Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1912 — Plan Railroad Across Sahara. [ARTICLE]

Plan Railroad Across Sahara.

A scientific mission charged with making the first studies for the construction of a railroad across the Sahara has just set out from France. Starting from Oran, on the Mediterranean, the expedition will travel first by rail and then by camel—to the mountains in the center of the Sahara. There one party will turn west and examine the route of the proposed railroad connecting the Trans-Saharan with the Cape to Cairo by Lake Tchad and the upper Congb Valley; the second will turn east to study the track of the Trans-Saharan itself from the center of the desert to the Niger at Timbuktu or Gao. One of the members of the expedition will be Captain Cortier, whose earlier journey across the desert to the Niger was one of the triumphs of Saharan exploration.