Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/280

 �thirty miles, pftsging wells sufficient for one hundred or two hundred men only, and reaching, about sisty miles from Suakin, beyond W&dy Ahmed, the sum- mit of the line, three thousand feet above the sea, — a short but steep and narrow past, and the most formi- dable obstacle on the roule. Some hi^avy ciittingwi]] be uiiBFoidable. unless another pass can be found. Wells at sluy-lwo nnd scventy-Bve miles from Sua- kin fumisi) a large quantity of good water. This portion of the route lies through barren, treeless val- leys, atrewa with fragments of trap and porphyry. At elghty-seren miles from Suahin is a steep, wlnd-, altitude about Iwenty-Bve hundred feet above the sea, the last point offeriDg any difflculty for a railroad. Nine miles beyond is the good well of Abd-el-Hab; and then, excepting two or three insignificant water-holes, we And only barren plains and lowgraiJtehlllstoWadyArlab, — a hundred and eighteen miles from Suakin, and nineteen hundred feet above the sea. Here there is a genuine oasis, with good gnuia^. Twelve miles beyond, the moun- tains decllue, and the route passes over barren plains forforly-two nillealo the sand-dunes of O- Back, about five miles across, where can be obtained a little water. la the preceding fifty-fonr miles there is no water. From 0-Baek U> the Nile, sixty-eight miles, stretches a stony plain wxUiout tree or herb, and with no water except at one good well two hours' march from the Nile. For seventy-flve miles from Suakin, at no one point could a force of two thousand or three thousand men, with their animaU, And sufflcient water; and, after leaving Bir Ariab. there are two absolutely waterless stretches ot 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 ns to provide for the permanent working of the railroad, a pipe-line is at once to be laid, to consist ot two lines of four-inch pipes, with stations every twenty-five or thirty miles, at which pumps will bo 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 bo laid in curves to allow for expansion from the excessive heat. The pumps are to be supplied by H- R. Worthinglon of New York, who has had great BUMcBs in pumping petroleum through pipe-lines In this country nnder 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 dale of the order. It is also rcporteil 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, ha^ offered to build and guar- antee tlie opening of the railroad from Suakin to Berber nlthln five months from the signing of the

��NCE. rvou v.. So. 112.

the English government the advantages to be gained by the use, on the Nile, of the small, slera-whwl, lighb-draught steamboats so commonly employed on our western rivers. These boats are equipped with powerful capstans and warps for hauling them np rapids, as well as derricks for working off or over sand- bars, and can be rapidly built in the western yardi and shipped in sections, or can be buHt abroad from

��Our enterprising countrymen are alio urging upon

��From Dr. Bell's report of the geol<^ical work of the Hudson-Bay expedition, we learn something re- specting the topography and geological formalion ot 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 ja reached: t>eyond this point it again descends gradu- ally to the cape, wlilch has an elevation of fifteen hundred feet. The highest land of the peninsula seems everywliere to lie close to the coast, with a grsd- ual slope westward down to the comparatively flat basins of the Eoksok, and the rivers emptying along the east coast of Hudson Bay. The coast of Labra- dor, like that ot northern Europe, is indented by deep and narrow fiords, and in some places has shoola extending out about five miles. In the ■ coasl-line appears to be less Irregular, the coast I lower, the bills more rounded, and the country devol of timber, of which the northern limit barely n Ungava Bay.

Throughout northern Labrador and the strsit Ibe formation Is of gneiss, most of it Huronlan, but bohm of it, perhaps, of Laurentian age, varying in color from gray to red, traversed at some points by dlkea.— of trap, at others by veins of quartz, accompanied b the rock-formations usually found associated v such gneiss, and containing minerals characteristi of the formation, such as labradorite. anorlhosiM^Ji calc-spar, iron-pyrites, and mica and felspar ciTStali. No economic minerals were found in sthi ; but at Ashe's Inlet some Eskimo from the eastward brought with them plates of good light-colored mica, piece* of pure foliated graphite, and one of amorphous graph- ite, all of which they said could be had .in iMge quantities. On l>eing shown specimens of mlnerkls likely to occur in the formation, they recognised a bright-red hematite as existing Inland, as well »• k coarse variety of snapstone, which had been used for making pots; they also knew quarts, which they dis- tinguished by its superior liardness from specimens of marble and gypsum shown them.

At Stuparl's Bay, beaches of shingle may be si^en at all levels, up to the lops of the highest bills \a the vicinity, alt as fresb-looktug as those on the prasent shore, except that the stones are covered with lichens. At Fort DeBoucherville the gneiss lies In island-like hummocks, the valleys being filled with bowlder-clay, which has a structural arrangement parallel to tha u'all^, npparcnity due to a proc<'!^^ of expansion, ci

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