DESE'RTS of Asia, biaban of the Persians, an( Chul of Turkestan. A chain of deserts extend fron the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to th, Yellow Sea, crossing Africa and Arabia, throng! path of Central Persia, Seistan, Korasan, Afghan istan, and Baluchistan, onwards to the east of thi Indus into Rajputana ; and the link, broken by th, Himalaya, is found in the great sand sea of th Gobi. They are mostly uninhabitable, from thi absence of water and the intense heat, but hav occasional oases of rich vegetation, where wate springs occur, or where the Nile, the Tigris, tit Euphrates, the Indus, and their affluents enricl the country. To the westward, the seas of saw of the African and Arabian wastes are seldon raised above, often sink below, the level of tIF ocean. To the eastward of the rich tract in Persia Kerman, Seistan, Chinese Tartary, and Mongolia the desert consists of series of plateaux, havini from 3000 to nearly 10,000 feet of elevation.
The Eastern Desert of Egypt, near Jabl Gyr, ha ancient green, red, and purple porphyry quarrio at Jabl Dakkan (Mons Porphyritis) ; and breech quarrie,s occur at Wadi Keuch, which were worke( in the thne of the first Osirtasen, supposed to hay, been the Pharaoh who ruled over Egypt in th, time of Joseph.
The Desert of Arabia extends from where th, borders of Syria touch the Euphrates in the north to near the coast of Hadramaut in the south. I is continued between Syria and the Euphrates between Hejaz and Jabal Sharnmar and the Naj( provinces, and between Yemen- and Oman, an( again on the east, between the provinces of Naj( and Al Hasa on the Persian Gulf.
There are oases in this desert, and in the winte] and after rains are scattered patches of grass, an( the Bedouin find pasture_on the borders ; but tho hot season the sun pours down its heat in unopposed fierceness. That part miscalled the Syriall desert by Europeans, was the Arabia Deserta of Ptolemy, and is now known 118 Al Ilaininad. That in the neighbourhood of Damascus is called Badiyalt us Sham.
The Desert of Syria lies between Mesopotamia and tho coast region of Syria and its southern part, Palestine. It is a gres.t chalk plateau, about 1800 feet above the sea, bounded on the west side by a great depression.
Desert of Kharaznh—Between the Caspian and the Oxus is a desert tract of firm gravel, broken into undulations, and covered with a rich pasture of aromatic herbs, and water is found in some of the hollows on its surface. It is known as the desert of Khiva or Kharazm, also as the Regan, and from June to September is liable to destruc tive bot winds, in which man and beast perish, even the hardy camel perishing miserably. The Baluchi call this wind Julo, the flame, also Bad-i Simoom, or the poison wind. There is great heat of skin, quickly ending in death. The approach of the wind is ushered in by an oppressive calm in the air, and a degree of heat that affects the eyes ; the precaution then adopted by travellers is to cover themselves over, and lie prostrate on the earth. Pottinger says (Travels, p. 136) that any cloth, however thin, will obviate the delet,erious effects of the Bad-i-Simoom on the human body.
The Great Salt Desert of Central Persia is called the Daria-i-Kavir. It stretches north and south across the eastern part of that country from Nishabor in the north, to Hinman on the south, and sinks to its lowestlevel opposite to the Seistan basin. It may be below the sea-level, and is certainly not far above it. It is the principal of the Kavir or Kafeh salt swamps of Persia. 1Vherever the alluvial soil of the Persian plateau is exposed to sufficient moisture, either by the overflow of rivers, by surface drainage from the hills, or by the want of sufficient slope to carry off desert rainfall, a saline efflorescence is produced, which, forming a thin whitish crust on the surface, retains the moisture beneath for a considerable time, and thus creates in winter and spring a treacherous and impas.sable bog. About lat. 34° N. it is 6 miles wide.