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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1927-11-10, Page 3r Lostexpedition to trace the ;tate of Frank plorears lin, Sc'hwatka traveled 3',2U0 miles Sought O Vain ram I•ludaon's 134 y into the 'Arctic, 'found skeletons on ging Wililam ILand, where the ships were destroy Bones of Many Heroes in ed; and returned with more Eskimo tales of white men who years before Polar Regions Have R.eveal2had .come .over the icQ_ and died, , ed Tragedies --- Dyott to Sir John Franklin and , his men ,Seek Fawcett, Reported .were dead, but in their deaths they Alive in Jungle, Far into the fastness of the jungle south of the Amazon River an expedi- tion expects to, penetrate within the next few months in search of Colonel I', H. Fawcett, the British 'explorer, who had long been missing in that region, but who 'recently was reported to have contentedly settled down in the wilderness with his son.. The ex- pedition is to be headed by Command- er George Miller Dyott, 'whose party met with thrilling adventu on its trip along the Afros of Doubt in Brazil not long ago. Hiddenamid the matter undergrowth are rumored to be the ruins of a lost civilization, and search for these, which Colonel Fawcett was seeking when he lost touch with the world, will be pursued by the Dyott party. Near the river, according to tradition,' is a rich gold lode. • Are we to hear in the course of time of a case similar to that of Liv- ingstone, who -vanished foryears in Darkest Africa and refused to come out when found by, Stanley? Or will another tragedy be written down on the long ,list of missing explorers? Numerous search parties have sought to find adventurers who disappeared; expedition after expedition has dared the ice packs of the Polar Sea or the bitter wastes of the Antarctic on the trail ofgallant wanderers. Into snow field and jungle explorers have passed from the range- of civilized contacts and many of them never have been heard •from since. -Most amazing, when the record is review- ed, is the fact that so many of the pioneers should have succeeded in getting out of the wilderness inw'.... h they hazarded their lives in b,',.1.1f of trade routes, extension of frontiers, treasure or in the service of science dud geography.. • A little group stood on the shores • of the port of Virgo, Spitzbergen, thirty years ago' and watched a bal- loon with three men drive northward on the wind in one of the most daring attempts made to discover the Pole. "For a moment between two hills we perceive a gray speck over the sea, very, very far away, and then it final- ly inally disappears," wrote an eyewitneess' to the commencement of an expedi- tion unique in history Salomon Auguste Andree, the Swedish engin- eer, and his companions, Strandberg and Fraenkel, were off by air for the top of the world. Last Word of .Andree.. A single carrier pigeon, shot down by the crew o€ a whaler, got through with a message from Andrea dated two days later. The Arctic holds the secret of the fate''of the fliers just as it holds the bones of the men of the Erebus and the Terror, the ships of Sir John. Franklin's expedition of 1845, for which a search of more than twenty -flue years was made. • 13y the time all hope for the missing men had been given up the polar regions had been covered and mapped; providing the groundwork of information fol- lowed by all :explorers. since. The British Government spent £ 980,000 in vain efforts to rescue, Franklin; the Hudson's Bay Company financed a year's expeditiion; a quar- ter of a million dollars was expended by private 1'ndividuals in this coun- try. The whole world waited, year on year, for news of the expedition, no ono of whose 134 members escaped from the grip of the Arctic. Here was the grimmest tragedy in• the history of exploration—a story of ships and men crushed by the forces of nature. —.Slowly it became possible to piece together the terrible chronicle of the Arctic's victory over the adventurers. Eskimos told of seeing two .ships locked in the ice for years. One of them sank and the other was driven on the shore and broken up. Their stronghold was gone and the men of the Franklin expedition were left to fight their way as best they could out of the frozen wilderness. Their bones were found in ship's boats, in tattered tents, on lonely peninsula. Tales of the strange white men who wandered over the vast fields of ice passed from Eskimo to Eskimo. Dr. John Rae, pressing into the Arctic in 1853, was told of a camp of 'horror where thirty bodies wore' found and the