Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1883-05-31
The New African Sea.

body OF contractors, at GabeS, IN the
bay of that name, on the southwest
shore of Tunis, to verify the long-dis-
cussed project of leading the Mediter-
ranean into the ''chotts' (dry basins)
found southwest of Tunis and Algeria.
The project has been his study from the
day of his admission to the Paris Acad-
emy-from the day even of Eugenie's
visit to the Suez Canal in 1869. 1t is
certainly the exhibition of remarkable
vigor of mind in one now in his seven
tieth year that, not content with the
direction of the two canals across the
worlds isthmuses and the honorary
Presidency at the smaller work at Cor
NTH, he should make a somewhat haz-
ardous journey across new desert for
a third enterprise.
Gabes (or, as marked on the Admit
rally charts, Kabes) itself comprises 4
cluster of villages within an oasis COM
ing close down along the sea one and n
half miles and extending inland three
miles. 1t is found on the charts in lat
itude 50 degrees 53 minutes north,
longitude, 10 degrees minutes east.
This oasis. one of the richest of the
whole region, yields the best of dates.
oranges and lemons, and enough grain
for population of 5000; including a
small percentage of Jews. The only
Europeans residing there in 1873 were
three Frenchmen-the Vicc-COnsul of
France. financial agent of Tunis and
the telegraph operator who commune
Gates through Tunis with the world.
Letters to Sphax. 120 miles north, are
sent by courier over a good road. From
the miserable village of Gabes Alta
grass, brought on camels and donkeys
from distance of sixty miles. gives an
annual export for British factors ut a
value of nearly 100000. The French
are just awakening to the Importance
of this trade. At Gabes the staff of NJ
de Lesseps have examined the point
selected for the future port of the canal,
naming it after the original protector,
Roudaire. They have verified his bor-
ings there of 1S7S-79 and reported that
the soil is easy of excavation and the
bay excellent. The more serious work
of the commission was TO begin from the
22d ult. by caravan to the interior, with
an escort Of 100 men.
The project is to connect by canal
twelve metres deep and fifty metres
wide the mouth of the Oued-me-lah
emptying into the Gulf of Gabes with
the four depressions-Feiej, Djerid,
Rarsa and Melrir. They lie in right
line from east to west about fifty kilo-
metres south of the mountains of Aures,
bordering on the Sahara. OF these
Rarsa, whose surface is thirty metres
below the sea level, is on the south
frontier of Tunis: its basin will be twice
as long as Lake Geneva and will con-
tain forty milliards cubic metres of
water; Melrir, within the French Terri
tory on the south of Algeria, has four
teen times the surface of Lake Geneva
and will contain 100 milliards cubic
metres of water. They are to form one
lake. The physical advantages us well
as the practicability of the work have
been discussed again and again by the
Academy of Sciences in Paris since the
first exploration of the gulf by Mouches
in 1877, and the first presentation of the
project by Roudaire.
A committee of distinguished MEM
bers of the Academy to whom Roudaire's
plan was referred reported that the en-
istence of this large body of watersouth
of the Aurcs must exercise II very favor
able influence upon countries now ster-
lie, and open up the heart of Africa to
European civilization. The specific
physical advantage will be the anchor
alton of the climate and the soil by
evaporation of the waters of the new
sea. Arrested by the snow-capped
heights, these will be condensed into
clouds and irregular rains. 1t is not to
be forgotten that this region was part
of the fertile granary of old Rome.
wherever the soil of Tunis is TILED, -
says United States Consul Perry, ''it
still justifics its ancient renOwn, en-
couraging the brightest hopes for the
future
De Lcsscps expects to see the old
cities, the ruins of which are here scat
tered, renew themselves around the
basins of the chotts, within one Ofwhich
the remains of an ancient galley have
been found. Their renewal must de-
pend on renewed fertility of soil, and
this upon Il new supply of water from
evaporation. The report made to the
Academy estimates this as 39,6OO,OOO
cubic metres of water day; a quantity
sufficient to cover the whole surface of
Tunis and Algeria with half-saturatcd
layer of air twenty-four metres in depth.
Reasoning by analogy from the evapora-
ton of the Bitter Lakes lying in the
same latitude and having a like climate,
ROudaire estimates the mean of the
daily evaporation as the same with that
of those lakes: his observations made in
the chOtts with the evaporOmctre OF
Piche, showed the double of this on the
DAYS of the siroccO The sirOccO, which
now destroys vegetation in Algeria, fer
tilizes France by bringing to it the
watery vapor absorbed in its passage
across the Mediterranean.
To restore vegetation to Algeria a like
absorption is needed of watery vapOr
raised by the sun from the surface of
the new lake. What has turned this old,
fertile land into barren waste The
want of tillage and the destruction OF
the forests, with the other evils of war.
creating desert within which the ex-
tremes of temperature arising from the
want of aqueous vapor blasts vegeta-
ton. Tyndall has shown that at least
ten per cent of the earth radiated heat
is intercepted within the first ten feet
above its surface, and that the full re-
mOval of this watery vapOr for single
summer night would destroy every plant
which frost kills. In the desert, al
though 1.-The soil is fire, and the wind is
fame ice at times forms in night;
in the chott region the thermometer
often falls sixty degrees in twenty-four
hours. Restore an aqueous vapor to
spread itself over such region and you
restore fertility, and with it pOpula-