100 Years Ago: March 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: March 1925

This is the 122nd Entry in my Series of Reviews of 100-Year-Old National Geographic Magazines.

Cover courtesy of Philip Riviere

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Looking Down on Europe” and was written by Lieutenant J. Parker Van Zandt. It has an internal subtitle: “The thrills and Advantages of Sight-seeing by Airplane, as Demonstrated on a 6,500-mile Tour Over Commercial Aviation Routes.” The article contains sixty-seven black-and-white photographs, of which twenty-five are full-page in size. The article also contains a sketch map of Europe showing the author’s airplane tour on page 275.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

In the prior six years, air travel in Europe had grown remarkably. Close to 200,000 passengers and thousands of tons of mail and merchandise were carried between the principal European cities. There was no doubt that aircraft were safe, reliable, and were here to stay. The author had the good fortune to make an investigation of that development for the War Department, and to travel as a passenger some 6,500 miles over Europe on English, French, Romanian, Polish, German, and Dutch airlines. The author received an initial report on European airways from a big, burly Scotsman, from Dover during their last night out of New York on a cruise to England. The captain introduced them. His Channel town was on the route of French and English planes between London and Paris. He estimated some 50,000 passengers had flown across the Channel since the armistice, mostly on British machines. Not one English plane went down in the Channel, but one Dutch plane, a few years prior, came down and landed on the Goodwin sands. The pilot and passengers were picked up by a freighter and taken to Dover. The Scotsman was jealous of the author’s plan to travel on all the airlines in Europe over the summer. He wished the author luck. A few days later, Lt. Van Zandt climbed into a British Imperial Airways bus at Trafalgar Square bound for the flying field – and Paris. Of the eight passengers on the trip (including the author), five were American. They arrived at the London Terminal Aerodrome at Croydon. The terminal was busy, with Dutch, French, and British services, bustling like a typical railway station. The noon liner from Paris had just arrived, a French bimotored Goliath. The author’s plane was a Hadley-Page named the Princess Mary. The author had the seat of honor, beside the pilot in the cockpit.

The plane’s two Rolls-Royce engines hummed under half throttle. A messenger ran out waving the clearance papers. With a burst of blue smoke and a roar, the plane circled away from hangars toward the green field. The pilot sought the far corner, from which they had a clear run of the length of the aerodrome for their takeoff into the wind. With a sudden, devastating roar they rolled forward, gaining speed rapidly. The absence of further jolting and a slight billowing effect let the author know he was aloft. Hanger, trees, and hedges flashed by the wing. The ground seemed to waft downward and the sweep of the countryside came into view as the pilot zoomed to a higher altitude. Flying a few hundred feet above a low-lying range of hills, they skimmed past several magnificent English manors, their well-kept grounds laid out with geometric precision. The white ribbon of the road curved over the hilltop and down the valley, beckoning them to follow. The everchanging and widening vista of the English countryside kept the author enthralled. The air was clear and warm as the neared the coast. From an altitude of 1,500 feet, they could trace the Channel from the Hook of Holland, south to where the water and haze converged. The plane’s shadow raced over hedge and cottage, across a field at the Channel’s edge, slid down the chalky cliff, and plunged out across the water. A score or more vessels were in sight. They passed over a large steamer and then a schooner. They were 22 minutes from Folkestone to Boulogne-Sur-Mer, as opposed to two hours by boat. The clean, white sand of Le Touqut Beach laid beneath them as they swung inland. Ahead, against the horizon hung a bank of clouds. The pilot checked by radio and found the skies clear Beauvais, and he would fly above the clouds the intervening distance.

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With a sudden rush, the green fields far below were blotted out of sight, and a damp, gray mist enveloped them – then abruptly into brilliant sunshine again. They were above the clouds, which looked like a blanket of snow below them. Through a break in the clouds, they saw the word “Abbeville” written in big white letters on the ground. This was one of the intermediate stations along the airway where supplies and shelter for the airmen were available. The edges of the cloud bank faded behind them as the Cathedral of Beauvais came into view, casting log shadows in the fading light. Then Paris under a twilight glow with the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur standing sentinel against the crimson sky. Le Bourget was at their feet. The grass rushed up to meet them and skimmed by under their wheels. The tailskid settled easily onto the grassy turf. And they were off for the Place de la Concorde in a big motor bus. Not many evenings later, the author boarded a night train at Quai d’Orsay bound for southern France. They were late rolling into Toulouse, the northern terminus of the French airline to Morocco, and although it was scarcely light, the local field manger was waiting for them. The airport at Toulouse was the main repair and construction field for the entire Latecoere [a French air company] system. A Breguet biplane was on the cement mat before the long row of hangars, its Renault engine idling. After the sacks of mail were stowed, the author scrambled into the rear open cockpit as the pilot began to taxi slowly away from the buildings. An answering roar from the engine as the throttle was advanced, wheels plowed through the deep, dew-laden grass, and the author was off on what was destined to prove his most memorable air ride in Europe. A wide turn over Toulouse in the half-light of early morning was made and they headed south.

The gentle valley of the Garonne laid sleeping under a fleecy sheet of light fog. Like a child’s ribbon, the canal laid curled at the base of the furrowed hills, a solemn double row of poplars guarding its banks. The black thread of the railroad ran beside it before striking out across the rich farmland toward the encroaching Pyrenees. They descended as they plunged into a cloud bank. As they lowered to 100 meters, they were in the open again, with farmhouses and poplars just beneath them. Ahead looked unpromising. The crests of the hills crowding in on both sides were hidden in clouds. The pursued the contour of the valley bed, marked by the canal. A half hour passed. They dodged through a winding pass, swung to the east again, and abruptly they broke out of the gloom into a glorious daybreak. The storm lifted above them into the golden, sunlit country beyond. The walled city of Carcassonne slipped by, sharply etched in light and shadow, and the glistening waters of the Mediterranean appeared ahead. They swung by the eastern slopes of the Pyrenees. Perpignan lied in a fertile valley at the eastern foot of the Pyrenees. There, they made their first stop, one hour from Toulouse, to pick up mail from Marseille. Another passenger, a young Frenchman, joined then there. The author’s comfortable chair was removed and replaced by a huge sack of mail. He sat on the sack, his head and shoulders exposed to the wind. He toured the length of the Spanish coast from that vantage point. It was noon as they approached Alicante, 6,000 feet above a tangle of rocky slopes bordering the sea. On their right, the mountains rose sharply, gullies and pockets in their bare sides, with patches of cultivation on their lower slopes. On their left, the great bowl of the Mediterranean green along the shoreline, gray on the shimmering horizon.

