Black lake Algeria. Ink lake in algeria

In Algeria, near the town of Sidi Bel Abbes, is located. This reservoir has many names, but the most famous are " Ink Lake", "Devil's Eye", "Black Lake", "Inkwell".

The lake got its name due to the fact that instead of water, the lake is filled with real ink. Since the ink is poisonous, there are no fish or plants in the reservoir.

For a long time, scientists could not understand the nature of the occurrence Ink Lake, but thanks to the development of new technologies, this mystery of nature has been solved. The reason for the appearance of such an unusual substance for a reservoir was two rivers that flow into the lake. One river has a high concentration of iron salts. The other contains a large number of various organic compounds that are washed out of peat bogs.

Flowing together into the lake, the streams enter into chemical reactions with each other, and thanks to constantly occurring interactions, the amount of ink does not decrease, but increases more and more.

Aborigines have different attitudes towards the strange body of water. Some believe that the lake is the creation of the devil, others believe that it is a source of income. Ink from the Black Lake can be found on the shelves of supply stores not only in Algeria, but also in other countries.

The most interesting thing in the world And based on the results, we get an idea of ​​​​some unique natural site

, supposedly attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world. By the number of links you can understand how widespread this information is. There are several options for description, but basically the meaning comes down to the following. Not far from the Algerian town(sometimes written as Sidibel, or not mentioned at all) there is a lake in which, instead of water, ink, by the way, is suitable for writing. Because of the toxic fumes, nothing grows there and no living creatures live there, and it is harmful for humans to be nearby. The locals do not like this lake, they avoid it and give it scary names, such as the Devil's Eye, etc. For added color, a legend is added that explains the appearance of ink as the work of an evil spirit. But this does not scare the particularly enterprising and they start their own ink business, because Algerian ink is known not only in Africa, but throughout the Mediterranean, as well as the Near and Middle East. Scientists struggled for a long time with the mystery of the origin of ink, conducted research and experiments, and then realized that two rivers flow into the lake, the water of which mixes and, as a result of a chemical reaction, turns into ink. The waters of one river have a high concentration of iron salts, while the waters of the other are saturated with certain organic compounds that got there from nearby peat bogs. These are the miracles Nature is capable of!

WHAT'S IN THE PICTURE

It is noteworthy that editors of various sites use photographs of different bodies of water with completely different surrounding landscapes to illustrate articles about the ink lake in Algeria. The only thing they have in common is that all the pictures make a spectacular visual impression even before reading the article.

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Most often, a photograph of a lake with deep blue water is used. Here and there in the comments to countless articles about the “ink lake” they noticed long before me that in the photo - Blue Lake Blue Lake near Mount Gambier ( South Australia). All this is easily verified by image search, and is also confirmed by satellite images. YouTube is full of rollers about the lake Blue Lake, Mount Gambier. You can see for yourself by typing these words into the YouTube search bar.

If the text about the ink lake mentions mountains that are actually located in the northern part of Algeria, then a photo of one of them can be inserted into the article Murudzhinsky lakes, What's on Dombay(Western Caucasus, Karachay-Cherkessia). Satellite view. More often they include the Blue Murudzhinskoye Lake, but they can also take a photo of one of the Baduk lakes. Sources of the photographs are in the hiking album of Innokenty Maskilayson, summer and autumn 2003.
Occasionally cropped photos of Lake Bohinj, Lake Bohinj in Slovenia, are used.

It seems that for an article about the inky Algerian miracle, a photo of any lake with dark water (maybe at sunset) could be suitable, as long as the living creatures do not stick out to the foreground. Even photographs of Trinidad's Pitch Lake are used, in which people are picking up either bitumen or oil with sticks. And what, also black, will do. That is, any forgery, but not a snapshot of a real body of water. What's really there?

IN FACT

I wasn’t the first to suspect that there was something shady going on with this lake. People before me have already studied the surrounding area using maps. Sidi Bel Abbes.
A couple of kilometers north of it you can easily find a lake called Sidi Mohamed Benali.
If you look at Google Maps (satellite view), it really looks like an inkblot.
The map clearly shows that not a single river flows into this lake. There are rivers there, but they flow by. So where would the ink come from?