contents of the kettles spoke,of the last resort of the desperate. Clues to Franklyn. Spoons, buttons, modals, watches -- mute relics of the expedition—were in many an Eskimo hut. Sir John Boss, leading a rescue party in his Own yacht, found throe graves •on Beechey Island and, the first ;real clues to the fate of Franklin's men -- a camp site and 5,00 empty meat tins. Henry Grinnell, a New York Mer- chant, fitted out two expeditions and sent then north. to join the search. Lady 'Franklin equipped, live separate parties. • At last, ten years after the hunt be- gan, Captain' McClintock, . in ono of Lady Franklin's ships, ,came on a ;fragment of a record in a charm. It told of the death o4 Sir John Frank- lin in June, 1847, and of the desertion of the ships in 'a last attempt to reach the mainland. . The paper, , dated April, 1848, listed the deaths so far as nine oiticers'and fifteen men. Oho ,.,hundred and ten men were yet to die on the ice. In 1878 the pchwatka party from the united, States want out as the last served the cause' of science. The Arc- tic regions now saw a series ofdashes for the Pole, on of which—theGree1Y expedition of 1881—almost resulted in as great a catastrophe es that of Franklin. Once moret, rescue ships fought their way. against ice and gales to reach and save a party of be- leaguered men. Scott's Party Perished. A tale of high heroism this, yet the: same can be said of almost every lost expedition in the history of explora- tion. It was only fifteen years ago that the Antarctic was being combed for traces of captain Robert Falcon Scott, the British explorer, who had attacked the great ice barrier behind which lies the South Pole. Roald Amundsen was in he region at the same time and won the race, leaving a record that with four men he had arrived at the South Pole en Dec. 16, 1911. Scott and his four companions doubled on their trail back toward the main food depot. Already t'bn mem- bers of the party had ,returned to the ,base, Blizzards swept down on Scott's men and the going was rough. Sea- man Evans dropped and died of a concussion. The food ran out, . Cap- tain Titus Oates, desperately frost- bitten and knowing that ho was doom- ed, retuned to let the party delay to help him along. If they halted, they would all perish. "I'm going outside and may be gone some time," he said calmly and stepped out of the tent in- to a howling blizzard.. It was the last ever seen of him. Eleven miles from the depot the final camp was made. Again a bliz- zard rose, malting it hopeless to try to move on. For four days the storm raged, and when it blew itself out the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers lay under the white mound of their tent. Eight months later the search- ers found them. They found also the journal of Scott, the last to die. It said: "After all, we have given our Iives for our country. * * * We have actually made the longest journey on record and we have been the first Englishmen at the South Pole." The most exciting rescue of a lost explorer is that of David Livingstone by Henry M. Stanley. . For years Liv- ingstone had not been heard from. He was somewhere • in the heart of Africa, ranging its dark interior and searching for the headwaters of the Nile. More than one expedition had gone after him and failed in its quest when' James Gordon Benett of the New York Herald commissioned Stan- ley to lead a search. Africa was a mystery to the white man in 1870 and the situation seemed hopeless. . At the head of a small band of 'armed natives Stanley penetrated the con- tinent. The 'Finding of Livingstone. Wild shouts and cries greeted him at Tanganyika when he marched in under the American flag—the first caravan to reach the village in years. A black man in a white shirt spoke to him in broken English. "Good morning, sir. I am the ser- vant of Dr. Livingstone." "Is he here?" burst from Stanley. The caravan swept on to the -mar- ket place. There sat an elderly man i na flannel blouse. . Stanley, the res- cuer, raised his helmet. "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" "Yes," • said Dr.. Livingstone, also bowing. Drawing room manners had come to Darkest Africa and a classic of exploration had been achieved. Livingstone would not leave the land in which he had been roving for five years, lost to the world. • The fol- lowing year he fell 111 and was carried to a native village. There he was found one morning at 4 o'clock, kneel- ing by his beside with the candle still burning.. David Livingstone, the de- voted explorer, who had traveled 29,000 miles in Africa