Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-02-23
EXPLORING The DESERT.
Bv Frederic J. Haskin.

The Unsuitable appetite Of geographers
for a complete knowledge OF the SURFACE
of our terrestrial globe continues to COM
pei explorers to fare forth into the I'M
known. The north pole iras been reached.
but an expedition now goes to find and
map Croker Land, a new body glimpsed
by Peary on his northward course. Every
day the world expects to hear news from
those who are assaulting the frozen fast
nesses of the Antarctic. The explorers
who have fioated down the Amazon in
boats and who have cut their way here
and there into the jungle along the banks
Of that mighty stream now are being fol-
lowed by the railroad surveyors who will
let modern civilization and transportation
into the middle of the South American
continent. In our own continent men are
still striving to conquer unclimbed noun
tain peaks still diving into the midst of
trackless northern forests, still seeking
out every little unknown spot until, in
the end, every square mile will be known
The frozen polar caps are about to sur
render the last of their icebound secrets;
the salt seas long ago have yielded to
the charts their every path and byWay;
the pine forests Of Canada, the rubber
forests of Brazil and the mahogany for
ests of the kongo are known to seog-
raphy and are exploited Of commerce.
Only the desert. the arid and the all but
lifeless desert, the mysterious and the
terrifying desert; only the desert still re-
mains unconquered and unmapped; only
the desert now challenges the hardihood
of the explorer and defies the curiosity or
the geOgrapher.
The southern and the more arid portion
of our own American desert, most of II,
Of course, lying in Mexico, still is a terra
incognita to the white man. The delight
full account of a comparatively modest
journey into this dry land, recorded by
William 7. Hornaday. has excited the
curiosity of the world, and now Kermit
Roosevelt. knowing Africa, is about to
undertake a journey into this far more
dangerous and far more deadly land
The new republic of China guarantees
equal rights to Chinese, Manchus, Mon
golians n d
Little Is Yet Known Tibetans, but
of Mongolia or Tibet. chine .
know much of Mongolia or Tibet Most
of those two countries belongs to the
desert. and although they have been in
habited since the time when the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary. the
outside world is to them sealed book.
and they to the world an unguessed rid
die The great desert of Cobb that is
partly in China, partly in Manchuria,
partly in Mongolia and partly in Siberia,
is traversed by the oldest transportation
lines in existence. 1t has a caravan
route over which tea and silk laden cam
oil hor 1p1a rd these
5000 years, and yet from the time when
Kublai Khan macadamiZed the road I'M
til the time when the Russian railroad
paralyzed it by competition of steam no
one of the merchants who travelled over
it turned either to the right or to the
left to tell Europe and the Occident of
the wonders or the terrors of that I'M
known land.
But the greatest of all the deserts. wild
est in eXpanse, dryest in air. most nearly
lifeless. an ocean of shifting sand, with
only here and there palm-fronded is
land. is the great Sahara.
And yet the Sahara is the first Of the
great deserts of which occidental civil
dawn of historical memory 1t has been
inhabited, and yet it is still unknown.
The National Geographic Society in
Washington recently listened with thrilled
johnson, an authority on everything per-
tanning to northern Africa, who has but
recently returned from an expedition into
southern Tunisia, where he visited GASES
in the desert to which no man of any liv-
ing white race had ever gone.
Mr.. johnson went to all of the villages
and towns of the Saharan troglodytes.
These cave-dwelling, burrowinS men are
be ieved % be the oldest pure race still
inhabiting their original home to be
found in the world. Existing Egyptian
inscriptions and writings tell of these
same people living in practically the same
fashion in this same country in these
same caves 1900 years ago. More than
four centuries before the beginning of
the Christian era Herodotus, the father
of history, heard in Egypt of this then
ancient race, and he described its habits.
The Roman historian Sallust was sent
into Africa by Julius Caesar. and he
wrote of these people as among the
most ancient of races.
These cave-dwelling troglodytes have
been. fiercely jealous of their independ-