The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-26
CLIMATIC WONDERS.
Animal Life in the Waste Places of the
World.


New York sun.
The Russian explorer, Preievalsky. said, after
his recent journey in northern Thibet, that an
enormous amount of animal life was supported
by the scanty heritage growing on these bleak,
half sterile plains that form the highest plateau
in the world, some 5000 feet above the sea.
He said the wild yaks there must lumber mill
ions and that full grown yak weighs from
1000 to 1900 pounds Natures chemistry
evolves these great masses of flesh from the
poor heritage of region so lofty that its lakes
are frozen over until nearly June, though they
are 600 miles nearer the equator than we are.
Explorers tell US that not only does animal
life abound, but that man can live in some of the
most desolate parts of the globe 1t is mis-
take to suppose that the Sahara desert is merely
useless. sandy waste. Much of it lacks not so
much cultivable land as industrious hands to
make the vast expanse OF withered GASES blossom
again. The Mussulman sect known as the
Senousians has for years been digging wells
irrigating the land and turning many hundreds
of barren acres into gardens. Twenty four years
ago it planted its headquarters in the desert near
the western border of Egypt, built reservoirs.
began plantations, erected converts, and now
population of 1000 people live at Jarabub, where
the soil has been restored to fertility by their
labors There are large areas in the Sahara that
need only rain or irrigation TO cover them with
verdure. Through these regions pass the cara
van routes along which the $4,000 camels
engaged in the Saharan commerce bear their
burdens
Mr.. Anderson, the civil engineer who last year
completed sixteen years of exploration in south
Africa, between the Orange and Zambesi rivers,
says that the rain that falls for few weeks IN
every year in the great region known as the
Kalahara desert covers the blackened, verdure-
less plain with splendid vegetation. Game is
abundant there, especially lions, leopards and
ostriches, and he has counted in this desert
twenty-five lions in a troop and has seen zoo
ostriches in one flock. Beasts and birds find
sustenance in this region, where only few
on the semiarid steppes of Kordofan and Darfur,
millions of sheep and camels exist on the scanty
pasturage of that desert regions
The earliest Arctic explorers found in the
little Spitzenbergen archipelago, where, it is be-
leved, no human being had ever lived, herds of
reindeer upturning the snow with their hoots
and noses to get at the lichens, on which they
fed. Many reindeer live as far north as Little
tor island and several scores of them were killed
by the Hayes and Polaris expeditions. Musk
oxen, or their traces, have been found along the
shores of the great frozen as far north as ex-
plorers have attained. Lockwood, far north of
the supposed limits of animal life, found traces
of this wonderful quadruped which grows fat on
the tender shoots of the Arctic willow and plows
up the snow for moss and lichens.
Of all parts Of the earth the Antarctic regions
alone are comparatively destitute of life. Few
species of living things in the vegetable or ami
NAL kingdom can endure the rgor of the south
polar region. No terrestrial quadruped inhabits
the land within the Antarctic circle and whales
and seals are the only mammals that enter its
area. Summer in the Arctic regions, with its
abundant life on land and in the air aud sea,
presents an animated and cheerful scene COM
pared with the utter desolation that reigns per-
petually in Antarctic waters.