AFRICAN DISCOVERY

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 12, 16 January 1933, Page 14

AFRICAN DISCOVERY

SECOND GRAND CANYON

A great valley like the Grand Canyon of Arizona, cut nearly a mile deep across plateau lands of southern Abyssinia, but inhabited only by monkeys, and seldom if ever seen by white people, has been discovered by the Italian explorer, the Duke of the lAbruzzi. One of Italy's colonies, a part of Somaliland, lies just south of the Abyssinian border, says Dr. E. E. Free, in his "Week's Science." "Through this colony flows the river called the Webishebeli, the Abyssinian headwaters of which the Italian Government commissioned the duko to explore. At one place along this river, he reports, the water has cut a deep gorge through almost horizontal • rock

strata much as the Colorado River has cut the Grand Canyon. "The gorge is reported to be six to twelve miles wide and from threequarters of a mile to one- mile deep. Its sides are almost bare of vegetaL tion, as is true also of the Grand Canyon, so that the- horizontal rock ' layers are exposed. The colouring and ■ the unusual pinnacles and other rock , forms^ sculptured by erosion in the , American Grand Canyon are reported to be less spectacular in the newlydiscovered African duplicate. 1 "Just aa the waters of the Colorado Eiver, after emerging from the Ameri- : can Grand Canyon, now are to be used . for power and irrigation by the new t Government project at Boulder Dam, so the river that flows through the r African canyon ultimately will boput to use, the duke believes, as a source . of power." .