The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1904-10-21
THE ADVANCE OF SAHARA.
Progress of the Arid Region South
ward Has Been Ascertained
by Explorers.

Scientists have long disagreed over
the question of the antiquity of the Sa-
hara desert, and over the manner in
which it was formed. They agree, how
ever, states Youths Companion, that
the dryness has much increased in the
centuries since Rome was mighty en-
pre- Lieut.. Co.. Poroz, of the French
army, who has recently made an arduous
journey from the Niger river to Lake
Tchad, has brought back much interest
ing information regarding the progress
of the arid region southwark.
The country which extends from the
Niger to Lake Tchad, he says, between
13 and 16 degrees, north latitude, is COM
pletely barren of permanent water
bodies. For more than 800 miles it
is tropical region. without water
course. Only yesterday-as biologists
count time-all this was different. The
Niger received from the left immense
afl1uents, averitable floods, rising even
in the lofty mountains about the plateau
of Hogan, the highest region of central
Sahara. Then giraffes and elephants,
the colonel believes, wandered even to
the borders of the Mediterranean Nu-
india, seeking the abundant vegeta-
ton.
Then came the Mohammedan con-
quest, with it's tribes of nomadic Arabs,
and the invasion of the Tuaregs from the
east, accelerating the Saharan devas-
tation
These invaders burned over great
tracts of land, destroying vegetation
and leaving nothing to hold the fallen
water in check. The hygrometric state
of the atmosphere was impoverished
The vapor no longer was condensed The
rain failed, vegetation disappeared, and
the soil and rocks were left exposed
to the direct action of heat and cold,
and of the winds. The decomposition of
the granite filled the dry river beds with
sand for great distances.
The advance of this phenomenon has
not stopped at the edge of the tropics
The Sahara, he believes, has gained
toward the south the regions, recently
verdant, OF Air and of Azawad It
touches now Adar, Gober Tessawa, and
and even the sultanate of Finder. an in
land city which was given to France
in the last settlement of ~Anglo-French
boundaries in Africa. 1t is established
on all the northern parts of Lake Tchad
Although it appears slow, it's march is
extremely rapid, compared with other
geologic phenomena. Barth, the Ger
man, explorer, found water in abund-
ance, so years ago, where Col. Peroz's
expedition suffered from thirst. The
old men of North Adar showed the
Frenchman rivers which in their youth
flowed full many months of the year,
but are now dry. Lakes yesterday per-
manent, which Peroz expected to find
full, were dry, and did not replenish ex-
cept during the two months of winter.
AS proof that part, at least, of the
damage has been wrought by man, Col.
Peroz says that in 1fisen, in corner of
a valley indicated by Tuareg, he was
able to uncover the stumps of a forest
which the Tuareg said they had de-
stroyed 25 years ago in order to devote
the fertile soil covered by it to raising
millet
Even now our line of communication
from the Niger to Lake Tchad," he says,
lis actually semi-desert. 1t is cut by
spaces of many hundreds of kilometers
where the desert is absolute. If we
do not take care the places still free
will be dried up successfully, just as
those have been dried up which mark
the route that Barth followed from
Air to Dame1ghu so years ago."