So, now we know the name of the lake and can get to know each other better. What is there about it on YouTube?
Here are various options for combinations of keywords for searching to check if I’m lying:
Lac Sidi bel Abbes
Lac Sidi Mohamed Ben Ali
Lac Sidi M"hamed Ben Ali
Lac Sidi Mohammed Ben Ali
Lac Sidi Mohamed Benali
Lac - from French - lake. In Algeria, in addition to the official Arabic, French is also used, as a legacy of the colonial past.

As a result, we will see a bunch of videos about the ink lake, where you can see how Algerians relax next to the ink, which instead of water, catch ink fish, ride boats on the ink, ink birds swim on the surface, and children splash right in the ink near the shore. You can see with your own eyes that people live there quite normally. For example, in this video, watch the first half a minute, as well as after 2:00

There are no other lakes near Sidi Bel Abbes.
10 km from the city (it’s no longer nearby) there is another body of water - Barrage Sarno. This is the result of a dam blocking a river. Oued-Sarno. But since Sarno's Barrage is much closer to locality Sidi-Hamadush, then you don’t have to look at it, except to be curious about how it is with their water - isn’t it inky?

Okay, jokes aside.
The myth is no more.
There is a lake, with very picturesque views along the shores, but the water in it is very ordinary. panoramas of the shores of Lake Sidi Mohamed Benali.
And why didn’t anyone think of checking this before? Google maps (find the name of the lake) and YouTube (find a video about the lake) - all this has been at hand for so many years!
But no, why think about it, try to check something - it’s easier to copy-paste all sorts of incredible things, because they are cool, and reality is boring.

"BORING REALITY"

To fill the empty space left by the dispelled myth, let’s at least look at the French-language Wikipedia, otherwise the cat cried on the topic of interest to us in the Russian-language one.
City Not far from the Algerian town is administrative center vilayet of the same name and has more than 212 thousand inhabitants (as of 2008). It is the second largest city in northwestern Algeria after Orana, which is 82 km to the north. Immediate big cities: Tlemcen- 87 km to the southwest and Mascara- 93 km to the northeast. The city is located at an altitude of 470 m above sea level. on the banks of the river Mekerra(as the White River is called in these places) in the center of a vast hilly plain with an average height of 500 m above sea level. The Sidi Bel Abbes valley is surrounded on all sides by mountains: from the north - Tessala, from the west - Ain Temouchent and Tlemcen, from the south - Daya, and from the east the plateau also goes to the highlands. It turns out that the location of Sidi Bel Abbes is strategically advantageous and allows control of communication routes between neighboring regions.

The climate is steppe semi-desert. Summer is very hot, cool nights and sunny days(25-35C), minimum precipitation (2-11 mm). In autumn there are intense rainfalls. In winter (1-9C) snow may fall briefly, precipitation 63 mm. Total precipitation for the year is 410 mm. The city owes its name to the Muslim religious figure (marabout) Sidi (respectful address) Bel Abbes, who was a Sharif and one of the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. His grandfather settled in the Maghreb to carry the word of Allah. The marabout himself Sidi Bel Abbes al-Bouzidi died in 1780 and was buried on the banks of the Mekerra River (Oued Mekerra) in the mausoleum (Arabic: Qobba). A settlement of the same name gradually arose around his tomb. The local Arab residents were mainly engaged in agriculture (cereals and gardening).

In 1830, the French invasion of Algeria began. In 1843, colonialists founded a military fort near the mausoleum of Sidi Bel Abbes al-Buzidi, and residential areas began to appear in 1849. Around the turn of 1860, European settlers began arriving to colonize western Algeria. But resistance local residents, from whom the French took the land, as well as regular summer droughts, locust invasions and diseases slowed down the development of land. The peculiarities of the local climate created serious difficulties with irrigation: in the fall and winter there may be too much water, and in the summer there is none at all.

