DESERT SANDS 355 



Sahara as a whole hes below sea-level, it may bo worth 

 while briefly to explain what it was ho really thought of 

 doing. 



Some sixty miles south of Biskra, the most fashionablo 

 resort in the Aljjferian Sahara, there is a deep depression 

 two hundred and fifty miles Ion*,', partly occupied by three 

 salt lal.es of the kind so common over the whole dried-up 

 Saharan area. These three hikes, shrunken renniants of 

 much larger sheets, lie below the level of the Mediterranean, 

 but they are separated from it, and from one another, by 

 upland ranges which rise considerably above the sea line. 

 ^Vhat M. lloudaire proposed to do was to cut canals through 

 these three barriers, and Hood the basins of the salt 

 lakes. The result would have been, not as is commonly 

 said to submerge Sahara, nor even to form anything worth 

 seriously describing as ' an inland sea,' but to substitute 

 three larger salt lakes for the existing three smaller ones. 

 The area so Hooded, however, would bear to the whole 

 area of Sahara something like the same proportion that 

 ^Vindsor Park bears to the entire surface of England. 

 This is the true truth about that stupendous undertaking, 

 which is to create a new Mediterranean in the midst of the 

 Dark Continent, and to modify the climate of Northern 

 Europe to something like the condition of the Glacial 

 Epoch. A new Dead Sea would be much nearer the mark, 

 and the only way Northern Europe would feel the change, 

 if it felt it at all, would be in a slight fall in the price of 

 dates in the wholesale market. 



No, Sahara as a whole is not below sea-level ; it is not 

 the dry bed of a recent ocean ; and it is not as Hat as the 

 proverbial pancake all over. Part of it, indeed, is very 

 mountainous, and all of it is more or less varied in level. 

 The Upper Sahara consists of a rocky plateau, rising at 

 times into considerable peaks ; the Lower, to which it 