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Barcelona, with its parks, bullring, and unfinished cathedral, was three hours behind them. Peniscola, a cluster of fishermen’s huts, had faded into the distant haze. Valencia and its fertile alley lied forgotten to the rear. Alicante at their feet, choked under a blanket of dust stirred up by a sirocco. They left their cool heights and glided down slowly. As they watched the fort and harbor of Alicante, a seaplane took off bearing mail for Algeria. At 3,000 feet, the author and his fellow passenger drank red wine as the orange groves of Murcia slipped away beneath and the Sierra range unfolded ahead. A snowclad peak appeared. Two hours later it had passed beneath them, now far to the rear. Their new pilot, who joined them at Alicante, was a tall Corsican. He pointed to the jumble of hills thousands of feet below, made a wry face and shook his finger disparagingly. A valley opened out and Malaga appeared, a welcome sight after four hours. Up that valley, a half hour by air, lied Alhambra Palace on its wooded hill, Granada at its feet. In 10 minutes, they had transferred to a new plane, and with another pilot were off down the coast. There, at last, the long Spanish coast ended at the Strait of Gibraltar. [See: “From Granada to Gibraltar – a Tour of Southern Spain,” August 1924, National Geographic Magazine.] The wind swept through the narrow strait, scattering flashes of white foam in the Mediterranean blue. Beyond lied Ceuta on the Moorish coast, with the highest peak of its headland, the African “Pillar of Hercules” standing out menacingly. The international port of Tangier was beneath their wings. To their left lied the Riff hills. Ahead was the brown, burnt, Moroccan veldt, the Bled. On their right was the restless blue of the Atlantic. They skirted the African coast, where Phoenician, and later Portuguese caravels crept cautiously southward.

The heat, even at 2,000 feet, was stifling. Their pilot descended to a few hundred feet above the Bled, where it was surprisingly cooler. An Arab town appeared by the blue rim of the Atlantic. Then Sale (Salli) and Rabat-el-Fath, the Imperial City on the banks of the Bu Regreg. As they glided down over the residence, the sun slipped behind clouds on the horizon. There, the author’s traveling companion left him. The pilot and the author were off in the closing hour of the day for one final hop. The blinding light of the afternoon had given way to velvet softness. At a bare 100 feet, they skimmed over a stone wall, behind which a camel stalked round a water wheel. The pilot dipped suddenly to a few feet above the broad Atlantic beach. Thus, they rushed suddenly upon Casablanca, zooming up over the artificial harbor, across the houses and towers, and came to rest upon a flying field beside a military camp. In the cool of the evening, the author wandered through the narrow, winding streets within the walls of the old Moorish quarter. Veiled women slipped noiselessly past, a Moor in white garments went by astride his donkey, a half-naked water-carrier staggered under the goat-skin flask across his loin. Here was the age-old, immemorial life of the East; yet, that very morning, a brief 15 hours before, he had been 1,200 miles to the north, across the length of Spain, in a bustling European city. The contrasts of a score of centuries had been compressed into those 15 hours; three civilizations passed in review, dramatized from the strategic crow’s nest of flight.

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There were eight passengers who sat in the crowded bus of the “Compagnie Franco-Roumaine de Navigation Aerienne” on an early August morning, as it pulled up the long hill out of Prague to the military aerodrome on the plain commanding the Vltava Valley. Of the passengers, one was a Frenchman traveling from Paris to Romania as the author was, and the rest were Americans traveling to Vienna. Two days before, he had come from Paris in a Spad plane with a Czech for company. For four hours of that trip, they flew over Germany, where a forced landing would have resulted in the plane and goods being confiscated and the pilot arrested. Germany and France were at odds regarding aviation. The Versailles Treaty restricted the German manufacture of aircraft. Germany refused authority to other nations to fly across its borders, while France blithely continued to operate its airline between Strasbourg and Prague. That was a bitter legacy of the World War, that only served to aggravate international misunderstanding. It was hard to tear oneself away from the quaint old city of Prague, redolent with history and tradition of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia. The frowning bulwark of the Royal Castle looked down across the green islets of the wide Vitava to the houses along the left bank, a fusion of Italian baroque and the splendor of the Middle Ages. In that rich medieval atmosphere young Bohemia was hard at work building up one of the most progressive of modern democracies. [See: “Czechoslovakia, Key-Land to Central Europe,” February 1921, The Geographic.] At the aerodrome they found two Spad planes waiting, as there were more people than one plane could carry. Those winged carriers of the Franco-Roumaine were not the most comfortable of modern European passenger planes, but they made up for it by cruising at a higher speed.

A short half hour later, they swept across the Vltava Valley. One hundred eighty-five miles across some of the most fertile farmland in Central Europe, laid Vienna. In less than two hours they were there. If the long flight across Spain to Africa was the most spectacular, this all-to-brief trip across Bohemia was the most charming of the author’s aerial travels in Europe. Overhead, the flawless blue sky; below, a marvelous of cultivated farms in all the ravishing colors of the harvest season. It was little wonder that Bohemian character developed in such a friendly environment. With real regret the author saw ahead the glistening Danube winding off through heavy woods toward Bavaria. The pilot called his attention to a castle just below them. It was the famous castle of Kreuzenstein, set upon a knoll dominating the neighboring countryside. In 20 minutes, they were off with a new plane and pilot for Budapest. A heavily jewel Hungarian took the place of the Americans, who bade farewell in Vienna. 150 miles separated them from the Hungarian capital. As they passed over the old Roman arenas and the chateaux, their pilot shook the controls to get their attention. The author found the broad and level Danube Valley unimpressive after the Moravian Hills. Ahead, they made out Komorn, a city half Czech and half Hungarian, at the confluence of the Waag with the Danube. Between those two capitals of the former Dual Monarchy, Vienna and Budapest, there were three competing air services – French, German, and Hungarian. It was passed the lunch hour when they landed in Budapest. There, the Hungarian bid farewell, while the author and the Frenchman had a scant quarter of an hour before taking off in a fresh plane for Belgrade.

