AMERICAN PROPOSES TO IRRIGATE 10,000 SQUARE MILES OF SAHARA

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6801, 3 January 1929, Page 12

AMERICAN PROPOSES TO IRRIGATE 10,000 SQUARE MILES OF SAHARA

GREAT ENGINEERING SCHEME. An engineering scheme which, for boldness of conception, rivals Ferdinand do Lesseps’s achievement in malciDg the Suez Canal, is now under the consideration of the Government (states the Literary Digest). Mr. Albert Tardieu, (Minister of Public Works), Mr. Painlevo (Minister of War), Mr. Briand (Foreign Minister), and Mr. Jules Carnbon, arc all said to have expressed themselves favourably on the subject; while Mussolini has referred to the project as “a Roman idea,” and has asked to be kept informed of its progress. The originator of tho scheme is an American, Mr. Dwight Braman, of Boston, who was responsible for great irrigation works in California at tho end of the last century. He proposes to redeem for cultivation an area of some 10,000 square miles in tho Sahara Desert by letting in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea through long canals, and

by damming the rivers that now flow south from tho Atlas Mountains. _ Tho new inland sea, stretching from Biskra to the eastern coast of Tunis, would, it is expected, promote rainfalls and serve as a ready ineaus of transport for the fertile lands to be opened up on its borders: and the building of dikes in the hills would enable trees to be planted where no vegetation has grown for 2000 years. In short, as the London Morning Post expresses it. the anticipation is that “a barren and uninhabitable region would be converted

into a land flowing with milk and honey, sheep and oxen, and inhabited by a prosperous population.” The Morning Post continues: “The prospect of supplying Europe ■with a new granary is certainly an attractive one, and it is not surprising to hear that, such a scheme put forward by so serious and responsible an undertaker should be under the consideration of the French Government.

Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco would all he affected immediately, and apparently to their great economic benefit; but those who accepted responsibility for such an experiment wouid be bound to satisfy them solver; that nl Jthc consequences had been measured. So audacious an interference with physiography might well raise misgivings in timid minds. Does not the Prophet

Amos declare the who ‘callcth for the waters of the sen, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth, the Lord is His name!’ And it is impossible net to reflect ,that it might be easier to do this thing than to undo it. On th(> other hand, some of man’s greatest triumphs have been in the direction of modifying his environment to his needs and of reclaiming waste spaces to his use. “Nor is it the tradition of the French any more than of the British or the American genius to shrink from great engineering ■ enterprises. But what would bo the effect, not only on North Africa, but on Southern Europe? Neither the engineers, nor the physiographers, nor the economists can answer that question confidently.” j