Newport daily independent., 1905-08-01
OCEANS TO ORDER.
What Engineers Propose Doing
 with the Worlds Deserts.
The Sahara Could Be Quickly Made an Inland sea-PrOiect to Divide Ireland with
 Canal.

Few people realize how completely of ate years the surface aspect of this veazened old globe of ours has been al tered and improved.
 The world to-day, in fact, differs from the world of our ancestors, much IS society lady, in all the glory of fold md frill and furbelow. differs from hey savage sister running wild in pestilen tial woods As art has transformed the one, so has it the other.
 Only the Mine. Rachel" who has made the earth, if not exactly .'beauti fuI for ever, al least pleasant and healthtui place wherein to dwell. is no charlatan with a dray load of cos ;netcs and a glib tongue, but d civil en- gineer, owning nothing mora harmful than few mysteriOusloOltng instru- ments and a measuring tape.
 And the marvel of 1t al Is this-that what has been done is but an infnites- final 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-will one day De out a memory? It was an inland sea once. IL would not be very difficult matter to convert it into one again.
 X capaaI 50 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. 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- mation5 Some would De good and some bad. Among the latter may be men toned the probable destruction of the vineyards of southern Europe, which depend for their existence upon the warm dry winds from the great African desert.
 In a similar manner the greater DOT ton of the central Australian desert, covering an area of fully 100000 square miles, might be flooded. The is land continent would then De recon verted into a gigantic atoll, and would resemble. roughly, an oval dish Of which the depressed central portion would be covered with water and only the 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, as at present proposed, is carried out, trHct of absolutely uninhabitable territory, comprising nearly 13,000 square miles. and the greater portion of which lies between 500 and 1000 feet below sea level will be submerged,
 A few Englishmen-knowu as little Englanders"--stIl blame the govern ment for insisting upon the reconquest of the Soudan. "A useless acquisition say they. Perhaps!
 But capable judges believe that it would have been little less than suicidal to have allowed these regions to fall into the hands of France; for the sim pie reason that her engineers. by divert ing the course of the Nile at Abu Hamed or Berber-no very difficult task could at any time turn all upper Egypt into a desert.
 It has even been suggested that 1t might be possible-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 new outlet for it into the Red sea, and thereby to transform, in process of time. that sheet of water into a great fresh water lake.
 T. accomplish this, # would of course be necessary to bUild a giant dam across it's southern meek" near Perrin, and to regulate, or rather stop alto gether, the inward flow of the Mediter- ranean through the Sucz canal-a big task, but one not entirely impossible of accomplishment.
 The above are examples of b!g | schemes. There are many others that mioht be mentioned, including, o' course, the Panama and Nicaraguan canals, and Inc French war canal" be- tween the mouths of the Loire and the Rhone. which, when completed, will enable thair ironcads to dodge round behind Gibraltar when passing from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean or vice versa,
 But it is the com paratively little en-