The Anaconda standard., 1899-07-13
MAKING OCEANS TO ORDER.
What Engineers Propose to Do With the
Worlds Deserts.

Few people realize how completely of
late years the surface aspect Of this
Weazened old globe of ours has been
altered and improved.
The world of to-day, in fact, differs
from the world of our ancestors. much
as a society lady, in all the glory of
fold and frill and furbelow, differs from
her savage sister running wild in pestil-
entail woods. AS art has transformed
the one so has it the other.
Only the Mime. Rachel who has
made the earth, il not exactly 'beauti-
full forever" at least pleasant and
healthful place wherein to dwell, is no
charlatan with a dray load of cosmet-
les and a glib tongue, but civil engi-
neer. owing nothing more harmful than
a. few mysterious-lo looking instruments
and a measuring tape.
And the marvel of it all is this--that
what has been done is but an intiintesti-
NAL faction of that which may, and
doubtless will be done. Who can doubt,
for instance, that the great Sahara
desert-that mole upon the earth's face
will one day be but memory? 1t was
an inland sea once. 1t would not be
very difficult matter to convert it into
one again.
A canal sixty miles long. connecting
with the Atlantic the vast depression
which runs close up to the coast nearly
midway between the twentieth and
th!rtieth parallels of latitude. would do
the business beautifully. The water
would not of course, cover the entire
surface OF the desert. Here and there
are portions lying above sea level These
would become the islands of the new
Sahara ocean.
What would be the results that would
ensue upon this stupendous transfor
nation? Some would be good and some
bad Among the latter may be mem
toned the probable destruction of the
vineyards of southern Europe, which
depend for their existence upon the
warm. dry winds from the great Afri-
can desert.
As some compensation for this, how
ever, the mercantile marines of the ma
tions affected would be enabled to gain
immediate and easy access TO vast re
gions now given over to barbarlsm, and
a series of more or less hour1shlns sea-
| port towns would spring up all along
| the southern borders of Morocco and
Algeria, where the western watershed
| of the Nile sinks into the desert, and
on the northern frontier of the Congo
| Free State.
In a similar manner the greater por-
| tion of the central Australian desert,
| covering an area of fully 1000 600 square
miles, might be flooded. The island
| continent would then be reconverted
| into "a gigantic atoll, and would resem-
BILE roughly, an oval dish of which
| the depressed central portion would be
covered with water and only the rim
| inhabited. In this connection it may
be interesting to note that company
| has actually been formed for submerg-
ing the Yuma desert in Southern Cali
fornia. If the plan, as at present pro-
posed, is carried out, tract of abso-
| lutely uninha bitable territory, compris-
| ing nearly $4,000 square miles, and the
greater portion of which lies between
| 500 and 1000 feet below sea level, VIII be
| submerged.
! A few Englishmen-known as little
| Englanders'-stilI blame the govern
ment for insisting upon the reconquest
of the Soudan, "A useless acquisition,