EXPLODED.

Putaruru Press, Volume V, Issue 175, 10 March 1927, Page 3

EXPLODED.

MYTH OF SAHARA. Cities and Peoples. Captain Angus Buchanan, M.C., the Scottish explorer, has finally exploded the Sahara myth, as it used to be taught in the schools. The great desert is as unlike the popular conception of it, suggested by the blank on the map, as it could well be. By the aid of the cinematograph, the lantern and his own description he was able to convey a vivid impression of it to a Scottish audience. Speaking under the auspices of the Edinburgh centre of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in the Synod Kail on “ Sidelights on Saharan Life,” he convened an idea of the vast mountain ranges, each as extensive as Great Britain, which rise to 6000 and sometimes to 10,000 feet above the sandy or rocky level of this great tract, and of the fortified cities, some of them abandoned for lack of food, and of the warlike tribes of nomads who wander in the Sahara. UNDERGROUND CITY. The most impressive part of his lecture and film described the great city of Faehi, built entirely out of salt, half underground, with dark lanes intersecting it everywhere, and rude barricades, to be hastily closed in case of attack. In these lanes, where the sun only occasionally penetrates, the men go heavily veiled, and the real sheik—an unlovely object—abounds. This race of nomads, said Captain Buchanan, is not of the negroid type, but seems to have been of Semitic origin, and to be allied to the Berbers, who took part in the Riffian struggle which has just ended. It is a fine race, rapidly dying out. They hate to live under a roof of any kind. Many of the men could quite easily migrate to Kano, a city of 60,000 inhabitants, on the southern fringe of the Sahara, probably one of the most picturesque cities in all Africa, where, from the terminus of the railway line a European trade is carried on. They prefer to live in a land where they can hardly keep body and soul together. At one point Captain Buchanan came suddenly upon three men of another race, almost white, who lived with a tribe on the top of a mountain. By visiting this settlement, should he make another expedition to the Sahara, he hopes to add a further chapter to the history of anthropology. WAR RAVAGES. Across the Sahara great caravan routes once ran. On these routes silent cities, some built of stone, now stand. Other cities are gradually losing their populations, through the impossibility of maintaining human and animal life or through the devastation of warfare. When slaughter takes place vultures darken the sky in great numbers, and it is impossible to say where they have come from or how far they have travelled. Vulture pictures were among the most interesting glimpses of the Saharan life which the lecturer gave (says the Scotsman), though a feature of his expedition was its zoological side. Specimens of animal and bird life, down to the smallest of rodents, were brought home, and form a valuable addition to British museums. The chair was taken by Sir Everard Jim Thurn in the absence of the president of the society, Viscount Novar.