100 Years Ago: November 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: November 1925

 

This is the 130^th entry in my series of National Geographic abridgements/rewrites for the 100^th anniversary of their publication.

 

 

Headlining this month’s issue is a “Special Map Supplement of the Arctic Regions in Six Colors.”  This map is referenced by the first two articles in the issue and shows the area that the expedition failed to explore.

Map Supplement courtesy of Philip Riviere

 

 

The first article this month is entitled “The Macmillan Arctic Expedition Returns” and was written by Donald B. MacMillan, Leader of the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, under the Auspices of the National Geographic Society, in Cooperation with the U. S. Navy; Author of “Peary as a Leader” and “The ‘Bowdoin” in North Greenland,” in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article has the internal subtitle: “U. S. Navy Planes Make First Series of Overland Flights in the Arctic and National Geographic Society Staff Obtains Valuable Data and Specimens for Scientific Study.”  The article contains forty-two black-and-white photographs, eleven of which are full-page in size.

It was natural for man to wonder what lied beyond the mountain peaks, what strange and interesting things might be below the encircling horizon.  Without that incentive there could be but little progress.  True, dreams of wealth, life, and happiness had driven men on into the unknown; but man’s inborn desire to seek, to know, had been the dominant factor in the exploration of the world.  No section of the world had proven more attractive than the North, with its ice fields, its snowcapped peaks, its encircling sun and stars, its strange animal life, and its square-faced aborigines.  Man had devised many schemes for the exploration of that great unknown area.  Staunch ships had been built and crushed.  Man had harnessed himself to his sledge and plodded slowly, painfully on.  Sails and even gigantic kites had been used in that toil.  Siberian ponies, burros, reindeer, dogs. Balloons, and motor sledges had all played a part – some successfully.  Thus far, the dog remained king.  With the development of airplanes and their feat of encircling the world, naturally, they would be considered for the conquest of the North, especially during summer months.  Given proper landing places and time, nothing could militate against eventual success.  One great area in the Polar Sea remained a mystery – roughly that between Alaska and the Pole, and northwest of Axel Heilberg Island.  There, at least twice, land had been reported, and there, tidal experts had predicted that it would be found.  The quest for that land was the primary objective of the Crocker Land Expedition of 1913-17.  Inaccessible by ship and extremely difficult to reach by dogs, it awaited exploration by air.  The rough ice of the Polar Sea, thrown into hummocks and pressure ridges by strong winds and currents precluded safe emergency landings.

Landing sites existed, however, and could be found in the early spring months, before the warm summer sun thawed the covering of wind-packed snow.  Since no one had ever visited that section during the summer months, no data were available for determining the amount of open water.  It was reasonable to infer that the “leads” increased in size and number as the season advanced.  Therefore, one’s chief dependence was upon a water plane.  However, conditions demanded that the plane may be called upon to take off and alight upon land, ice, or water.  The Loening Amphibian had those requirements; hence their choice of that particular type.  Etah, North Greenland, eleven and a half degrees from the Pole, was the ultimate port in Smith Sound which a ship could safely visit and leave the same season; therefore, the authors choice of the place as headquarters.  The National Geographic Society financed his expedition of 1925 from funds provided by its millions of members.  Four men were detailed as assistants: Lt. Benjamin H. Rigg as magnetic and tidal observer; Dr. Walter N. Koelz as naturalist; Mr. Maynard Owen Williams as staff correspondent; and Mr. Jacob Gayer as color photographer.  The U. S. Navy generously cooperated with The Society by sending a separate unit of eight men and three amphibian planes for the work on the Polar Sea.  Those men were under the command of Lt. Cmd. Richard E. Byrd, Jr.  In contrast to the lone, silent months that Peary, Greely, and others spent in the Arctic, the author’s party enjoyed hearing the voices of friend and music concerts by radio.  For the transmission of day-to-day messages, they depended on the cooperation of the radio operators who were members of the American Radio Relay League.  Press associations and newspapers cooperated in that news transmission, allowing people to follow their progress.

F. McDonald, Jr., was in charge of the radio, equipment furnished by the Zenith laboratories, and their own operator aboard the Bowdoin was John L. Reinartz, while the Peary’s dispatches were handled by Paul J. McGee and Harold E Gray. The steamship Peary, with the author’s second in command, E. F. McDonald, Jr., carrying the Naval unit and the three planes, was given a rousing sendoff from the Charlestown Navy Yard on Bunker Hill Day and joined the Bowdoin at Wiscasset, Maine, from which port both ships sailed on June 20 for Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, to take on the last supplies of coal and fuel oil. Changes to the Peary were effected at Sydney; portholes were covered with steel plates to better resist ice pressure in Melville Bay.  The delay caused by that work resulted in the Bowdoin proceeding to Battle Harbor, Labrador, a few days in advance.  There, the Peary rejoined them on July 2, both ships going north on the 5^th to Domino Run, where the purchased a supply of native sealskin boots, much lighter and warmer than their homemade product.  Five miles east of Cape Harrison both ships met the ice-pack lying close against the land and extending north in an almost unbroken sheet.  This was the Peary’s first encounter with the pack.  An iron ship was not the equal of a wooden ship for northern work.  When bucking ice, rivets were easily loosened, steel hauls were easily punctured by sharp rocks, and steel hauls could not compress, where wooden ones sprung back into shape.  The Peary, with her 600-horsepower engines, her 9-foot propeller, and her triple-plated bow, nosed her way through the ice.  Before them laid the most difficult part of the voyage – the inside run from Cape Mokkovik to the Moravian settlement at Hopedale.  With one eye over the bow, the author directed the Bowdoin over a path she knew so well.

