The oases of the desert, like the Sahara generally, have been the subject of much popular misconception. The origin of the word “oasis,” which has reached us in its present form through the classics, may perhaps be found in ancient Egyptian. It seems to be connected with the name of the Wawat People of the West referred to in the Harris Papyrus,[3] and occurs in the names of Wau el Kebir and Wau el Seghir or el Namus, which are oases in the Eastern Fezzan.[4] The term El Wahat,[5] given to one or several of the oases west of the Nile Valley, contains the same root. An oasis is not necessarily a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land; it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor water. “Oasis” is a term with no strict denotation, it connotes attributes which render animal life possible. In this sense Air, as a whole, is an oasis situated on a great caravan road from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. The mountains so lie in respect of the desert to the north and to the south that caravan journeys may be broken in their valleys, and camels can stay to recuperate. The mountains mark a stage on the road, the importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate. In the history of North Africa, the principal routes across the Sahara from the Mediterranean to the Sudan have seemingly not changed at all. Since the earliest times they have followed the shortest tracks from north to south whenever there was sufficient water. If the Nile Valley and the routes in the desert adjacent thereto are left out of account as being _suorum generum_, there are four main caravan roads across North Africa from north to south. The easternmost runs from Cyrenaica by Kufra to Wadai and Tibesti; only within the last century has it been rendered practicable for caravans by the provision of wells along the southern part, which was opened to heavy traffic by the Senussiya sect. The two central routes run respectively from Tripolitania by the Fezzan, Murzuk and Kawar to Lake Chad, and by Ghadames, Ghat and Air to the Central Sudan. The western route runs from Algeria and Morocco across the desert to Timbuctoo. In addition there is the Moroccan road, which roughly follows the curve of the coast to the Western Sudan and Senegal. Of all these the best known in modern times,[6] and culturally perhaps the most important, has been the Air road. It is noteworthy that all three central routes have been or are within the control of the Tuareg race. As the Tuareg were the caravan drivers of the Central Sahara, so were they also responsible for bringing a certain degree of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Equatorial Africa.