IN the OA E of the Desert of Sahara | |
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EK0-**0’*-0* 0,*'0’#*0-#-0*^0M,-0,»,0-#‘0*'0’#*0,*,0'#'0 Travels through garden spots By Frank G. Carpenter i IN THE OA E of the Desert of Sahara | | T <•» W W’WW W' W W W V W %r w^xr uf "ar vJ u* w v w a*a w v w *v*w v" v*V w’w (Copyright, 1907. by Frank G. Carpenter.) miles and then rises and supplies the the river bed for eight or ten miles. I ing and others were as high as my head. council over the whole, and all subject to powers of Europe will have to control far frcm Tunishia and in time we may Colomb-Bechar, Desert of Sahara. oases of Tuat. which are among the larg- rode at least six miles through them and Others were so tall that their Arab owner the control of the French. its people. It nas with Its surroundings cross the Sahara by rail. people appreciate the extent of est of the western Sahara. that under hunches of ripe dates all the had to climb them to cut off the bunches uat produces opium, tobacco and cot- a population of more than a million and Surveying the Sahara. way. T near a mud village, which of dates, which at the top. ton and some wheat and barley. A its are about the worst in Morocco. the fertile spots of the Desert of River Oasis of Tarla, stopped always grow large people The French are rapidly prospecting thtf but which cara- wm inhabited not long ago. part of its date crop Is brought by The family of the Sultan comes from desert. have laid out the Sahara. have I ! Vast Bed of Fertilizer. They already FEW The French been have already described the extensive is now deserted at times of har- vans the that the have a except up valley of the Saoora by way region and Taflletltes route for a line from Algiers to The soil of the Sahara Is not like that telegraph exploring their territories in these sandy date plantations of Flguig. lying north- vest. its people have moved across the of Igell to the railroad at this point and great influence over all parts of Mo- Timbuktu and' Lake Chad. It will be east of near of any country where, rain Is common. wastes. They are them and are here Beni Ounif. in Morocco, desert to Figuig in order that they may shipped from here northward to Oran rocco. 26u miles Their mapping of long. civil engineers on the other side of the mountains. be better from the brigands of Indeed, the lack of rain is one cause and thence to The oases there are due to several making a kind of a census of their They protected Europe. have also gone over the desert from here pop- its great Other lands are leached are watered by hot springs, some of the desert, although they still own and fertility. These oases are a great center of the causes. I understand they have both that the ulation. are now a to Timbuktu and they report They policing great h a and by the water, and the brooks and caravan whi have temperature above 100 de- cultivate their little date farms when trade. They lie about eight hun- springs and wells, and that the southern in a be- streams chief difficulty running railroad part of the desert and, for the first time, Fahrenheit. the come back to their mud carry a great part of their pot- dred miles from Soudan of the are grees Those springs come crop is ripe Timbuktu la the portions country watered by tween the two points will be the ques- travel in the out of a to watch them. asn and other fertilizing matter out to and a like distance on the fed central Sahara is compar- plateau in the middle of the huts and mud towers from Mogador underground rivers, by the inner tion of fuel. The coal which is now used and their waters the sea. This is not so here. The rocks Atlantic, from the of the Atlas. atively safe. oase.?, are conducted by of the Sahara. Tangier opposite Strait slopes o nthis line is made of coal \ Vegetation but the briquettes underground drains over a solid date for- will may disintegrate more slowly, of Gibraltar, and from on the This is not so in the western of th$ ] 'i he Arabs say that if you thrust Tripoli Railroads Versus Caravans. each being the size of an ordinary part weathering goes on all the same. There dust, obi. covering an area greater than that a and water Mediterranean. The French are trying sick into the desert you This town of Colomb-Bechar is at the building brick, and the expense of trans- desert, where I now am. 1 can go no- is no place where the changes of tem- to divert of eighty 100-acre farms. 1 rode miles will soon have a tree. I can easily be- the Tripoli caravan trade to such that at where unless marked. end of the railroad, and caravans from portation is Colomb-Bechar accompanied by soldiers, with soldiers In in and perature are more sudden and their Tunisian port of the route to my going out lieve this to be ho. The sands of the Gabes, all this of the Sahara their good coal costs about $20 % ton. This and many of the oases about here are The sun is red hot during the day, but which Is much shorter. part bring among the plantations and I am told that Sahara are wonderfully fertile, and if cost will be increased as the railroad now fearing an invasion from the Tafllet when it sets it becomes bitterly cold and goods here to be shipped north. I under- their number is close to a million. could all be watered this would be the who mountaihs they Great Morocco Oasis. stand that the railroad is and goes farther south. At this writing brigands, live across the oasis blankets are by no means uncomfortable. paying The of Figulg is not at all like the garden spot of the globe. As It is, the have discovered no coal along in Morocco. a or so a I an overcoat in rides About the best dates known to the that notwithstanding it was built as a engineers Only day ago th- oasis of Tarla, which I also always carry my visited rainfall the whole region over does not world come from the route, and I am told that they will camel caravan coming north into the over th* desert, for I find that I need It. Tafilet. situated west of military necessity. About three years 1 not continue the road unless some cheap- French Sahara from the Soudan was ■nanniuitHttaiNniHiHMiiiiiiiMliiiimgmiinMmiiHnmaniimnn ■••MftMuniiMiiiiMiiiiffiiimiiimmiimiiiiHMiaiiniHiiiiiiiiftiiimi The changes are such that the rocks er fuel can be invented. If Thomas Edi- robbed not far from l^iike Chad, many split and crumble under them. The desert son should as he has been try- of its people were killed ami the French winds are as strong as those “of the sea. discover, ing to do for years, a way of get- soldiers tell me that they apprehend I and when the sirocco blows the sand cuts J many ting the full energy of the coal without trouble here in the near future. one’s face. It dashes the sharp grains | turning it Into steam, that may solve against the rocks and grinds them down, Oases of the Sahara. the As it is now fully 90 per without the action of water, so that all problem. But I want to tell you something about cent of the heat is lost, so that the rich fertilizing materials lie where energy the oases of this mighty desert. I have such an invention would make coal ten they fall. visited a number of them, and through times as cheap as it is now. This would The oases will grow almost anything conversation with explorers and trav- make a Trans-Saharan railroad a possi- that is grown in California. They have elers of this part of the world I have luscious oranges, grapes, melons and bility. learned much about others. The oases Look at olives, and also apples, peaches, pome- the Caravans. are scattered at wide distances apart The caravans here granates and pears. Jn the northern Sa- which bring goods throughout the Sahara. Often there will of hara they produce great quantities of from the oases are as clumsy a means be none for miles and miles, and again Each wheat, barley, millet and sorghum, and in transportation as can be imagined. they will pepper the rocky wastes as camel on a carries the south tobacco and cotton. I see egg- , freight long journey though the Dord had sown patches of rate of plants, onions, tomatoes and cucumbers about 300 pounds, and the usual green from out the It Is estimated j sky. for sale in the markets, together with travel is not more than two miles an that there are altogether like hour. dozen camels has to have something peas, beans, turnips and carrots. The Every 80,000 square miles of such garden caravan spots chief product, however, is dates. a driver, and each is equipped scattered here and there upon this ocean with W'ater bottles of pig skins and pro- of sand. Millions of Date Palms. visions for the people on the journey. Eighty thousand square miles! The date palm thrives throughout the The ordinary caravan has only an hun- T*iat means a territory twice as large Sahara if it can only have water.