Loading...
The Seaforth News, 1950-04-06, Page 3Ice That Drives Strong Men Mad The runt 01 the world is pertu- hneutly clad las lir, The fee Cap of t:recnland, in places 9,000 feet Odd., rovers (t higeer area t'hau \'\'esteq' Europe and is continually spewing glaciers acro the frozen sea• •ice bergs by the thousand. Spitsbergen tied the waters of Arctic Siberia add to this profusion of ice, much of which drifts into the .North At tenths Mid-Octo1 er sees an icy pulp iortning on the fjords of Northern Siberia. 'Then, suddenly, the mere• rry chops fo- 70 below and—bang; —an icy vowing is whisked across the ocean. :11 thickens every sec. and until, in half an hour, it is a foot duel,. 'Where .currents are strong, the movement of the water defeats the colt, But not for long. The channels of open Tater formed' by the currents graduals; narrow and disappear. Roar Like 1,000 Guns Inside 12 !tours, the ice is foto' feet thick. And when the tide be- gins to rise, a roar like a thousand guns boosts across the Arctic. Such, at least, is the case in the New Si- berian. Islands, off Northern. Siberia. Here the tide rises and fills as touch as 40 feet, and when it rises after the "freeze-up" the world semis to go toad, The sea presses beneath the ice which resists at first—then suddenly gives way. With a tremendous thunderclap, the air compressed he- tweeti the sea and its icy crust bursts out, flinging into the air blocks of ice the ize of a house, jets of sea water follow the escap- ing air, pouring across the surface of the ice, adding feet to its thick,- Less, hick-ness, Once again, the tide falls and rises, As it drops, the ire is left suspended across the fjords until, unable to support itself, it crashes ilito - the sea which, exposed to the air, freezes again --the old ire and the new forming a contorted mass perhaps 20- feet thick. Then the tide begins to rise again, pressing upwards. harder and harder until race again it bursts through, fling- ing immense blocks of ice 0n - to the shore with the uproar of a vol- canic eruption. "I've seen amt, go mad. at such thins," says Jan Wetzel, a trader who lives in the New Sigerians. "Seen them run along the shore waving their arms and yelling with fear until they fall froni cshaust- ion." For.seveu mouths the sun i$ but a memory. But with the return of spring, its warmth melts the ice sufficiently for tide, current and Wind to break it tip, Late last century, expl,rers de- eqided that the currents that carry ,the floes of Siberia, Spitsbergen and Greenland into the North At- lantic could be used to carry a strip very close to the Pole, The Amer - lean explorer, Commander G. de Long, was the first to test this theory. For two years, his ship, the jeanette, drifted towards the North Pole, at times with pack -ice piled against her to the level of the decks. But the pack crushed her, leaving her crew to die on the frozen sea 150 miles froth the New Siberian Islands. But the icy fate of the Jeannette did not dissuade others from fol- lowing in her track. In 1894. the Norwegian, Nansens allowed his sine, the Frain, to be frozen -in not far from where the Jeannette had perished. Day after day, the Fran drifted towards the North Pole. When she had reached the most northerly 7mnit of the current, Nausea low- ered sledges and dogs on to the floes and set out with a companion, Jolianssen, He was a brave man, Ile kuety he could not hope to find his ship again, for she was drifting 01 an unknown direction, It knew lie would have to make itis way to stud as best he could. Ships Lifted Forty Feet When finally forced to tarn back, he headed for Franz Josef The Manassa Mauler Shows 'Ern How—(tick Dempsey-, • former world's Ilea yvweight Inir;tng champion, is keenly interested in all welfare work. During his recent visit to Toronto lie called Variety ariety Village, vorational training school for crippled children. '1'lte School is operated by -the Toronto Variety Club; the wart is One of the activities of the Ontario Society for Crippled Children which is conducting it annual Easter Seals campaign for funds Mauch- 13 - April 9. The boys with Dempsey arc, from left: 'Wilfred Ilombroskie, Renfrew; Bob Ken- nedy, Toronto; Donald Brennan, Ottawa and Donald Orr, Sault Sts'. Marie. Donathllis may be sent to Timmy, Toronto, Ialalld, 5 sledge -journey which only one of his huskies survived. There, he and his companion also would have died if they had not stet mem- bers of a British expedition. Back in Norway again, Nausea learned that the Frain had survived. She was lucky, for the power of the floes is such that they have lifted a ship 40 feet out of the water, Such was the experience of the Intrepid, ouc of the ships that searched for Sir jots Franklin's Erebus and Terror. The ice, con- verging on her hull, piled -beneath lter until she. was 39 feet "above sea level," Huge loose. blocks -top- pled to her decks. Ilcr crew thought the end had come --when the pressure suddenly relaxed and the ice fell, away, all but two pil- lars, one under her stow, the other snider the stern, Then her skipper, Cap,. Cator, did something that no seaman had «one before—or will do again. Swinging over his ship's side, he walked the length of the ship under the keel. Ten minutes later, he clambered aboard again to report that she had suffered little damage, just before the two ice pillars col- lapsed and the ship fell into her natural element! Every Man Perished The Erebus and the 'Terror (in which Frauklia tried to fled the North -\West Passage) had sides 17 inches thick, Evert so, when ice trapped them in a fjord in the ex- treme north of Canada, it crushed them. Every