TILLING THE DESERT.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19407, 6 November 1934, Page 12

TILLING THE DESERT.

ITALY’S ACHIEVEMENT. Italo Balbo, Governor of Tripoli* tania, has made his first report on the Italian North African colony since taking oVer his new duties recently, stated the Rome correspondent of the London Morning Post. The report reveals that the Italian colonist, who formerly proved one of the best labourers when, as an emigrant, he landed on foreign soil, is now showing his quality of endurance In Afrloa, and on territory over which his own national flag is flying. The formerly arid sands of Tripoli, near the sea, comprise an area of about 500,000 acres, of which nearly on&•third have already been brought under cultivation by the Italian colonists. The latest statistics show that the concessions under cultivation already have more than- 1,000,000 forest trees, some 20,000,000 vines, 68,000 fruit trees, chiefly peaches, 58,000 mulberries for the cultivation of the silk worm, 2,200,000 almond trees, and nearly 2,000,000 olive trees. There are 2500 model farmhouses, more than 2000 artificial w'ells, fourteen electric power stations with a vast network of wire the current all over the colony, and some 200,000 acres of land reclaimed for cultivation. The above report, says a correspondent, gives some idea of the possibility of the earth “yielding her Increase,” during the “times of restitution of all things." Surely, “the desert shall blossom as the rose.”