After the brutal suppression of the rebels in 1872, the situation stabilized and thousands of immigrants with their families poured into these parts from France. The occupation process ended and comprehensive capital development began natural resources countries. Mineral exploration, reclamation of surrounding lands, settlement of new arrivals and, at the same time, expansion of the city were carried out. Roads, including railways, bridges and other infrastructure were built. In 1881, the population of Sidi Bel Abbes was 16,840 inhabitants. In the 1930s, the old fortress walls were torn down and wide boulevards and squares were built in their place. Among themselves, the French called the city “Little Paris”. For more than a hundred years, the base training camp and headquarters of the French Foreign Legion were located in Sidi Bel Abbes. Since 1962, the city has been part of independent Algeria.

Sidi Bel Abbes is a commercial and industrial center and also has its own university. The city's activities are mainly focused on agricultural machinery, electrical equipment, footwear and dairy products. It is the most important railway junction. The training center of the modern Algerian National Gendarmerie is also located here. Wheat, barley and grapes are grown in the surrounding area. There are several natural tourist sites, including the artificial lake of Sidi Mohamed Benali (2 km to the north), the Louza recreational forest (12 km to the east). Sidi Bel Abbes has a rich archaeological and historical heritage. This applies not only to the years of French occupation, but also to the period of Ottoman rule that preceded them, and before that to the period of the Spanish conquests and even to the era of the Roman Empire.
If anyone is interested, here is a site in French on the history of Sidi Bel Abbes. I don’t know French, I used Google translator.

SO WHAT ABOUT THE LAKE?

Sidi M'hamed Benali- that's what the locals call it. Located in the municipality of Ain Trid, 1.7 km from the city of Sidi Bel Abbes, it is one of the largest nature reserves in the region. The lake is strictly man-made and is fed largely by a canal dug in the 1940s between the Oued Mekerra River, on which the city stands, and the lake. Then the canal goes from the lake to the Oued Sarno River.

In the sketch, continuous blue lines indicate wadi rivers or, as they are called here, oueds. Time flows are indicated by dotted lines.
Arrows indicate the direction of flow. Red stars are populated areas.

This channel is designed to reduce flows floods in Oued Mekerra and, consequently, the risk of flooding of Sidi Bel Abbes, which Mekerra flooded almost every rainy season in the autumn-winter period. The canal is used only during floods, as an additional drainage system, transferring excess water from the river to the lake. Lake Sidi Mohamed Benali occupies a natural basin formed in sedimentary rocks, which was closed downstream by a dam. Its bottom, initially very permeable, became waterproof after a few years due to sedimentation. During a flood, the area of ​​the lake can increase from 30 to 50 hectares, and maximum depth is about 30 m. With an average size of 750x730 m, the estimated capacity of the basin is 3 million cubic meters. In fact, the lake serves as a reservoir, from where water is taken in the summer to irrigate the surrounding gardens. This solves the problem of water for irrigation, which is plentiful in the fall and winter, but not at all in the summer.

The reservoir does not have a beach, but is still a favorite vacation spot for townspeople, as well as residents of neighboring vilayets. People come here, stupefied by the city heat among asphalt and concrete, to breathe clean air in the shade of dense, by local standards, vegetation cover and admire picturesque views or catch fish. The local yacht club holds regattas. Athletes go jogging and cycling around the lake. This natural area is transit zone For migratory birds, including ducks, flamingos and other species. The presence of birds creates a special atmosphere and arouses the curiosity of visitors. The area close to the lake is patrolled by the National Gendarmerie.

Unfortunately, there are also environmental problems. The lake is surrounded by farmland, which receives a lot of fertilizer and supports abundant livestock. Added to the pollution caused by these activities are the consequences of the lake's tourist attraction. There is an ambitious project to improve the nearby area with the creation of a recreation park, but due to lack of funding, the matter has not yet progressed much. Local environmentalists are conducting campaigns to clean up the area and also inform visitors about the need to pick up trash after themselves. There are a lot of articles on local Internet resources dedicated to this remarkable body of water, but nowhere is it referred to as an inky one.

How is it that in this whole story about the city of Sidi Bel Abbes and its environs there was no place for some ridiculous ink tale that is already inconvenient to remember? But something served as the starting point for the myth? Like some abstract schoolboy in a chemistry lesson saw the experience and under his impression I decided that in a country far, far away, this could very well happen. The main thing is that the country is far away.

Unlike the absolutely fantastic story about two sources of concentrated sulfuric acid, which come from nowhere at the bottom of the Sicilian “lake of death” (there are a lot of mysteries in the world, right?), the story about two rivers that form Algerian ink has a simple chemical basis. Here is an example of an erroneous assumption: if an experiment works in the laboratory, then why not the same thing happen in nature. How the components needed for ink are found in the right concentrations in the water of the rivers of Algeria, where are the peat bogs (this is in Algeria!) and what are the rivers of Algeria and its climate like - these are little things, right? If a student, due to lack of life experience, does not realize the degree of difference between laboratory conditions and the natural environment, this is understandable. But many adults do not understand that not everything is possible in nature - it has its own laws.

RIVER FROM THE PAST

So, the main goal has been achieved: the myth has been smashed into reality.
All that remains is to find out:
Who launched the duck and when?
Why ink?
Why Algeria?

A search for the earliest publication in RuNet simultaneously revealed a sharp surge that occurred in 2011-12. Even a journalist from a Russian publication National Geographic fell for this “news”, which was later stated in the article “10 popular fables of 2012” - see 4th place.
Among the heaps of clones of the original article on all sorts of websites and blogs (I’m not talking about social networks), there are links to this. This is the popular science magazine "Science and Life" No. 8, 2011, pp. 84-85. It seems to be a serious publication, but there it is.
Or there is a good thing - TRIZ - Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. The author of the theory is Altshuller G.S. - inventor and writer. I read his book “And Then the Inventor Appeared” in my youth. His work continues today, but problem 937 is also found on the TRIZ website. Outwardly it looks like an inventive task, but in fact, this is a task to test the knowledge of a once learned textbook fact. Screenshot
As a result, we find the publication of the electronic version of the book on July 9, 2001: Vladimir Andreevich Mezentsev. Encyclopedia of miracles. Book I. The ordinary in the unusual. 3rd ed. – M., Knowledge. 1988.


But where did Mezentsev get the information? There is no list of sources used at the end. It is logical to assume that from the earlier Russian-language collections of the very best. And their authors, in turn, how did they collect such a large amount of information? Could they at some stage look into similar foreign collections to broaden their horizons?

Let's change the search language: Ink Lake Algeria
We filter out the English-language clones of the article about the “ink lake” of several recent years. It is clear from their text that these are the results of a reverse translation from Russian into English. We also ignore geographical discrepancies, such as Ink Lake in Ontario or Inks Lake in Texas, as well as completely inappropriate ones, such as an ink refilling service for printer cartridges in Algeria.
Suddenly, something new attracts attention: on a site where various hoaxes, pranks and deceptions are collected. Now there’s also a river! It's worth posting in full. (Google translation plus my grammar correction.) screenshot 1 and screenshot 2

Algerian ink river.
In the works of the "Athanasius Kircher Society" an interesting geographical mystery. The American Journal of Pharmaceuticals in 1930 published an article entitled "The History of Ink" which contained the following statement:
“Iron-tannin ink sometimes forms naturally; this phenomenon is observed in Algeria, a country in northern Africa, where an “ink river” exists. Chemical studies of the waters of the streams that combine to form this river have shown that one of the streams is saturated with iron from the soil , through which it flows, and another stream carries tannin from the peat bog. When these two streams combine, a chemical reaction occurs between tannic acid, iron and oxygen in the water, resulting in black ferrous tannate, creating a natural ink river. "

Does this ink river really exist? And if so, where is it on the map?
The earliest mention of this mysterious river that I could find is in The Athens Messenger for May 25, 1876. The short entry reads:

"A river of ink has been discovered in Algiers. Let them find a mountain of paper and then send for William Allen."

Over the next seven decades, similar passages—almost verbatim to what was printed in the American Journal of Pharmacy—appeared regularly in newspapers. They were usually present as a bunch of odd bits of information to fill the space in a column. However, the name and location of the river itself (other than the fact that it is in Algeria) has never been identified.
More recently, Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler included a passage about the river in their 1994 book The Best, the Worst and the Unusual: Noteworthy Achievements, Events, Feats and Mistakes of All Kinds:

"The most unusual river. The confluence of two tributaries in Algeria forms an ink river: one contains iron, the other, which flows from a peat bog, gallic acid. The substances mix and react chemically to form true black ink. (Black Creek in upstate New York is formed by a similar chemical mixture.)"

