256 



SCIENCE. 



[Yol. V., No. 112. 



thirty miles, passing wells sufficient for one hundred 

 or two hundred men only, and reaching, about sixty 

 miles from Suakin, beyond Wady Ahmed, the sum- 

 mit of the line, three thousand feet above the sea, — a 

 short but steep and narrow pass, and the most formi- 

 dable obstacle on the route. Some heavy cutting will 

 be unavoidable, unless another pass can be found. 

 Wells at sixty-two and seventy-five miles from Sua- 

 kin furnish a large quantity of good water. This 

 portion of the route lies through barren, treeless val- 

 leys, strewn with fragments of trap and porphyry. 

 At eighty-seven miles from Suakin is a steep, wind- 

 ing pass, altitude about twenty-five hundred feet 

 above the sea, the last point offering any difficulty 

 for a railroad. Nine miles beyond is the good well 

 of Abd-el-Hab; and then, excepting two or three 

 insignificant water-holes, we find only barren plains 

 and low granite hills to Wady Ariab, — a hundred and 

 eighteen miles from Suakin, and nineteen hundred 

 feet above the sea. Here there is a genuine oasis, 

 with good grazing. Twelve miles beyond, the moun- 

 tains decline, and the route passes over barren plains 

 for forty-two miles to the sand-dunes of O-Baek, about 

 five miles across, where can be obtained a little water. 

 In the preceding fifty-four miles there is no water. 

 From O-Baek to the Nile, sixty-eight miles, stretches 

 a stony plain without tree or herb, and with no 

 water except at one good well two hours' march from 

 the Nile. For seventy-five miles from Suakin, at no 

 one point could a force of two thousand or three 

 thousand men, with their animals, find sufficient 

 water; and, after leaving Bir Ariab, there are two 

 absolutely waterless stretches of fifty miles each. 



To supply the water for the workmen while con- 

 structing this railroad, and for the troops which will 

 be needed as guards, as well as to provide for the 

 permanent working of the railroad, a pipe-line is at 

 once to be laid, to consist of two lines of four-inch 

 pipes, with stations every twenty-five or thirty miles, 

 at which pumps will be connected with power suffi- 

 cient to force the water, under a pressure of some one 

 thousand to fifteen hundred pounds on the square 

 inch at the pumps, so as to give a flow of about a 

 hundred and fifty gallons per minute. The pipes 

 will be laid in curves to allow for expansion from the 

 excessive heat. The pumps are to be supplied by H. 

 R. Worthington of New York, who has had great 

 success in pumping petroleum through pipe-lines in 

 this country under similar circumstances of distance 

 and elevation to be overcome. In some cases their 

 pumps have forced oil over a hundred miles with- 

 out the assistance of intermediate stations. They 

 are to be delivered in London in thirty days from the 

 date of the order. It is also reported that the con- 

 tract for laying the pipe has been offered to a New- 

 York contractor of experience in that work, and that 

 a man in Winnipeg, once an officer under Gen. 

 Wolseley, and skilled in American methods of rapid 

 railway-construction, has offered to build and guar- 

 antee the opening of the railroad from Suakin to 

 Berber within five months from the signing of the 

 contract. 



Our enterprising countrymen are also urging upon 



the English government the advantages to be gained 

 by the use, on the Nile, of the small, stern-wheel, 

 light-draught steamboats so commonly employed on 

 our western rivers. These boats are equipped with 

 powerful capstans and warps for hauling them up 

 rapids, as well as derricks for working off or over sand- 

 bars, and can be rapidly built in the western yards 

 and shipped in sections, or can be built abroad from 

 plans. \ 



THE TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF 

 THE HUDSON-BAY REGION. 



From Dr. Bell's report of the geological work of 

 the Hudson-Bay expedition, we learn something re- 

 specting the topography and geological formation of 

 that region. In passing northward along the Labra- 

 dor coast, the land ascends until within seventy miles 

 of Chudleigh, where a height of six thousand feet is 

 reached : beyond this point it again descends gradu- 

 ally to the cape, which has an elevation of fifteen 

 hundred feet. The highest land of the peninsula 

 seems everywhere to lie close to the coast, with a grad- 

 ual slope westward down to the comparatively flat 

 basins of the Koksok, and the rivers emptying along 

 the east coast of Hudson Bay. The coast of Labra- 

 dor, like that of northern Europe, is indented by deep 

 and narrow fiords, and in some places has shoals 

 extending out about five miles. In the strait the 

 coast-line appears to be less irregular, the coast is 

 lower, the hills more rounded, and the country devoid 

 of timber, of which the northern limit barely reaches 

 Ungava Bay. 



Throughout northern Labrador and the strait the 

 formation is of gneiss, most of it Huronian, but some 

 of it, perhaps, of Laurentian age, varying in color 

 from gray to red, traversed at some points by dikes 

 of trap, at others by veins of quartz, accompanied by 

 the rock-formations usually found associated with 

 such gneiss, and containing minerals characteristic 

 of the formation, such as labradorite, anorthosite, 

 calc-spar, iron-pyrites, and mica and felspar crystals. 

 No economic minerals were found in situ; but at 

 Ashe's Inlet some Eskimo from the eastward brought 

 with them plates of good light-colored mica, pieces of 

 pure foliated graphite, and one of amorphous graph- 

 ite, all of which they said could be had in large 

 quantities. On being shown specimens of minerals 

 likely to occur in the formation, they recognized a 

 bright-red hematite as existing inland, as well as a 

 coarse variety of soapstone, which had been used for 

 making pots; they also knew quartz, which they dis- 

 tinguished by its superior hardness from specimens 

 of marble and gypsum shown them. 



At Stupart's Bay, beaches of shingle may be seen 

 at all levels, up to the tops of the highest hills in the 

 vicinity, all as fresh-looking as those on the present 

 shore, except that the stones are covered with lichens. 

 At Port DeBoucherville the gneiss lies in island-like 

 hummocks, the valleys being filled with bowlder-clay r 

 which has a structural arrangement parallel to the 

 w T alls, apparently due to a process of expansion, con- 



