Project Gutenberg 2025-10-20 Public domain in the USA. 250 Ball, John 1872 1941 Problems of the Libyan Desert $aLondon :$bThe Royal Geographical Society, $c1927. Produced from The Geographical Journal, v. 70, 1927. Galo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library) "Problems of the Libyan Desert" by John Ball is a scientific publication written in the early 20th century. It synthesizes exploration, surveying, and geology to explain the Libyan Desert’s great depressions, artesian waters, dunes, and rumored “lost” oases, while evaluating whether basins like Qattara and Wadi Rayan could be harnessed for irrigation, drainage, or power. The work also challenges persistent myths—most notably that a former Nile branch crossed the western desert—by using new contour mapping and hydrological reasoning. The opening of the work lays out a dozen central questions about the region and explains how recent triangulation and improved barometric leveling enabled a first, provisional contoured map. It lists a chain of sub‑sea‑level basins culminating in the vast, newly confirmed Qattara Depression, outlines the major escarpments and highlands (Gilf Kebir, Oweinat, Kissu), and uses these data to dismiss the old “dry river” idea of a Nile branch to the Mediterranean. The author attributes the depressions chiefly to wind erosion acting on soft strata breached through structural weaknesses, illustrating a subtle deepening mechanism observed in coastal “bosom” basins, and then weighs engineering schemes: Wadi Rayan as a sump looks plausible, while a Qattara sea and hydropower face prohibitive topography and cost. He traces the artesian system to the Erdi–Ennedi highlands, derives static water‑level contours from wells and lakes, explains the persistence of desert lakes via underground inflow, and notes the Nile’s capture of warm artesian water near Dakka. From these contours he rejects deep coastal artesian wells, warns that well interference and external drains may lower oasis heads, and begins to test traditions about “Zerzura” against the new topographic and hydrologic evidence. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.230921 20250926032210ball 1927 GB en Libyan Desert DT Text 243046 2025-11-30T10:36:09.060958 text/html 215840 2025-10-20T07:57:17 text/html 2144461 2025-11-30T10:36:16.360953 application/epub+zip 2146588 2025-11-30T10:36:11.291967 application/epub+zip 153152 2025-11-30T10:36:09.869938 application/epub+zip 2012233 2025-11-30T10:36:19.771882 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 1989155 2025-11-30T10:36:14.919904 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 202862 2025-11-30T10:36:08.466967 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 183008 2025-10-20T07:57:17 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 15714 2025-11-30T10:36:19.936857 application/rdf+xml 15072 2025-11-30T10:36:10.127930 image/jpeg 3982 2025-11-30T10:36:09.996915 image/jpeg 2050600 2025-11-30T10:36:09.163968 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia