Djelfa to Laghouat
The bleakness and the bareness of the environs of Djelfa come with a surprise when one considers that the rainfall of the place is not inconsiderable, about 375 mm., and that the altitude is about 1,110 meters, which insures a fairly low temperature and hence a relatively low evaporation rate. The sparseness of the vegetation is probably partly due to the fact that the rainfall does not occur at one or at two seasons, as nearer the coast, but is distributed fairly evenly between the four seasons, and also to the long occupancy by the Arabs and the French, by which possibly most of the useful native plants, large and small, have long since been destroyed. Somewhat removed from the town, particularly on the mountains to the west, is a forest of pines. Along the streets are many shade trees, as Lombardy poplar, ash, locust, and others, and within the town limits is a small but fine public park and experimental garden with a large variety of shrubs and trees.
From Djelfa to Laghouat the road runs through barren mountain passes, and is dreary and of little interest. Tristram’s description of the approach to Laghouat, written about 1860, gives very well the present condition of things:
The next day’s journey was through a rocky desert country.... We afterwards passed a low-lying strip of sand-hills on the west, with the marks of an ancient ocean beach; on the east a high range of mountains, with the stratification regular and horizontal.... Our next day’s ride was by a base of a continuous chain of steep ridges, again with an even water-line very near the crest, and presenting a singular serrated appearance (the Djebel Lazareg). I counted no less than 127 little peaks rising above this straight horizontal line, almost all of them of equal height, like the crests of a long sea-reef; and lower down the sides were many tidal strings, if I may so term them. Turning around to our left and crossing the dry channel of an evaporated and aged “Wed,” we had some low headlands close behind us—Ras Ainyah of the Arabs, “Prise d’eau” of the French—the scene of a bloody combat under General Yusuf. Through an opening between the mountains we debouched on a wide plain, and suddenly before us stood an isolated rock. Two cliffs facing each other bore each a bastioned tower, and in a depression between these lay a town.
The town, whose situation is thus so graphically presented, is Laghouat, of which the leading present interest lies in the fact that it is on the very edge of the Sahara proper. From the rocky hills by the town one can see the serrated Saharan Atlas to the north, extending northeast and southwest, and, turning, to the south, an expansive and gently undulating bare plain, stretching without a break to the horizon.