But, in the nineteen-nineties, the government began to invest seriously in its infrastructure, irrigating immense tracts of desert between the Yellow River and the Helan Mountains, much as the phoenix had done.
The official said the country's official satellite imagery database had not been updated since the 1980s – a key hindrance in the ability to track the extremists' movements across wide, isolated tracts of desert and forest.
Arizona is well known for its waterless tracts of desert, but, thanks to many large man-made lakes, it has many more miles of shoreline than its reputation might suggest.
LAS VEGAS - Miles away from the glamour of the Las Vegas Strip, past foreclosed homes and dusty tracts of desert, the Wall Street bond powerhouse Cantor Fitzgerald has placed millions of dollars of its own money on the table.
In some countries vast tracts of unpopulated area were indistinguishable from population centers (Saudi Arabia's territory was segmented into a mere thirteen units, most of which included both populous cities and large tracts of desert).
In northwestern Mexico, large tracts of native desert scrub and thorn scrub vegetation are being converted to non-native grass pastures at an increasing rate in an effort to increase cattle production.
One group, on escaping from the most godforsaken tract of the Mojave desert, doffed their hats, turned back and said: "Goodbye, Death Valley!" "The name stuck," notes Brands.The journey to North Dakota today is more straightforward.
Some 200 miles (300 kilometres) east of Samarkand, in a once fertile, now desert tract of land, the ruins of the great feudal castle of Mug survive.
The rest of Palestine, an undeveloped tract of what was largely desert, became Transjordan, a territory so poor that its new king lived at first in a tent or with better-off supporters.
