NEARLY A MILE A YEAR

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 22 (Supplement)

NEARLY A MILE A YEAR

SAHARA SAND IS ADVANCING. RELENTLESS TIDE CREEPS ON. The Sahara is advancing. It is massing its battalions, many billions strong, of tiny particles of sand to baffle still further the efforts which man may make to conquer it, says the Children’s Newspaper. Its sand tides are creeping over its eastern and south-eastern boundaries, not as the waves of the sea beat against a coastline and wear it away, but with a . resistlessness as hard to counter. The Nigeria of Great Britain and the colonies of the French Sudan are threatened.

It is possible to draw a line eastward from Ansongo on the Niger to Lake Chad, which is becoming less of a lake and more of a marsh, to show that the whole Sahara has advanced over that 800-mile front nearly 200 miles in the last three centuries. It is quickening its pace now, and advancing at the rate of nearly a mile a year. The Sahara is not merely an expanse of waterless sand. There are vast areas of low hills, rocky valleys, and black masses of volcanic rock. Not all its regions are waterless, though on the dreaded Tanezruft, the most arduous part of the Sahara crossing, it is declared that rain never falls. There are sandy plateaux and innumerable sandhills carved into continually changing forms by the winds. These are the chief agents in carrying the sand into the forest borders. BARRIER PLANTATIONS. The advance has received some aid in the past from the natives, whose efforts at farming and agriculture have assisted to push back the forest barrier, for to them the forest is no friend. Now that the danger is becoming more apparent the Government of Nigeria is considering the construction of barrier plantations. The first steps were taken by the Emir of Katsena, in the Katsena Province, just north of Kano, the chief town of Nigeria. But if the danger is to be met properly France must join hands with England to deal with it. How far the threat of the sand is due to the drying up of these regions it is impossible to say. There are . manythings to point to the desiccation of Africa in some of its parts. Lake Chad is one of the examples of a sheet of water greatly changed in its appearance since it was first discovered by European travellers. There are other lakes pointing to the same conclusion. The Sahara itself shows traces of regions that were fertile in past geological time. BURIED CITIES OF THE PAST. If the geological record were followed far enough back it would be found that some parts of the Sahara were covered by water or that they were invaded by incursions of the sea. But this is true of other continents, notably that of Asia, where are buried cities that flourished hi the early days of civilisation. Asia also furnishes in Lob-nor an example of a huge inland lake which several times has changed its place as the oscillating tides of sand have covered it or receded from it. Every continent, the geologists tell us, is rising or falling, and the distribution of water in it changes accordingly. The oscillation may take thousands or even millions of years, but in the short time open to us for observation it is impossible for anyone to say that any part of the world is permanently becoming drier.