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They could not speak the language nor had they any Hungarian currency, so it was difficult to get so food and drink. [See: “The Battle-Line of Languages in Western Europe,” February 1923, The Geographic.] This corridor between the Carpathians and the Alps was the source of much smoldering hatred and dispute. There was an even deeper antagonism here, for this was the meeting place of East and West. Somewhere across that broad Danube corridor lied an invisible, intangible demarcation between the dominance of Eastern and Western ideals. A sudden jolt of the plane informed the author that they were approaching a big rain squall. The pilot gradually reduced his altitude as they passed beneath the cloud rim. The squall was traveling with them, but the turbulent air was full of pockets and bumps. At Kiskunfelegyhaza, they overtook the storm center, a spectacle of Nature’s fury unleashed on a hapless town. In 20 minutes, they were out of the shadowland and into sunlight once more. Occasional flashes of silver to their right betrayed the sluggish Danube making lazily for the sea. The author drifted off to sleep, and when he awoke, Pancsova aerodrome was rushing up to meet our wheels, with Belgrade at the wingtip across the shallow Danube. 550 air miles laid behind them, while some 280 miles to the east, beyond the frowning Transylvanian Alps, was their goal, the capital of Romania. There was no time to lose, as the afternoon was waning. The author was shocked at the plane into which his luggage was being loaded. It was an old vintage that could cruise at 75 mph, at most. It would take four hours, well after dark, before reaching Bucharest. He was informed that night-flying aids were installed on the Romanian section of the route. This was the “experimental” plane with which the test flights were being made.

The Frenchman and the author boarded the big plane. There were seats for six, but they were the only passengers. They were asked to move to the front seats, or the plane would be tail-heavy. With a deep-throated roar, the big plane plunged across the sandy field and staggered into the air. They had not gone far when a copper tube broke and was leaking fluid. The plane circled back from the Transylvanian foothills and landed back at Pancsova field. Half an hour later they we off again, in the same plane, the offending tube having been replaced by a new one. This was the only instance in all his European air travels that the author’s flight had been interrupted or delayed by mechanical trouble. A white cloud laid upon the outposts of the Transylvanian Alps, as they swept east 1,000 feet above, and the Danube swung in a wide arc to the south, searching an outlet through that last barrier to the sea. A strong wind at their upper altitude urged them forward, but it was already dusk when they crossed the deep-cut gorge at the Iron Gate and bade farewell to the Danube at Turnu Severin. An hour sped by and waves of darkness crept down from the mountain masses. Friendly lights rubbed at the tiny windows in dark wooded patches on the plain; a beacon flare winked eagerly from an emergency field below; then a dull glow against the sky, a checkerboard of flashing signals, and Bucharest laid beneath their wing, a great searchlight spread its glow upon the Baneasa aerodrome. That evening, through his window on the Calea Victoriei, there floated up the staccato music of hoofbeats to the accompaniment of endlessly tinkling silver bells, as the youth of Romania rode out behind the dark-robed Russian cabbies to mark the quiet stars. Royalty had withdrawn to the nearby foothills, but the street life of the city still throbbed on.

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Seven hundred and fifty miles northwest of Bucharest, as the crow flies’ lied Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, near the shores of the Baltic Sea. An easy day’s flight, id one cared to make it so, but the author chose the more leisurely way, revisiting the capitals that had been little more than glimpsed on the outbound journey, and thence by air via Warsaw to Danzig, near the mouth of the Vistula. The creation of the Free City of Danzig seemed a good idea at Versailles, but, cut off from the Germany on the west by a Polish corridor and from the rest of East Prussia due to its customs being controlled by foreigners, the population of 400,000 (93% German), were extremely unhappy. Trains from East Prussia to Germany went through Danzig locked, with Polish guards patrolling the vestibules. On the shores of the Gulf of Danzig, the townsfolk, in summer, enjoyed a dip in the Baltic or promenading along the beach. Zoppot boasted a pretentious Palace of Sans Souci, which for many years attracted a host of summer visitors from Poland. Poland built a rival resort at Gdingen in the corridor next to Zoppot. One rainy night, the author was traveling by train from Danzig to Konigsberg. Three days prior, he had wired for plane tickets and was informed that all seats between those cities were booked for more than a week. The author was embarrassed having to that a train for this article. The heavy air traffic was due to the railway passing through the Polish town of Drischau. That meant that, to ride the train, one had to pay $10 for a Polish visa. [See: “New Map of Europe,” February 1921, Supplement to The Geographic.] Plane services did not need to stop at Dirschau, and bus lines from Danzig carried one as far as Konigsberg without crossing the Polish border.

The author reached Dirschau late at night in the pouring rain without a Polish visa. For ten minutes customs officials debated his fate. A kindly Pole assured them the author was an American diplomat. The let him go with a warning not to return without a visa. He agreed, knowing he would be flying from then on. In contrast with that harrowing tale, the journey back to Danzig by air was idyllic. It was early morning, and the rising sun shone through scattered clouds over the Konigsberg field. The monoplane to Riga took off first; then the big liner to Smolensk and Moscow; a few minutes later the author took off in a metal limousine plane, across the ivy-covered university where Kant once taught. They sped above the sandy strip along the Baltic shore. While the author enjoyed the view, his German traveling companions were engaged in business conversation and wasted few glances on the scenes beneath their feet. The toy fishing vessels rolling in the trough of a Baltic wave; the tiny figures of fishermen on the white sand stretching out their dark nets; sudden silver gleams from wheeling gulls; the rich green meadowland edging out the blue lagoon – such scenes stirred the fancy and enriched the mind. In an hour, the red-tiled roofs and narrow streets of Danzig laid beneath them, the Church of St. Mary towering above its neighbors. They glided down for a landing at the Langfuhr municipal field, to await the connecting plane from Warsaw, before pushing on to Berlin. The freedom of flight represented in a real, objective sense a partial removal of the ordinary checks and restraints that normally imposed themselves between our will and our actions, between impulse and event. There was a temporary harmony with one’s environment where momentary preference may be indulged without opposition.

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It was September and the author was in London again, having flown over from Amsterdam that morning, across the dikes and tulip beds of Holland, with a company of Dutchmen in a monoplane, thus completing 6,500 miles of looking down on Europe. Europe was big, but not so big that, with such a vantage, the mind could not retain a vision of the whole line and contour of it – a vibrant, living picture. One learned without conscious effort the geographical origin of so much of Europe’s history; the inevitableness of misunderstanding and conflict where political lines had been flung recklessly across mountains and watercourses, now throttling an isolated alley, now barring an ancient people from their natural outlet to the sea. There came flooding back the vision of castellated battlements along the Danube bank; of castles nestling in the German hills; of chateaux, half hidden in poplars, stepped up like organ reeds against the warm colors of the French countryside; of ripening grain on the Moravian slopes under a late afternoon sun; and the bold, free sweep of the Mediterranean, stretching out in tranquil beauty to an unreal horizon. But the real, luminous beauty of Europe seen from above could not be phrased. It was there, happily within reach of every arrant lover of living, that precious gift bestowed by flight.

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Across French and Spanish Morocco” and was written by Harriet Chalmers Adams, author of “Adventurous Sons of Cadiz,” “A Longitudinal Journey Through Chile,” “Rio de Janeiro, in the Land of Lure’” etc., in the National Geographic Magazine. The article contains nineteen black-and-white photographs, none of which are full-page in size. It also contains a sketch map of French and Spanish Morocco on page 331. Unfortunately, this is another map that Philip Riviere missed while doing his scanning.

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It was a spring evening when the author’s train from Oran, in western Algeria, rolled into the town of Ujda, just over the French Moroccan border. They were entering that land of romance and mystery by the back door. The new front door was at Casablanca, chief harbor of the Protectorate on the Atlantic seaboard. It had been the author and her sister’s intention to sail from Oran to Gibraltar and down to Casablanca. Souli Mohamed, a Moor, convinced them to use the Ujda route. Big cars ran between Oran and Ujda, and between Ujda and Fez. From Fez there was a new railroad to Casablanca. They bought tickets to Fez from a barber. His wife’s brother ran that automobile service. It was a “jitney” line not connected with the French company. The line was patronized by Moors, Algerians, and Oran Jews. They would meet no tourists and many natives. There was a triweekly service, and each passenger could carry 60 pounds of luggage. Oran, 261 miles west of Algiers, was becoming an African Chicago – modern in appearance despite its rich historical background. It was rapidly gaining commercial importance. The Oran Bay was becoming Algeria’s chief naval base. Back of the city lied a fertile agricultural region settled by French colonists. Springtime had come in a flash to western Algeria as the journeyed those eight hours from Oran to Ujda. Vineyards alternated with grain fields and orchards. Turbaned farmers, in flowing white robes, were at work in the fields. Near the native villages laid the villas of the French colonists. Paralleling the railroad was a metaled highway. Up they climbed toward the plateau. The two Algerian towns that stood out most to the author of that day’s journey – Sidi-bel-Abbes and Tlemcen. The former was one of two Algerian depots of the Foreign Legion. Tlemcen, although within Algerian territory, was Moorish in its history and architecture.

From the station in Ujda, they made their way by automobile to the little hotel across the street from the jitney garage. They were to start at four in the morning. The author could not describe Ujda; it was dark when they arrived, and it was dark when they left. Their start was made before daylight, in a torrential downpour. The author was grateful that they had not come to Morocco too late. There, little had changed since prehistoric times. As opposed to being “very good” as advertised, the jitney was the most uncomfortable and unreliable the author had every encountered. But their fellow passengers where all that was desired. The driver was French-Algerian; the two men next to him were Jewish. The sisters sat in the middle seat along with a young woman from Ujda. The three men in the back seat were Berbers. They wore black pointed beards, in the Moslem fashion. The author could speak to the young woman in Spanish, and she in turn could speak to the Berbers in their tongue. When the auto skidded into a ditch, which happened three times on the journey, language was not needed. They crossed a newly conquered country. The road paralleled the narrow-gauge railway that brought soldiers to the forts along the line. Those forts, guarding the road and railway, were placed at regular intervals. The Riff tribesmen were 30 miles to the north and the remaining Berber tribesmen were 30 miles to the south. Through that narrow lane, between enemy lines, they went in safety. Fortunately, the muddy road merged with the desert. There were cacti and a scanty vegetation on which camels grazed. Camels came to Morocco with the Arab invasion, twelve centuries prior. Before that time, the ass was the Berber’s only beast of burden. Before Islam, before Christianity, Berber farmers drove their asses to market and Berber shepherds tended their flocks.

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At their first breakdown on the lonely road, out of sight of forts and soldiers, they were surrounded by those shepherds, not yet as rich as the back seat passengers. They passed the homes of those shepherds – black, camel-hair tents with thorny brush walls. In Morocco, there were more sheep than people. At the village of Tautirt, they had coffee at a café kept by a Frenchman. A tamed gazelle followed him about the room. The Atlas Mountains were a haven for many wild creatures. They crossed the broad Muluya River on the railroad bridge. Morocco was drained in three directions. They flowed from the Atlas Mountains to the Atlantic, to the Mediterranean, and into the quenchless sands of the Sahara. Muluya flowed north to the Mediterranean and was the boundary between French and Spanish territory. Like the Sebu River, flowing from Fez to the Atlantic, it could be canalized over much of its course. Nearthe village of Gersif, they met the first of the Senegalese troopers. Within the walled military enclosure, they saw the dwellings of those warriors – circular adobe huts with conical thatched roofs. On the white walls of every fortified station along that route two signs pointed to the French and the native village. The French built outside the native villages. They had built railroads and highways; erected hospitals and schools, but Moslems and Jews were kept apart in the hospitals. From Gersif, the road climbed to the terraced hill town of Taza, boldly commanding the Touahar Pass, the natural boundary of Morocco, which reminded the author of the Khyber Pass. At Taza, in the spring of 1914, the French forces from Fez met the French forces from Algeria, and the tricolor waved across North Africa.