While the chemical composition of the "ink river" sounds plausible, other details about it are so vague that it resembles a geographic urban legend.
Publ. Aug 17 2007 (end quote)

But still:
Why ink?
Why Algeria?

BLACK STREAM

How could Scientific American, such a serious popular science magazine, allow this to be published? If we exclude intent, incompetence and oversight, then it remains level of scientific knowledge corresponding to the second half of the 19th century. This may explain the appearance of such notes in the journal.
By the way, a little earlier, in the issue of Scientific American dated March 25, 1876, on page 197, material was published that on March 3 in Kentucky, a rain of pieces of meat fell from the sky in clear weather. Information of this kind, scattered across various publications, will later be collected by Charles Fort for his “Book of the Damned” and other collections of the mysterious. Subsequently, he will be called one of the first ufologists, and we are not on the same path with them.
But on the other hand, as recently as April 6, 1876, the American Chemical Society was founded, which was a consequence of the intensive development of chemistry in these years.

Let us return to the issue of Scientific American dated April 15, 1876, where on page 248 there is a section “Scientific and practical information". It is dedicated to Africa and contains three notes. The first is about the discovery of voids filled with rainwater in the rocks 30 miles from Mossamedes (West Africa), the second is about an incident in Benjuel (West Africa) with a spitting snake cuspedira. Both notes specifically describe what happened, where exactly it was and how it happened, but the material in them is not as vivid as in the last, smallest, third note - A RIVER OF INK.

It begins with a single sensational proposal that in Algeria there is a river with genuine ink. What follows is actually a brief retelling of the long-known recipe for making iron gall ink, which can be found in the reference book. Maybe the authors know where there are iron ore or peat bogs in northern Algeria? In contrast to the two previous notes, there are no specifics, no facts. In the last sentence, the authors patch a factual hole with speculation. It is obvious to them that the inky color of the water of either the Black Stream or stream (Black Brook) in the northern part of the same country is “due to similar conditions.” According to their logic, inky means it consists of ink.

By the way, the last sentence about Black Brook, when reprinted in other publications, is either completely discarded or remade in their own way, as a result of which Black Brook is “transferred” to the northern part of New York.

Right under the note, at the very bottom of page 248, there is strange advice: “rub swelling from frostbite with oil.” Again, information at the level of “we heard a ringing, but we don’t know where it is.” After all, not just any oil, namely naphthalan oil, is suitable for treatment. It is not mined at all, not in Algeria, but in Azerbaijan, and this is a completely different story.

How could the journalists from Scientific American know about a certain Black Stream in Algeria, which they refer to in the article? In the second half of the 19th century, the French were in full control of Algeria - isn’t it time to change the search language? Black Brook from English to French will be ruisseau noir, which means we are looking for: ruisseau noir Algerie.
We are not interested in the shooting club of the same name, but here is a link to an e-book digitized by Google.
Date of publication: 1844.
Author: Antoine Ernest Hippolyte Carette
Name: " " i.e. "Scientific exploration of Algeria: in 1840, 1841, 1842."
On page 65 there is a phrase: "De Sour-el-R"ezlan, la route va passer a Hamza sur l"Ouad-Kehal (le ruisseau noir)" - From Sur el-Rezlan the road goes to Hamza on Wad Kehal (black stream).
With poetry and imagery French, note, black is simply called black and no inky metaphors for you. By the way, the word encre(French ink) is completely absent in this book, as in other old French-language digitized Google books about Algeria. Then what does the expression mean? le ruisseau noir in brackets? Maybe a translation of the name of a toponym from the local dialect into French, or maybe a value judgment from personal observations? No explanation. Throughout the book the phrase le ruisseau noir no longer found. Let's try to answer this question.

