El-Jereed, or Belad-el-Jereed, the country of dates, or literally, the country of the palm branches, is a part of the Sahara, or the hot dry country lying in the immediate vicinity of the Great Desert.  Its principal features of soil and climate offer nothing different from other portions of the Sahara, or the Saharan regions of Algeria and Morocco.  The Belad-el-Jereed, therefore, may be properly called the Tunisian Sahara.  Shaw observes generally of Jereed:—­“This part of the country, and indeed the whole tract of land which lies between the Atlantic and Egypt, is by most of the modern geographers, called Biledulgerid, a name which they seem to have borrowed from Bloid-el-Jeridde, of the Arabians, who merely signify the dry country; though, if we except the Jeridde, a small portion of it which is situate on this side of Lesser Syrtis, and belongs to the Tunisians, all the rest of it is known by no other general name than the Sahara or Sahra, among those Arabs, at least, whom I have conversed with.”

Besides the grand natural feature of innumerable lofty and branching palms, whose dark depending slender leaves, are depicted by the Arabian poet as hanging gracefully like the dishevelled ringlets of a beautiful woman in distress, there is the vast salt lake, El-Sibhah, or literally the “salt plain,” and called by some modern geographers the Sibhah-el-Soudeeat, or Lake of Marks, from having certain marks made of the trunks of the palm, to assist the caravans in their marches across its monotonous samelike surface.

This vast lake, or salt plain, was divided by the ancients into three parts, and denominated respectively, Palus Tritonis, Palus Pallas, and Palus Libya.  The first is derived from the river Triton, which according to Ptolemy and other ancient geographers, is made to pass through this lake in its course to the sea, but which is the present river Ghobs, where it falls into the Mediterranean.  The name Pallas is derived from the tradition of Pallas having accompanied Sesostris in his Asiatic expeditions with the Lybian women, and she may have been a native of the Jereed.  The lake measures from north-east to south-west about seventy English miles, with a third of the breadth, but it is not one collection of water; there being several dry places, like so many islands, interspersed over its surface, depending however, as to their number and extent upon the season of the year, and upon the quantity of water in the particular season.

“At first, on crossing it,” says a tourist, “the grass and bushes become gradually scarcer; then follows a tract of sand, which some way beyond, becomes in parts covered with a thin layer of salt.  This, as you advance, is thicker and more united; then we find it a compact and unbroken mass or sheet, which can, however, be penetrated by a sword, or other sharp instrument, and here it was found to be eleven inches in depth; and finally in the centre, it became so hard, deep, and concentrated, as to baffle all attempts at breaking its surface except with a pickaxe.  The horse’s shoe, in fact, makes no impression upon its stone-like surface.”