Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1903-06-18
CHANGES MoRTALs MAY EXPECT
A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE.
SOME PROJECTS TOO RISKY
Regions now DesoIate Will Become
Productive-Both S:- and Water
May Be More Useful Than They
Are at Present-A Next Century
City.

London Leader-How many of US
in the shape of fish food and certain
ardent spirits in France announced
dead loss to the world and, what is
worse, the greatest of all obstacles to
progress? 1t separates us from our
kin, wrecks our ships, claims an ever
increasing toll of dead and is barren
fruitless, mere receptacle fro gar
fruitless, mere receptacle for gar
have awakened to these facts and found
means to make "the caverns vast of
ocean old" something better than a
subject for the dreamer and a resting
place for the dead whom it murders.
Not every dream, however, can be
reaiized-not even the engineers.
Some years ago certain ardent spirits
in France announced that the desert
of Sahara lay below the level of the
sea and could be flooded from the At
lantic or Mediterranean. The effects
of this, it was considered, would not
merely be to inconvenience certain in
considerable Arabs, but to change en-
tirely the climate of the rest of equa-
torial Africa Thanks to the benet-
cial waves of the ocean lands at pres
ent uninhabitable would, it was de-
clared, become fertile and salubrious.
the project was dismissed or shelved
as impracticable from engineering diff
ficulties. Shall we a hundred years
l. ,af
Risk Is Too Great.
Probably not To work such changes
in the distribution of land and water
will be a thing not indeed beyond the
power of the next century's engineers,
but beyond their daring. The &C.
complishment of them would be at
tended by frightful disasters, some of
which can be readily estimated, but
of which the worst would probably re-
main unforeseen and unimagined until
the irrevocable moment of fulfillment.
To increase to this extent the area of
the worlds oceans without increasing
Gas of course we would not increase)
their mass would perceptibly lower
the level of the sea everywhere, and
in accordance with the well-known
hydrostatic law things would right
themselves" on a chaotic scale. Every
narrow strait in the world, every oce-
anic canal would become for the time
being a roaring catarac. The Mediter-
ranean would rush unanimously out
through the strait of Gibraltar and the
Suez canal and the overflow would
flood the adjacent lands. The straits
of Dover would roar like Niagara and
corner of France would be devastated.
The isthmus of Panama would at the
same time be swept away; South
America would become an island, for
the narrow banks of the completed
Panama canal would certainly give
way before the weight of the two
oceans All the rivers of the world
would rush down in spate until they
ran nearly dry from the increased out
fall. The sea would recede from all
the coasts Along with this fall in the
level of the sea would come tempests
such as since the appearance of man
on the planet the world has never
known. For the sea-supported atmos-
phere would suck into its vacuum the
whole weight of the everything air until
pressure was equalized. And the eli
mate of all the world would be recon-
stituted in new and probably incon-
venient ways.
No. We cannot venture thus to
change the face of creation. What
we can and shall do is to make the
best of it. In hundred years time
many countries at present undevel-
oped will be rich and populous. Cana
da, for one example, has an area great
err than that of the United States, and
with a population smaller than the pop
ulation of London. And Canada, en-.
dowed as she is with almost every
source of wealth, will before long be
come perhaps the richest country in