The log cabin Democrat., 1916-04-10

"RlPOLI, the highy-inflammable
 land of Arab and Berber has
 exchanged it's peace-time in-
 dustrieS for the industry of war, and according to a statement pre- pared by the National Geographic so- ciety, the newer industry adds little to the normal hazard of Tripolitan life.
 Danger is the daily bread and meat of the dweller in Tripoli, and, in this country flecked with occasional oases and fringed with narrow strips of coastal vegetation, even the principal native pursuits for wealth and hap piness are accompanied by hidden ter TOT and grave risk. The principal sources of income to Tripolitans are those of sponge gathering of esparto picking and of carrying on the trans saharan caravan trade.
 Whether the native son seeks to make his pile searching the slimy bottom of the Mediterranean for sponges, or gathering esparto grass in the morning mists of the desert, or fol lowing the caravan of a thousand cam els back from the coast through 1,500 miles of Saharan desert to the distant Sudan, he takes not only his labor and capital for profit but also his health and life. More often than not he reaps disability or death as his reward.
 PeriIs of Sponge Gatherers.
 Tho wild that and opaiD boil over the northern coast of Africa are the smallest part of the sponge divers hazard. Paralysis is always just ahead of this venturesome labOrer who, day by day making foolhardy rapid ascents from the sea bed under press of keen competition. sooner or later experiences the return to ship board in terrific dizziness, which forms the usual prelude to partial or com plete paralysis. Strange as it may seem, many partially -paralyzed divers are able to continue their calling, and the unfltted, helpless cripple in the upper air feels normal circulation re- turn to arms and legs when lowered into the sea on the sponge grounds And the Arab divers of Tripoli, beiev- ing the disease indispensable to the vocation, and inured to hazard in their peculiar fatherland, dive phlegmatic- ally through few fat seasons until crippled or killed by their chosen trade.
 Back in the plateau lands of the Sahara. behind the coastal greens in the silent, treeless, untenanted desert wastes, where the alluring mystery of the desert broods under the blighting heat of day and beckons in fanciful shapes over the dunes at night, stretch vast fields of wiry esparto grass, from which paper is manufac- tured in great mills in England. In these fields. working for the starvation wage of twenty cents a day or less, picking the grass and tying it in large bales to be loaded on camel trains for Tripoli City, the port of Tripolitania, is another corps of workers who ad- venture their safety in their work.
 Picking the Esparto Grass.
 Day begins for the esparto picker in the moonlight of early morning In the chill of desert morning the picker leaves his pearby shack for the field, and begins his rapid task of breaking the longest wiry blades. leg high, from the most matured clump. And in the heart of these clumps ever and again turks his danger in the form of his arch enemy. the deadly viper. In the clurnps, also, are hidden the venom ous North African rock scorpions, whose stings now and again prove ia tai. It is the poisonous vipers, how ever, that make the work of esparto picking a sporting game with desth.
 Of the $2,000,000 of export trade en- joyed by Trpoli before the war, one fifth of 1t was produced by the sponge divers, more than one-third of 1t by the esparto pickers and considerably more than one-sixth was brought over the wide, treacherUus desert from the Sudan. Many caravans, some of 8 few and some of thousand camels, fit ted out in Tripoli, undertook the danger-fraught journeys to the great marts of Sudanese trade-Timbuktu kano, Kanen, Kuka, Bornu and Wadi These journeys sometimes lasted two years around, and brought their under takers into every species of danger that the desert affords Robbers in fest all the lanes across the desert and, besides these, all the inner desert lies subject to the vengeful caprice of the masked Tuaregs, the strange peo pie who are at war with all who cross their paths and do not pay a sufficient tribute.
 The bones of the camcls and men of