The beautiful part of their day’s journey was from Taza on. The blue Riffian hills were to the north, and to the south were the peaks of the Middle Atlas. In the emerald bottom lands below the road sleek cattle grazed. Far ahead, on a distant hillside, they saw a splash of white. It was their first glimpse of Fez, that long-hidden Holy City of Morocco, the seat of Moslem learning for more than 1,000 years. The author was glad that she saw it in springtime, when it laid like a pearl on the slopes of the velvet-green hills. Fez was a compact, white-robed city of uneven flat roofs and unexpressive walls. From among those roofs rose the minarets of the mosques. It was the great crenelated outer ramparts surrounding the city which gave it, and every Moroccan town, an air of enchantment and mystery. The walls of Old Fez fascinated the Westerner, lingering in the memory. Breaking the monotony of those walls within walls, were the fields and gardens which surrounded the town, and the glimpses of secluded gardens within, where cypresses, pomegranates, apricots, and oleander shaded the jasmine and the rose. The author would always connect that city with the sound of running water. Through it, and under many of its streets, rushed mountain torrents. Fez had four distinct divisions: the Medina, or native town; the Mellah, or Jewish quarter; the Sultan’s palace and grounds; and the new French city outside the walls. The native city was divided into Djedid, the upper town, and El Bali, the lower, older section. In Djedid were palaces and gardens. One of those palaces was used as a French hotel. El Bali was a labyrinth of dark lanes flanked by windowless buildings, and crowded alleys, roofed with reeds and palm branches, where merchants sat in bazaars smoking kief in long reed pipes.

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El Bali was where the mosques and schools were. Travelers could not enter a mosque in Morocco, like they could in Algeria; but one could see in the schools the beautiful Moslem architecture at its best. Those old buildings dated from the fourteenth century. All Moroccan mosques, schools, homes, shops, and cemeteries looked more or less alike. The people, regardless of station, dressed alike in form and color. The author thought that that whiteness and sameness gave the cities of Morocco an air of quietude. The Moors, who numbered 6,000,000 in the Spanish and French zones, were a mixed race with a Berber base. The mixture included Arab, Jewish, Turkish, and European. There was also Negro slave blood from the far south. The upper-class women rarely ventured out. Theirs was a walled life of sisterhood in seclusion. The faces of the women on the street were veiled. In marked contrast to the people seen in Medina were those of the Mellah – sly, furtive old Jews in black gaberdines and skull caps, modern Jews in European clothes, fat old Jewesses wearing frayed Persian shawls, bright-faced young Jewesses with big black eyes, their heads wrapped in gaudy silken scarfs. To Mellah the traveler went for postcards and photographs, to have film developed, to look for odds and ends. They had to go back to the native town for the silk embroideries for which Fez was noted. There too were saddlery and leather slippers, musical instruments, pottery, and glazed tiles. Until recently, Fez had a monopoly on the red felt caps which bore the city’s name. In 1925, fezzes were also manufactured in Turkey and in France. The reigning sultan came to the palace seldomly, he usually stayed in his more modern abode beside the French Resident General in Rabat. Women of his harem lived behind the moldering walls of the palace.

On all those massive Moroccan walls, storks, in nesting time, held sway. They also nested on thatched roofs of the mud huts. The natives loved and cherished those big, friendly birds. The annual migration brought them up from South Africa to southern Europe in early spring. Thousands flew no further north than Morocco. The young hatched earlier here than in Spain. The author saw small white egrets in the meadows where cattle grazed. They followed the cattle, feeding on insects disturbed by them, often perched on their backs. In the French quarter of Fez, one saw the attractive modern Franco-Moorish architecture. During the early years of French occupation, structures in Casablanca, the first city built by the Franch, were of European design, unsuited to the climate. Since then, a new architecture had evolved. The buildings, always white, were usually of two stories, with walls of concrete or soft native limestone. There were broad windows instead of blank Moslem walls. There were arcades, patios, columns, and arches. Color was introduced in bands of glazed tiles, mostly blue. The effect was one of space, beauty, and comfort. From Fez, the trail reached Mekinez in two hours by highway or by broad-gauge railway, with finer coaches than any the author had seen in Europe. It was the situation of Mekinez that placed it among the unique cities of the world. The sisters arrived after nightfall and drove to a hotel on the edge of the French settlement overlooking the native city. When they looked from the window next morning, all Mekinez laid before them across a deep canyon – an oblong white city within its surrounding walls. The sunlight sparkled on the bluish-green tiled domes of the mosques. The author counted 15 minarets. Beyond the white town they saw the red walls of an older city stretching for miles.

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Within the enclosure of the French hotel grounds at Mekinez was a small, white-domed building, the shrine of some dead saint. There a holy man lived. The author saw an old woman sweep the path to the shrine and an old man bring him food. Such shrines and such holy men were to be seen throughout Morocco. Not far away, among the silent Zerhoun hills, were the ruins of Roman Volubilis, where French archeologists were piecing together fragments of stories in stone. There was a forest of cedars and oaks east of Mekinez, and a forest of cork oaks between the city and the coast. Last autumn, the U. S. made its first direct purchase of Moroccan cork. From Mekinez and its neighboring villages, the sisters went on to Rabat. It was not the author’s first visit to Moroccan coast towns, and she found many changes after an absence of 12 years. The twin cities of Rabat and Sale were separated by the wide Bu Regreg River. The one, with its great citadel mounted on the cliff where the river met the sea, now merged into the progressive French capital. The other quiet and white as a snowdrift, beside the restless gray ocean, was little changed since those adventurous days. That inhospitable West Coast was without natural harbors, and the French had spent a small forture on the port of Casablanca, an hour’s ride south from Rabat. That city, second in size in the country and home to most of the European residents, was the economc center, just as Rabat was the administrative base. South of Casablanca, by sea boulevard, lied Mazagan and Safi, rich in Portuguese associations, with crumbling fortresses built 400 years prior, when Portugal was the greatest maritime nation in the world, with trading posts far down the West African coast. The ghosts of the valiant sailors seemed to haunt those noble old battlements.

Mogador, South of Safi, was the gate of Marrakesh, the largest city of Morocco, now reached by rail and highway – beautiful, palm-fringed, red-walled old Marrakesh at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, more African in character than any of the cities the author had named. To it came jaded camel caravans from the Sahara, and the strange, untamed men from the Draa, the Ziz, the Gir, and the Sus, those little-known fertile valleys on the other side of the mountains. From Sus came the acrobats famous on the international vaudeville stage. The French had built motor roads over the Atlas. Even Veiled Tarudant, in the valley of the Sus, would soon be accessible to the traveler. Barley, wheat, beans, camel hair, hides, skins, almonds, and beeswax were some of the products brought by camel caravan and donkey train from inland Morocco. There were over 100,000 camels in the country. Cattle were shipped in great numbers to Portugal; sheep to Spanish Morocco, Spain, Algeria, and France. An incredible number of eggs were annually exported. One of the chief imports was tea, the national Moroccan beverage, served very hot, very sweet, and flavored with mint. The French in Morocco had made a steady advance in pacification, unification, and progress. Native troops, officered by Frenchmen, marched the roads, railroads, schools, hospitals, and agricultural bureaus. In this grain-producing country, only 500,000 of the 5,500,000 inhabitants lived in the cities. The Berbers were born farmers. Sugar cane and rice grew in that land of the olive and the vine, the orange and the fig, and cotton was planted along the Sebu River. Certain sheltered valleys were as well suited as the Canary Islands for the growing of bananas, and there were potential forest areas and minerals unexploited. A rich phosphate deposit inland from Casablanca was being worked.

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It was a long day’s motor journey from Casablanca to Tangier. The Tangier-Fez Railway was being built. The highway, which crossed first a low plain and then a hilly country before again skirting the sea, paralleled that future railroad. They passed through Kenitra, a new French town at the mouth of the Sebu River. At Souk-el-Arba, they saw a country market in progress. The people came from long distances with their produce. Arbawa was their last French village. There, customs officials examined their luggage. The sisters were straying from the tourist circuit. The officials at the Spanish frontier were trim and businesslike. They had been warned that they would run right into the Spanish-Moroccan war zone and be shot at, but the saw only Spanish soldiers repairing roads and working on the walls of forts. Many military convoys passed them bound from Larache to the outposts, nearer the Riff Range. Alcazar was their first Spanish-Moroccan town. It was a historic spot. From there, expeditions set out for the conquest of Spain. Now, they headed for the sea, for Larache and Arzila, the two old Portuguese presidios on the Atlantic shore of the Spanish Zone. At Larache, they crossed the wide Loukkos River on a pontoon bridge, and beyond Arzila came to a salt marsh where the highway served as a bridge. They were rounding the northwest corner of Africa. They were in the International Zone. Ahead laid Tangier. That city was so well known to travelers and had great possibilities. The long-discussed and much-needed port works would soon be underway. Tangier had motor-bus service with Arzila, Larache, and the inland town of Tetuan. A railway connected Tetuan with Ceuta, just across from Gibraltar. Ceuta and Melilla were Spain’s sister fortresses on the Mediterranean under the shadow of the Riffian hills.

In the U. S., there was [in 1925] much misinformation regarding Spanish Morocco, the general impression being that every Moor was about to cut the throat of every Spaniard. The truth was that a fair percentage of the 500,000 inhabitants spoke Spanish and were on friendly terms with their conquerors. There were many Spaniards living among the Moors and loyal Moorish soldiers fighting with Spaniards against the Riffians. The Riffian clansmen, with whom Spain was having such great difficulty, were Berbers, allied with other hill tribes of North Africa. They occupied a semicircular mountainous district away from the coast, extending from southeast of Tetuan to the east of Melilla. Some of the peaks from that region reached 6,000 feet high. In their mountain fastness, with their herds and flocks, upland forests, and vales where grain was grown, they were self-supporting. The coastal fields of Spanish Morocco were peacefully cultivated. Seeds and agricultural implements were being distributed among native farmers, roads were being built, and schools were being opened. In safety and comparative comfort, the sisters journeyed across Old Morocco, seeing, through the veil of centuries, country life as it was three thousand years ago, cities which were perfect settings for Arabian Nights’ tales, and oases where clustering date palms whispered the secrets of that vast Sahara which lied beyond.

The third item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “The Camera’s Color Records of North Africa” and has Gervais Courtellemont listed in the byline. It is not an article but the “16 Autochrome Lumiere” listed on the cover. Mr. Courtellemont is not the author, but the photographer. The item is a set of sixteen true color photographs appearing on eight plates, two photos per page, and is embedded within the second article. The plates are numbered I through VIII in Roman numerals and represent pages 333 through 340 in the issue.

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A list of caption titles for the color photographs, and the Plates on which they appear, is as follows:

• “White Tangier Framed by a Cobalt Seascape” – Plate I
• “The Hour for Tea in Fez” – Plate I
• “A Leather Merchant of Rabat” – Plate II
• “Jewish Women of Fez” – Plate II
• “A Moroccan Daughter of Israel” – Plate III
• “A Berber Maid from the Atlas Mountains” – Plate III
• “A Jewish Cloth Merchant of French Morocco” – Plate IV
• “Presiding Over a Samovar in Marrakesh” – Plate IV
• “Apprentices in Illumination” – Plate V
• “Jewish and Moslem Women at the Fez Hospital Dispensary” – Plate V
• “The Town Palace of a Lord of the Atlas” – Plate VI
• “Musicians and Dancers at a Banquet in Fez” – Plate VI
• “An Arabian-Nights Type in Morocco” – Plate VII
• “A Rabat Dyer of Rug Yarn” – Plate VII
• “A Languid Merchant of Casablanca” – Plate VIII
• “A Jewish Cloth Paddler” – Plate VIII

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The third and last article in this month’s issue is entitled “The Singing Towers of Holland and Belgium” and was written by William Gorham Rice. The article contains twenty-two black-and-white photographs, of which three are full-page in size.

Four hundred years prior, Charles V, Roman Emperor and King of Spain, inherited the territory now within the boundaries of Holland and Belgium. To that territory he added French Flanders and proclaimed the new political unit under the name of the Seventeen United Provinces. Appropriately, the seal of the new federation was a lion holding a sheaf of seventeen arrows. But soon the sheaf fell apart, and the arrows were turned against one another in long and devastating war. Yet within that distracted territory, and in a time of siege and of distress unparalleled, a civic music of rare beauty came into being – a music loved by its people but had been until lately unknown outside the boundaries of its origin. Gradually that music had been wonderfully developed. In 1925, it was widely commanding artistic consideration, and, with its architectural setting, it was coming to be recognized as peculiarly fitting to adorn and stimulate civic and community life everywhere. The region of which this article treated extended from the North Sea shores inward for fifty miles or more in plains which were largely just above high tide. Often with protecting dikes, portions of fertile acreage there were found even below sea level. Throughout those tranquil reaches, windmills and waterways abounded and sometimes ships seemed to be sailing through the land. On every side, one saw scores of cities, towns, and villages. In every view, above town hall, city gate, and ancient church rose a rugged tower, there a tall belfry or a graceful, slender spire. And each of those skyward-soaring structures became, for the traveler, a Singing Tower if he found it crowned with that majestic instrument of music called a carillon. The word “carillon” was French in origin, but, in 1925, was generally accepted in English.

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After crossing the Atlantic, the author and his party touched at Plymouth and at Boulogne, and then of Friday night came in sight of the shores of the Netherlands. At the mouth of the River Maas, they waited for high tide at two in the morning, to make it possible for their great ship to steam slowly up to Rotterdam. There, they found the tower of St Lawrence’s Church, whose old bells made not merely a great musical instrument, but by their melodies expressed the spirit of the country over which they sounded. They mounted the circular stone stairway leading to the heights of tower after tower to see the bells of a carillon in all their beauty of decoration and arrangement. The found themselves among a great company of bells, fixed upon a heavy framework and extending in parallel rows, tier above tier, completely filling the great tower room. The little bells hung on the highest tier; the big bells just cleared the floor; the intermediate sizes hung in tiers between. The largest bell of all was taller than a tall man and it may have weighed eight tons. The smallest bell had a height of 10 or 12 inches and perhaps weighed less than 20 pounds. Soon, their search showed them that of greater consequence, however, than number, or size, or weight, was the pitch relationship of the bells; for the bells of a carillon always progressed by regular semitone or chromatic intervals. The carillon of St. Lawrence’s tower had those intervals complete through three octaves, except that the two lowest semitones were lacking. The arrangement and character of the bells had first attracted their attention. Then they began to study how the music was produced. They soon discovered that a carillon was played in two ways: first, automatically by a revolving barrel connected with a tower clock, and second, by a trained carillonneur seated a keyboard like that of an organ.

Automatic playing of simple folk songs, chiefly on the light bells, with now and then the addition of a deep bass tone, was what the traveler constantly heard as he wandered through old towns in Belgium and Holland. The keyboard-playing by a carillonneur was reserved for special occasions only. It took place on market day, and on Sunday, and in the greater cities on a fixed evening every week in summer, particularly in Belgium. Then, for one hour, an elaborate concert, often with a printed program, was given. It included the best music – Beethoven and Schubert, Flemish and French folk songs, and national hymns. Thousands gathered for those concerts. The tower of St. Lawrence’s Church was begun in 1449, and the city placed a carillon in it in 1660. In the tower of the Rotterdam Bourse, they found a smaller carillon of 27 bells, also more than two and a half centuries old. A third carillon in Rotterdam to which they listed was the one that had just been placed in the new City Hall. It was larger, both in weight and in number of bells, than any carillon made in the prior 100 years. Rotterdam’s three Singing Towers gave them a clue to the variety of structures which might possess a carillon. Their journeys showed them that similar music floated for more than two centuries over the city gate at Enkhuizen, the Royal Palace at Amsterdam, the Weigh House at Alkmaar, the Cloth Hall at Ypres (destroyed during the World War), the University Library at Ghent, the Wine House at Zutphen (burned in 1921), the Abbey at Middelburg, and the spires of not a few of the historic churches of the Low Country were Singing Towers. Finally, they discovered the important fact that wherever a carillon hung, its bells were owned by the city, its carillonneur was an official chosen by city authority, and the tower itself was under city control.

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What a ride of peaceful beauty it was from Rotterdam to the Hague! Windmills and waterways, long rows of slender trees, and black-and-white cattle contently grazing, were to be seen on every side. They went by automobile to enjoy their first 14 miles in Holland. At Delft, the carillon was in the spire of the New Church, called “new,” though over 400 years old, because it was begun a century later than the Old Church, nearby. There, far above them, they saw nearly four octaves of bells, arranged in rows above and on both sides of the dial of the tower clock. Six miles beyond historic Delft, lied The Hague – old, yet cosmopolitan, and even delightful. They walked across the Square to the nearby Vyver, that small sheet of water in the center of the city, surrounded by shaded walks and the restful Parliament buildings. As they sat under the trees looking down at the fascinating reflections, they heard coming faintly from the Singing Tower in the background an enchanting folk song. Then slowly a deep bass bell gave the afternoon hours. In Holland and Belgium, about the middle of the 15th century, when timepieces were rare, and people depended on the town clock for the time of day or night, it became the custom, as a premonitory signal, to precede the striking of the hour by a short automatic chiming on three or four small bells hung in the clock tower. As this town and that sought to surpass its neighbors the bells were increased in numbers and the musical scale of tones and halftones thus became complete. Brief melodies began to be heard at the hour and the half hour, and with the addition of more bells came, at those divisions, whole tunes played upon three or even four octaves of bells. All that playing was automatic.