alone and had opened a territory of a million square miles to the white man, had held to the trail to the last. Byrd sees in the airplane, he says, an instrument of peace. Aq flying olive -branch, in fact. "I've decided' to put a check on your allowance." "Thanks, old thing. Make it blank, will you?" A Man Spilt Water pkier THE "SEA FLEA," A HYDRO-AREOPLANE Crossed from France to England'' in 20 minutes. Draws only three inches of water and weighs 2,&00 pounds, It is claimed suoh a craft could, if built for the trip, cross the Atlantic with 100 passengers in 40 hours. Marcelin Berthelot On Opt. 25 the world joined France • in observing the centenary of the birth of Marcelin Berthelot, chemist, philosopher and patriot. One of the pioneers of modern thermo-chemistry, agricultural chemistry and synthetic chemistry, his discoveries gave the evolution of science a, new purpose and direction. Berthelot's contributions were of extraordinary range and far-reaching effect. More than 1,200 treatises' stand to his credit, an indication of. his enormous industry and of a spirit encyclopedic in its scope. Many of these are now classics in the litera- ture of chemistry. Despite the syn- theses that had been effected before Berthelot's day, no • less a chemist than Betzelius despaired of assemb- ling molecules into organic com- pounds similar to those of nature. "Organic" meant something intimate- ly associated with life, and between the living organism and inert matter a chasm yawned that science saw lit- tle hope of bridging. Berthelot's bril- liant syntheses of alcohols, organic acids, benzene, ethylene, acetylene— syntheses of the very atoms of which organic nature was composed—start- ted chemistry with their new possi- bilities. If the chemist now 'wields a power over matter that seems little short of miraculous, it is partly be- cause of Berthelot's work. More than a mere experimenter, Berthelot realized the vast potentiali- ties' ofhis discoveries. "The domain in which chemical synthesis exercises its creative power is greater than that of nature herself," he said, As he synthesized atoms, so he synthe- sized his conception of life and the universe into a whole that saw in an amoeba and in a star two manifesta- tions of the same matter. Interests Diversified. To She true research scientist, the class to Which Berthelot belongs, a discovery is but a key which will un- lock a new door in the unexplored house of science, an inspiration as well as an achievement. When he synthesized formic acid the inertia of his atoms struck him. At once his inquisitiveness was aroused. Out of the studies then begun came new dis- coveries and theories that gave ther- mo-chemistry a surer foundation. While . Crookes painted his gloomy picture of a too fecund world starving because of its inability to feed its. ever-increasing 'offspring, Berthelot saw the possibilities of fixing atmos- pheric nitrogen and establishing a huge fertilizer industry and making two blades grow where but one. grew before. His quick imagination even conceived it `possible to dispense with agriculture and with the slaughter- house. Had he not himself succeeded in building up organic compounds? Might not some chemist of the future produce food out of nothing but the gases of the atmosphere? Thus or- iginated the conception of "meal pel- lets," since widely exploited. The German invasion of 1870 re- vealed' this extraordinary man in a new light. Besieged Paris made him President of the Scientific/Committee of National Defense. In that capacity he tirelessly devoted himself to the task of defeating the enemy, to plac- ing Paris in communication with the outer world, and to conducting re- searches that laid the basis for the discovery of smokeless powder and the now accepted theory of the action of explosives. Although he had no taste for politics the bickerings of the Chamber frankly boned him he nevertheless served his country as Minister of Public Instruction and Minister of Foreign Affairs. When he celebrated his scientific jubilee a medal was presented to him that bears on one face the inscription: Pour la Patrie et la Verits" In these simple words France fittingly sum- med up a great investigator's devo- tion to his native land and to science. f "Maybe you saw some curves and cut, some corners, but it's not so sharp Cabby Gertle to mow down a cop." r 'Australian Goes Ahead Although Canada has been the leading customer of the U.S., the Bur- eu of Foreign and Domestic Com- merce of our neighbor reports that during the past mouth Australia pur- chased the largest