Newport daily independent., 1905-10-24
OCEANS TO ORDER.
What Engineers Propose Doing
 with the Worlds Deserts.
The Sahara Could He Quickly Made an Land Ses-Pr0iect to Divide Ireland wfth
 Canal.

Few people realize how completely of late years the surface aspect of this weaaened old globe of ours has been all tered and improved.
 The world to-day, in fact, differs from the world of our ancestors, much as society lady. in all the glory of fold and frill and furbelow, differs from her savage sister running wild in pestilen tial woods. As art has transformed tho one, so has it the other.
 Only the Mime. Rachel" who has made the earth, if not exactly ''beauti- ful for ever," at least pleasant and charlatan with dray load of cos- metics and a glib tongue, but civil en- gineer, owning nothing more harmful than a few mysterious-looktng instru- ments and measuring tape.
 And the marvel of it all is thts-that what has been done is but an ininites- imal fraction of that which may, and doubtless will, be done. Who can doubt, for instance, that the great Sahara desert that mole upon the worlds face-wiIl one day be but a memoryg It was an inland sea once. It would not be very difficult matter to convert it into one again.
 A canal 60 miles long, connecting with the Atlantic the vast depression which runs close up to the coast nearly midway between the twentieth and thirtieth parallels of latitude, would do the business beautifully. Tho water would not, of course. cover tho 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 snaue upon this stupendous transfor- nation? Some would be good and some bad. Among the latter may be men, toned the probable destruction of tho vineyards of southern Europe. which depend for their existence upon the warm dry winds from the great African desert.
 In . similar manner the greater DOT tion of the central Australian desert, covering an area of fully, 100000 square miles. might be flooded. The is- land continent would then be recon yerted into a gigantic Atoll, aud would resemble, roughly, an oval dish of which the depressed central portion would be covered with water and only tho rim" inhabited. In this connec- ton it may be interesting to note that a company has actually been formed for submerging the Yuma desert in southern California. If the plan, az at present proposed, IS carried out. tract of absolutely unsahahitabse territory. comprising nearly 13,00o square miles. and the greater portion of which lies between 800 and 1000 feet below sea level, will be submerged.
 few Englishmen-known as little Inglanders"-stiII blame the govern nent for insisting upon the reconquest of the Soudan. "A useless acquisition, say they Perhapsi
 But capable judges believe that it would have been little less than suicidal 70 have allowed these regions to fall into the hands of France; for the sin- ple reason that her engineers, by divert ing the course of the Nile at Abu Named or Berber-no very difficult task could at any time turn all upper Egypt into q desert.
 It has even been suggested that tt might be possibIe--by turning it's wa ters into one of the many lateral ravines which run at right angles to the present course of the river-to find a new outlet for it into the Red sea. and thereby to transform, in process Of time, that sheet of water into great fresh water lake.
 To accomplish this, 1t would of course be necessary to build giant dsn across it's southern neck" near Perim and to regulate, or rather stop alto gether, the inward flow of the Mediter- ranean through the Suez canal--a big task, but one not entirely impossible of accomplishment.
 The above are examples Of big schemes. There are many others that might be mentioned, including, c' course, the Panama and Nfcaraguan canals, and the French war canal be- tween the mouths of the Loire and the Rhone, which, when completed, will enable their ironclads to dodge round behind Gibraltar when passing from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean or vice versa.
 But it is the mparativeiy little en' cineeriny feats which have slowly but surely altered in the past and will alter in the future the face of the earth. Even so small matter, for instance, as the proposed seawall at Southcud will cer- tainl3 deepen the estuary or the Thames, and may conceivably do away with the Goodwin sands.
 A scheme was recently mooted to cut a ship canal through the center of Ire land, beginning at Dublin and finish ing at Galway. It would be no very difficult feat to accomplish. for most of the country through which it would pass is flat and boggv.-Chicago Cnron- icle.