DESERT INTO GARDEN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 154, 11 April 1930, Page 7

DESERT INTO GARDEN.

, “BLAZINC” THE NILE TRAIL. Vast uncharted wastes of the Nile watershed, where the foot of man is never known to have trod, are to be explored by an aeroplane which has just left Croydon, says the “Sunday News.” _ , , , The future of Egypt is largely bound up with the results of this exploration. Great sun-baked deserts could be made fertile if water could be obtained. Water is plentiful in the upper reaches of the Nile, but it is being dammed by great swamps of sudd (masses or vegetation) within the unexplored tracts of the Sudan, Uganda, and Congo. There the waters stagnate and evaporate. If canals could be cut the desert might blossom like a garden. Another scheme is to make a. vast reservoir of 'Lake Albert in Uganda, so that rain, which now overflows into the Sudd region, might be stored. Exploration is to be by ipeans of aerial photographs, and a specially-de-signed aeroplane will survey the Sudan. The ’plane has been built by the Fairey Aviation Company, and will be flown to Juba, on the Upper Nile, by Mr R. C. Kemp, managing director of the Air Survey Company, and Mr Allan Calder. Two photographic ’planes will be used for the work. Each picture, from a height of 15,000 feet, covers an area of nine square miles and the ’planes will fly so that each strip of pictures overlaps slightly. The photographs, when developed, aTe pieced together, so that each detail joins up exactly. Sections of the photographs are then sent out to ground surveyors to enable them to pick their way through the difficult country. The party will consist of seven Europeans under Lieutenant-Colonel Blazeley.