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Show 126 Sl'EPPES AND DESERTS. and sometimes further towards the south. It became the custom (in the first century of our era, when the Roman arms penetrated into the interior of Mauritania and Numidia), to give the name of Atlas to the African chain of mountains which runs from west to east almost parallel with the coast of the Mediterranean. Pliny and Solinus we1·e, however, very sensible that the descriptions of Mount Atlas given by the Greek and Roman poets were not applicable to this long mountain chain; and t.hey therefore thought it necessary to transfer the Atlas, of which they gave a picturesque ·description in accordance with the poetic legends, to the terra incognita of Central Africa. According to what has been said, the Atlas of Homer and Hesiod can only be the Peak of Teneriffe; and the Atlas of the Greek and Roman geographers must be in Northern Africa." I will only add the following remarks to this instructive discussion by Professor Ideler. According to Pliny and Solinus, Atlas rises from a sandy plain (e medio arenarum); and elephants (which certainly were never known in Teneriffe) feed on its declivity. What we now term Atlas is a long ridge. How came the Romans to recognize in this long ridge the isolated conical mountain of Herodotus? May not the reason be found in the optical delusion by which every mountain chain seen in profile, in the prolongation of its direction, has the appearance of a narrow cone ? I have often seen in this manner, from the sea, the ends of long chains or ridges, which might be taken for isolated mountains. According to Host, the Atlas is covered near Morocco with perpetual snow, which implies an elevation of above 1800 toises, or 11,510 English feet. It is also remarkable that, according to Pliny, the "Barbarians," i. e. the ancient Mauritanians, called the Atlas "Dyris." The chain of the Atlas is still called by the Arabs Daran, a word which has almost the same consonants as Dyris. Hornius, on the other hand (de Originibus Americanorum, p. 195), thinks that he recognizes the word Dyris in the Guanche name of the Peak of 1'eneriffe, Aya-Dyrma. On the connection between purely mythical ideas and geographical traditions, and on the way in which the Titan Atlas gave occasion to the image of a mountain supporting the heavens, beyond the Pit. Jars of Hercules, see Letronne's "Essai sur los Idees cosmograph· |