NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ARDINAL LAVIGERTE'S project for recivilising great kJ tracts of the Sahara may be a dream, but it is a noble one. He is organising a French Sahara Brotherhood, who will live as engineering monks, instead of the fighting monks of the Middle Ages, and will, after five years' trial of their willingness, devote themselves for life. They will be posted near old wells in the Sahara, will reopen those wells and sink new ones, and, when water has been found, will plant fruit-farms. They will gather in the scattered nomads, convert them if possible, and compel them to give up stealing slaves. The system is to extend itself yearly, until very large tracts have been fertilised, as was the case in the Carthaginian days. The Cardinal, who is, by-the-way, Bishop of Carthage as well as the first prelate in Algeria, has received 1,760 offers from volunteers, and has accepted 50 as a beginning, who will be trained for fifteen months at Biskra, and then enter the desert. They will receive, apparently, no salaries, but their actual expenses will be paid out of a collection which the Pope has authorised at Epiphany throughout the Catholic world. Cardinal Lavigerie may turn out an anachronism ; but that is a very splendid project.
