That belt of coast upon which Atlas descends is of a nature quite distinct from the High Plateaux. The Americans can match such sudden contrasts: we in Europe have nothing of the kind. You come down from salt water to fresh, from a cold (or from a burning) to a genial air, and you enter as you sink from the tableland a territory of great luxuriance. It is called the Tell, and to seize its character it is necessary to modify and to develop somewhat one’s idea of the mountain chains. For though the Greater and the Lesser Atlas run in those main lines which appear in the little sketch upon page 58, yet in detail each range, and especially the range along the sea, is broken and complex, and is made up of a number of separate folds, sometimes parallel and sometimes overlapping, thus: [Illustration] [Sidenote: The Mountains] Moreover, the heights are irregular. There are groups of high peaks and ridges against the desert to the east in the Aurès Mountains, and to the west in those of Morocco, while along the seaboard great bulges of mountain rise in places from the Lower Atlas to a height rivalling the inland range. For instance, where an =X= is marked upon the sketch map, there is an almost isolated mass known as the Djurdjura, very high, almost as high as Aurès, which stands up 150 miles behind it above the Sahara. [Sidenote: The Berber Strongholds] It was in these groups of higher and more rugged hills along the seaboard or the desert that the native languages and perhaps the purity of the native race took refuge both during the Roman occupation and during the Arabian conquest. It is in these ravines that the ancient tongue is spoken to this day. It is there that the Berber type, though it is still everywhere what we ourselves are, has maintained itself least mixed with the foreigner: it is even, perhaps, allied in these hills with a people older than we or the Berber can be. [Sidenote: The Bays of the Tell]