MOVING SANDS IN AFltlCA. 375 



Hebrides, and Mr Macdonald's Work on the Hebrides, 

 farther details may be seen. In Jameson's Account of the 

 Shetland Islands, and in Shirreff and Fleming's Reports on 

 these islands, are also facts connected with this devastat- 

 ing agent. We may add, that Dr Oudney, Major Den- 

 ham, and Captain Clapperton, have added to our know- 

 ledge of the blowing sands of the African deserts. The 

 coloured engraving of the sand-hills of the African De- 

 sert in Denham, Oudney and Clapperton's Narrative, is 

 a striking and interesting representation of the form of 

 the moving sand-hills of Africa. 



The moving Sands of Africa and their effects are thus 

 described in the Mercure de France for September 

 1809, by De Luc. 



The sands of the Lybian desert, he says, driven by 

 the west winds, have left no lands capable of tillage 

 on any parts of the western banks of the Nile not shel- 

 tered by mountains. The encroachment of these sands 

 on soils which were formerly inhabited and cultivated is 

 evidently seen. M. Denon informs us, in the account 

 of his Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt^ that summits 

 of the ruins of ancient cities buried under these sands still 

 appear externally ; and that, but for a ridge of moun- 

 tains called the Lybian chain, which borders the left 

 bank of the Nile, and forms, in the parts where it rises, 

 a barrier against the invasion of these sands, the shores 

 of the river, on that side, would long since have ceased 

 to be habitable. Nothing can be more melancholy, 

 says this traveller, than to walk over villages swallow- 

 ed up by the sand of the desert, to trample under foot 

 their roofs, to strike against the summits of their mina- 



