346 
TRAVELS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 
CHAP. IX. 
Soobker is the designation of salt-plains, which are marshy in 
winter, and in summer become broken and rough bv the influence 
of the sun ; or of that particular species found in Fezzan, where 
the salt and earth or sand are so closely combined, as to form a 
substance resembling stone, and equally hard to cut or break. One 
of these plains, between Traghan and Mafen, is about three or four 
miles in the broadest part, and above twenty-five in length. 
Wadey is a term of vrhich I have frequently made use, yet I have 
given but a slight explanation of It is a valley in which shrubs 
grow, or through which the rains form a temporary stream. N^ear 
Tripoli the Wadeys are sometimes the courses of impetuous tor- 
rents ; but in Fezzan, where rain is almost unknown, they are 
smooth dells, very rarely producing a single plant. A small rift 
in the mountains, capable of containing only eight or ten camels 
abreast, is as much a Wadey as a large valley containing a town or 
towns, and the date trees belonging to such settlements. 
Gibel, or Mountain, is a term I need not explain ; but merely 
as showing that it is by no means a matter of course that a Desert 
must be flat, or nearly so, as even in the kingdom of Fezzan, 
mountains are very numerous. 
Sahara, therefore, is only apphcable to sandy districts, and the 
Arabs only use the word Berr or country, as a general term. In 
no part of the Desert, which I have seen, or of which I could obtain 
accounts, does it appear that water is found on the surface : hence 
it seems extraordinary, that wild animals should exist ; yet antelopes, 
bufFciloes, and some other animals, are, in different places, very nu- 
merous. Rats are frequently found to burrow in plains twenty or 
thirty miles distant from shrubs, and their food is unknown; no 
birds being found there, and the small lizards and snakes, as weU as 
the few insects, being too active to be caught by them. In some 
parts, the only living creature seen for many days is a small insect 
