A Journey in the Libyan Desert

Abstract

It is probable that some portions of the depressed areas in the Libyan desert have been the scenes of human activity and habitation from very remote periods, and although existence there must always have been arduous and precarious, the human pressure in the more habitable but circumscribed regions of the Nile Valley and Delta would tend to force the weaker people thereto. This generalization, however, perhaps expresses but one half of the incentive which forces human beings into such inhospitable regions, for it is also evident that the man of exceptional enterprise and vigor, finding his opportunities becoming few and inadequate in locations such as the Nile Valley, where every pint of available water and every foot of available land is already performing its appointed part in the sustenance of life, will also be attracted by the desert, with its vast expanses and indefinite but ever possible opportunities for exploration and adventure. Of all the arid regions in the world, the Libyan desert is one of the most inhospitable, and were it not for the few depressed areas which are rather loosely termed oases, it would still exist as an absolute, instead of only a partial terra incogn'ita. In the course of the general study of desert conditions and of the capacity of arid regions to support life, which has been undertaken by the Desert Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington,