100 Years Ago: September 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: September 1925

 

This is the 128^th entry in my series of National Geographic Magazine abridgements on the 100^th anniversary of their publication.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Everyday Life in Pueblo Bonito” and was written by Neil M. Judd, Leader of the Pueblo Bonito Expeditions.  It has the internal subtitle: “As Disclosed by the National Geographic Society’s Archeologic Explorations in the Chaco Canyon National Monument, New Mexico.  The article contains thirty-seven black-and white photographs, of which five are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of New Mexico and vicinity on page 232.  Note: the map covers the first four article (five items) in this issue.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Even in ruin Pueblo Bonito stood as a tribute to its unknown builders.  It was one of the most remarkable achievements of all the varied Indian peoples who dwelt within the present U. S. in prehistoric times.  Pueblo Bonito was a massive communal dwelling – a village in itself – that sheltered no less than 1,200 individuals.  It was a broken pile of once-terraced homes that rose four stories.  The National Geographic Society began intensive exploration of Pueblo Bonito in 1921.  Each summer, the Society’s representatives delved into the secrets of an ancient people who left no written record.  A hundred thousand tons of earth, stone, and blown sand had been carted away, revealing a veritable maze of empty rooms in which the former occupants left their mark.  From those material fragments – earthenware vessels, agricultural tools, personal ornaments, and bits of ceremonial paraphernalia – they sought to reconstruct the wordless history of the now-vanished Bonitians.  The reader appreciated the turquoise necklace recovered by the expedition in 1924.  But the reader could scarcely know the unbelievable amount of labor went into the fabrication of that prehistoric jewel – obtaining the unworked stone; making the 2,500 beads; and drilling each hole.  That necklace was unique.  Before work could proceed a Pueblo Bonito, they sought out and tapped a hidden reservoir of the desert for drinking water.  That well was their labor barometer. As its surface rose and fell, the number on men and animals engaged in exploration was increased or diminished.  When the gods smiled and work progressed as they wished, thirty-five Indians, ten white men, and eight or nine horses were busy in the ruins.

During four months out of the years, their camp was the seventh largest settlement in San Juan County.  All provisions for that village, all the hay and grain for the teams, had to be hauled from the railroad.  Firewood was brought from twenty miles away.  Repairs had to be anticipated.  Their corner grocery at Gallup was 106 miles away by iffy road.  When that road was dry, the one-way trip took seven hours; during the summer rains, their driver carried a bedroll and a week’s rations.  Previous reports of the Society’s explorations at Pueblo bonito had dealt more with the progress of excavation than with the nature of the discoveries.  [See: June 1921, March 1922, and July 1923, National Geographic Magazine.]  In those earlier accounts, details of investigations, descriptions, and interpretations of the cultural material recovered had purposely been omitted.  They felt further research was needed to write the story of inhabitants.  That story had not yet been wholly retrieved, but it was possible to weave the countless threads of facts and reasonable conjecture into a single fabric of probable truth – to review the daily life of the Bonitians as they lived a thousand years or more ago.  Every potsherd, every fragment of worked stone, had its individual meaning.  Their task was the faithful interpretation of that mute evidence; their hope, to breathe new life into those cold, inanimate objects.  In thus weaving the story of a prehistoric people who had left no written records, many loose ends unavoidably remained; a bit of patchwork appeared now and then, but the basic warp was mostly fact and strong enough to stand the supreme test of close and searching inspection.

Life in prehistoric Bonito was surprisingly modern.  It was both strenuous and complex; yet it remained simple, withal.  It witnessed the coming together of at least two distinct groups of people and their subsequent development of perhaps the most extraordinary pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico.  The daily struggle for existence was paramount then as now, and each inhabitant of the village, young and old, contributed his share to the support of the community.  That they eventually lost in that struggle was no just argument against their diligence, their capacity as colonizers, or their skill as agriculturalists.  It meant only that their highly organized form of community life was not adapted to the environment of Chaco Canyon.  The ancient Bonitians were backyard farmers.  They dwelt in a compact village – an aboriginal apartment house – covering over three acres, standing four stories, and containing eight hundred rooms.  No other apartment house of comparable size was known in America or in the Old World until the Spanish Flats were erected in 1882 at 59^th Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City.  Desert plants furnished edible seeds and skilled hunters brought occasional game from distant mesas.  Nevertheless, the principal source of food laid in their neighboring garden plots, where corn, beans, and squash were intensively cultivated.  Judging by modern Pueblo practices, the ceremonies performed by those farmers of long ago had for their fundamental purpose the propitiation of tribal gods for a more bountiful harvest.  Irrigation originated on the sandy borders of the Nile and the Euphrates.  Irrigation was practiced at Pueblo Bonito by Indians who had never heard of the Egyptian Pharaohs or the splendors of Babylon.  In Chaco Canyon, without living streams, canals were scarcely feasible.

Floodwaters that roared down from the mesas following torrential midsummer showers were caught by low ridges of earth surrounding even the smallest enclosures, wherever corn and beans would grow.  By this system of inundation moisture was concentrated in the cultivated areas.  The Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo of 1925, all practiced flood irrigation like their forefathers.  In prehistoric Bonito there existed a division of domestic responsibilities.  The head of the household was the wife and mother, not the husband.  Bonitian fathers had the responsibility of providing for their families, yet the women owned and ran their homes.  Man reigned supreme out of doors; hunting and farming.  The corn was his while unharvested; but once dried and stored, possession passed tohis better half.  A daily task for the daughters of every household was the preparation of the allotted ration of maize.  The corn was shelled and crushed between milling stones.  The old saw applied – man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.  The sun rose, shortly after the men turned to their fields, to the hunt, or to forests to fell trees for ceiling poles.  At the same time, the women resumed the unending and varied tasks of their households.  There were skins to tan, dyestuffs and clay to fetch, pots to fashion, and blankets to weave.  Such fragile stuff as cotton cloth rarely survived the passing centuries, but fragments had come to light from time to time.  Sandals were plaited from split leaves of the yucca or woven from its tough fibers.  Baskets of many shapes were built up, coil upon coil, by skilled fingers.  A Pueblo Bonito home, for all the simplicity of its furnishings, was a busy place.  It was dwelling and workshop combined.  And all the various materials required for each day’s activities had to be gathered in the proper season and stored for future use.

It was understood that, after having stood roofless under rain and snow for a thousand years, Pueblo Bonito had not yielded examples of all the arts and crafts once produced within her moldering walls.  Many objects had long since disappeared; others were so fragmentary as to resist accurate interpretation.  Of all the varied artifacts, none had come down to us in anything like the numbers of pieces as pottery.  Pottery elevated to a fine art at Pueblo Bonito.  Nowhere else in the U. S. were earthenware vessels of ancient times found which surpassed those of Chaco Canyon in beauty of form and decoration.  The pottery of Pueblo Bonito stood at the very apex of ceramic achievement among the prehistoric peoples of our country.  The potter’s wheel was unknown to the aborigines of the New World – it was an Old-World invention.  Dwellers of the cliffs made basket receptacles before they discovered pottery manufacture.  They retained in the latter industry the technique of the former.  They built up a bowl or jar with long ropes of clay, pinching each successive coil to firm union with its predecessor.  In the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, they had found rude, miniature ladles and pitchers bearing the imprints of baby fingers; they had unearthed toy bowls to serve as object-lessons for restless beginners.  Childhood in Pueblo Bonito did not differ greatly from 1925.  It had its tragedies and its joys.  Only the environment varied.  In everyday life, toddlers were not especially humored by their parents.  Their childish desires were simple and easily satisfied.  A stick and a rag served as a doll.  A leaf, a potshard, or a feather on a string became toys for a time.  Pets, too, there were. Coyote pups, squirrels, and rabbits galore.  Eagles and hawks moped in wicker cages; imprisoned turkeys begged for crumbs and seeds.

Brilliant macaws from Mexico, treasured clan totems, excited the wonder and admiration of youthful eyes.  And then there were always bright-colored stones to be counted and recounted and hidden again; butterflies to chase in summer and daubs of mud to throw.  But daytime was not all playtime for the children of Pueblo Bonito.  Little girls tended smaller brothers and sisters or assisted in the ceaseless duties of the home; little boys had their share of work in the fields, planting seeds in the spring and nursing each plant through the hot months.  Turning over hard, dry soil with sharp stick was no easy task; pulling prickly weed made hands sore; guarding fields from destructive pests was a never-ending chore.  Worms had to be hunted out and killed.  At times, grasshoppers came in countless hoards to eat the leaves.  An those thieving rascals, the crows, required constant watching.  But there were other, more dreadful enemies to guard against.  Human wolves crept through the shadows of autumn to prey upon villages and steal all that could be carried.  Similar strife between sedentary and nomadic peoples had been waged since man became man.  Such brigandage continued during the Spanish and Mexican occupancy of the Southwest.  It was ended only through American efforts during the second half of the 19^th century.  That their attacks were relentless and recurring had been established y the society’s expeditions.  The single gateway to Pueblo Bonito was reduced to a narrow door, and that was subsequently and permanently closed in the interest of still greater security.  Thereafter, access to the great house was gained by a ladder, which, in times of necessity, be drawn up to the rooftops.  Doorways and elevated windows in the outer wall were all closed with masonry long before the village was abandoned.

Without deep-rooted fear of savage marauders, those precautions would never have been taken.  Within the passing years, the Bonitians drew more within the shell of their pueblo, as a tortoise when threatened.  But even closed doors and a blocked gateway did not entirely shield those ancient folk from their enemies.  Peaceful villagers were no match for trained warriors.  Again, the team only surmised the general facts of such sporadic warfare, since no definite proof of it had come down to them.  The Bonitians kept no diary of passing events and the glyphic carvings they pecked on the cliffs remained mostly unintelligible.  But similar defense against hostile tribes within the last [19^th] century was forced upon the Zuni, Hopi, and Tewa.  Final abandonment, in 1838, of Pecos – the largest Pueblo village visited by Coronado in 1540 – was a direct result of relentless attacks by Comanche war parties.  Not only did those unknown marauders periodically raid the Bonitians, killing men, stealing women and children, and plundering their fields, but they even pillaged the burial chambers.  Prehistoric peoples of the Southwest sometimes interred their dead in rooms of the village.  Four such room had been found I Pueblo Bonito.  Of the seventy-one bodies buried there, most had been wantonly disturbed when the village was deserted.  In those four chambers, skulls were tossed aside, limbs ripped from torsos, bodies crushed, and bones scattered, all for the search for turquoise or other treasured ornaments.  Nothing was more highly prized than turquoise by the Pueblos of a thousand years ago, as by their descendants of 1925.  Turquoise was symbolic of the blue desert sky.  Indians of mesa country were rated not by the number of their horses, their sheep, or their goats, but by the amount and perfection of their turquoise possessions.

Turquoise to the southwestern Indian was as a diamond to city-dwellers.  A pendant worth $10 would buy 100 goats or 30 ponies.  Perfect stones from prehistoric ruins were priceless.  When the Expedition’s incomparable necklace first came to light, every Indian on the force dropped his shovel and hurried to peer over the wall.  It was impossible to gage their feelings.  They talked in whispers.  And, when at last, the blue stones shone forth, subdued exclamations rose from their audience.  Turquoise deposits in New Mexico and Arizona had been worked since ancient times, and at least one of them furnished the Bonitians with their matrix.  Possession of such deposits gave great prestige to a community, for the mineral frequently served as a medium of exchange.  The wealth of Pueblo Bonito was widely famed in prehistoric days.  It brought vendors of parrots from Tamaulipas and Vera Cruz and dealers of seashells eastward from the Pacific.  It tempted nomadic desert folk to recurrent and devastating attacks.  Although a thousand years had passed since Pueblo Bonito was in its heyday, it was still venerated in Navajo tales, because of the jewels worn by its builders.  But the Bonitians themselves were not lost in idle ostentation.  They had left a convincing record of their industry and tireless energy.  On festive occasions, the finest raiment of the villagers was displayed, but at other times bare backs bent to numerous and arduous tasks.  Among all the activities of Pueblo Bonito, few were more persistently practices than that of home-building.  Like the proverbial beaver, the Bonitian was always busy.  With increasing population, there came a need for more dwellings; also, for larger or additional kivas, the circular, subterranean room inhabited by unmarried men and utilized by fraternities and religious societies.

The dwellings were the property of the women.  When a man married, he went to live with his wife’s family.  This was an old, established custom among modern Pueblos – a custom which had survived the fleeting centuries.  The women not only owned, but they also built, their homes – another Pueblo custom which had persisted.  Of course, the men participated in that work.  They quarried and transported the stone; they fetched the huge roof timbers and seated them upon the walls.  But the houses, nevertheless, were the exclusive property of the women.  In direct contrast, the kivas were owned and occupied by the menfolk.  Because the welfare of the entire community depended upon the faithful performance of prescribed rituals, the influence of the ceremonial chamber was stronger than that of the home.  They had notice, repeatedly, where two or four adjoining rooms were sacrificed to provide space for a single kiva.  Ceremonial requirements placed the kiva at an elevation lower than the living rooms, for the kiva symbolized an earlier world, which man reached on his race from a more primitive state and from which, in turn, he emerged into this world of the present.  To provide kivas without encroaching upon the two courts or plazas where public ceremonies were presented, the men turned toward the residential area surrounding the plazas.  It was but natural, therefore, that religious necessity should prevail, and that mere dwellings should give way to ceremonial chambers.  Despite the large number of their ceremonial rooms and the probable influence of their priestly groups, the Bonitians were a democratic people.  They granted no special privleges.  Among all the room of Pueblo Bonito, no single dwelling could be pointed out as the home of the most influential.  Each inhabitant had work similar to his fellows.

Head men were no doubt selected periodically and for definite terms of office, as with the Pueblos of 1925.  The team found no evidence to the contrary.  Representative government prevailed; clan leaders and designated members of the secret societies made up the town council, and that body, in turn, chose a “mayor.”  Living quarters, except for insignificant variations in size, were singularly alike.  Masonry walls rose from clay floors to beamed ceilings.  Wall pegs supported casual garments, while shallow niches held personal items.  Tanned skins and blankets of rabbit fur, neatly piled to one side during the day, were spread out on the floor as beds at night.  A tuft of eagle feathers, suspended from the ceiling, protected the family from evil spirits.  Unlike other prehistoric house-builders of the Southwest, the Bonitians provided for ventilation by leaving square openings in the upper walls of their dwelling.  Thus, fresh air was conveyed to the dark, inner rooms, where corn and other foodstuffs were stored between harvests.  Very few rooms in Pueblo Bonito contained fireplaces.  They were present in the older portion of the village; more rarely in the newer.  Cooking was done in open courts; also, on the flat roofs of the houses, for most of the inhabitants dwelt in the second, third, or fourth story suites.  Bonitian wives were good housekeepers.  With a broom of dry grass, they regularly brushed their living quarters; then sprinkled the floor with water to smooth and pack the clay.  Their husbands, on the other hand, were a bit careless.  The author felt the Bonito housekeepers were too thorough.  A beautiful jar, when broken, was discarded.  The larger fragments thrown on a rubbish pile or into some abandoned dwelling.  It made the reconstruction of the jar difficult to impossible.

One of the most astonishing discoveries made in the ruins of Pueblo Bonito was the amount of reconstruction undertaken during the period of occupancy.  It was difficult to measure the full extent of that work and impossible to identify all the influences which prompted it.  Houses were torn down and replaced; partitions were built in; walls were changed and new levels established.  First story ceilings were braced to receive the additional weight of later rooms erected above.  Fully 30% of the dwellings in the newer portion of the pueblo overlie the remains of unfinished or partially razed structures.  On the outer northern quarter, there was a maze of interlaced foundations with no walls erected upon it.  It appeared that plans for expansion of the village were suddenly altered after work was underway.  As recounted in prior articles, several types of masonry were visible in the ruins.  The oldest and crudest of those was confined to the north and northwest sections; it was characteristic of a separate settlement of long standing and of irregular outline – a settlement which formed the nucleus of the great terraced village.  The inhabitants of that older section were the original Bonitians.  New arrivals began to rebuild the town to suit their fancy.  Abandoned dwellings of the old village were razed and replaced; the new structures absorbed and encompassed the old settlement.  Those newcomers were masterful.  They were skillful potters, master builders, hewers of stone and wood.  They changed, altered, and enlarged their pueblo with utter disregard for the physical labor involved.  What they willed to do, they did.  They even erected a puny brace of sticks and stones to hold back 100,000 tons of solid rock that threatened to topple upon their dwellings.  It was that colossal conceit that gave Pueblo Bonito its Navajo name – Place-of-the-braced-up-cliff.

During the long period of time that their guest dominated the religious and secular life of the community, the original settlers continued quietly to occupy their corner of the village.  They only slightly influenced by the more dominant culture about them.  They maintained rectangular rather than circular kivas, but slowly introduced furnishings of their neighbors into their council chambers.  The original settlers remained in Pueblo Bonito after their associated had departed.  Theirs was a sinking ship, but they remained with her.  The author was not sure why Pueblo Bonito was ultimately abandoned.  The anxieties of defensive warfare may well have hastened the actual abandonment of the village.  Those that remained were probably exterminated or reduced to captivity.  Evidence related to that last period of occupancy was meager and inconclusive.  Other possibilities remained.  The water supply may have dwindled; there may have been successive years of drought; or long-continued irrigation may have sterilized the soil.  Irrigation water tended to eliminate or wash out helpful chemicals from the soil, leaving too much sodium bicarbonate, which had a hardening effect upon the soil and made it impermeable to water.  During The Society’s exploration of Chaco Canyon, the team noticed numerous shallow puddles of rainwater that sat for days.  It was determined that black alkali was present rendering agriculture impossible.  Those salts were found to a depth of ten feet.  Pueblo Bonito, at its height, sheltered 1,200 people, almost wholly dependent on agriculture.  Those villagers had no beasts of burden; with prowling enemies present, they would long have sought to cultivate distant farms or to support themselves through barter with other tribes.

In striving to reconstruct the history of a primitive people who vanished a thousand years ago without any written record of themselves, one was forced repeatedly to call upon the imagination.  No matter how much data was recovered or how accurately they were interpreted, the story was incomplete.  Trained eyes read the secrets of broken pottery and fragmentary implements; experienced hands pieced together scattered bits of information until the significance of the whole was apparent; but when immeasurable gaps occurred, it was not always possible to bridge them.  Through The Society’s explorations, the daily life of the prehistoric Bonitians had been at least partially reconstructed, but the forces that hastened the abandonment of Pueblo Bonito and the destination of its builders after leaving their canyon home were problems which awaited solutions.  On those points no light had been shed.  That last chapter of their fascinating story was apparently lost.  Pueblo Bonito stood as a fitting memorial to its unknown and long-forgotten inhabitants.  It stood as a monument to their primitive genius, to their tenacity of purpose, to their ambition to erect a communal home.  Theirs was an experiment in democracy – an experiment which ripened into full bloom and then withered – a full millennium before our Pilgrim Fathers dared a similar venture on the bleak coasts of New England.

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Exploring in the Canyon of Death” and was written by Earl H. Morris.  It has the internal subtitle: “Remains of a People Who Dwelt in Our Southwest at Least 4,000 Years Ago Are Revealed.”  The article contains twenty-four black-and-white photographs, of which six are full-page in size.

A rugged gorge wound westward from the pine-clad slopes of the Chuska Range to lose itself in the multicolored wilderness of northeastern Arizona.  Throughout the 25 miles of its length, the mottled black-red walls rose, sheer or ragged, 500 to 1,000 feet above the tortuous ribbon of comparably level land which formed the canyon floor.  Such was Canon del Muerto, the Canyon of Death, and in the origin of the name, there lied the story.  In times past, the Navajos and the Mexicans were great enemies.  In the winter of 1804-05, the fighting men of a band of Navajos placed their women in a cave high in the rim rock, where they could not be seen from the canyon below.  A party of Spanish soldiers marched down the canyon.  An old woman taunted them from the ledge.  Thus, advised of the hiding place, they encamped beneath it., cutting off all escape, and sent a detachment, by a long, circuitous route, to the mesa top.  Riflemen opened fire on the defenseless occupants.  Many fell and the remaining hide among the rocks.  Then, the riflemen fired against the sloping wall of the cave, depending on an occasional deflected bullet to find its mark.  When the marksmen judged their goal accomplished, they signaled the watchers below.  The latter climbed to the cave, crushed the skulls of the wounded with their gun butts, christened the gorge the Canyon of Death, to commemorate their “victory,” and retreated into the night of time.  Because of a superstitious fear of the dead, since that day, no Navajo had set foot upon the spot where nearly 100 of his tribesmen met their ignominious fate.  Although in recent years despoiled by white men, the cave still bore mute evidence of the tragedy – hundreds of white marks where bullets splashed against the cliff, bleached bones, and parts of ligament-bound skeletons lying in the dust.

That was only an episode in the history of Canon del Muerto, a history written not in formal documents, but in the results of their occupation, left in the caves by the succession of peoples who for unnumbered centuries dwelt within.  Food substances, articles of dress, implements and weapons, domestic utensils, types of dwellings, and burial customs were the alphabet in which the story of people who knew not the art of writing was recorded; and those symbols the technique of the archeologist translated into the history of primitive culture.  During the fall of 1923, the author began the study of the prehistoric ruins in Canon del Muerto for the American Museum of Natural History of New York City.  On a bright September day their expedition encamped in front of Mummy Cave.  In it there stood a typical cliff dwelling, a masonry structure of 80 rooms, in one place three stories in height.  From the front of the building a blanket of refuse, mostly ash and sweepings, spread down over the sloping rock to the top of a natural talus, 100 feet below.  At one end of the refuse deposit the wind had uncovered human bones, and there they began to dig.  The first skeletons were badly decayed, and the only objects found with them were stone pipes.  Farther in, beneath a covering of cedar bark, there laid the body of a man mummified by desiccation.  Buckskin moccasins with an insole of cedar enclosed the feet, and spiral leggings of the same material extended to the knees.  A broad sash of buckskin encircled the waist three times.  On the left wrist was a bracelet of shell beads, and by the right side, a spear thrower.  On the breast laid a wooden wind instrument encrusted with white beads set in pitch, a sack made from the entire skin of a small animal, containing a pipe and smoking materials, and a number of bone implements.

A basket laid beneath the head, another was inverted over it, and a blanket made of cords wrapped with strips of rabbit skin enveloped the entire frame.  Evidently, the man had been an important person in the ancient community.  As they trenched upward, following the rock, they cut through various cribbings of stone, log, and brush built as retaining walls to hold back the refuse.  Eventually, they came to a large series of storage bins.  Those were rude enclosures of irregular form from two to six feet in diameter and of varying depth.  The roofs of only two were in place.  Resting upon the tops of the slabs were jug-like necks of adobe.  In one storage cyst there were 700 ears of corn, which, although thousands of years old, were still yellow and fresh.  In another there were slender gourds from which bottles and dippers were made; and in a third, a quantity of seeds.  As the rubbish resulting from occupation accumulated in the cave, the cysts farthest down the slope were allowed to become filled with it, and contained many discarded objects.  In such places they found hundreds of cloth sandals, baskets, arrows, knives, agricultural implements, and a variety of minor objects too numerous to mention.  In the center of each cluster of storage cysts there was a dwelling chamber, a rudely circular structureb12 to 25 feet in diameter.  The walls had been of posts set leaning inward, and plastered over with mud, and the roofs of logs covered with earth.  Fire had destroyed one of those rooms along with the possessions of its occupants.  Beneath the masonry cliff dwellings, three culture levels were recognizable.  Around the corner from the Mummy Cave was a cemetery.  Bones lying about an animal’s burrow gave the clue, and they set to work.  Destruction had preceded them.  A deep recess had been packed full of bodies when a fire gained access to the grotto.

There must have been 100 bodies in the original heap.  The meager fragments recovered from the wreckage poorly paid for their efforts, but the unexpected brought them their reward in the end.  In front of the burned area, a pit had been dug in the talus and three bodies placed in it.  They laid back downward, one on top of the other. As the author was removing earth from the breast of the second, he found a magnificent mosaic ornament which had been worn around the neck.  It was a large ring of wood encrusted with highly polished turquoise set in gum.  It was the most ancient piece of mosaic work discovered in the Southwest.  On the breast of the third skeleton there laid a second pendant identical to the first except for the inclusion of a rectangle of iridescent abalone shell.  While they were working in the “boneyard,” the author’s wife discovered a cave in the side of the canyon.  With binoculars, cave paintings of mountain sheep and humans could be seen on the rear wall.  A half hour’s climb brought them to a wall of smooth sandstone 30 feet below the cave.  One member climbed up the wall, threw down a rope, and the all climbed up and explored the cave.  There were a few intact rooms at one end of the cave, fallen masonry covered most of the area, and retaining walls at the front of it.  Where two walls met at a sharp angle, a pair of mummified feet protruded from the debris.  The tightly folded body was wrapped in a feather-cloth blanket.  Three poles laid lengthwise above it and three shorted poles across them.  Upon those was spread a mat made of reed stem, which in turn was covered by one of plaited rushes.  On the left wrist there was a bead bracelet of lignite disks.  At the right of the head were a pottery bowl and drinking vessel.  At the back of the cave two vessels were discovered, one white and the other red, containing sunflower petals.

The largest cave in the canyon was three miles below their camp.  They set out in late October for the cave.  On the way, a bear ate their slab of bacon which they had hung in a tree.  Near the western end of the 1,100-foot shelter the corner of a slab cyst like those in the Mummy Cave was visible. In the bank of a pit opened by some relic-hunters.  The author found a child’s skull in the debris contain in it.  The cyst was triangular, the sides being three feet long and the base three and a half feet.  It appeared to have been filled with the bodies of infants and small children.  Each one was wrapped in yucca leaves and shrouded either in a fur or feather-cloth blanket.  They were packed in as tight as sardines.  After the author had removed the 14^th, he found a large basket.  Inside were the skeletons of four more children.  Two of them had bracelets on their left wrists, with white beads and pendants of abalone shell.  The neighboring areas were literally full of graves. In several, the bodies were well preserved.  One had several pieces of turquoise found in its wrapping.  They looked for the pendant to which they belonged, but it had apparently been stolen by grave-robbers.  A few days’ work in that cave co increased the bulk of their collection that two four-horse teams were needed to freight it out and over the 100-mile stretch to Gallup, New Mexico, the nearest railroad point.  October 1924 saw them again camped in the canyon among the sage and cacti.  At the close of a five-week campaign, the freight teams once more trekked Gallup-ward ladened with a precious cargo.  Many of those finds were as spectacular as those of the preceding season.  The burial ground of an old woman in one grotto had been vandalized.  Her legs had been torn off.  The author lifted the blanket-swathed trunk from its resting place.

After lunch, the author removed the blanket from the corpse and discovered, encircling the left wrist, a cuff five inches wide, composed of 200 perfectly matched Olivella shells with a single set of fine turquoise at the center.  It was a handsome ornament and unique among archeological material from the Southwest.  In another portion of the cave, they came upon “The Burial of the Hands.”  On a bed of grass laid the bound hands and forearms of an adult.  Touching one radius were two pairs of unworn sandals with patterns in black and red, probable the most exquisite specimens of their kind to have survived.  Against the other forearm was a small basket half full of long, crescentic beads of white shell.  Heaped upon the wrists were three neck cords.  One bore a single pendant of abalone shell as large as one’s palm, ad another two smaller ones of the same material.  The third breast ornament was a masterpiece.  Lashed at short intervals to the neck cord, and overlapping, were 18 shell rings, three inches in diameter.  Covering the entire cluster of treasures was a basket nearly two feet in diameter.  Their last great find was separated from the hands only by the thickness of an upright slab.  Beneath a stone floor laid a wagonload of cedar bark and grass, crowded into a space six feet by three.  The surface was fresh, but a few inches down, it was charred.  It appeared that fire was buried with the dead.  On the breast of the first body were beads of wood and of yucca seeds, a stone pipe, and many other objects charred beyond recognition.  The blackened knees of another body were beside the skull of the first.  As they worked downward along the thighs, the burned area became smaller, and finally ended just as they reached the trunk.  The body was that of an old man, surely once a priest or chief.

Besides the usual offerings of beads, baskets, and sandals, there laid above his buckskin wrappings a flute.  By the left shoulder was a basket containing an enormous stone pipe and many hanks of human hair, each wrapped and tied in the center with cord.  Along the left side was a mass of wooden objects in rare, perfect condition.  Among them were bone-tipped flint flakers, several spears, four spear throwers, and three more flutes.  The author dusted off and played one of the flutes.  The author glossed over the work it took to collect and document the specimens.  He also only touches on the work ahead, studying them to decipher the story of the Southwest.  Probably, the exact day of the first human habitation of the Southwest will never be known, but, by conservative estimates, it was 4,000 years ago.  The first settlers of whom a trace had been discovered were an extremely long-headed people of medium stature.  They were undergoing the transition from nomadic to sedentary life under the influence of the cultivation of maize.  That cereal, together with wild fruits and seeds, augmented by wild game, provided them with food.  Although their tools were few of type, and made of stone, bone, and wood, they were skilled artisans.  They were past masters in weaving and basket-making, and no Southwestern people had surpassed them as workers in wood.  However, they had not learned to use the bow and arrow; to make pottery; or to build walls of masonry.  Those so-called Basket Makers, who probably migrated from what was now Mexico, occupied the Southwest unmolested for some time.  Eventually, however, there came among them a round-headed stock, bringing with it new manners, customs, and arts.  From the blending of the two, there resulted the beginnings of the Pueblo culture, which peaked before 540, still survived [in 1925].

The simple culture of the Basket Makers marked the beginning, and the civilization which flourished in Pueblo Bonito marked the culmination of aboriginal advancement in the Southwest.  The three or more cultural periods which intervened need only be mentioned.  The caves of northeastern Arizona were occupied during the entire range of the inhabitation of the region by sedentary agricultural peoples, and after the latter had departed, after even Pueblo Bonito had been abandoned, the Navajo arrived and found the canyon a congenial dwelling place.  In 1925, while riding through it, one passed an occasional stunted peach orchard, a cornfield, a melon patch, or a squalid hut, and if one remained long enough, one became acquainted with the 40 or 50 Indians who inhabited it.  They were a dwindling remnant.  Within a few generations they will be extinct, or else their life and custom changed by civilization that they will no longer be real Navajo.  Thus, as far as aboriginal peoples are concerned, that gorge was truly a canyon of death, and the Spanish raiders struck deeper than they knew when they named it Canon del Muerto.

 

The third entry listed on this month’s cover is entitled “Canyons and Cacti of the American Southwest” and has Edwin L. Wisherd and Jacob Gayer in the byline.  It is not an article, but the “22 Natural-Color Photographs” advertised on the cover as “Twenty-two Illustrations in Full Color.”  Mr. Wisherd and Mr. Gayer are the photographers.  The twenty-two photo are on a set of sixteen plates numbered I to XVI in Roman numerals representing pages 275 through 290, and embedded within the second article.  Of the twenty-two photos, ten are full page in size while the other twelve are half-page photos appearing on the remaining six plates.  Among the photos are ones referencing the first three articles.

A list of the color photographs’ caption titles with plate number

• “In the Land of the Navajo” – Plate I
• “Playground of the Desert Gods” – Plate II
• “The Rainbow Arch, Largest of the Worlds Natural Bridges” – Plate III
• “Turquoise Necklace and Ear Pendants from Pueblo Bonito” – Plate IV
• “Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico, in September 1923” – Plate V
• “Rock Fingers Pointing to the Glory of Arizona Skies” – Plate VI
• “On the Trail of Rainbow Natural Bridge” – Plate VII
• “Canon del Muerto” – Plate VIII
• “Beauty in a Weary Land” – Plate IX left
• “A Melon in Bloom” – Plate IX right
• “Banners of the Desert” – Plate X (2 photos)
• “The Orchid’s Rival” – Plate XI (2 photos)
• “In the Southwest Desert Flower Garden” – Plate XII
• “The Candle’s Flame” – Plate XIII (2 photos)
• “Mighty L’ak Rose” – Plate XIV top
• “Posing Under Difficulties” – Plate XIV bottom
• “A Desert Beauty Near Carlsbad Cavern” – Plate XV top
• “A Relative of the Rainbow Cactus” – Plate XV bottom
• “The Dome Room in Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico” – Plate XVI

 

 

The third article (fourth item) listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “New Discoveries in Carlsbad Cavern” and was written by Willis T. Lee, Leader of the National Geographic Society’s Exploration of Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico.  It has the internal subtitle: “Vast Subterranean Chambers with spectacular Decorations Are Explored, Surveyed, and Photographed.”  The article contains nineteen black-and-white photographs, of which four are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of Carlsbad Cavern, with Cross-section on page 302.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico, was the most spectacular of underground wonders in America.  For spacious chambers, for variety and beauty of many natural decorations, and for general scenic quality, it was the king of its kind.  Long known locally, that underground marvel was first disclosed to the readers in January 1924.  [See: “A Visit to Carlsbad Cavern,” January 1924, National Geographic Magazine.]  Following that publication, The Society sent an expedition to explore further the cavern and the mountains near it.  The cavern, which had been set aside as a national monument by President Coolidge, was situated in southeastern New Mexico, 26 miles southwest of the town of Carlsbad.  It was the best known of many caves in a region of unusual beauty in the Guadalupe Mountains.  Their camp was established at the mouth of the cavern, in a shack used by a fertilizer company years prior, when guano was being taken from the cave.  {See: Next article.]  Water was carried by burro from the nearest spring, nearly a mile away, and wood was gathered from the mountainside.  While nights were always cool, during the day the sun beat down, with temperatures between 100- and 115-degrees F.  In the cool cavern, the temperature was uniformly 56 degrees F.  Perishable items were lowered 50 to 75 feet into a small opening at the side of the elevator shaft, where they remained cool and fresh.  The darkness of the cavern, its unbroken silence, and its unearthly aspect affected the workers in different ways.  Some feared the dark; some feared their own weakness.  Some were attracted to the unknown, while others clung to the beaten path.  All who worked regularly in the cavern were under a mental strain.  Exploration began around the middle of March.  New methods were devised for the simplest operations.

The first work was to improve the trail, which was travelled each day to the more spectacular parts of the cavern, where most of the work was done.  That extended for nearly three-quarters of a mile through the great subterranean vault 100 to 200 feet wide, with a ceiling nearly 300 feet high at some points.  Each morning, they descended into the Stygian darkness, and, by lantern light, picked their way around and between great blocks of rock, working their way downward to Shinav’s Wigwam, 830 feet beneath the surface, where the highly decorated parts of the cavern began.  The chambers previously explored were used as starting points of departure for new discoveries.  They used kite string to mark their way.  In time, they had a system of avenues of white twine all leading to the exit.  By following the twine, one soon came to the main trail.  It was easy for one to lose his sense of direction amid the unearthly scenes.  All light available emanated from lanterns, so that what they saw at any one moment was not an entire object.  Formations seemed strange and unfamiliar viewed from a new angle.  The National Park Service would soon install lights to produce a great variety of spectacular effects in a restricted area.  One of the newly discovered chambers was found when the surveyor’s helper crept through a hole in the wall of Shinav’s Wigwam.  That new chamber, which they named Avanyu’s Retreat, contained several pools, about which were grouped many attractive decorations.  One of the pools, which they called Mirror Lake, was about 150 feet long and was surrounded by onyx marble.  The water of those pools appeared deep blue.  At the far end of the Retreat, up a series of terraces of flowstone about 30 feet high, was the Koo Vanyu, a chamber where the Medusa-like formations known as helictites suggested stone snakes.

Many interesting nooks and corners about Shinav’s Wigwam were thus explored and mapped; others, which were difficult to access, remained unknown.  On leaving the chambers grouped about the Wigwam, they were obliged to build a trail over a steep hill in order to reach the more spectacular part of the cavern.  On the side of the hill facing the Big Room, the blocks of limestone were covered with flowstone built up in terraced slopes, on which were fountain basins with bejeweled bowls.  They descended that terraced slope with care.  The great cavity called the Big Room was surrounded by tributary chambers of which little was known.  Near the portal of that room, they found a small hole.  Through it, there was a chamber, about 150 feet long, with walls and ceiling gracefully arched, which they called the Dome Room.  From the arched vault hung pendants, and on the wall were sheets of delicate onyx.  Another series of chambers near the Big Room had a group of stalactites and stalagmites at the entrance and farther along a second group of stalactites gave forth musical tones when lightly touched.  Toward the right, as one entered the Big Room, the trail ended abruptly at the brink of a chasm, 90 feet deep and 300 feet across.  The domed ceiling of that rotunda was 200 feet from the floor of the pit and was decorated with pendants of onyx marble, while the walls were adorned with a tapestry of flowstone.  A wire ladder was constructed and lowered over the brink.  At the foot of the ladder, they found themselves in a highly adorned corridor about 150 feet long, with a floor composed of a succession of fountain basins partly crusted over with onyx marble about the rim at the surface of the water.  Under the dome stood numerous stalagmites, over them hung great pendants, like sharp-pointed daggers.

Two main avenues led from the central rotunda.  The one to the left was profusely decorated with stalactites.  There, the floor had sunk, with the result that great columns had snapped asunder and drawn apart.  The avenue to the right led to the Rookery, so called because of the many egglike bodied of cave marble.  A considerable amount of the floor was covered with those bodies.  Like real pearls, these cave pearls were built up, layer by layer, by calcium carbonate deposited by water.  An alcove of unusual beauty was found near the Rookery.  They entered through a maze of pendants.  Within the alcove was a pool of water so beautifully adorned that they called it the Nectar Fountain.  As exploration was extended beyond the Rookery, they found that the basement chambers turned and came back under the Big Room.

The mountains and plains in the vicinity of the national monument were scarcely less interesting than the cavern itself.  It was a land of alkali flats ad soda lakes; of sun-parched slopes and barren crags; of cactus and mesquite; a land of coyotes, rattlesnakes, and horned toads.  The characteristics of the desert were everywhere in evidence.  The prairie dog chattered at one’s approach and disappeared into his burrow.  The jack rabbit bounded away over the bunches of broomweed and between thorny shrubs.  The hot, dry whirlwinds raised spirals of pungent dust, which quivered and shimmered in the atmosphere.  It was the Wild West, the land of adobe shacks, of range cattle and goats.  One of the old pioneer trails, used by ‘49ers and known as the Butterfield Trail, crossed the plain.  The Guadalupe Mountains rose from the plains like a rampart out of the sea.  Far from lines of travel, eyes had beheld their glories.  A great earth block, composed chiefly of limestone had been lifted up more than a mile above the plain.  Erosion had carved that block into a series of deep gorges and crested ridges.  Among the crags lived bighorn sheep, bear, and deer.  Along the streams in the canyons were delightful campsites, where wild creatures came down to drink.  From those camping places near the streams and springs, the limestone walls rose in rugged grandeur.  On a properly constructed trail, in a day’s trip in the saddle, one could pass from desert plain, over a craggy mountain slope, to a crest more than 9,000 feet high.  In that region, adjacent to the southern border of New Mexico, Texas has selected an area for a State Park.  [Note: that State Park is now Guadalupe National Park.]

 

 

The fourth article in this month’s issue is entitled “Bat of the Carlsbad Cavern” and was written by Vernon Bailey, Biologist, Biological Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture.  The article contains eleven black-and-white photographs, of which only one is full-page in size.  That full-page photo serves as the frontispiece for the article.

Bats – celebrated in art, story, and drama as emblems of evil and darkness, associated with Satan and the infernal regions, supposed to be teeming with vermin, and prone to entangling in ladies’ hair – were one of the least-known and most-maligned groups of mammals.  Least known because they were highly nocturnal and rarely seen except in semidarkness, and because in daytime they hide away in dark places, which were rarely accessible except to the prying naturalist.  Bats were mammals of a very old and highly specialized group.  Many of the families and genera were worldwide in distribution, and 252 species of bats are listed in the Mammals of North America.  Although clothed in fur instead of feathers, their powers of flight were comparable to those of birds, or even superior for their purpose.  On their wide, elastic wings they can fly slowly or rapidly, and make the necessary short turns in the air to capture their insect prey.  They captured prey in the air and avoided all solid objects, all without sight.  They flew though caves in complete darkness.  They wandered far and wide over the country at night in search of food, and with unerring sense returned at daybreak to the same place to sleep.  All the bats of America north of the Tropics were entirely insectivorous, feeding upon and controlling the abundance of night-flying insects, just as the birds did to the daylight species.  They fed rapidly and consumed a great number of insects.  It was conservatively estimated that bats consumed half their weight in insects every 24 hours.  Insects eaten were not easily identified, as bats had good teeth and chewed their food to the finest bits.  Wing scales of moths and the hard parts of beetles and flies formed a large part of the recognizable stomach contents.  Mosquitoes, gnats, and such were rarely recognizable, but undoubtedly were eaten.

So far as was known, the insects eaten were mainly our enemies and might, in unchecked abundance, injure or destroy our forests and crops.  It was not improbable that bats are as necessary as birds in preserving that balance of Nature which rendered the earth habitable for man.  Most species of North American bats had but one young a year, born in June and carried by the mother until old enough to fly and catch its own food.  The young were very large at birth, in some species weighing a quarter of the mother.  They had no nests, but the mother hung head downward, by her hooked hind claws, the young clung to her body or were folded under her wings.  During the mother’s flight the young clung to her body and were carried about in search of insects.  They flew considerably before becoming fully grown, and developed rapidly.  The mating season for most bats was in late summer or autumn, but the embryos showed little development until the following spring.  The birth of those young, a quarter the size of their mother, would not be possible except for the low and widely separated bones of her pelvis.  With only one young a year, bats must live long to keep up their abundance, but there was no available data on their longevity.  Generally, they had few enemies, and their abundance was probably limited only by the food supply.  The bats of Carlsbad Cavern were mainly the Mexican Free-tailed, the famous guano-producing species of Mexico and the southern U. S.  They roosted in enormous colonies in caves or buildings, producing great quantities of guano, a prized fertilizer.  They differed from most northern bats in the projecting tail, about an inch long.  Their numbers varied at different seasons, reaching a maximum in late summer and early fall when they gathered for winter sleep.

On a warm evening in early May [1925], about 10,000 bats came out of the cave.  From descriptions of the dense cloud of bats coming out in August, the number must have ran into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.  The temperature, moisture, and space in that great cave suited the bats better than other smaller and drier caves in the region.  The guano deposits reached back into geologic ages.  When first brought to commercial notice, in 1901, the guano filled some of the largest rooms to a depth of 100 feet.  It was estimated that 100,000 tons of guano was taken out of Carlsbad.  An effort was made to determine the rate of deposit of the guano, but with little success.  The best estimate was one inch per year of fresh pellets, which would compress to a half an inch over time.  For most of the bat colony that cave was a winter resort rather than a summer home.  In cave further south, where bats stayed year-round, the guano deposit rate was greater.  A good, productive bat cave had an advantage over a gold mine in being self-perpetuating.  Besides the vast numbers of Free-tailed, or Guano Bats, there were about a dozen species that occupied parts of the cave or nearby caves and canyons.  Of the 18 species of bats known in New Mexico, 13 were found in that vicinity.  The Long-eared Bats were found in large numbers in McKitterick Cave, 20 miles farther north.  The Large Pale Bats were common bats to the region, but none were closer than 26 miles from the cavern.  The Large Brown Bats were represented in Carlsbad Cavern by an old skull and wing bones.  They were common in Slaughter Canyon and the nearby Slaughter Cave.  At Oak Springs, where they got their water, one of the Silvery-haired Bats was obtained.  They were northern bats of migratory habit, breeding in Canadian mountains in summer.

The House Bat was represented in the lowest room of the great cave by several fragments of old skulls, but in another cave near Carlsbad about 1,000 of those bats were hanging to the low roof.  One of the Fringed Bats was found in a rain barrel close to the open ladder shaft of Carlsbad Cavern.  The Cave Bat and the Little California Bat had a general distribution over that region, but the only specimens taken at the cave were old skulls.  The tiny Canyon Bat, easily recognized by its small size, was often seen early in the warm evenings, flitting about the big western doorway of Carlsbad Cavern.  The Great Hoary Bats, largest of our northern bats, were not common in New Mexico and occurred mainly as migrants.  They had been found as far south as Brownsville, Texas, but were or how they winter had never been known.  The Red Bat had never been recorded in New Mexico, but the southern part of the State was well within its range.  Two of their old skulls were found on the floor of the farthest, deepest room of the cave.  Finding remains of several different migratory bats in the rooms farthest from the Guano Bats seemed to indicate that they wintered there, as far away from the smell as possible.  The Red Bat was a tree bat, hanging in the leaves during the day and winter in caves.  Unlike most bats, the females have four mammae, and two to four young.  Those mothers were found in hanging in trees and not observed in flight.  Reports that bats were the only animal life in Carlsbad Cavern had been disproven by the discovery of several other mammals and two cave crickets occupied its whole extent, while a few insects and a myriapod occupied the first large room where there was still a trace of light.  Many other mammals and some birds lived in the gloomy halls of the entrance shaft, and still more in the immediate vicinity outside.

 

 

The fifth article in this month’s issue is entitled “Experiences of a Lone Geographer” and was written by Joseph F. Rock, author of “The Land of the Yellow Lama,” “Banishing the Devil of Disease Among the Nashi,” and “Hunting the Chaulmoogra Tree,” in the National Geographic Magazine.  It has the internal subtitle: “An American Agricultural Explorer Makes His Way Through Brigand-infested Central China en Route to the Amne Machin Range, Tibet.”  An editorial note attached to the author’s name states that the article was taken from a letter by him written on May 17, 1925 that he led the Society’s expedition to Yunnan Province; and that he did not plan to return to America until the latter part of 1928.  [See: April 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  The article contains sixteen black-and-white photographs, of which six are full-page in size.  The article also contains a sketch map of the author’s route with an inset of southeaster Asia on page 334.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

The author had a bad time the last few months.  He was delayed for a month in Yunnanfu due to his Nashi assistants being held up between Talifu and the capital.  Between Yunnanfu and Tungchwan, in east Yunnan, they met brigands twice and had some real scares.  Several people who followed the authors train for protection lost some of their belongings and two loiterers were captured.  From Tungchwan to Chaotung was five days’ journey north, and just two days out the author had the most terrible experience of his life.  The magistrate of Tungchwan sent 40 soldiers to protect him.  The author sent word to Chaotung requesting soldiers be sent.  He would only dispatch them to his border.  Day one went without incident, but on day two, robbers attacked the caravan of his 12 Nashi men, 26 mules, 40 soldiers, and all the followers.  The soldiers fought admirably, climbing a ridge and firing upon the brigands, but they were greatly outnumbered.  They pushed on as best they could over the pine-covered slope, down a deep ravine, and up the other side.  The soldiers covered their retreat under fire from the brigands.  The shooting continued all afternoon, but fortunately, they only lost one soldier killed.  When they reached the small plain of Yichehsun and the hamlet of Panpiengai, the author thought they were safe, but the brigands followed them.  They looted the little place and captured 3 soldiers and their guns.  They eventually reached the village of Yichehsun, where they had to stop for the night.  Just as they arrived, 35 soldiers from Chaotung met them.   Then a Tungchwan soldier came running up saying that a band of 200 robbers was only a mile and a half away.  The Chaotung soldiers went to help the Tungchwan soldiers, but soon all returned with the robbers on their heels.

The author was quartered in the center of the village in an old temple full of coffins.  The brigands came to within a half a mile from the hamlet, where they took possession of a large temple.  Darkness came on.  At midnight, the officers came in and announced that the brigands were outside and that the town could not be held.  The author spent the night, fully clothed, with his two loaded revolvers ready.  Every minute, he expected the shots to begin.  It was a terrible wait and the longest of nights.  At 4 a. m., their besiegers were still outside but no shot had been fired.  At dawn, there was not a bandit to be seen.  They had vanished.  The people of Yichehsun begged the author not to leave, but he could not stay indefinitely.  As day broke, the order to proceed was given.  They reached Chaotung without further molestation.  The mandarin of Chaotung, having heard of their plight, had dispatched 250 soldiers to rescue them.  They came too late; they met them one day out of Chaotung.  In Chaotung, the author was ill, and was also delayed by blizzards which lasted 11 days making travel impossible.  The author camped in an ancient temple outside the city walls.  He pitched his tent in a long room among the idols; the roof was defective and the snow came in.  A few days before his arrival, a burial had taken place near the temple.  One night, wolves came to the temple door and howled for hours.  1the author was afraid that they would jump the short wall and attack them, but they were content with digging up the grave and devouring the newly buried man.  The author was glad to resume his journey.  For days they waded through snow.  The author had a peculiar military escort from Chaotung on.  His soldiers were former bandits, whose chief, a famous brigand, had accepted employment with the Yunnan Government.

The author reached the Ta Kwan River, a tributary of the Yangtze, above Suifu.  There, he chartered a boat which took him to Suifu.  From there, he went to Kiating and by river to Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan.  In Chengtu, the author was delayed by fighting to the north.  Travel was very unsafe, as defeated soldiers scattered into bands and turned highway robbers.  He left Chengtu with an escort of 140 soldiers and some cavalry.  As they neared Mienchow the guard was increased to 190 soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.  The author’s train was over half a mile long, with 26 mules, 17 muleteers, his helpers, and the soldiers.  Many people joined his train for protection.  Despite the party’s size, they had to take a narrow and torturous trail over mountains as the main road was closed by a small army of brigands.  Even the military dared not take the shorter main road.  The author’s escort was changed from town to town, since each was distrusting of the next and would not let outside soldiers enter their town for fear of fighting and looting.  They passed many dead soldiers on the road.  They also met many half-dead stragglers.  Fron Mienchow, the author went to Chungpa, the greatest medicine mart in Szechwan, if not all China.  There he found the Szechwan-Kansu border troops.  They had orders to see him safely to Pikow, the first large village in south Kansu.  They went on to Chingchwan, the last town in Szechwan, and from there sent a letter to Pikow requesting an escort to Motzaping, the first village in Kansu.  As they neared the border, a reply came back stating that Kansu soldiers would meet them in Motzaping.  All was amiable when enemies met, the Szechwan soldiers turned the author over to the Kansu troops and immediately returned to Szechwan.

The Kansu authorities were exceedingly kind and courteous to the author.  In every town he entered he was given a royal reception, troops lined up, bands played, and the chief mandarin came out to meet him, sometimes up to 20 miles before reaching town.  From Pikow to Kaichow was five days’ journey, and from there to Minchow was seven days.  The author stayed in Minchow for four days in a merchant guild.  Minchow was full of Mohammedans and many of them were robbers.  The house he was staying was guarded by 30 men, yet on the second night robbers climbed upon the roof intent on overpowering the guards and robbing the author.  The ringleader and four men were captured.  The captured men were taken by the military, who beat them with bamboo until they confessed and gave the name of the other gang members and the location of their headquarters.  Next day, the stronghold, four miles from Minchow, was raided and seven other robbers captured.  They were all to be shot after the author had left Minchow.  From Minchow he went to Choni, a sort of independent territory ruled by a prince, a Tibetan chief.  There he learned that the best way to reach the Amne Machin Range was via Radja Gomba, on the Yellow River.  The author asked the prince if he could help him get to Radja Gomba.  The prince told him to see the Great Living Buddha of Labrang Monastery and ask his aid.  The Living Buddha now [in 1925] wandered about from one monastery to another, and the author visited him at Ankurgomba, a small lamasery in the mountains near Taochow.  He was friendly and gave the author a letter addressed to the lama of Radja Gomba monastery demanding that they escort him to the Amne Machin Range, making the tour around it. It would take seven days to go around the range and the lamas arranged safe conduct with the Ngoloks of that region.

The author stayed first in Taochow, then went to Hetso Gomba, a large but very unfriendly monastery in the Tibetan grass country, where he purchased sheepskin coats, Tibetan boots, and wool cap for his men for the coming cold.  From Hetso, he returned to Choni to make final preparations.  He arranged with the Mohammedan sect at Taochow to take him to Radja Gomba.  That sect traded with the Tibetans of Radja Gomba and the Ngoloks of Amne Manchin.  They brought the author 22 yaks and allotted him five carriers and a headman, all of whom had been to Radja Gomba, which was 16 days from Taochow.  At Radja Gomba, the Yellow River was to be crossed on inflated pigskins, and from there it was four days to the Amne Machin peaks.  All arrangements had been made and the author was ready to start in about a week, and not return until next November.  Armed with the letter from the Living Buddha of Labrang, he was confident in the success of his journey.  The author brought many trinkets for the Ngoloks, as money was unknown to them.  Even at Raochow, silver dollars were unwanted, the Tibetans still using lump silver.  The author brought several thousand taels of silver and a scale to weigh the pieces.  Throughout the author’s route, the exchange rates and currency used varied from place to place.  The author stated that we would hear from him again when he emerged from Ngolok country.  If we do not hear from him, we could assume he found his final resting place in that land.  This was his last words to us until November or December, when he hoped to turn up in Taochow or Sining.  His plan was next year to explore the Richthofen Range and then come out through Chinese Turkestan.  The author ends with, “Once more, au revoir, not good-bye.”

 

At the bottom of the last page of the fifth article in this issue (Page 374) there is a notice regarding change of address.  If a member wanted the magazine to be mailed somewhere else, the Society needed a month’s notice in advance, starting on the first of the month.  If a member wanted the November issue redirected, the Society needed to know by October first.

 

The sixth (and last) article in this month’s issue is entitled “Scientific Aspects of the MacMillan Arctic Expedition” and has no byline.  This editorial is one in a series documenting the MacMillan Arctic Expedition of 1925.  The article contains five black-and-white photographs of which only one is full-page in size.  That full-page photo serves as the frontispiece for this article.

It was hoped that by the time this issue of the National Geographic Magazine reached the reader at large, a large part of the program of the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, which took the field under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, the U. S. Navy cooperating, would have been accomplished.  However, pending a complete narrative by the leader, which would appear in an early issue, this update should be of interest to the members of The Society, since we all equally shared in financing the undertaking.  The editor listed the full roster of the expedition, which went north on the converted mine-layer Peary and on the oil-burning yacht Bowdoin.  I am only listing the commanders and counts of the crews.  Aboard the Bowdoin were Donald B. MacMillan, in command of the Expedition, and nine crewmembers.  Aboard the Peary were Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd, Jr., U. S. N., and twenty-seven crewmen.  Wireless reports indicated that the scientific work had been extremely fruitful.  Technical experts were bringing back to the U. S. date in the form of field notes, specimens, atmospheric and tidal observations, and color photographs, which would prove of value in answering questions as to the flora, the fauna, and the meteorology of Arctic regions.  The observations and specimens collected by one Dr. Koelz were expected to add to our knowledge of the fishes and birds of the Arctic regions.  Except for work done in Spitsbergen and a few random specimens, the Arctic fauna had not been examined in depth by scientific observers.  Among the specimens were several gulls and arctic hawks of which nothing was known prior.  In making his marine collections, Dr. Koelz used gill nets with square meshes, 3/8” and 5/8” in size.  Short lengths were splices to make nets up to 1,000 feet in length.

Collecting fish, birds, and mammals in the Arctic was a difficult undertaking, required much equipment.  Hundreds of pounds of supplies were taken along, and packing and transportation of specimens was worked out.  Because space was a t a premium on the ships, there was much improvision.  Once pickled in alcohol and formaldehyde, the fish were stored in empty gasoline drums.  The preservation of the bird specimens was simple.  They were skinned, salted, laid flat, and packed in crates with feathers still attached.  Back home, they would be softened by washing out the salt, stuffed with excelsior, and mounted.  The skins of the land animals had been dressed and numerous photographs taken to aid taxidermists in mountings.  Experiments had been undertaken to determine the temperature of the water at various depths in relationship to the zones of undersea life.  Prior to the work of the MacMillan’s party, upper air temperatures in the Far North were unknown.  Summer records of those conditions would be of value to aviation, and might aid in weather forecasting.  Forecasting in 1925 consisted of detecting new disturbances as they showed up on the western and northwestern borders of the U. S., learning their characteristics, and figuring out their probable paths.  Most of the “lows” in winter originated over the warm sea south of the Aleutian Islands; while in summer they formed over Alaska.  The conditions the caused those “lows” and the “highs” to the east, had their birth farther north in the Polar regions.  In search for the beginning of U. S. weather, the team surveyed the regions north of Alaska.  Most of the meteorological work was done by one Mr. Francis, chief aerographer.  Temperatures, pressures, and wind conditions were not known in the regions north of Alaska to the Pole.  Detailed observations were being made.

Mr. Francis’ equipment included instruments to measure the winds in the upper atmosphere as well as the surface winds.  Other equipment included instruments to measure the barometric pressure, temperature, and humidity at the surface and in the upper air.  Observations were taken daily and radioed to Washington so they could be used in preparing daily weather maps by the Weather Bureau.  A special study of all unusual meteorological phenomena, in many instances with photographs.  All aerological observations had been recorded and a journal had been written to assist in their interpretation.  One Lt. Rigg, of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, had carried on a series of observations of tides, currents, water temperatures, and densities.  Tidal observations had been made at every point possible.  They were done manually at every stop of less than three days, and automatically at stops of three days or more.  Using the staffs from those measurements, benchmarks were made whenever practicable.  Whenever possible, Lt. Rigg established three standard benchmarks.  Whenever practicable, temperatures and densities of the sea water had been taken twice a day – at 8 a. m. and 8 p. m. in most instances.  Like the current observations, those of temperature and density had been made at three depths – one-fifth, one-half, and four-fifths of the depth of the station.  Those deep-sea temperature measurements had been made with a deep-sea thermometer in a reversable frame.  The surgeon of the expedition, one Dr. Davidoff, contributed to the scientific research thanks to the good health of the crew.  That had left him free to study many natural history specimens collected in the Arctic.  All in all, the members of The Society might well feel gratified at the scientific data collected by the expedition which they had sponsored.

 

 

Tom Wilson