The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-27

i poses to build railroads to these oases, and as a consideration therefor it is to receive 6O0000 acres of land and is to have the right for 30 years to mine the alum, ochres and phosphates with which the oases abound. part of its scheme is to irrigate the lands acquired by the concession. The company estimates that 1t will cost them $25 per acre to do this, and that the lands will sell for $75 per acre as soon as the water can be put upon them. Much of the irrigation will be done by artesian wells, some of which have been already sunk and are produc- ing flowing streams. The company is composed of Englishmen and Egyptians, and it has capital of $2.500000. It has already begun building it's railway. and has laid the route from the Nile to Khar- ga with a telephone equipment. It's To- comotives and other rolling stock are building in England.
 Through Lbya by Rail.
 When the railroads are completed one will be able to go through some interest ing parts of the Libyan desert by train, and it is probable that winter resorts. similar to that at Biskra in the Shara, will spring up in these oases. l first saw the Llbyan desert in Tripoli. It begins there and runs eastward to the Nile val ley. Near Egypt it is a monotonous, stony tabeland from 600 to 1000 feet above the level of the Nile. It is absolutely barren. and is without doubt one of the bleakest parts of the globe. As one goes westward and hears the oases the land drops. The desert is cut up by ravines and cliffs. The oases are in a depres- sion running for several hundred miles irregularly north and south Just west of them the land is still rocky. but after about six days camel journey it changes to an ocean of sand which extends on and on for hundreds of miles.
 These oases now have over thirty thousand people, They are Mohamme- dans, and include both Arabs and Be- dans. They live in villages of mud brick houses, each oasis having one or more towns In Baharia there are four villages, in Farafra one and In Dakhla fourteen.
 Dakha is the most thickly populated of all of the oases. It has over seven teen thousand people, and it is watered by APO wells, many of which were bored by the Romans. All of these villages have mosques. In kharga there are 4S00 people in one village, and it Is the seat of the Egyptian gov ernment. There is a government doctor there and also a telegraph office. Many of the inhabitants have never been out Slue Lne OdSeS, ana they dIe Sdlu5 lO Dc interesting to an extreme. They grow fruit and dates exporting the latter to Egypt. The new company expects to raise rice whea and barley as well as cotton and sisal hemp. It has al- ready planted many thousand date palms and large orch ards of oranges, olives and pomegranates.
 The Fayoum.
 The largest and most fertile of all the Egyptian oases is the Fayoum. It is so big that 1t is a separate proyince. It contains about $50 square mi1cs and has a population of 370,000. It lies about seventy miles northeast of Cairo, and there is only short strip of desert between it and the Nile valley. It Is an oval basin inclosed by the stony Libyan hills, and watered by a great canal which some say was first built by Joseph and others, that it was a branch of the Nile and needed only to be widened and deepened. The canal which feeds 1t now Is called the Bahr Yusef which means Joseph's canal. It begins a mile or so north of Assiout and flows through upper Egpyt, wa tering the Nile valley until about sew enty miles above Carlo, when it turns to the left and flows through break in the hills into the Fayoum depres- sion. The canal is 270 miles long. l