Where exactly in Algeria is the above mentioned Ouad-Kehal and whether it even exists now, since since 1844 the name could have changed or disappeared altogether. As far as I know, Algerians call temporary watercourses in wadis oueds, so let’s google: Oued Kehal and immediately find a place Oued el Kehal deep in the Algerian Sahara. Oued el Kehal is the name of some gap between the dunes 35 km northwest of the oasis of El Golea in the Ghardaia vilayet, which is 700 km south of the capital. There is almost no vegetation, the population density is 4 people. per sq. km. The hottest is August up to +34C, the coldest is January up to +8C. Precipitation is 85 mm per year. The rainiest month is October 18 mm, the driest month is August 1 mm. Looking from a satellite, nothing is visible there, not even a dry riverbed. Some point lost in the sand with exact coordinates. Name Oued el Kehal in Arabic it will be وادي الكحل accordingly, the search displays video clip with a muddy watercourse or

We all know from the school curriculum that lakes are bodies of water with fresh water, although, of course, there are salt lakes. But not everyone knows about the fact that there are completely unique bodies of water in nature, for example, Ink Lake in Algeria.

Near the small Algerian village of Sidi Bel Abbes this fantastic lake is located, yes, with real ink with which you can write. It is a known fact that not a single microorganism lives in this ink, not to mention the fish and other living creatures of an ordinary lake.

For a long time, scientists could not find the reason for the formation of such a paradoxical filling of the Ink Lake. Today this mystery has finally been solved. It turned out that two rivers flow into the lake: one carries a huge amount of all kinds of salts, and the other is rich in organic matter from peat bogs. When these components are mixed, a certain chemical reaction occurs (we won’t get into chemistry) and the result is real ink, poisonous to all living things. Therefore, God forbid to swim in such a lake!

Local residents, of course, keep all sorts of legends that tell why this once beautiful lake suddenly became so poisonous and terrible. Along one of them, the Devil himself once passed by a reservoir, and he supposedly ran out of ink to sign contracts for the purchase of souls (such contracts are not signed in blood, as Western people think). So the Lord of Darkness turned the lake into a huge inkwell. Therefore, the aborigines are even afraid to approach the cursed lake and call it “The Eye of the Devil.” And they are doing the right thing, I must say, since even the evaporation from this reservoir is harmful to human health.

However, enterprising youth do not pay any attention to this; they widely use natural ink (by the way, very High Quality) for their intended purpose, that is, they write with them. In addition, special pens, mascara (for paper, not for eyelashes), shoe polishes, excellent dyes and much more are made as souvenirs for tourists. And I must say, all this is being bought up by visitors with great pleasure...

People started talking about the Algerian town of Sidi Bel Abbes after an unusual reservoir was discovered on its territory, the uniqueness of which lies in the fact that it is filled not with ordinary water, but with real ink, which can be safely used for writing. Of course, you won’t be able to fish here, because this place is unsightly even for plants, not to mention any living organisms.

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Scientists have been trying to solve the riddle for a long time, and just recently the answer was found. It turned out that the appearance of ink in the lake is the result of the confluence of two rivers in this particular reservoir, one of which is a source of huge amounts of iron salts, and the other of organic compounds found in peat bogs. Thanks to this “tandem”, a real natural inkwell appeared, the history of which is shrouded in a huge number of legends.

Local residents like to tell the story that once upon a time in their town dark forces bought living souls. And then one day, while signing a contract, they ran out of ink, so they decided to get out of their situation in such an unusual way.

People's opinions about the origin strange lake, which they like to call Black or Ink, split up. Some consider it the work of evil spirits and try not to even come close to it, but the more courageous, having managed to establish a business, are now making money from it. There are also those who would prefer to see ordinary water in this lake, because the climate in these places is very dry, so drinking water wouldn't be a hindrance.

To be fair, it is worth noting that the quality of ink in this lake is quite high, which is why they are sold not only in Algeria, but also in many other countries. Tourists take great pleasure in accepting various souvenirs made from this natural raw material from local residents.

Nevertheless, scientists warn everyone who wants to see this miracle of nature that staying for a long time near such an unusual and interesting attraction can be dangerous to health, because there is a huge chance of getting seriously poisoned by caustic fumes.