Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-24
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Triroi, the highly infamable land of Arab and Berber has exchanged its reace- time industries for the industry of war, and, according to a statement just prepared by the National Geo. graphic Society at Washington, the newer industry adds little to the nor nal hazard of TripOlitan life. The statement reads:
 Danger is the daily bread and meat of the dweller in Tripoli and, in this country f1ecked with occasional cases and fringed with narrow strips of coastal vegetation, even the principal native pursuits for wealth and happi- ness are accompanied by hidden ter
 or and grave risk. The three princi- pal sources of income to TrlpOltan 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 following the caravan of thousand
 camels back from the coast through 1,500 miles of Saharan desert to the distant Soudan, he stakes not only his labor and capital for profit but also his health and his life. More often than not he reaps disability or death as his reward.
 The wild seas that now and again DOH over the northern coast or AIGlCd are the smallest part of the sponge divers harZard. Paralysis is always just ahead of this Yenturesome 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 l pIete paralysis. Strange as it may seem, partially paralyzed divers are | able to continue their calling, and the
 unfitted, helpless cripple in the upper l air feels normal circulation return to arms and legs when lowered into the l sea on the sponge grounds. And the Arab divers of Tripoli, believing the | disease indispensable to the vocation,
 fatherland. dive phlegmatically through | few fat seasons until crippled or 1 killed by their chosen trade.
 i Back in the plateau lands of the l Sahara, behind the coastal greens in | the silent treeless untenanted desert l wastes, where the alluring mystery of l the desert broods under the bIighting l heat of day and .beckons in fanciful 1 shapes over the dunes at night, stretch ! vast fields of Wiry esparto grass, from
 which paper is manufactured in great mills in England. In these fields,
 working for the starvation wage of l twenty cents @ day or less, picking
 the grass and tying it in large bales 1 to be loaded on camel trains for Trip | oli City, the port of Tripolitania, is 1 another corps of workers who adven-
 ture their safety in their work
 l Day begins for the esparto picker in
 the moonlight of early morning. In ! the chill of tn edesert morning, the | picker leaves his nearby shack for the l field, and begins his rapid task of
 breaking the longest wiry blades, leg i high, from the most matured clumps
 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 clumps, also are hidden ! the Venemous North African rock | scorpions, whose stings now and again
 prove fatal. It is the poisonous vipers
 however. that make the work of es-
 parto picking a sporting game with | death.
 "Of the s2,OOO, 900 of export trade en-
 joyed by Tripoli before the war, one | fifth of it was produced by the sponge 1 divers, more than one-third of it by | the esparto pfckers, and considerably
 more than one-sixth was brought over 1 the wide, treacherouS desert from the Soudan. Many caravans, some of a ! few and some of a thousand camels, fitted out in TripoH, and undertook
 the danger -fraught journeys to the great marts of SOudanese trade Timbuktu, Kano, Kanem, Kuka and l Wadi. These journeys sometimes last l two years around, and brought their
 undertakers into every species of dan- ger that the desert affords Robbers infest al the lanes across the desert and, besides these all the Inner Des-
 ert lies subject to the vengeful caprice of the masked Tuaregs, the strange | people who are at war with all who | cross their paths and do not pay a suf- flcient tribute. The bones of the cam-
 els and men of a myriad of caravans
 Of the past bleach along the desert | trails, caravans that mostly came to | harm at the hands of marauders, but there are some among them destroyed
 by thirst, by the sand storm. or by the | water of wells poisoned in inter-tribal
 wars. Of all three risky Tripolitan | trades, the caravan trade is the most
 risky; and the old caravan men vii
 find little in the newer industry o1
 war for which their peace time Iabors