Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1936-12-24
CONQUER SAHARA BY
MODERN TRANSPORTS
Expedition Makes Surveys
for Passenger Lines.

lines! Admission, one round-trip
ticket" Thus may the French
advertise a new exhibit in their
many-ringed circus of French West
Africa. And the new catch has
been that bitterest enemy of hui
man life, the wild, the untamable,
the unconquerable: the Sahara des-
ert.
"A French expedition has COM
pleted new north-South link in the
surveys for lines to carry passen-
gers regularly across desert wastes
which had been virgin solitudes un-
til the machine age arrived with
it's superhuman relentless ener-
gy," says the National Geographic
Society.
''The new route starts at Tin
douf, an oasis on the high Ora
Plateau of western Algeria, and
plunges through about 800 miles of
the Sahara's primeval desolation to
Walata, French Sudan. 1t skirts
the eastern edge of Mauritania.
Both settlements are on east-west
trade routes, but travel across the
blistering vastness between them
has previously been classified as an
expensive way to commit suicide
Jumping-Off Place.
"Tindouf, the northern terminus,
is jumping-off place for the upper
left hand corner of the Sahara,
which practically blots out life
across the top half of Africa, ex-
cept for coastal border and a
Sprinkling of interior GASES. AL
ready, on several routes, white
BUSES with windows curtained
against the binding glare of the
sun and sand haul passengers along
ancient caravan trails to desert no.
tells of sunbaked mud, furnished
with white iron beds and chairs on
carpeted floors.
"Signposts point the way through
geographical ovens where tempera-
lures average somewhere around
100 degrees by daylight and tum-
BILE at sunset toward the freezing
point. Raincoats can safely be
omitted from baggage strapped atop
the buses.
"Thus mechanical progress sub
dues the desert which was formerly
one of the greatest barriers in the
world to human travel, pitted with
doom, Uttered with tragedies. It's
dangers were braved only for the
fabulous profits from traffic in des-
ert gum-arabic, salt, dates, ostrich
feathers and kola nuts of the Sudan,
or that basic commodity of Africa's
black ivory days-slaves.
''The new Tindouf-Walata route
crosses territory which was Stunned
before, threatened as it is with the
two greatest dangers of desert trav-
ell: nature in a state of utter desola-
ton and human nature in the very
rawest. Tindouf is palm-shaded
oasis on rocky waste of smooth
sandstone, sloping down from the
Atlas mountains. The sandstone,
only occasionally broken with a
stretch of rough gravel, is remarka-
bly, good going for motors. Sur
rounding areas are steppes, semi
desert stretches supporting such
vegetation as clumps of plantain so
or 60 yards apart, but hardly
enough for hospitality.
Lift Sand Skyward.
"Soon enough the route crosses
the Iguidi desert, where sand dunes
creep stealthily forward on the
strength of swirling winds, gradu-
ally obliterating waterholes, and
miniature whirlwinds lift sand sky
ward to form Waiting jinns.' The
eastern edge of Mauritania must
be crossed, in spite of the imper-
fectly subdued Moors, an Arab tribe
that is proud of being a bit more
cultivated than other ArabS-more
literary, more pious, quicker to aid
the faithful, quicker to despoil the
unbeliever, quicker to evade the
French military patrol cars from
Tindouf. Then comes Ell Juf, about
375 miles of shallow depression in
a bowl of red sandstone cliffs, one
of the least penetrated parts of the
Sahara. Apparently quite fiat, it's
arid surface is barely broken with
small dunes and scattered clumps
of half-dead gray shrubs, the whole
desolate solitude shimmering in a
fierce dry heat.
'Walata, the southern terminus,
is the first habitable spot encoun-
tered in the journey longer than that
from New York to Chicago. And
'habitable' in Walata means less
than it would imply outside the des-
ert. For this is population CEN
ter only for the Tuaregs, a sturdy
Berber tribe in which generations of
contest with their greatest adver-
sary-the Sahara-have produced a
breed that is keen and quick, with
the endurance of steel. A des-
ert sandstorm is simply their sub
stitute for a bath. These People
of the Veil have developed a tech
nique of building complicated mud
cities of houses several stories high
with inclosed stairways, and rooted
ox,or cfroofc 1ipoJ with oofoc opJ