, Atlas rises 

 from a sandy plain (e rnedio arenarum) ; and elephants (which cer- 

 tainly were never known in Teneriffe) feed on its declivity. What 

 we now term Atlas is a long ridge. How came the Romans to re- 

 cognize in this long ridge the isolated conical mountain of Herodotus ? 

 May not the reason be found in the optical delusion by which every 

 mountain chain seen in profile, in the prolongation of its direction, 

 has the appearance of a narrow cone ? I iiave often seen in this 

 manner, from the sea, the ends of long chains or ridges, which might 

 be taken for isolated mountains. According to Host, the Atlas is 

 covered near Morocco with perpetual snow, which implies an eleva- 

 tion of above 1800 toises, or 11,510 English feet. It is also re- 

 markable that, according to Pliny, the "Barbarians/' i. e. the 

 ancient Mauritanians, called the Atlas " Dyris." The chain of the 

 Atlas is still called by the Arabs Daran, a word which has almost the 

 same consonants as Dyris. Hornius, on the other hand (de Origi- 

 nibus Americanorum, p. 195), thinks that he recognizes the word 

 Dyris in the Guanohe name of the Peak of Teneriffe, Aya-Dyrnia. 

 On the connection between purely mythical ideas and geographical 

 traditions, and on the way in which the Titan Atlas gave occasion to 

 the image of a mountain supporting the heavens, beyond the Pil- 

 lars of Hercules, see Letronne's " Essai sur les Idees cosmograph- 