amount of radio receiving sets, with 48,543 worth, Can- ada being second with $38,390 and Ar- gentina third with $33,684. Australia was also responsible for $25,519, the largest amount of money expended by a single country for radio tubes during the month.. Argentina and New Zealand were second and third, with 16,124 and $12,247, respectively. Argentina bought receiviug set components to the extent of 57,242, Canada $32,709 and Australia $30,270. Receiving set accessories found a ready market in Canada, which pur- chased $71,546 worth. Australia, with $27,434 worth, was the next figure. The total value of the different classifications was as follows: Re- ceiving sets, $185,079; tubes, $86,190; receiving set components, $167,768, and receiving set accessories, $159,- 966. Radio apparatus to the amount of $3,402 was shipped to Alaska. Porto Rico received $5,751 worth and Hawaii $2,873. --y A Canadian judge, in a suit over the recent Dem sey-Tunney affair, has demanded proof in court that the bout actually took place. He evi- dently was there. From An AustraIi n' Good English Calendar A Requirement September is a glorious month in Australia, The orange blossoms scent the air; the wistaria and spirem begin their short dives; the banksia and cloth of gold roses are in splens did bloom; pink ones also; but the dark crimson roses are laggards. At the month's end, it is haymak- Ing time.. Purple -fringed violets, as they are called—those which close at midday—and a small, flesh -colored orchid, as well as everlasting flowers _which :are Australian daisies—dot the plains... , Next month, the wild jasmine shrubs on the track to the springs will he covered with yellow and cream flowers; then all the garden will be a bright tangle of seedlings —phlox, verbena, sweet peas—all kinds of annuals. There will be car- nations of every shade; the black fence will be a sheet of lilac thum- bergia; a pomegranate, in bud now, will bo "hanging out balls of vivid red; the yellow amaryllis lilies will have poked their heads out of their green sheaves, and there will be snowy branches of deutzia, I could make a calendar, only that I have begun in the middle. But in November the cool, soft shades have gone. A11 the flowers are fiery red or yellow—geraniums, hibiscus, gladi- olas, tiger lilies, begonias, allemandes and pomegranates. Yet there are al- leviations. The passion fruit is ripe, and so are the Cape mulberries and flat -stoned peaches.. , . Then comes December, when the thermometer ranges one hundred de - groes in the verandah; when the grass is brown and scorched, the creeks dry. . Hailstones make a clatter on the roof, and lightning plays on the wet boards of the verandah. There is a sudden and delicious chill. The blan- ket has first frozen and then burst, scattering great jagged pieces of ice. The old plum -tree, which never bore, lies prostrate, and the garden paths are carpeted with vine and mulberry leaves. When it is over, the whole earth, with all upon it, lifts up its voice in rejoicing. Hailstones are gathered in buckets ,and wrapped in blankets to ice butter and drinks for the morrow. And oh, what a paradise the verandah is on that evening after the storm! The air is filled with the voices of beasts and insects which have drunk their fill. The curlews are wailing in the scrub, and the swamp pheasant makes his gurgling noise by the la-. goon. There is a delicious sense of moistness and refreshment in the at- mosphere. The verbena throws off stronger perfume, and the datura at the end of the verandah is oppres- sively odorous. I are lying in the hammock. Near my fent is a slab wall, where the stag-horn ferns shoot out their anglers, and from the top of which the frogs flop heavily upon the boards.... Close to my head a ghostly -looking pillar of rinkasporum rears itself, .a mass of white bloom. There is no moon, but the brilliance of the starlight causes every outline 1 to stand forth clear against the hori- zon. One star seems poised upon Mount Marroon. It is a pointer of the Southern Cross, and the Cross it- self lies over the mountain, while nearer, in central heaven, there is Orion's belt turned upside down. I always used to wonder what it would look like in England. Someone is singing within, a plaintive English ballad, in which there is an allusion to Charles's Wain and a winter even- ing. The words suggest the Un- known—the far -away. Ice, snow, the Great Bear, holly and mistletoe, and Christmas waits. What have these to do with this languorous southern night.