When approaching Flagstaff Tickle, nine miles from Hopedale, the course lied near a breaking ledge.  Captain Steele was a bit overcautious.  The Peary grounded on some rocks.  Fortunately, the tide was rising and the ship was soon freed.  The Peary swung from the rock and rode to her kedge, a few yards from the breaking reef.  Instructing Captain Steele to keep directly behind them, they threaded Flagstaff Tickle, passing two bad underwater rocks.  Upon reaching Hopedale, they found the mission flag snapping in the breeze to give them welcome.  For the last 154 years [prior to 1925], those brave and unselfish Moravian missionaries had worked on the bleak Labrador coast.  Were it not for them, there would not have been a single Eskimo on that coast in 1925.  Eskimo history was the history of all savages, slowly retreating from the outposts of civilization and dying from its diseases.  Once a great race, extending to the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, they were not to be found in 1925 until one reached 55 degrees 14 minutes North.  The strenuous fight of the Moravians had been not so much against the ignorance, superstition, evil practices, and primitive religion of the savages as against the sins of the so-called civilized.  The crews of both their ships mobbed the Mission store in eagerness to secure the light, water-tight sealskin native boots.  Two days of busy sewing by native women fitted out many of the crew with blanket dickies and sealskin coats.  On July 10 they were away at 1:30 a, m., threading their way through the narrow Dark Tickle, past the hidden rocks to Windy Tickle, where they anchored to give the author a chance to run up in the powerboat for his old interpreter, Abram Bromfield, who had accompanied him on two previous trips.

On their return to the Bowdoin, preparations were made for the immediate departure of both ships for Greenland.  The author ordered full speed ahead, the engines roared, but the Bowdoin did not move.  They had broken their shaft.  They called the Peary and told them to go on, and promised to rejoin her in Greenland.  The Bowdoin, with her 10-foot draft, was designed to be beached using the Arctic tides, but their location only had tides of four to seven feet.  They returned to Hopedale, where there were higher tides and plenty of help.  Their trip back was a painfully slow 25 miles.  Then began a wait for a greater tide; the struggle to lift the stern, and the replacement of spare propeller.  They were away on the 19^th at full speed to rejoin the Peary, anxiously awaiting them at Godhavn, Disko Osland.  Early on the morning of the 24^th, they shot around their sister ship and dropped anchor in front of the Governor’s house.  They were together again.  The Peary was a coal burner, and, before leaving home. They had arranged for fuel at some Greenland port.  No coal could be spared at Godhavn, but they were promised as much as they could load at Umanak, 180 miles north.  As both ships proceeded northward they encountered their first ice off South Upernivik, a scattered field through which they easily passed.  A half hour later they met the real pack – hard blue ice five feet thick.  They were glad to follow the Peary, slowly smashing through it with her reenforced steel-concrete bow.  Finally, conditions were such that they tied up to a large sheet to await better luck.  When the author awoke from an hour’s sleep, he found the field dotted with hunters and photographers.  Within a few minutes Rawson came running over the ice, shouting that Bromfield had killed a seal and wanted his harpoon.

The seal, their first fresh meat, was quickly secured and brought on board.  With the change of tide, the leads began to open.  We blew the Peary’s steam whistle to recall their men, all of whom responded except Salmon, who was caught on the far side of a crack, which he finally crossed with great difficulty.  They fought the pack all day, the Bowdoin following the more powerful Peary, which split big pans wide open.  At 6 o’clock, they were free of the ice and stopped for 45 minutes to await the Peary.  At 11:30, they were again in its midst, slowly working westward toward Cape York.  On July 29, little progress was made due to thick fog.  The 30^th was a hard day for both ships.  The Bowdoin was so wedged in the ice the Peary was at needed to extract her.  Later, the Peary, strong as she was, was helpless.  Four times she rammed into a crack between two tremendous pans, hoping to shatter the edges and squeeze through.   The Bowdoin circled about in a narrow basin.  They stopped engines, put out ice anchors, and waited a change of wind and tide.  The Arctic was full of surprises, the biggest of which was the sudden change of ice conditions.  At 4 p. m., they were held tight.  At 10, the Peary started through the lead without the help of her engines!  They ran a towline to the Bowdoin.  At five the next morning, they were again underway, breaking out through the pack into open water and heading straight to Cape York, their hard-fought goal.  There, most of the men saw their first polar bear not in captivity.  She ambled along over the ice fields, just out of rifle range, parallel to that of the Peary.  She turned toward them and plunged into open water, where a fine shot by McDonald gave them a specimen for the Provincetown Museum.  Cape York was blocked with ice and inaccessible.  They reluctantly passed it by.

A broken field extended northward in under the Crimson Cliffs.  Two Eskimos in kayaks visited them.  One was an old assistant of Peary’s.  They were looking for tobacco.  They were cut off from the trading post at North Star Bay in the summer.  Shortly after passing Conical Rock, they encountered fog so dense that they barely missed several large bergs.  They laid to for a while.  The fog soon lifted, and they hastened on the Etah, where they arrived in a snowstorm, three hours ahead of schedule on August 1.  The author’s plan was to arrive on that date and depart about August 25, but no later than September 1.  Since they had provisioned for only three months, wintering in the Arctic would be a serious matter.  Their work of landing and assembling planes, of establishing food and fuel stations on Ellesmere Island, and of flying at least 2,000 miles must all be done in the allotted time.  The men, at once, began work on the landing beach, removing all rocks and boulders and smoothing it up.  On August 3, he NA-2 was ready for flight.  The NA-3 and NA-1 followed quickly.  On the 4^th, all planes were in the air, and NA-2 made the first flight over Greenland.  The engines were not running satisfactorily.  Minor trouble developed in all of them.  On the 6^th, two planes were loaded with gas and supplies, with the intention of establishing a substation across Smith Sound.  They failed to get off the water.  Rain, fog, and low-lying clouds dis their worst.  It was decided to put a new engine in NA-1.  Within 10 days all three had new engines and propellers.  Fog. Rain. And wind precluded flight on the 7^th.  On the 8^th, two Eskimos came to inspect the giant birds and the white men.  That evening they left for Cannon Fjord, on the western side of Ellesmere Island, hoping to establish a substation to help then to Cape Thomas Hubbard, 250 miles distance.

Smith Sound was covered with large pans drifting out of Kane Basin.  Safe landing on wheels or skids was impossible.  Narrow lenes of open water offered landing places in an emergency, but, once down, takeoff was impossible until those lanes had widened in lower Smith Sound.  They flew directly over Peary’s winter quarters at Payer Harbor, at 3,000 feet, and, in a few minutes, over the boulder to which the author had bolted, in 1924, the memorial to the Greely Expedition who died there in 1884.  Open water was seen all along the north side of the shore to the west of Cape Sabine.  Buchanan Bay and Kane Basin were practically solid sheets of ice, except for narrow leads alongshore on the south side of Bache Peninsula.  In passing over Ellesmere Island, they flew over the snowcapped hills which rose to 4,000 feet.  The second long flight, on August 11, over a more southerly route to Bay Fjord, interested the author, because he had explored there by dogsled in winter.  He wanted to see what it was like in the summer.  He looked down from 5,000 feet upon big hills over which they had laboriously pushed their sledges in 1914-16 and in 1924.  With absorbing interest old camps were recognized and various experiences recalled.  Alexandra Fjord, an inlet of Buchanan Bay, was inviting looking, with no ice and as smooth as a mirror.  The ice conditions at Flagler Fjord had improved since a few days before, with landing places throughout one half of its length.  Returning, they took a more southerly course, going east by way of Beitstad Fjord, which, to their surprise, was entirely free of ice.  They passed over Rice Strait to find the hut and provision station built by the Canadian Government in 1924.  As they spiraled down toward the Fram’s winter quarters of 1898-99, they spotted a small square dot, which they knew to be the building, near the shore.

They headed out over the ice fields of Smith Sound for home.  A few miles west of Littleton Island, they saw a walrus with her baby sleeping on a pan of ice.  They dropped to 100 feet, and the mother raised her head to look.  They exhibited no fear.  As the waters of Beitstad Fjord had been found ice-free, Commander Byrd attempted to land supplies as a station to be used on a return trip from Eureka Sound if food or fuel was needed.  Two planes landed but rough waters and crosswinds prevented the establishment of the station.  On August 12, the wind blew so hard from the south that nothing could be done.  The 13^th was their unlucky day.  Everything seemed to occur at once – a gale came from the northeast; a boat broke loose from the Peary, and needed to be salvaged; then, the NA-2 almost sank, ruining the engine; next, the Peary’s forward deck, loaded with gasoline, caught fire.  A blazing bundle of waste was tossed over the rail; the fire was out.  The day ended with floe ice trying to carry two of the planes out of the harbor; both planes were recovered.  With the NA-2 disabled, the NA-1 and NA-3 got away on the 14^th and landed the first cache of supplies at the head of Flagler fjord, 107 miles from the ships.  They returned in the evening, but drift ice prevented leaving additional supplies.  They realized that, with ice conditions as the were, no dependable supply station could be established.  August 15^th was a beautiful day.  The two planes got away at 10:45 p. m. in another attempt to land supplies at Flagler Fjord, and to go on into Cannon Fjord.  At 8:30 the next morning they were back, reporting the Flagler Fjord was inaccessible.  They had gone on to the head of Sawyer Bay, and had there left a small cache.  The afternoon of the 17^th was the finest they had seen.  Unfortunately, the NA-1 required a new engine, and the NA-2 was disabled.

On the evening of the 17^th, they noticed flames under the stern of the Peary, close to the NA-3.  It proved to be a fire on water – burning gasoline which had overspread the surface.  Before it could be extinguished, one wing of the plane was badly scorched.  It was decided to substitute a new one.  To remove her engine and replace one wing would require three days.  It was now August 18.  As a result of 18 days’ work, two small deposits of food and fuel had been advanced 107 miles only.  All spare motors and three spare propellers had been used.  Only one plane was available for flight and her radio was not working.  Commander Byrd wanted to take the remaining plane across Smith Sound and possibly over Ellesmere Island, but was vetoed by the author.  With ten days remaining, they might have reached Axel Heilberg Island and the edge of the Polar Sea, but nothing was to be gained by that.  The Expedition had other worthy goals, so flight work was terminated.  To delay even one week might result in failure in all their program.  Their photographers and scientists had been patient, yet they were all in agreement that nothing could be gained by remaining longer at Etah.  Because of storms at Etah, it was decided to fly the two remaining planes to Igloodahouny, in Robertson Bay, and dismantle them at that Eskimo settlement.  The Bowdoin proceeded at once to await their arrival, but the NA-3, while taking photographs over Smith Sound, barely reached Etah in safety, and was unable to fly down the coast.  The NA-1 arrived at Igloodahouny at 10 a. m. on the 22^nd.  At 11, the author left for the Eskimo village of Karna, 25 miles to the southeast, to visit his old dog-driver and bring him back by plane if he cared to come.  They landed; the dog-driver was there, all smiles.  When asked to join them, he climbed into the rear seat, and they were off – he did not care where.

Their flight work terminated with a short trip by Commander Byrd and Bennett up Robertson Bay and in over the Greenland ice-cap.  The Peary arrived on the morning of the 23^rd.  Leaving orders for her to follow the Bowdoin down the coast, they proceeded to Karna to land their Eskimo guest.  The waters of that part of the North were almost wholly uncharted.  Off Redcliffe Peninsula, however, there was a dotted line indicating shoals.  A careful examination the day before revealed no danger.  They were going at full speed about one mile off the beach when there came a tremendous crash.  They scrambled up the ladder to the afterdeck.  One glance was sufficient.  They were high and dry, and so high forward that they would not come off until the next tide.  If they were on ragged rocks, the Bowdoin might suffer greatly despite her staunch construction.  She was heavily loaded with a deck-load of 39 barrels of gas.  Over the rail it went into choppy sea.  The drums drifted away rapidly off the leeward.  They chased and fastened all but six of the barrels together and anchored them.  Meanwhile, the tide was dropping.  They radioed the Peary for help.  She rushed their assistance.  The Bowdoin listed heavily to starboard and was so high on the rocks that they could walk under her prow.  They found the shoe almost gone and the keel badly split and splintered.  But knowing her construction, they had no doubt as to her sea-worthiness.  The incoming tide flowed over her rail and up the slanting deck.  She rose, and within an hour, they were afloat and chugging along in search of anchored barrels.  All but six were found and reloaded, and they proceeded to Karna, to land their guest.  Two hours’ anchorage there convinced them that no ship should ever call at that port. Strong winds pushed great blocks of glacial ice threatening them.

