Africa . perhaps the hottest part of North Africa,water is found on digging to some depth, and date-palmsare abundant. Three or four settlements occupy the mostfavoured spots, and a sultan rules over the small popula-tion. By far the most important district of Kauar is itssouthern province of Bilma, with the village of Garu, andthis on account of its rich salt mines, which supply a greatpart of Central Africa. These mines consist of a numberof deep pits, which apparently lie upon a great bed of rock-salt. The water in them is so intensely salt, and the 104 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL. e
Africa . perhaps the hottest part of North Africa,water is found on digging to some depth, and date-palmsare abundant. Three or four settlements occupy the mostfavoured spots, and a sultan rules over the small popula-tion. By far the most important district of Kauar is itssouthern province of Bilma, with the village of Garu, andthis on account of its rich salt mines, which supply a greatpart of Central Africa. These mines consist of a numberof deep pits, which apparently lie upon a great bed of rock-salt. The water in them is so intensely salt, and the 104 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL. evaporation so great, that in every two or three days acrust of salt of several inches in thickness forms overthem, wliich is broken up like ice and carried away inpieces. The Tuaregs of the country of Asben, which wehave previously described, come here with wheat and clothand slaves to exchange for the salt, which they carry backthrough Asben and thence to the Sudan, sometimes withcaravans of 1000 AX IN THE LIBYAN DESEIIT. 14. The Lihyan Desert. The great Libyan Desert, reaching almost to the Xilevalley, was for the first time, to some extent, explored THE EASTERX SAHARA. 105 by the expedition sent tliither in 1873-4 under GerhardEohlfs. It would appear to be one of the most, if notactually the most desert portion of the Sahara, the onlypart of it really answering to the former descriptions repre-senting it all as a vast ocean of sand. ( In truth, the Libyan desert is nothing but one im-mense sandy sea, intersected by lofty sand-dunes, restingon it like great soMified ocean waves. However it is nota true depression as was supposed, but, like the rest of theSahara, a table-land. Its western limits, roughly speak-ing, are Fezzan and the great caravan liighway leadingthence through the oasis of Kauar (Bilma) southwardsto Bornu.^ In the three other directions it is naturallylimited—on the north by the Mediterranean sea, on theeast by the Nile vaUey, and on the so
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