Arctic Ocean and the Promontory of the Samoiedes to the
extremity of Terra Australis. A third and similar comparison
will be furnished in the regions of the new world, which
extend from the American Polar Sea to the Land of Fire.
The continent of Africa has been considered by some
Writers on physical geography as consisting of two great
mountainous regions or table-lands of very unequal extent
and including between them a vast intervening space of
lower elevation, which has been compared to the sandy
bottom of a wide ocean, laid dry by the retreat of its waters.
The great Sahara extends across the whole continent of
Africa from Egypt and from the Syrtes, or the low tracts on
the Mediterranean which lie to the westward of the Cyre-
naica, to the Atlantic shore. An ocean of sand, interspersed
with green islands or oases, separates the region of Mount
Atlas from the extensive highlands of Central Africa, of which
the mountains of the Moon form the northern border; .. The
former of these regions is connected by many-relations with
the continent of Europe. By the narrow Mediterranean,
across which the hills of Spain and of-Sicily may be seen
from the opposite coast, the Atlantic... highland s are less
completely separated from Europe than by the great Sahara
from the central region of Africa.
I shall take a brief survey of the principal-geographical
features of these three divisions of Africa.
S e c t io n II.— Atlantica, the elevated region of^Northern
Africa.
The oriental geographers, as Professor Ritter has observed,
gave the designation of “ Western Island,7’—Maghrab insula,
—to'the elevated countries which in the north-western part
of that continent, or beyond the 30th degree of latitude, form
the highlands of Northern Africa.* This region in reality
* See the admirable work of Professor Kilter, “ Die Erdkunde im Verhaltniss
zur Natur und zur Geschichte der Menschen, oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographic,
als sichere Grandlage des Studiums und Unterrichts in physikalischen
und moralischen Wissenschaften.”—Berlin, 1832. A translation of the hrst
volume of this Work has just been published, wlih additions, by M. M. E. Buret
and Ed. Desor, Paris, 1836.
elevates itself like an island between the Mediterranean, the
Atlantic, and the great ocean of sand which cuts it off towards
the south and-east.; It is, hot a chain of mountains but a great
continuous system of highlands, which, under the denomina-
tio^of Atlas, extend along‘the( Mediterranean coast, occupying
all '.the interior • of the countries, of Tunis, Algiers, and
MarQco,sand,i®eaGhing-' on the border of the Atlantic ocean
as far southward as the province;of Souse and the promontory
of Ger. Taking its rise cm,'the eastern side from the gulfs
of the two? Syrtes At/rbecomes, gradually elevated into the
Tunisian plains, w-bichy towards the Sahara, spread out into
Ranges o t precipitous hilli% but^rise . behind Maroco, and
towards the shores of the Atlantic, into-lpfty plains, and
throw up sib the interior, conical,hills _of prodigious. height,
the opposite peaks of, the,; Sierra Nevada,
between Andalusia and Grenada. The whole of this highland
regionsseparates itself from the rest tdf Africa, and ap-
prQximategdn the-form and structure; the.height and arranged
ment of its elevated masses^., thei|ystem of mountains in
the Spanish Peninsula, of which, if the narrow,Strait of the
Mediterranean;; were dried up, it would manifestly / form a
part.
The Atlantic highlands, at their .eastern -extremity,,; decline^
between the Syrtes and Tunis, rintq^sapdy plains. At Ras-
Addar, pCCape- Bpn;, the Prdmohtorium Mercurii, the mount
tainous country reaches the coast, and approaches within sight
of the heights of Sicily* The south-eastern limit of the pld^
teau js formed by the mountain-chains of Ghouriano, and the
Black Harhdje or MonsAter,, situated to the, southward of
Tripoli, branches.of which, extending in ranges to the length
of a four d ay journey, reach into Fezzan, the country of the
Garamantes.
, The principal subdivisions of,s this,,country, founded on its
geographical features, are, first, the greater chain of Atlas., or
the Mons Lamta of Edrlsl, which^ according to that geographer,
when traced from the. westward, rises above Souse,
not far from the Atlantic' ocean, and extends eastward almost
to the lessor,'Syrtis/ At SpuSe, the southern province of Maroco,
the western extremity, of Atlas, forms, on the coast of