In the next two days, bucking strong headwinds and heavy seas, and encountering fogs and snowstorms, both ships groped their way southward.  A last goodbye at a small encampment was made to deliver a few presents.  They succeeded in getting a footing, and within a few minutes were surrounded by men, women, and children.  Here was a summer encampment but a decidedly winter scene.  A final “Goodbye!” and they were in pursuit of the Peary, far off in the ice fields, speeding south for home.  Their next stop was at Holstensborg, the most interesting settlement in the Northern Inspectorate of Greenland.  Years ago, it was the home port of the American halibut fishermen, some of whom were buried in the little cemetery overlooking the harbor.  Its well-kept buildings nestle among the rocky hills, each festooned with strings of dried halibut heads, food for the long winter to come.  Its up-to-date canning factory was a pleasant surprise and its product, canned halibut, delicious.  Bucking a heavy sea and headwinds, they proceeded slowly south along the coast to Sukkertoppen, the most impressive looking village that they visited in Greenland.  Within a few minutes of their anchoring, Governor Langskov visited the ship and gave them the “keys to the city,” so to speak, and throughout their stay he saw to their comfort.  Sukkertoppen might well be called “The Venice of Greenland,” situated upon a collection of peninsulas and islets connected by bridges.  At Godthaab, the Peary re-coaled and, since she was to go directly to Battle Harbor, the author made additions to the Bowdoin crew by taking on Dr. Koelz and Jacob Gayer.  Koelz was the most energetic naturalist the author ever knew.  The author believed that he accomplished more during the summer than many scientists in the North had done in years.

Among his collections were 1,500 bird skins!  And those in addition to fish and flowers galore!  Gayer, the color photographer of the National Geographic Society, had succeeded in obtaining natural color reproductions of Arctic life and scenes – the first ever made north of the Arctic Circle.  Gayer learn the necessity of keeping his plates cool while taking pictures of cacti in New Mexico where temperatures stood at 103 degrees in the shade.  [See: “Canyons and Cacti of the American Southwest,” September 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  The costumes of the Far North, the markings of new species of Trout, the red lichen on Arctic snow, the elusive tints in glacier and iceberg – those had been recorded on a photographic plate for the first time.  The cheery character of the Eskimo was faithfully recorded in color on Gayer’s plates.  [Note: Many of Gayer’s color photos made in the Arctic will appear in an early number of the National Geographic Magazine – Editor.]  One of the objectives of the expedition was a study of the Norse ruins of Greenland.  Near Godthaab was situated the so-called Western Settlement of the Norsemen, consisting of about 90 farms and 4 churches.  The governor appointed Dr. Borresen as their guide to a Norse building, the best now [in 1925] in the Western Settlement.  The Godthaab Fjord was 60 miles in length, and as beautiful as it was long, revealing a composite picture of Norway and Switzerland – the fjords of the former and the snow-capped peaks of the latter.  As they approached the head of the fjord and beheld the glaciers descending from the great Greenland icecap, they looked for the Norse ruin.  In the gathering twilight it was very distinct – a square rock building, standing in the middle of an elevated plain 100 feet above the water’s edge.

They stood at the open door of what had apparently been a church, a beautifully built and well-preserved rock structure, roughly 20 feet square, with walls 10 feet in height.  Its roof, probably of logs and thatched with turf, was missing.  It had no windows, only small peep-holes.  The church served the double purpose of worship and defense.  Within a few yards of that structure were the remains of several buildings and the rock outlines of their stockyards and barns for cattle – sheep, goats, and cows.  The reached Godthaab on the night of September 17, and, on the morning of September 21, they were away for Labrador with a fair wind and fairly good weather, but in the evening a gale came from the northeast and east, with a driving rain and heavy seas.  After a stormy passage the Labrador hills of Cape Mugford loomed up through the driving mist, their tops white with snow on the morning of the 24^th.  They were forced by wind and sea to square away down the coast for Jack Lane Bay.  At midnight they caught the welcome 2-second flash of Cape Harrigan, their first lighthouse since leaving the Labrador coast on July 19.  They anchored on Jack Lane Bay in front of the Bromfield home.  No time was lost.  They were underway at daybreak, bound for the Moravian settlement at Hopedale.  There, they rid themselves of the load of Navy gasoline.  The Bowdoin was now a different ship.  Her decks were clear.  She was stripped for action.  Driving before rain and wind, the ship swept down the Labrador coast.  Off Cape Strawberry their main gaff snapped, but a new one, ordered by radio, awaited them at Battle Harbor.  Only one night there to fit their new stick and lace on the sail and they were away, heading down through the Belleisle Strait for home.  As they entered the harbor of North Sydney on the morning of October 6, they were saluted by several vessels.

When half way up to Sydney, a powerboat awaited them.  It was Mr. J. R. Hildebrand, a representative of the National Geographic Society, there to be the first to greet them.  No sooner had they docked that a throng gathered around the schooner.  Within four hours, all the men had received much-needed haircuts; had enjoyed apples, bananas, grapes, and peaches; had read their mail; and were ready for home.  The Bowdoin had taken on one thousand gallons of fuel oil and declared she was ready for their last 500 miles.  They cast off at 1:30 and proceeded down the harbor and out to sea with a fair wind.  But as darkness came on, the wind whipped around from the southeast to northwest, with vivid flashes of lightning and driving rain.  A nasty cross sea caught the Bowdoin from every direction.  She shipped tons of water over her bow and over both rails, threatening to wash some of the men overboard.  They finally shortened down to a foresail alone, to ease the ship a bit.  The ominous slatting and banging of a sail revealed that the lacing of their foregaff had given way.  That meant the loss of their most valuable sail unless it could be taken in at once.  All hand worked rapidly as wave after wave reached over the rail, ending with a thud against lifeboat or cabin.  With engine full speed ahead, they were dropping backward, and there were times when the Bowdoin seemed to have decided to go back North.  But the next morning was glorious – a beautiful fall day, and good weather.  All day, they raced along in under the land – a glorious sail – with the Peary, which had waited for them at Halifax, slowly creeping up.  Not until they rounded Cape Sable, however, and were well in toward Seal Island, on the last leg of their voyage, did she forge past them, her lighted cabins giving her the appearance of an ocean liner.

Three long blasts of her whistle ended the race, as she crept ahead and disappeared into the night, heading up for Monhegan Island, off the Maine coast, nearly abreast of Wiscasset.  The next day, several species of birds came fluttering to their decks and rigging.  Dr Koelz recognized the chirping sparrow, junco, ruby-crowned kinglet, black-and-white creeper, and myrtle warbler.  At 5 o’clock in the afternoon, they caught the faint outlines of Monhegan and headed for the south entrance.  As they entered and ran through the harbor, they were saluted by the Peary and by the islanders crowding the dock.  They had arrived on time and were ready to leave for Wiscasset the next morning, but a gale roared in.  The gale increased through the morning and by mid-afternoon, they were in the center of a chaos of white water.  Sunday was little better.  It was the irony of fate that, within 30 miles of home and thousands of people awaiting their return, they were unable to reach the mainland, but at 6 a. m., October 12,, the Peary and the Bowdoin steamed out of the island shelter and at 9:30 anchored in Wiscasset, to be met by Governor Brewster and by hundreds of people crowding docks and streets.  They were home!

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Flying Over the Arctic” and was written by Lt. Cmdr. Richard E, Byrd, U. S. Navy (Ret.), Commanding Officer, U. S. Naval Aviation Arctic Unit.  The article contains ten black-and-white photographs, one of which is full-page in size.

Aviation will conquer the Arctic – and the Antarctic, too.  But it will be difficult and hazardous.  Those things, however, only increased the extraordinary lure of the Polar regions.  It seemed fitting that the U. S. Navy, so prominent in Arctic history, and the National Geographic Society should have joined hands last summer in Arctic exploration by aircraft.  That work would not end until the heart of the great unexplored area was reached – an area, containing a million square miles, which had so far baffled all attempts to penetrate it.  The MacMillan Expedition took aviation conditions in the Far North out of the column of the unknown.  In the air battle with the Arctic elements last summer, they learned some facts of value to all future aviators in Polar regions.  At 5:30 a. m., August 2, the eight officers and men of the Naval Aviation Unit started work at Etah to build a runway on the beach.  Working in the open on delicate parts, and at times in snow squalls, they got the wings and disassembled planes to the beach, erected and flew them by August 4.  The beach proved entirely too small and soft, so they moored the planes out to buoys, several hundred feet offshore.  They therefore operated entirely from water.  Some of the gales which the planes had to ride out were so severe that the anchors dragged, and it was necessary to keep the planes tied up astern of the ships.  The weather being calmest from midnight to 7 or 8 in the morning, they frequently flew during the night hours.  On August 4, they took their ten carrier pigeons ashore in a pigeon house.  On the 10^th, they turned them loose, but only four of them returned.  They had been killed by Arctic falcons.  Pigeons were not practicable for communication purposes in that part of the Arctic.  They had hoped to use them in case of a crash if their radio was put out of commission.

They spent August 5 making radio tests and full-load tests.  They found that the stowage area needed to be moved forward to balance the plane.  They spent the 6^th taking an emergency gas tank out of the bow to make room to stow the gear.  At 7:00 p. m. on the 6^th, fog descended and it began to rain.  The downpour continued for 24 hours, after which a gale sprang up.  That blow turned into a snowstorm the following day.  There was scarcely any summer at all.  In fact, it turned out that after the planes were ready for flight there were but 15 days of “summer” in which to accomplish their mission.  Of those 15 days, only 3¾ were good for flying, 2 were fair flying days, and 1 indifferent.  More than half of the time was either dangerous or very dangerous for flying.  Yet three planes flew more than 6,000 miles, 5,000 miles of which were flights from Etah on their mission.  They saw 30,000 square miles from the planes, a large part of which, being inaccessible to foot travelers, had never been seen by human eye.  Their first reconnaissance flight was to Cape Sabine, on their course toward the Polar Sea, 30 miles from Etah.  They found that ice began several miles north of Etah, and covered all the water as far as the eye could see.  They flew low on that trip, hoping to find the ice smooth enough to land on, but it was rough and corrugated, and in such condition that landing was impossible.  In all the hundreds of square miles of ice over which they flew later, they did not see a single place on the ice where a landing could be made without disaster.  The engine in the NA-1 had developed a knock on the 5^th and they decided to put in a new motor.  They worked all day and all night connecting the motor, out in the cold and wet, and reported the plane ready on the morning of the 7^th.  They were ready to fly, but the weather turned nasty.

At 4:00 a. m. on the 8^th, during a gale, the NA-3 barely missed destruction from a drifting iceberg.  Later she began to drag anchor, so they had to tie her up astern of the Bowdoin.  The bad weather persisted until 7:00 p. m., when the author gave orders to prepare for the first long flight into Ellesmere Island to attempt to put down a base.  Because of the distance to the unexplored area from Etah, at least one base was necessary and two were advisable.  They left Etah at 9:10 p. m., in the NA-2 and the NA-3.  They set a course for Cannon Fjord, which lied on a line with Cape Thomas Hubbard on the Polar Sea, from which Peary, in 1906, thought he saw the high peaks of a great land mass to the northwest.  At last, they would find out whether they could navigate a plane where the north magnetic pole was on one side and the North Pole on the other, and where earth’s magnetism was very weak.  The author noted immediately that the steering compass did not move, but pointed east all the time.  A more sensitive instrument, the navigator’s compass, was used.  In clear weather, the sun compass, provided by the National Geographic Society, was use.  The author was delighted with it.  When they reached Cape Sabine, they took bearings of two points 30 miles apart and found that the 103 degrees of error caused by being north of the magnetic pole, there was an additional error of 30 degrees, an unheard-of deviation.  The course they wanted to steer was northwest, but, due to those compass errors, they had to steer east by compass needle.  As they flew over the ice of Smith Sound, they saw where Peary and Bartlett had such a difficult time getting through with the Roosevelt in 1908.  They reached Cape Sabine at 9:40 p. m. and passed over the spot where 18 of General Greely’s men died from cold and hunger.  The author had never seen a bleaker spot.

Over to the northward they could make out Bache Peninsula, which Peary traversed in 1898.  After passing Cape Sabine, the view that opened was magnificent and they were stirred with the spirit of great adventure.  The author believed that they had a new story to tell of the grandeur of Ellesmere Island.  It was evident that the greater part of the land they saw was inaccessible to the foot traveler.  But there was no time to enjoy the view.  Any slight engine trouble might require a landing.  They searched for places to land, but found none, on land, ice, or water.  A landing attempt would have meant disaster.  The land was everywhere too irregular, the water was filled with broken ice, and the ice was not smooth.  MacMillan was confident that the fjords would be free of ice.  That they ere not was probably because they were having scarcely any summer.  They could not use the sun compass, as the sun was obscured, so they continued steering east by the magnetic compass.  By sighting astern on known points, the author found that they were almost exactly on course.  A little later, the wind-drift meter indicated a strong wind from the north and they had to change course 10 degrees to compensate.  No idea of the extremely irregular and rugged character of Ellesmere Island could be gathered from the maps and charts, and many of the mountains they saw were uncharted.  The higher mountains were snow-covered and their glaciers extended down to the sea.  They continued to Knud Peninsula, between Hayes and Flagler Fjords, flying at 4,000 feet.  Low-lying clouds hung over the peninsula, with many rugged peaks appearing above them.  Ahead they saw high mountains that appeared impassable.  They kept on, hoping to find some way through, but soon realized that the clouds were so high that they could not get over them with their load of supplies.

The weather astern had begun to thicken and the cloud covered most of the landmarks.  Weather conditions changed rapidly in the Arctic, a fact which was of great concern to aviators, who could not fly through fog and clouds over land as he could over the sea, since there was a danger of running into a mountain.  Neither could he land and wait for the weather to clear, if he had no landing place!  Nor could he keep flying around, as his gas eventually would give out.  They decided to fly over the clouds and take a chance on finding Etah.  Without a landmark it was necessary to steer a compass course.  Luckily, they found a rift in the clouds over Smith Sound, with fog only in places here and there on the water.  They were able to make the base without much difficulty, although a 30-mile wind from the north made landing rough.  Upon their return, they were handed a report that a gale of great intensity was rushing toward Etah from the south.  All flying was, therefore, “secured.”  A driving snowstorm soon set in.  The next morning a 3 o’clock, a piece of iceberg, weighing perhaps 500 tons, was driven by the gale between the Peary and the planes, barely missing the latter.  They decided to get beyond the mountains by going through a gap to the south of their course even though it was a roundabout route to their proposed Polar Sea on Axel Heilberg Island.  The gale subsided at 5:30 and they made a reconnaissance and radio test flight to Cape Sabine.  They ran into snow over the cape and found Ellesmere Island completely covered with fog and snow.  The weather cleared toward Ellesmere Island the next morning, August 11, so all three planes left for Bay Fjord at 10:40 to attempt to put down a base of fuel, food, and ammunition on its shore.  They hit the eastern end of Bay Fjord at 12:45 p. m.

The fjord was largely obscured by clouds.  That part of the fjord that could be seen was covered with ice.  NA-1 continued to Eureka Sound, southwest of Axel Hielberg Island, 200 miles from Etah, and found only one, temporary landing spot.  NA-1 set a course for Beitstad Fjord and found it free of ice and clouds, approximately 100 miles from Etah.  NA-2 and NA-3 reached Etah at 2:30 p. m. and NA-1 at 3:15. They left at 9:30 p. m. to establish a sub-base at the western end of Beinstad Fjord, to leave food, cooking utensils, primus stove, rifle ammunition, gasoline, and oil.  At 10 o’clock, NA-2 turned back due to low temperature of the motor.  The remaining planes reached the eastern end of Beinstad Fjord at 11 p. m.  They did not land due to strong cross winds from the southwest.  They landed on the western end of Hayes Fjord, but high winds made anchoring impossible.  Took off and both planes reached ship by midnight.  They found another spot free of ice – the western end of Flagler Fjord.  They decided to set up a base there.  After being buffeted by a gale on the morning of the 13^th, the NA-2 began to sink.  The plane was saved, but the engine was water-soaked.  It was hoisted onto the deck of the Peary to replace the motor, but it was never able to fly again.  At 11:45 a. m., August 14^th, the NA-3 and NA-1 left Etah for the western end of Flagler Fjord, 107 miles distance.  They reached the fjord at 1:15 and landed.  They got the planes to withing 50 feet of the beach and waded ashore with supplies.  They deposited, 100 yards from the beach, 200 pounds of food, 100 gallons of gasoline, 5 gallons of oil, a primus stove, a camping outfit, smoke bombs, rifle, ammunition, a gallon of kerosine, and a can of matches.  They left Flagler Fjord at 3:35 p. m. and reached Etah at 5:10 p. m.

To take advantage of fair weather, as soon as the planes were fueled and loaded, they left for the base   to deposit more gasoline and oil.  When they reached Flagler Fjord, they found that during the few hours they had been away the ice had closed in and completely covered their landing place.  They cruised about for some 60 miles looking for a landing place in one of the other fjords, but they were unsuccessful.  The next day they started out again.  They left Etah at 10:45 o the 16^th for Cannon Fjord.  At midnight, they ran into fog and low clouds 105 miles from Etah.  They found that the base they had establish a Flagler Fjord was still blocked with ice.  They found open water at Sawyer Bay and landed at 12:15 a. m.  They were able to beach the planes through a large break in the ice foot.  The weather cleared at 4:15, and they took off, but NA-3 landed after developing a knock.  It could not fly over mountains, so it waited while NA-1 went to investigate Cannon Fjord.  At an altitude of 5,000 feet, NA-1 cleared the mountains shown on chart and unexplored regions of Grinnell Land.  They found uncharted mountains and an unknown frozen lake.  At 5:30, they encountered high peaks that proved impassable.  They returned to Sawyer Bay, and the waiting crew of the NA-3.  The planes unloaded 100 gallons of gasoline, 5 gallons of oil, and some pemmican.  The NA-3 and NA-1 started their return trip at 7:05.  They ran into a gale over Smith Sound and reached Etah at 8:30. On the 17^th the gale finally subsided.  At 8 p. m. some gasoline on the water around the Peary caught fire, endangering the NA-3.  The men set the plane adrift and put out the flaming plane.  There was one forced landing during their Arctic work, but it did not come until they were ready to leave Etah, where there was open water.

