592 CANAL TO LIBYAN DESEET. 



importance, because they would give access to no new markets or 

 sources of supply ; but when the fertile valleys and the deserted 

 plains east of the Jordan shall be reclaimed to agriculture and 

 civilization, these waters would furnish a channel of communica- 

 tion which might become the medium of a very extensive trade. 



Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and 

 filling of the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable 

 area, adding not less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to 

 the present fluid surface of Syria, could not fail to produce im- 

 portant meteorological effects. The climate of Syria would proba- 

 bly be tempered, its precipitation and its fertihty increased, the 

 courses of its winds and the electrical condition of its atmosphere 

 modified. The present organic hfe of the valley would be ex- 

 tinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals would emigrate 

 from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art had 

 prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 

 feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bot- 

 tom of the basin might disturb the equiHbrium between the inter- 

 nal and the external forces acting on the crust of the earth at this 

 point of abnormal configuration, and thus produce geological con- 

 vulsions the intensity of which can not be even conjectured. 



It is now estabhshed by the observations of RohK and others 

 that Strabo was right in asserting that a considerable part of the 

 Libyan desert, or Sahara, lay below the level of the Mediterranean. 

 At some points the depression exceeds 325 feet, and at Siwah, in 

 the oasis of Jupiter Ammon, it is not less than 130 feet. It has 

 been proposed to cut a canal through the coast-dunes, on the 

 shore south of the Syrtis Major, or Dschun el Kebrit of the 

 Arabs, and another project* is to reopen the communication 



* The project referred to in the text has been at least partially studied, has 

 been entertained by the French Chambers, and has become a subject of much 

 discussion. The most careful estimates I have seen allow to the new internal 

 sea a length of 350 kilometres, a width of 60, and a depth of from 40 to 60 

 metres. There has been much wild conjecture in regard both to the ameliorat- 

 ing effects of such an expanse of water on the climate of Northern Africa, 

 and the injurious consequences to Europe of the large addition of moisture to 

 the atmospheric currents, which it is argued might increase the rain and snow 

 on the Alps to a very prejudicial extent. The possibility of the scheme is by 

 no means yet established, and the doubt whether it would be practicable to 

 keep open, through the sandy isthmus, a channel wide enough to furnish a 