man on board—there were 105—perished, but the two ships Were yet to make another journey. When ultimately the ice broke tip, it carried them nearly 3,000 miles along the north coast of Canada, down into the North At- lantic. There they Were seen by the company of the Renovation, heeled over on the pack ice, their sides gaping. Similar tales have come; out of the Arctic during recent tears, The Russians' lost silt, ships in six months before the last war. A Norwegian scaler, caught in 'the spitzbergen flocs, was carried right round the island before, after 10 months in the grip of the pack, she foundered with all hands. Last spring, six sealers were crushed while sealing off Labrador, New- foundland and Greenland. During one period of I0 • years, 70 ships—Russian, :Norwegian, Ca- nadian, American—were destroyed - in the grind of pack -ice of in col- lision with 'bergs, •leudship Wins •-1+tMilk. the railroad yards evidently 1l'iuutpl adopting this fearless mouse int Rtmutegate birth to a tiller of up and made mother cat who lives at the led over her baser instincts in o her household, Shortly after kittens, the wee loottse turned itself al horse, Wayward "Oscar" -- Aircraft worker, Bruce Kierman, 20, is the holder of an "Oscar," but he didn't win it for acting. Kier:.'an found the coveted statuette about nine years ago. Despite demands of the Aca- demy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to surrender the statuette, Kiertnan held onto it, and every- year around Aca- demy Award time he wonders who lost or threw away his "Oscar." Life Amongst A Million Seals Charles Mulvey, a Canadian ex - barrister who has travelled widely in North West Canada recently gave a BBC talk on his experiences on the Pribolofs, a group of islands in the far North Pacific. These islands are the only mating grounds of the great fur bearing seal herd. They are almost fogbound in sum- mer ,and one morning as Mulvey groped along the bare, boulder strewn shore he heard a deep - throated roar and through the fog sew a giant seal, six feet long and. weighing about seven hundred l.ounds; lumbering by, Front a safe distance he watched the great creat- ure se tug his head to and fro, growling and snarling vindictively told threatening any nearby seals. In the second week of May hund. reds of -brill seals conte le the is- lands and each adepts a territory which becomes his herein during the mating season, The best posy. Bans, nearest to the. wiser, are the property of the fiercest fighters and when the fog lifted, Mulvey Watched many of these awesome territorial battles, A seal would • take ep a- position, aootlie, would fancy it and charge with roaring challenge, to be suet by the first seal wi111 teeth bared and powerful neck thrust out. Mulvey described these fights as the most vicious he had ever seen and at tinges he iurned away in horror praying that something. might intervene to stop theist. fiut the end eoutes only with , complete victory for the stronger seal, During the battle period the fe- males •have been coming front the South Pacific, where they bask happily during the winter. In May they feel an irrestible urge to go back to mate -en the islands where they were. born, The sea is dotted for miles with their !leads as these lovely little seals, only two and a . half to three feet long and weighing about eighty pounds, come gently to what Mulvey described as "two months of the most hellish form cf domesticity that the female of any species has ever experienced." As the females swim in the bulls are ranged along the shore to meet theist, cooing to' attract them. A fe- male approaches the bull of her choice and is picked up as though she were a kitten and carried to the harem, She is left there while her husband goes to collect other wives, for although the young bull seal takes only one or two, the mature bull may take a hundred. Bull seals attain maturity• at seven but mate from the age of four, when they develop a mace of light yellowish hair. For the two and a half months of mating season they never eat and seldom sleep, Tltey spend their entire time in their harems and when they leave the islands an emaciated wrecks, com- pared with the dusty giants they were in mid-May. Young bachelor seals live away from the harems and cautiously make their way to the sea through special lanes be- tween them, for trespassers are torn to pieces. Ivfulvey spent a great deal of time in these neutral lanes, studying the seals and watching the mothers caring for their babies, for within a very short time of landing the females give birth to the young conceived in the pre- vious year, I'Ie watched the young bachelors playing' together in the sea with an amiability that leaves them when they become mature and grow into "thugs, wife•bcaters and all round domestic tyrant:;." These seals' pelts are unlike any others and are thick, soft and lus- trous with great commercial value, I0 the middle of the last century, when the Herd ntimbered :between three and five• million, the seals were slaughtered with hicious fero- city and in fifty years their numbers were reduced to about two hundred and ti£ty thousand. Now the islands are controlled by the United States, coastguard cutters escort the Herd on migration and when it is in residence patrol the surrounding waters. No. one is allowed to land on the islands without permission from Washington and no ships are Permitted to call. Only a certain number of seals are killed each year and these are all three year old bachelors, for old bulls' skins ere scarred by fighting and females are ken for breeding. ' Industry :1 woman visiting der,' ay was