By the 20^th, the burned wings on the NA-3 had been replaced and a new engine installed.  They were ready to go again, but MacMillan ordered them to prepare for the return trip.  They were all depressed that they could not continue their work.  However, there was another great adventure ahead of them – the flight over the Greenland ice-cap.  They spent several days making photographic flights, and on the 22^nd, the NA-1 and NA-3 left Etah for Igloodahouny, 50 mile south.  A half mile from Etah, the engine on the NA-3 threw a rod and stopped dead.  It was forced to land and had to be towed back.  It was then put back on the Peary alongside the NA-2.  After landing to see if the crew of the NA-3 was okay, the NA-1 continued to Igloodahouny, where they found a fine beach.  They landed and made camp.  At 3:15, they left for a flight over the Greenland ice-cap.  The visibility was wonderful and they climbed to an altitude of 11,000 feet.  They could see 100 miles in every direction.  As they got further in, it got bitterly cold.  They were flying a little south of east over a part of the ice-cap never explored.  They saw in the direction which they were flying, the ice-cap reached 11,000 feet.  Glaciers near the foot were greatly crevassed, but further up, where they join the ice-cap, they were smooth and firm, but still risky to land upon.  But 50 to 60 miles inland, though a bit rolling, there were flat places where planes with skids could land.  They returned to Igloodahouny literally frozen stiff, but they were proud of the NA-1, for she had flown more than 2,500 miles in the Arctic in every kind of weather, and she appeared to be in just as good condition as when they started.

 

 

The third article in this month’s issue is entitled “History’s Greatest Trek” and was written by Melville Chater, author of “Rediscovering the Rhine,” “Through the Back Doors of Belgium,” “Through the Back Doors of France,” “The Land of the Stalking Death,” etc. in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains fifty-two black-and-white photographs, of which seven are full-page in size.

Ever since the expulsion from Eden, man had been trekking, and folk wanderings were the roots of his history; but with 1922 began what may fairly be called history’s greatest, most spectacular trek – the compulsory intermigration of two million Christians and Moslems across the Aegean Sea.  Slowly gathering impetus through the centuries, of a sudden those human tidal waves reared and burst its shores.  That trek, brought about by the startling recuperation of Turkey after her defeat in the World War and her subsequent triumph over the Greeks in Anatolia, eventually developed into a regulated Exchange of racial minorities, according to specific terms and under the supervision of the League of Nations.  But the initial episodes of the Exchange drama were enacted to the accompaniment of canon and machine gun, and with the settings painted by the flames of the Smyrna holocaust.  The first human derelicts of the Exchange were the Anatolian Greeks, who moved seaward in long files on their 500-mile trek.  Through 1920-21, the flow of deportees, leaving uncounted dead among the mountains and plains of Asia Minor, went on.  For more than two thousand years, inner Anatolia had mothered those descendants of those who followed Alexander the Great into Asia.  A thousand years still earlier, its coast had been Hellenized by pre-Greeks fleeing from their invaded homeland.  Now, the deportees huddled half-naked in seacoast marketplaces, hailing whatever chance vessels might recue them.  And thus, the first 100,000 in history’s greatest trek slowly filtered into Greece.  When the author visited Smyrna in 1922, he little realized that he was watching one of the last dawns to rise over ancient Smyrna.  A few weeks later, that scene of peace and prosperity laid in ashes; upon the Turkish offensive of August 26, the Greek army collapsed on a 150-mile front.

Refugees from everywhere within 150 miles inland herded seaward into Smyrna.  By now, Smyrna broad quay swarmed with perhaps 150,000 exiles.  The American consul general, the staff of the American College, and relief organizations formed the American Disaster Relief Committee for the distribution of bread along the quay.  All day long of September 8 and far into the night, the defeated Greek troops tramped toward the transport, which left under full steam.  Then, the harbor’s entire shipping fled seaward.  A few hours later there came riding into Smyrna a body of Turkish cavalry, while they called “Fear not!”  Before nightfall, the whole division was in, with two infantry divisions following.  A few days after the triumphal entry of the Turks, the army of quay-squatters saw flames dancing in the Armenian quarter a mile and a half away.  The dance became a fiery huddle race, as wind-fanned flames leaped from balcony to balcony across the narrow streets.  Then the race became a hungry conflagration which gulped down that mile-and-a-half breath of city down to where the refugees huddled between fire and sea.  And now, fresh multitudes were disgorged upon them – fleeing Smyrna citizens.  The city had become a Titanic blast furnace.  All afternoon and all night long, the flood of men and beasts debouched from the doomed city upon the quay.  The multitudes outermost ranks, hurled back by its scorched inner ranks, toppled over the jetty’s verge and into the sea.  300,000 souls were crushed together on Smyrna’s quay. By dawn, two-thirds of Smyrna laid blackened and smoldering.  High on Pago’s crest rose the unscathed Turkish quarters’ minarets like symbols of victory.  When, three days later, the conflagration had exhausted itself, 100,000 people withdrew from the quay to the cellars.

For another week, the remaining 200,000 continued to live and die on the quay.  With Smyrna’s bakeries burned, they ate raw flesh torn from animal carcasses and on sea biscuits brought by American sailors.  The clear waters showed a bottom strewn with the drowned, and body fishers were hooking bodies and looting them.  Because of the lack of ship to bear them away, 60,000 refugee families were to be “deported into the interior,” a death sentence.  It was then that the Disaster Committee performed a unique service.  With the Turk’s formal assurance that Greek vessels not flying their flag or docking at the quay would be exempt from seizure, one of the Committee sped by destroyer to Athens, where he rounded up a squadron of rescue ships and returned to Smyrna.  Meanwhile the Turks notified the Allies of its permission to remove all refugees except males from 17 to 45 years.  At the same time, revolution burst over Greece.  On Mitylene and Chios, 75,000 defeated and dissatisfied troops commandeered ships, then embarked for Athens.  In the capital, airplanes were showering manifestoes urging revolution upon the multitudes.  Over Smyrna’s refugees, a Turkish airplane was dropping handbills informing them that those not out of the city withing a week’s time would be deported.  That resulted in the mad stampede of 350,000 people toward the quay-transversing barrier that led to several other such barriers on the railroad pier.  The long-awaited ships were in the harbor. – Greek ships flying the American flag.  Uncounted hundreds were crushed to death or pushed over the quayside to drown, on the first day, when eight ships departed with 43,000 souls aboard.  Six more days at the barriers, where women’s shrieks told of wives being pushed through to liberty and of husbands dragged back for the rope-gang.

