THE UNKNOWN SAMARA.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 18 December 1925, Page 7

THE UNKNOWN SAMARA.

RANGE LOFTY AS ALPS WIND LIKE FURNACE BLAST (By Diana Bourbon in the New York Times) Eighty swift Mahari camels have left the north coast of Africa, carrying provisions and. gasoline into tne ueptns of the baluua Re-sort. Tliey are la, mg a trail 01 supplies (,depots oud kilometres apart) lor the expedition that will foaow at the begimt.ng oi October, under the .eadenslnp or count Dry on tie Frorok, into the mountain ranges of tne fauhara, tne Fioggai country, into winch no white man nas ever before penetrated, as its objective. J lie route passes through Uuergha, Insalah and hamanrassett —which rast will be the expedition's headquarters and which lias been renamed by the French Fort Daperme, in memory or the French airman who lost ins hie near there in the course or one ot his desert flights. . Almost all the way the trail is a Golgotha —the road lined with skeletons of explorers and adventurers who have died ol thirst or native tieacliery. The return journey will lead past the place whore a whole Touurog army, slam m ancient battle, lies perfectly preserved—mummified oy the intense heat, much as bod.es are sometimes preserved for years in ice.

EMPIRE OF THE TOUAREGS ’mo FLOggar country, as yet unexplored by jxuropeans, is theoretically all French territory. Actually it is the empire ot the Fouaregs, a mysterious nomadic peop.e descended Horn tne Lybians and the Numiuians. 'they Rave iouglit every foreign intruder irom tne. uays ot the Uarchagimaus, Romans and Vandals down to tne present; nave never grown less inhospitable to Europeans. Count tie Frorok, however, lias entered mto treaty relations with many oi the chieftains and expects sale conduct. Tne F roucii t,overument, m turn, is prepared to assure safety, to the tune oi an escort of a hundred men and three niaenine guns. Of the country, which is almost as large as the United States, and especially of the mountain range that runs through it, even less is known than of the inhabitants. “How many people,” observed Count do Prorok, “realise that there is a mountain range as high as that of the Alps set down in the middle of the Sahara. The Atakor, as it is called, consists mostly of extinct volcanoes snow capped in winter. This is not really as surprising as it sounds, for the Sahara climate, insufferably hot during the day, becomes so cold at night that one’s water will freeze in his bottles.” The expedition intends to scale Mount Hainan, 3.500 metres high, the loftiest peak in the Sahara. Count de Prorok Has' engaged a Swiss guide to go along, because of the mountains to be c imbed. South ot the Hoggar, in the desert once more, an effort will be made to find the lost city of Atlantis, thought to have been situated midway between the. Hoggar, Air and Tibesti. Many tales have been told of it by the Touaregs, and it was probably at one time buried. “Carthage is hidden under the sand,” the explorer explained. “I have myself seen no less than 260 ruined cities —all of them victims of the Sahara, showing evidences of a supei rior civilisation. i have known .:* forty-foot bank of sanu to appear over night, completely covering tne ruins I liad been looking at the day before. “The sand comes up in huge waves, which cut like knives, so fierce is the wind. It is really the Sahara, wind that has made the desert; millions of years of blowing oil. the rocks, literally wearing them into sand. “The landscape, if you can call it that, is always changing. On my last expedition we got into the desert the day after a sandstorm and could hardlv find the French military posts.”

LIKE A FURNACE BLAST Count do Prorok s exploring party will find itself much better equipped to combat perils than was the case when the sole moans of conveyance was the immemorial camel. Apparently only ' those wlio have actuary experienced a sandstorm m tne Sahara can understand what it is like. “The most horrible feature of that dreaded waterless desert,” says Captain H. H. W. Haywood of the British Royal Artillery, in recounting his journey through the Moggar country. A storm, he relates, “would begin with little warding. All of a sudden there would appear a dense yellow cloud, whirling rapidly toward us from the distant horizon. . . “This was preceded by an intensely hot wind, resembling somewhat the hot-air blast from a furnace when the doors are opened'! This hot wind carried with it counties* particles of sand —scouts, as it were of the storm that was following, and sent on to find out what human beings or animals- were there to become the object of its attack. This preliminary wind, with its accompanying sand, was a mere bagatelle. Ihe real trial was to follow. Close oil its heels came the sandstorm —a whirling, densely packed bank of sand, hurrying forward at a headlong pace, blinding and overpowering everything with winch it came in contact. It is said that before and immedately after one of these terr.ble storms the sun is blurred in a way as to envelop the desert in what looks more like a thick London fog. There, aro happier aspects, however of the Sahcu j desert. There are the nights Iml of luminous stars, with naught to mean the majestic sweep of the heavens from rim to rim of horizon. This is a speeLiele at which the silent Sphinxes stare and from which no doubt-, they glean their stores of mysterious wisdom.

UNDERGROUND RIVERS An attempt, may be made to investigate some of the great underground rivers, which plunge suddenly into the sand to emerge hundreds of kilometres awav. Count de Prorok believes that the‘'natural tunnels in the sancl may be large enough to admit being penetrated. “Certainly, there must be air there. The blind fishes that are so plentiful must breathe, even though they have no eyes, since in the dam they have nothing to see.’ in preparing for so hazardous an expedition, expert planning is absolutely essential. . Five thousand great stone jars or gasoline have gout* ahead, to be buried in the sand along llie route. Tons of tinned loods have also been dispatched from Felix Putin’s very Pairis ion grocery establksment —enough to sustain fifteen persons for three months. _ . c At least one-third, possibly more, or tho gasoline will have evaporated before it is reached by the Renault cars. This is a toll exacted by the climate of the Sahara, for which ample provision must he made in advance. -No one quite knows what may happen to some of the iood. At several of the principal depots a few native members of the came! convoy will remain behind to await the arrival of the fleet of cars in which the personnel of the expedition will travel. But most of these stations will be left unguarded. Each cache is to be marked on 0110 of the large-scale maps of the desert and sig-

! iials not likely to be affected by sandi storms have been arranged. Count do Prbrok is taking no chances about his water supply. The expedition will carry enough to last a mouth —the time it is expected the journey to the Hoggar country will consume. After that water will be plentiful, until the return is begun. : liie Hoggar has many mountain rivers and a rainfall that is torrential, if rare. CARAVAN OF MOTOR CARS The twelve members of the expedition with their guides and an Arab chief who makes his living by cooking for Sahara explorers— a party numbering fifteen in all—will travel in seven huge 6ix-wheeled cars. These will move in a steady procession across the desert, never losing sight of each other. The cars, designed for the purpose, are powerful enough to make forty kilometres an hour, even when ploughing through sand l . Each wheel has two tyres twice as wide as ordinary tyres. And each car is fitted with a traction cable, by means of which it is able to pull its own way up out of a sandpit when the other end is attached to something solid —a rock or another car. This provision is very necessary in <>, land where drifts often twenty feet or more in height are encountered, up which drivers must proceed, utterly ignorant of what may lie at the top <*r just beyond.