Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/128

110 efforts to get out. A woodcut representing this strange belief will be found in an old cosmography in our library."

Meteorological and earthquake disturbances of the past year are noted; and, with an account of the voyage of the Challenger and the important results attained by it, Judge Daly passes to the progress of geographical work in Europe, and gives an instructive account of the drainage of the Zuyder Zee now undertaken by the people of Holland, who have become masters of hydraulics by necessity, as their whole country lies twelve feet below the level of the sea. They drained the Haarlem Lake, twelve miles long, seven miles wide, and fourteen feet deep, and covered it with thriving farms and villages, and were so pleased with the speculation that they have now undertaken to drain off the Zuyder Zee, which embraces an area of 759 square miles, and by which they propose to add six per cent, of fertile land to the total area of the country. It is a dull waste of half-navigable waters with low, marshy borders. They are first to construct an immense dike 164 feet wide at the bottom of the sea, and rising to a height of twenty-six feet above it, making a total length of wall, near the narrow opening of the sea, twenty-five statute miles. The inclosed area will be divided into squares, and pumped out at an expense of $48,000,000, or about $100 an acre. Our Yankees, who are being drowned by the score in the overflow of their ponds, might learn something about dams from these Dutchmen.

The president next attacks Asia, and gives us a great deal of valuable information of the results of geographical inquiry in various portions of its immense area, of which the following has a very human interest:

Africa is, however, now the great point of assault by geographical explorers, and there come the most wonderful revelations regarding the fertility and beauty of various of its extensive regions, with curious descriptions of its government and peoples. Dr. Nachtigal, describing Wadai, in Northeast Africa—

"Fixes the population of the country at about two and a half millions, and says that the surface elevation of the land is from west to east, with an elevation of from 1,000 to 1,500 feet above the sea-level. Numerous small streams flow from the eastern heights, falling into the two principal rivers, the Kafa and Poaka. The country is divided