Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/77

I TOPOOEAPnY. 69 harvest time the arms of the cultivators and their slaves are insufficient to gamer the crops, and then immigrants from Fezzan come to lend a hand as labourers for a few weeks. Enriched by agriculture, the inhabitants of the oasis take no part in trade, like the natives of Murzuk, Ghadames, and Gh&t ; but the produce of their fields finds a market through the medium of other Arab tribes. Ostrich farming, pursued with success at the beginning of this century, has since been given up. The present capital of the oasis is the walled town of Sokna, which contains about one-third of the whole population, and at times gives its name to the whole district. Its inhabitants belong almost exclusively to the Berber race, and still speak the old language, mixed, however, with many Arabic expressions. Hon, situated nearly in the centre of Jofra, in the eastern section of the oasis, is shared by Berbers and Arabs in common. It is the most populous town in the country, and at the same time owns the greatest extent of cultivated lands. Wadan^ lying farther east at the foot of the hills of like name, is a " holy city," thanks to its Shorfa inhabitants, who enjoy the twofold honour attached to the descendants of the Prophet and to the families that have emigrated from ^Marocco. Built in ampLithcatrical form on a clifP, Wadan presents a very picturesque appearance. It is an old place, already mentioned centuries ago by the Arab geographers, and formerly gave its name to the whole oasis. According to Rohlfs, its walls would appear to stand on Roman foundations. Following the route which leads from the Jofra oasis towards Tripoli around the eastern foot of the spurs of the plateau, the caravans have selected as their chief station the village of Bu-Njeim, occupied by a few Orfella Arab families, who live by trading with the passing merchants and the surrounding pastoral tribes. The wells of Bu-Njeim, lying in a deep depression of the steppe at a height little above sea-level, are visited by the herds of camels for a distance of 60 miles round about. These animals are well acquainted with the roads leading to the watering- place. Every month, and more frequently during the hot season, they proceed in long processions to the Bu-Njeim wells, where they have at times to wait patiently hours, and even days, for someone to water them. All the other wells of the country, as far as the Bent' Ulid oasis, belong also to the Orfella tribe. In this extensive oasis, some fifty villages and hamlets, scattered amid groves of olives and other fruit-trees, are permanently inhabited. Seen from the hills, the valley of the wady, which is of limestone escarpments overlaid with lavas, and ranging from 450 to 550 feet in height, looks like a river of verdure over half a mile in width, and stretching east and west beyond the horizon. The olive groves are divided into innumerable plots by dykes of large stones, which arrest the overflow of the inundations, and at the same time serve to retain the vegetable humus. The walls of the Wady Beni Ulid are sunk in some places to a depth of over 130 feet. A few groups of huts in the gorges of the plateau at the foot of the hamada, may perhaps deserve the name of towns. Such are both G/wrim — G/iaria-es/i-S/ier- kiya, the " eastern," and Gharia-el-Gliarbiya, the " western," situated in the depres- sion of the wady tributary of the Zemzem. These two places, built at a distance