It is rumoured that M. de Lesseps will be able
to carry out his plan of introducing the Mediterranean into the, Sahara. The long line of " Chotts," or swampy salt lakes, stretching from Gabes eastward into Southern Tunis, are all some fifty feet below the sea, and are supposed to have once made part of a deep fiord. M. de Lesseps thinks he can let the water in again, and so create a lake ten times the size of the Lake of Geneva, alter the climate, and cleave a seaway into the -back territory of Tunis. He only feared that below the sand covering the isthmus between the " Chotts " and the sea he might find rock. Personal investigation, with the help of his staff of engineers, hae, however, convinced him that there is nothing but sand, and he now says success is certain. The practica- bility of the work seems prima facie probable, but the difficulty is to see any source of large permanent revenue. The force which heaped those sands must be heaping them still, the dredging work will be endless, and the commercial world is not burning to send goods to the Sahara. However, if M. de Lesseps announced his intention of bisecting Africa with a canal, which would be moat desirable, money to commence the work would be found ; so, we suppose, we shall see one more salt-water lake in the world, The British have a " Chott " of their own, the Chilka
Lake, in Cuttack, which ought to provide the finest harbour on the Bay of Bengal ; but there is no M. de Lesseps in India.
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