A TALEB tells me that _The Sahara_ is so called from its consisting mostly of rocky stony ground, and its name is a cognate term with _Sakharah_, ‮صخرة‬, _i. e._ "rock." This derivation we can scarcely admit, although as we advance into The Sahara we shall find at least a third of its entire surface to consist of rocks and stones, and mountains. _The Sahara_--‮الصحرا‬--being the theatre of my adventures and researches, deserves a little consideration as to the derivation of this appellation, for so vast a proportion of the African Continent. A late French writer, M. Le Lieutenant-Colonel Daumas, defines The Sahara as "une contrée plate et très-vaste, où il n'y a que peu d'habitants, et dont la plus grande partie est improductive et sablonneuse." This definition presents no proper idea of The Sahara. We have already seen it intersected with long low ridges of mountains, but we shall soon meet with groups of high mountains, as well as find it bristled over and bounded by interminable chains. We shall find also that but a certain portion of its actual mass consists of sand. Unproductive the greater part undoubtedly is, or rather uncultivated; and its population, compared with its vast sterile surface, is extremely small, perhaps not one inhabitant to many thousand square miles. The Mahometan talebs give the following curious etymology of the term Sahara. "We call _Sehaur_," they say, "that point scarcely distinguishable which precedes the point of day, (_fidger_), and during which, in the time of Ramadan, we can eat, drink, and smoke. The most rigorous abstinence ought to commence from the time of morning, or when we can distinguish a white thread from a black thread. The _Sehaur_ is then a shade between night and the point of day, which is important for us to seize upon and to determine, and which ought to occupy the attention of our Marabouts. One of them, Ben-ej-Jiramy, starting on the principle, that the _Sehaur_ is more easily and sooner distinguished by the inhabitants of the plains, where nothing bounds the horizon, than by the mountaineers, who are enveloped in masses of earth, concludes that, from the name of the phenomenon there formed, viz., on the plains, where it is more particularly distinguished or observed, we have named the country _Sahara_, or the country of the _Sehaur_." In this whimsical and ingenious derivation there is a change of the ‮س‬ into ‮ص‬, but which is sufficiently frequent in the Shemitic languages. The grand fallacy of the above etymology is, that it assumes the Sahara to be a perfectly flat country, or country of plains, which is not the fact. The talebs also give various names to different portions of The Sahara, according to the geological character of the country. _Feeafee_ is The Oasis, where life is retired, and one spends one's happy days amidst eternal springs of living water, reclining under palms and fruit trees, securely sheltered from the burning simoon (_shoub_).