—Mrs. Campbell Freed, in "My Australian Girlhood." Failure to Use It Means )iv qualification From University Honolulu, Hawaii, --World-wide ink terest is being taken by educators in) the adoption of strict requirements bY; the University of Hawaii, which make'' disqualifioation from the university'. possible for continued use of poor English. Similar requirements have proved. successful in the public schools of the territory for the past two years, and Dr, David L. Crawford. president of the university, announced that begin), Hing with the fall semester, the unit versity will extend direction oil spoken and written English to alis branches of study, making good Eng? fish a requirement in all classes with! a separate inclusive report upon' which wil be based each studentt's standing with respect to use of Eng, lish. This report, prepared by a special! English co-ordinator, will be used to' require the students who show mark-' ed deficiency in English to undertake special work without credit in Eng-, lish studies, and upon continued dei flciency may result in the student be- ing dropped from the university. The action of the university, which raises standards of English to a higher level than ever before, is' based on the theory that a proper un- derstanding of the English language is a fundamental basis of American learning, and that higher branches of study cannot bo undertaken without! a thorough command of the language,' according to Dr. Crawford. Our Canadian universities should; take note and pay more attention to' Reading and wRiting than in the past. They Go Anyway - Stowaways Are Not Deterred By Prospect of Punish- ment A problem for many steamship cap- tains is that of dealing with stow -i aways. On one vessel on a recent trip from New York to San Francisco and return thirteen stowaways were unearthed. Eight were found on We way to San Francisco and five more on the return voyage. Formerly the silowaway was thrasa—t4 ed and put in irons. This custani' has been done away with, although; 1 the irons are still used on occasions.' In most cases the stowaways know this when .discovered they will be pint to work. All stowaways, after dis= covery, receive the same treatment. They are taken to the bridge, whore, they are searobed. A record is made of the discovery—time, date,. place and by whom. These -facts ara entered in the •ship's log. Some 0f the men are signed on as regular sea- men; others work to pay their pas - !sage; very rarely a stowaway is found who has, sufficient 'money to pay for his transportation. One of the captain's first queries, is whether the stowaway has a frieni in the crew. If so the seaman men- tioned is brought to the bridge. If he admits knowing that thestowaway intended boarding the ship and .mads uo move to prevent it ho is nearly always "logged" or fined. It is not an especially difficult task to board a ship. Tho quartermaster on duty at the gangway does not know the entire crew and after a stowaway has slipped aboard it is easy for him to find a place in which to hide. Leaving the ship presents more of a problem. Tho stowaway (presuming that he has been discov- ered in the course of the voyage), is naw known. In any event he cannot unceremoniously leave by the gang- way. Sometimes he tries to slip through a porthole; sometimes he hides in one, of the huge rope nets used to carry freight from ship to , pier. "My husband and I are going to be divorced. We own our house jointly. How shall we divide it?" "Divide it equally, of course. You keep the in- side and give him the outside." Pat was over in England working with his coat off, There were two Englishmen working on the same rail- road, so they decided to have a joke on the Irishman. They painted a donkey's head on the back of Pat's coat and watched to see him put it on. Pat, of course, saw the donkey's head on the back of his coat, and, turning to the Englishmen, said, "Which of yoz wiped yer face on me coat?" Days That Are Gone Forever OLD PORT A'l' NORTH WEST ARM, HALIFAX Called to the Attention of the Board of Health Mrs, Hopkins imparts her practic- ability, psychology and knowledge of. art to her associates. Her entausiasn and working pilins are infectious,--- Froni a reprint from the American Business Magazine. Time for Caution "What's that plane doin' stecrin' far us?" inquired the mate of the Barouti- recOt as he sighted Miss Ruth Elder's machine. "Better change yer course a point,"; declared the skipper. "Y'never kin tell about those women drivers!" Modern Mother—"Tell ane, Gene- vieve, aro you keeping something from mother?" Genevieve -- "Yes, my Millionaire boy friend."