The Africa of the ancients�the modern Barbary�lies between the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea. It is protected from the ever-encroaching waves of the sandy ocean by the Atlas range. In its western parts this mountain wall is high and broad and covered with eternal snow. It becomes lower as it runs towards the east, also drawing nearer to the sea, and dwindles and dwindles till finally it disappears, leaving a wide, unprotected region between Barbary and Egypt. Over this the Sahara flows, forming a desert barrier tract to all intents and purposes itself a sea, dividing the two lands from each other as completely as the Mediterranean divides Italy and Greece. This land of North Africa is in reality a part of Spain; the Atlas is the southern boundary of Europe. Grey cork-trees clothe the lower sides of those magnificent mountains; their summits are covered with pines, among which the cross-bill flutters, and in which the European bear may still be found. The flora of the range is of a Spanish type; the Straits of Gibraltar is merely an accident; there is nothing in Morocco to distinguish it from Andalusia. The African animals which are there found are desert-haunting species-�the antelope and gazelle, the lion, the jackal, the hyena and certain species of the monkey tribe; and these might easily have found their way across the Sahara from oasis to oasis. It is true that in the Carthaginian days the elephant abounded in the forests of the Atlas, and it could not have come across from central Africa, for the Sahara, before it was a desert, was a sea. It is probable that the elephant of Barbary belonged to the same species as the small elephant of Europe, the bones of which have been discovered in Malta and in certain caves of Spain, and that it outlived the European kind on account of its isolated position in the Atlas, which was thinly inhabited by savage tribes. But it did not long withstand the power of the Romans. Pliny mentions that in his time the forests of Morocco were being ransacked for ivory, and Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century observes that "there are no longer any elephants in Mauritania."

In Morocco the Phoenicians were settled only on the coast. Tunisia and part of Algeria is the scene on which the tragedy of Carthage was performed. In that part of Africa the habitable country must be divided into three regions; first a corn region, lying between the Atlas and the sea, exceedingly fertile but narrow in extent; secondly the Atlas itself, with its timber stores and elephant preserves; and thirdly a plateau region of poor sandy soil, affording a meagre pasture, interspersed with orchards of date-trees, abounding in ostriches, lions, and gazelles, and gradually fading away into the desert.

Most of the north end of the African continent is desert. There is, however, a stretch of land running from the Atlantic Ocean to the gulf Syrtis Minor, two or three hundred miles deep from the Mediterranean, that people can settle in thanks to a regular supply of water. This water supply is brought on by the winter winds of the Atlantic falling on the mountains surrounding this Mediterranean basin, causing regular rainfall in the winter, light showers during spring and autumn, and drought in the summer.

Recent archaeological surveys have shown that around one hundred miles of the Saharan border, which is now uncultivated pre-desert, was an extremely prosperous and substantial region during the Roman period. It supported a greater population during the Roman era than either before or since. Water management of the heavy, intermittent rainfall enabled farmers to grow barley and olives and to raise sheep and goats.

The mountains were covered in forests of conifers and evergreens. In the plains grew olives and figs, in the most fertile regions, grain. Animals of the region included snakes, scorpions, ostriches, gnus, antelope, gazelles, elephants, panthers, leopards, lions, and bears.

http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/pir/geograph.htm