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Show H Planning A New Sea AND now Professor Etcheyoyen of Paris has startled Europe hy reviving the scheme to H make central Sahara a great salt lake and Hj stating succinctly the simple details of the plan. H One-third of Sahara is below sea level, and the H professor declares that a canal from fifty miles M Inland to the Mediterranean, over a route which H presents no material engineering difficulties, H would make a lake about one half the size of the H Mediterranean which would vary in depth from ten H to sixty fathoms. H That with this done the awful desert would H give way to rich folds, around the lake millions H of homes might bo created on the fertile soil that H requires nothing but moisture, and lines of steam- H ers would connect with the Fiench territory of B Eastern Africa. But the objection is raised that H by producing a mild climate there, the result H would be to convert England and Prance, all H Europe, indeed, into ice fields, which is a childish m conclusion unless the diverting of so much sea H water to an inland lake would have the eJtQct of m changing the course of the Gulf stream, for it is HH the air that, floating over the Gulf stream, is warmed, and in that warm state breaking against tho British Isles and Northern Europe, make the weather mild there when Salvador in the same latitude on our side of the Atlantic is bound in fiost through nearly the entire year. Contiguous warm water does not warm a coast to any extent, but the winds that sweep over warm currents and are warmed by the rising moisture and then are wafted Inland are what hold a land in perpetual springtime. To make an inland sea in the heart of the Sahara, even half the size of the Mediterranean, could not materially mater-ially lower the surface or change any currents of the deep sea. But still another fear is expressed which is that the creation of such a lake and the diversion of so many billion tons of water might have the effect to change the earth's axis. As all moderate moder-ate scholars know, the old earth has a lean of 23 degrees from tho vertical, and the fear is that by drawing such a weight to one spot might cause a further list or cause it to tip back to the upright, as it must have stood when tropical forests for-ests and the mastadon flourished there. It has been a theory of scientists that in the past the tipping of the earth back and forth has caused in the past those convulsions which men call "geological periods." And in our day we have heard learned geologists point out that considering consider-ing the position of the earth on its axis, the drainage of the continents must be to the south carrying down so much debris that eventually the weight there would become so great as to cause the earth to tip back, which would have the effect to make a tropical climate around the north pole and bury the southern continents under perpetual Winter. If that is true, then this proposed Increase qf the weight north of the equator would not precipitate pre-cipitate but postpone the cataclysm. The account from Paris says that were this engineering en-gineering to accomplish what Is feared, he "would bR cursed by humanity for having altered the gpbe's axis," all of which shows that there are men who have not yet learned that when the earth goes through a convulsion of that kind there Is no one left to either curse or bless, that It means the instant annihilation of all animal life on this planet. |