amazed at the enormous rocks in the valley where site was staying. "Wherever do they all conte from?" she ass ed a local inhabi• tent, "'Che • glacier ' brought them down,'' he explained. "But where's. the glacier?" "Gone back for more rocky," was the reply, TAW etll aero In 1 Ile Middle Ages Xrutk were unknown until the tittle of Elizabeth and even then were regarded as foreign and ef•- £eminate The problem of wash - tag ftp was largely solved by having no plates, .Instead, a thick slice (a tranche) of bread was laid before each guest. On this the meat was placed and the gravy soaked down into the bread. The charitable, and the 'well-fed. tool: care to leave at least a little of this bread at the end of the meal. It was then scram- bled for by the scalllous and what they did not eat was given to the poor at the gate... , The medieval cools had quite an array of tools. As early as the sec-. old half of the twelfth century we find Alexander Nerkhaul, enumer- ating, in addition to pot; with their trivets or tripods and their p01 - sticks mid pot -hooks, a mortar and pestle, a frying pan, a grid -iron, a posuet fir saucepan, a saucer (that. is a vessel for nixing sauce), a hand - mill, a pepper -still, and au inst'u. stent for producing breadcrumbs. Ile also mentions a special table for chopping and nixing herbs and. vegetables. It is plain that evert at this remote period the culinary art was capable of many elabora- tions, . These pontes were naturally coli - fined to the houses of the aristoc- racy, but the burghers who grew wealthy towards the end of the medieval period, if they lacked something of knightly ceremony, certainly knew how to furnish their tables, In the Cent nouvelles Nou- velles (which may be taken to re• fleet manners common to both England and France) we read of the widow of a mercltattt setting before a single` guest a dinner con- sisting of soup, bacon, tripe, and a roasted ox -tongue, followed by a piece of salt beef and some choice mutton. As her guest devoured all these slie called for a ham, and when this had vanished, for cheese and a dish of tarts and apples. To our modern "rationed" appetites this would seem to constitute a very handsome repast. It was customary to wash before beginning a meal, and favoured guests had a ewer of water, a bowl, and a towel brought to them by two servants. Less important people were expected to wash before sitting down and for this purpose lavours or lavatories were provided some- times in the hall itself, sometimes outside. A few of these lavatories have survived in the cloisters of cathedrals. When the guests were seated the servants spread cloths over the tables, placed 00 them the salt -cellars and, in later times, the knives. Spoons were also provided when the nature of the food seemed to render theist necessary. One very curious feature of me- dieval table -manners is mentioned so often in the metrical romances that there can be little doubt of its being a universal custom. Guests were seated at the tables in pairs with only one plate between them out of which they were both expected to eat. , The placing of guests must also have offered considerable opportunity for the exercise of tact by the lady of the douse.—From "The Character of England," edited by Ernest Barker. AU From Seaweed 1''1001 t80, days w.h.et: it was dia* covered that iodine could be ole• lracted from burnt seaweed, seien.- tists have been putting this,luttnbls plant under a thousand and one, tests to find out what other 111es It has for mankind. Latest discovery is of tremeta- dous benefit_ drat a boilable wool can be macre from seaweed for .use in dentistry. Haemorrhage after an extraction was one of those things you hoped you clever had; but this n;w soluble wool has vir- tually overcome the possibility of this. The inventive genius behind this discovery is Frank Botanist:en, who is still trying to find other applica- tions for seaweed. "I want to con- centrate on bloodless surgery," he says He has been at the seaweed game for twenty years, and in that time he has converted seaweed into hair- creaul as well as into ice-cream powder. Aritificai wool has also been made front the plant; silk has been copied, and to -dap you may hare yOln' food wrappe'' in a certain type of transparent wrapping paper that originally was a green, blistery plant at the bottom. of the sea. Couldn't Be Heaven The sick man had been delirious with fever for days, but now he regained consciousness and became aware of his comfortable bed and the gentle assurance of cool, loving hands. "Where am I?" be asked weakly. "in heaven " "No, dear," said his wife sooth- ingly, "I'm still with you." Belgium's Ruler? - -- Prince Baudouin, 19, above, son of King Leopold III, would be- come king of Belgutn if tate suggestion of former Premier Paul -Henri Spaak, -leader of the powerful Socialist Patty, is followed. Spaak urged the king in an open letter to turn over the throne to the prince to restore order and unity. Acting Premier Gaston Eyskens, Soci- al Christians' leader, reportedly favors the plan. Royal Snack Bar—To aid her family's fading fortunes, Lady Lees (pouring), wife of Sir John Lees, third baronet, of Poole. England, has opened this snack bar outside the lodge gates at her South I.ytc•ltett Manor home, The customer is Lady. Lees' daughter-in-law, Mrs. Faith Lee. Financial stress also forced the family to move into a cottage on the grounds and relit the manor house as a school. JITTER 1 t p0AN N4 U (:'OR'r ANK sOiviNG eA'e AND owl' SlaSAK-THEMt By Arthur Point Mau n0H'r CATCH MG SLIPPING. v THAM nsaRE MW(y� ut.oreraE 50 iM PkOPLE t0SE0s Tama Neaps (1K11 x 00!