Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-05-15
WASTE PLACES,
The Dcsolate Localities Which Support
Animal Life.

Animal Life.
The Russian explorer Prejevalsky
said sitter his recent journey in northern
Thibct that an enormous amount of
animal life was supported by the scanty
heritage growing on these bleak, half
sterile plains hat form the highest
plateau in the world, some thirteen
thousand feet above the sea. He said
the wild yaks here must number mil
lions, and that a full grown yak weighs
from sixteen hundred to eighteen hun
dred pounds. Natures chemistry
evolves these great masses of flesh
from the poor heritage of a region so
lofty that its lakes are frozen over until
nearly June, though they are six hum
bred 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 a mistake to sup
pose that the Sahara desert is merely a
useless sandy waste. Much Of it lacks
not SO much cultivable land as indus
trious hands to make the vast expanse
of withered GASES blossom again. The
Mussulman sect known as the Senous-
ians has for years been digging wells,
irrigating the land, and turning many
hundreds of barren acres into gardens.
Ywenty-four years ago it planted its
| headquarters in the desert near the
western border of Egypt, built reser-
voirs, began plantations, erected con
vents, and now a population of eight
thousand 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 ir-
rigation to cover them with verdure.
Through these regions pass the caravan
routes, along which the fifty thousand
camels engaged in the Saharan com.
merce bear their burdens.
MI. Anderson, the civil engineer who
last year completed sixteen years of
explorations in South Africa, between
the Orange and Zambesi Rivers, says
that the rain that falls for a few weeks
every year in the great region known
as the Kalahara Desert covers the
%blackened. verdureless plain with SPLEEN
did vegetation. Game is abundant
there, especiallylions, leopards, and os-
triches, and he has counted in this
desert twenty-five lions in a troop, and
has seer two hundred ostriches in one
flock. Beasts and birds find sustenance
in this region where only a few bush
man hunters live. Far northeast of
them on the semi-arid steppes of Kor-
dofan and Darfur millions Of sheep and
camels exist on the scanty pasturage of
that desert region.
The earliest Arctic explorers found
in the little Spitzbergen archipelago
where, it is believed, no human being
had ever lived-herds. of reindeer up
turning the snow with their hoofs and
noses to get at the lichens on which
they fed. Many reindeer live as far
north as Littleton Island, and several
scores of them were killed by the Hayes
and Polaris expeditions. Musk oxen.
OF their traces, have been found along
the shores of the great frozen sea as
far north as explorers 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 ploughs up the snow for
moss and lichens.
OF all parts of the earth the Antarc-
tic regions alone are comparatively
destitute of life. Few species of living
things in the vegetable or animal king
dom can endure the rigor of the South
Polar region. No terrestrial quad
ruped inhabits the land within the Ant
arstic circle, and whales and seals are
the only mammals that enter it's area.
Summer in the Arctic regions, with its
abundant life on land and in the air
and sea, presents an animated and
cheerful scene compared with the ut
ter desolation that reigns perpetually
in Antarctic waters.-M Y. San.