TRIPOLI USELESS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 33, 22 January 1912, Page 7

TRIPOLI USELESS.

INDICTMENT BY PROFESSOR GREGORY. Professor J. W. Gregory, formerly of the Melbourne University, writes in the Contemporary Review of the meagreness of Tripoli’s natural resources. In 1908, at tiie request of Mr Israel Zangwill, he organised an expedition to Cyrenaica, the eastern and least unpromising district of Tripoli, to investigate its suitability for the purpose of a colony of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. The expedition had reluctantly to report that the country, owing to'its large area of useless land and its insufficient and uncertain water supply, was quite unsuitable for extensive agricultural colonies. Over the greater part of it even “dry farming,” as practised in America and Australia, is inapplicable, owing to the nature of the ground, and the fact that half the acreage of the country has a rainfall of less than lO.in. Professor Gregory points out that Italian explorers were as disappointed as he with the potential value of the land, and that the former Italian commercial agencies proved such failures from the financial point of view that Italian activity was suspended in 1896. He suggests that the revival of Italian Interest in Tripoli of late years hafe been due to sentimental rather than to practical reasons, though he admits that the Turkish officials have given the Italians much cause of offence. Apparently the possibilities of development in Tripoli cannot be judged by what has taken.,place in Algeria and, Tunisia. Tripoli is, in fact, geographically par f of, the Sahara, while the western States of North Africa belong rather to Southern Europe. The northern coast of Africa, according to Professor Gregory, Includes three types of .country. The western section, comprising Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, is traversed by the great mountain chain of the Atlas, which ends abruptly in Tunisia, where it is , cut acrqss by the southward turn of the coast-, its eastward continuation be’ng in Sicily. This western section differs altogether from the rest of Africa, and is plaped by geogra phicaf zoologists in the same region as Europe. The second section/ of the coast consists of the Tripolitan shores of the broad bight between Tunisia and Cyrenaica. Here tin Mediterranean reaches to the inne. zone of the continent; that is to sa , to the plateau of the Sahara. TV third section extends eastwards from the gulf northward around the hills of Cyrenaica to Egypt. Cyrenaica is, in many respects, similar in structure to Egypt, but its economic conditions are quite other, since it lias neither Nile nor Suez Canal. Tripoli’s chief importance in times past lay in the great caravan route, which ran from its chief ports to the interior. of Africa. That trade, however, has been diverted, owing to the opening of better routes through the Soudan* and as the country, besides being poor agriculturally, is also almost devoid of minerals, it is never likely to repay the Italians for the money they are expending upon their present war.