Then came the adoption of the keyboard, like that of an organ, with each key representing a bell note and readily responding to the musician. Soon pedals were added to play the heavier bells. Thus, over the course of two or three centuries, was developed the carillon. By making The Hague a center, they found they could easily reach every part of Holland’s carillon region in day journeys. Early one morning they went to Gouda. There, in the great church, they gaze upon the wonderful 16th century glass windows, the finest in Holland, abounding in glorious color, allegorical design, and historic interest, and listened as the carillon played far above them. Ascending the steep winding staircase, the came finally to the carillonneur’s cabin. Seated at the keyboard was the carillonneur with a group of seven boys and girls enjoying their Saturday holiday. In the party’s honor, they played, “My country, ‘Tis of Thee.” Painted on two of the great posts of the frame that carried the bells, they read the names and dates of service of all Gouda’s carillonneurs from 1669 onward. Only half an hour from The Hague was Leiden, where they found the Singing Tower crowning the low and very beautiful Town Hall. The city had had a carillon since 1578. Twenty-five miles beyond Leiden they came to Haarlem. There, the carillon was in the tower of the old church, famous for its organ and models of historic ships suspended high in the groin arches of the ceiling. The stood in a quiet street listening to the bells. Amsterdam, the commercial capital of Holland, lied 38 miles from The Hague. The journey between those cities was a succession of attractive scenes. It was a continuation of the beauty they had already enjoyed between Rotterdam and the Hague, with the addition of tulip, hyacinth, and gladiolus fields, and, in the distance, the dunes.

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Amsterdam was first among present-day cities in the number of Singing Towers it possessed. The Royal Palace, the old Mint Tower, the Ryks Museum, and the Zuider, the West, and the Old Church spires all had carillons. When they came to know that Amsterdam had six carillons, they were not surprises that John V of Portugal had visited there in 1730. He was so impressed with the music that he had two magnificent carillons built in the royal residence at Mafra, near Lisbon, one played by keyboard, the other clockwork. Only copper and block tin, 3 parts copper to 1 part tin, were used in making ancient bells, and the best bell founders in 1925 still used the same practice. In one foreign foundry, the equipment consisted in part of 1,500 tuning forks. There, bells were brought into tune as accurately as a piano. Properly made bells, once in tune, remained so always. It was half a day’s drive from The Hague to that part of the Singing Tower region far in the northeast of the Netherlands, where purple heather and hills abounded. Groningen, not far from the seacoast, in those higher lands, merited a visit. There, high up in the tower of St. Martin’s Church, they saw one of the finest of carillons. When they where there, a city watchman, as had been the custom for centuries past, spent the night in the tower. Immediately after the ripple of the bells every quarter of an hour, he appeared successively at each balcony that faced each point of the compass. He sent out a faint trumpet strain in each direction, a restful “All is well.” Alas, that ancient custom had all but ceased. The last surviving trumpeting tower watchmen had been retired due to the economy. Other explorations took them to Amersfoort, Arnhem, Utrecht, Middelburg, Flushing, Veere, and Zierikzee, in each of which town they found a carillon which commanded their interest and invited their study.

And then their journey took them into Belgium. Looking out over the trees of the Place Verte, at Antwerp, from the open windows of their hotel, they saw the Cathedral spire close enough to reveal the delicate details of its beauty, and, above the busy square below, they heard, before the great bell, Karolus, struck the hour, a lightly falling carillon melody. At Ghent, where the bells hung in a separate structure, the Belfry, a custodian took them up the tower in an electric lift. Nowhere else was a carillon tower so equipped. The carillon at Ghent rang out more than a century prior, when, on December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Peace between Great Britain and the U. S. was concluded. Eighty years prior to the author’s party arrived in Bruges, Longfellow dwelled there. The entries of his diary of 1842, and his poem “The Belfry of Bruges,” of which one part was called “Carillon,” showed the impression they made upon him. In the World War, the carillonneur of Burges served in the army. When the war was drawing to a close, he found himself close to Burges and asked permission to go and see how his home had fared. Finding all was well there, he ascended the tower. There, he discovered the wires had been cut. He quickly mended them and, a few hours later, played for the King and Queen as they rode into town. Most glorious of all the Singing Towers was that which rose above St. Rombold’s noble cathedral at Malines. They arranged their journey as to reach Malines for the anniversary of the 35 years of service of the distinguished carillonneur, Josef Denyn. His skill was indeed marvelous. Having arrived at Malines early on Saturday evening, they found themselves in the current of a street pageant in Denyn’s honor. Ancient guides and modern societies marched in the procession. Houses and buildings were gaily decorated.

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That impressive pageant was but the beginning of events which filled four days, during which came the inauguration of the School of Carillon Instruction, free to all the world; the meeting of the first Carillon Congress ever assembled; the opening of the Exposition of Carillon Art, lasting through September; and the playing of visiting carillonneurs from France, Holland, and Belgium. On Sunday noon, in the crowded Town Hall, the burgomaster presented Denyn a gold medal from the city and the American Ambassador to Belgium spoke. Carillon art attained its noblest expression in the evening concerts by Denyn at Malines. Those took place on Monday evenings, in June, August, and September, from 9 to 10 o’clock. Malines was midway between Antwerp and Brussels, and distanced only half an hour from each, so multitudes from both those cities attended the concerts. Lately, many came from much greater distances in Europe and from all parts of the world. That Monday evening, after the hour bell of St. Rombold’s Cathedral ceased striking and the vibration of its deep and solemn tone had died away, there was silence. So long a silence it seemed, so absolute, that they wondered if it was ever to be broken. Then pianissimo, from the highest, lightest bells, as if not to startle them, and then, from far above, came trills and runs that were angelic. Rapidly they grew in volume and majesty, as they descended the scale, until the entire heaven seemed full of music. Sometimes the sounds were so low that they bent forward to hear them. They seemed to come from an infinite distance, so faint and delicate were they. Then at other times, great chords, in the volume of many organs, burst forth rapturously. The concert ended at 10 o’clock with the national air of Belgium. Directly after, the great bell struck the hour.

In 1925, there were 180 carillons in the world. Of those, 134 were in Belgium and the Netherlands. The rest were scattered in other parts of Europe, the U. S., and Canada. Eleven carillons were destroyed in the World War, but already three of those had been replaced.

At the bottom of the last page of this two-page editorial (page 86) is a notice with the heading “Index for July-December, 1924, Volume Ready”. The one-line text of the notice states “Index for Volume XLVI (July-December, 1924) will be mailed to members upon request.”

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Tom Wilson