1882.] Geography and Travels. 259 



not uncommon to find some grazing places for camels, as well as 

 flocks of gazelles and antelopes. At El Eglab Dr. Lenz found 

 granite and porphyry, and was fortunate enough to have rain. 

 Thence the character of the desert becomes more varied, the route 

 crossing sometimes sandy and sometimes stony tracts or sand- 

 dunes, with several dry river beds running east and west between 

 them. On May 29 he reached the salt works of Taudeni and 

 visited the ruins of a very ancient town where numerous stone 

 implements have been found. Here he crossed a depression of 

 the desert only 145 to 170 metres high, while the remainder of 

 the desert usually reaches as much as 250 to 300 metres above 

 the sea level ; and he remarks that throughout- his journey he did 

 not meet with depressions below the sea-level. The schemes for 

 flooding the Sahara are therefore hopeless and misleading. The 

 landscape remained the same until the wide Alfa fields which 

 extend north of Arauan. This little town is situated amidst sand- 

 dunes devoid of vegetation, owing to the hot southern winds. 

 Four days later Dr. Lenz was in Timbuktu, whence he proceeded 

 west to St. Louis. During his forty-three days' travel through the 

 Sahara Dr. Lenz observed that the temperature was not excessive; 

 it usually was from 34 to 36 Celsius, and only in the Igidi 

 region it reached 45 °. The wind blew mostly from north-west, 

 and it was only south of Taudeni that the traveler experienced 

 the hot south winds \edrash~\ of the desert. As to the theory of 

 north-eastern trade winds being the cause of the formation of the 

 desert, Dr. Lenz remarks that he never observed such a wind, nor 

 did his men ; it must be stopped by the hilly tracts of the north. 



" Another important remark of Dr. Lenz is what he makes with 

 respect to the frequent description of the Sahara as a sea-bed. 

 Of course it was under the sea, but during the Devonian, Creta- 

 ceous and Tertiary periods ; as to the sand which covers it now, it 

 has nothing to do with the sea ; it is the product of the destruction 

 of sandstones by atmospheric agencies. Northern Africa was not 

 always a desert, and the causes of its being so now must be sought 

 for, not in geological but in meterological influences." 



Arctic Exploration. — Up to the middle of June last the edge 

 of the ice extended in an east and west direction at a distance of 

 only sixty to one hundred miles from the coast of Finmark. It 

 trended north-eastward toward Novaya Zemlya.and swept round at 

 a distance of about thirty miles from Matyushin Strait, towards the 

 entrance of theWhite Sea. With the probable exception of 1 S67, the 

 ice was then nearer to the northern coast of Norway than it was 

 ever known to be before. After the middle of August the ice dis- 

 appeared off Novaya Zemlya, and there was probably open water 

 to Franz-Josef Land. It is stated in the Royal Geographical 

 Societies' Proceedings that " the collective evidence shows that the 

 prevailing northerly and north-westerly winds of last winter packed 

 the ice in a broad belt across the Spitsbergen and Barent's Seas. 



