basin of the "inland sea," if this term can be any longer applied to the saline depression of the Shott Melghigh. More than half of Southern Algeria draining towards the Sahara, from the Jebel Amur to the Tunisian frontier, forms part of this basin, the central reservoir of which is at present almost dry.

The watercourse flowing from the rising village of Aflu, capital of the Amur

Fig. 136. — Laghwat.

highlanders, is joined near Tajemut by a stream fed by tributaries from the southern Amur valleys, and passing near Ain-Mahdi, the religious centre of the famous Tijâniya order, founded in the eighteenth century. But its prosperity was ruined by the choice made of Laghwat by the French as the capital of the Saharian