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Show 124 STEPPES AND DESERTS. (21) p. 32.-" A connected sea of sand." As the Heaths formed of socially growing Ericere, which stretch from the mouth of the Scheidt to that of the Elbe, and from the point of Jutland to the Harz, may be regarded as one connected tract of vegetation-so the seas of sand may be traced through Africa and Asia, from Cape Blanco to beyond the Indus, or through an extent of 5600 geographical miles. Herodotus's Sandy Region interrupted by Oases, called by the Arabs t.he Desert of Sahara, traverses almost the whole of Africa, which it intersects like a driedup arm of the sea. The valley of the Nile is the eastern limit of the Lybian Desert. Beyond the Isthmus of Suez, beyond the porphyritic, syenitic, and basaltic rocks of Sinai, begins the Desert mountain plateau of Nedjid, which occupies the whole of the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and is bounded to the west and south by the fertile and happier coast lands of Hedjaz and Hadhramaut. The Euphrates bounds the Arabian and Syrian Deserts towards the east. Immense seas of sand (bejaban) cross Persia from the Caspian to the Indian Sea. Among them are the salt and soda Deserts of Kerman, Seistan, Beloochistan, and Mekran. The latter is separated from the Desert of Moulton by the Indus. (22) p. 32.-" The western part of the Atlas." The question respecting the position of the ancient Atlas has been much discussed iu modern times, but the oldest Phrenician legends have been confounded in this discussion with the later fables of the Greeks and the Romans. A man who combined deep philological with thorough mathematical and astronomical knowledge, Professor Ideler (the father), was the first person who explained and dispelled the confusion of ideas which had previously existed on this subject. I permit myself to introduce here the remarks that clearsighted and highly-informed writer has communicated to me on this important subject. "At a very early period of the worlu, the P.hronicians ventured beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. They built Gades and Tartessus on the Spanish, and Lixus and several other towns on the Mauritanian coasts of the Atlantic. They sailed along those coasts north- |