WATERING SAHARA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 127, 11 March 1936, Page 2

WATERING SAHARA.

ENGINEERING POSSIBILITIES. Recently an Italian engineering commission announced from Eritrea that if oil in abundance is found in the eastern Aussa region of Ethiopia a canal would be dug to let the Indian Ocean flow into the dry Danakil basin, some 500 feet below sea level. Thus a lake 200 miles long and 100 miles wide would be formed and the problem of shipping out tlie oil solved at one bold engineering stroke. All this recalls the numerous proposals for the conversion of the Sahara Desert into a land of milk and honey by letting the Mediterranean Sea run into its depressions, states the “New York Times” in an editorial. To a physical geographer the Sahara Desert does not end with the Nile or with Nubia. It extends straight to the Red Stea and into Arabia. Hence the Italian plan is related to the Saharan projects. Desert? The word conjures up an image of endless flats and dunes of sand. But the Sahara is actually a stony, wind-swept waste. Within it are mountains that tower from 5000 to 8000 feet, and a vast central plateau. Much of this area, 12 times as large as Germany, is irreclaimable. But after Captain Roudaire of the French Army, in 1873, surveyed the swampy depressions below sea level In Southern Tunisia and Algeria, we began to hear of Sahara’s redemption. Only 13 miles separates these hollows from the Mediterranean. It would be no engineering feat at all to dig a canal to the Gulf of Gabes. In one part alone an inland lake with an area of 3000 square miles could be created. Much more ambitious was the late Dwight Braman, of Boston. He laid before the French Colonial Office grandiose schemes that enlivened the newspapers of all countries seven years ago. No 3000-square-mile lake for him. A sheet of water about as large as New York State (40,000 square miles) was to be formed. Rainfall was thus to be promoted. And if waters were brought down from the Atlas Mountains an area of 100,000 square miles would blossom. No one gave the reclamation of the more thought or argued his case with the aid of richer engineering detail than Braman. Mussolini was captivated. “A thoroughly Roman idea.” Can it he that the plans for Eritrea hark back to Braman? The evidence is strong that in past geologic times the Sahara was threaded by rivers and that it was a lush tropical! jungle. Can it be restored to its pristine verdure ? Meteorologists doubt it. Yet there can he no question that much of the waste can bo made productive again and that the French are justified in listening to proposals that will open enormous areas of an arid wilderness to agricultural colonists.