With the Turks’ house-to-house search, 100,000 cellar-hiders were added to the diminishing quay population.  That necessitated a time-extension of six days.  By October 8, the evacuation was complete.  Disregarding the great number of deported men, 300,000 people had been evacuated in a fortnight, 180,000 under the supervision of the U. S. Navy.  Estimates of the Smyrna disaster placed the loss of life at 10,000 and a property destruction at $300,000,000.  And thus, the second wave in the great trek passed over Greece.  Even though 400,000 refugees were scattered at Athens, Saloniki, Rodosto, and the Aegean islands, in lots of 50,000 and 100,000, the crisis had not yet occurred.  On September 23, the Allies retransferred to the victorious Turks East Thrace.  That triangular region stretched westward 25 miles from Constantinople, and contained 600,000 Greek and Turkish farmers in about equal proportions.  Bulletins giving a month’s notice of the withdrawal of Greek troops and the entrance of the Turks were to be posted to avoid a panic; but panic was already abroad, as it was in Smyrna.  Within a week of that quayside evacuation, Thracian Greeks saw Greek troops striking camp and marching westward.  And, within hours the villages were deserted.  Village after village, the sight of marching soldiers surprised the people.  Everywhere throughout the plain the word passed, the trek began, the endless caravan lines took form.  Ahead, the sky grew dark.  Rain fell in torrents, washing out roads and swamping fields, as that Christian hegira into Greece moved slowly on.  At Rodosto, 28,000 trekkers descended the cliffs, waiting for rescue ships until they were on the verge of starvation – that while in the deserted interior, their harvest mildewed where it laid.

Through Adrianople, 60,000 poured during the first six days.  Men and women trudging ahead to lighten the fast-miring wagons, bore shotguns; for bandits were ambushing the emigrants.  By day and night, the self-exiled host, which had mounted to 180,000 in twelve days, plodded on toward the marshlands of the ever-rising Maritza.  From the Maritza’s banks, where incoming roads converged upon the Karagach bridge, one could watch the last lap of the flight: by day the desolate prairie, over which, from foreground to skyline, wound e procession, gray under slanting rain; by night the swaying streak of lanterns across black infinitude.  While Smyrna was an “epic of fire,” East Thrace was an “epic of rain.”  And thus, 300,000 crossed the swollen Maritza and strewed its western banks; and thus, the third wave in the great trek, now mounting to 700,000, passed across the frontiers of Greece.  Already another, a mere wavelet of 25,000, had gathered in Constantinople and along the Dardanelles while the Nationalists’ army was wheeling northward from the conquest of Smyrna.  Arriving at the capital, their leader disbanded the city government and took charge.  That night, Stamoul’s minarets were festively illuminated, while Turkish crowds shouted, “Down with the monarchy!  Long live new Turkey!”  And, thereafter whoso among the Greeks could conveniently depart from the capital did so.  When Friday came, with the Sultan’s progress to prayer, the waiting crowds were turned away, for overnight, Mohammed VI had fled to Malta.  The Nationalist force entered the city and ascended Galata hill among a sea of fezzes, while sirens shrilled to Europe and Asia the news that the Turks were back in Constantinople.  Almost immediately, a Nationalist edict, posted throughout Asia Minor, gave “permission” to all non-Moslems to leave by November 30.

Upon that notification, the remaining Christian population of inner Anatolia arose en masse and fled for the Black Sea coast.  Almost immediately, 40,000 women, children, and infirmed – their men being held as prisoners of war – swamped the seaport of Samsun, and within three weeks, 250,000 more were tramping the snowy roads toward Trebizond, Sinope, and Ineboli.  With ship-deserted quays, as at Smyrna, and with the Black Sea ports glutted with sidewalk-sleeping paupers, the gap was finally bridged by the arrival of Greek ships flying the Stars and Stripes and convoyed by American destroyers.  By January 1923, some 80,000 refugees, one-tenth of this, the fourth and most formidable wave in the great trek, had reached Greece, where the never-ending influx at last became insupportable.  Athens slammed her doors, protesting “further expulsions.”  The alternative proved to be disused barracks and barrack stables near Constantinople as the dumping ground for 100,000 Anatolian Greeks, where they died at a rate of 300 a day.  Meanwhile, behind Greece’s closed doors?  A small country of no great natural wealth, she had just emerged from 10 years of mobilization and war, culminating in a recent defeat, only to be plunged into refugeeism on a colossal scale.  Greece had received, within a year of the fall of Smyrna, 1,250,000 exiles.  That 25% leap in her population meant that for every four citizens one homeless and usually destitute person had been added.  And what of the land itself?  In Old Greece, as of 1912, more than three-fifths of its total area was uncultivated and useless.  Her territory had expanded to 53,000 square miles, only one-fifth of that was under cultivation or pasture in 1923.  Because of mountains and swampland, the major portion of Greece laid unredeemable.

Greece depended largely upon other countries for grain, and her total cereal production for 1923 was scarcely more than half the amount needed.  By now, Athens and Saloniki were surrounded by tented plains resembling classic engravings of besieged cities.  Daily from those canvas-covered slums came women to sell their belonging, until all they had brought out of Asia Minor had gone, for handfuls of course grain and they became recruits in the national dole-line of 800,000 people.  Then Nature’s terrible correctives appeared.  Instead of a birth rate, which had dropped to zero, typhus at 36 centers and smallpox at 60 centers throughout the country’s 800 refugee locations yielded by January 1923, a death rate of 1,000 daily.  To avert the horrors of a plague-swept Greece, a quarantine station was established off the coast at Makronisi Island by an American organization, while other American agencies were in the field with food relief, medical assistance, and orphanage work.  The Greek Government itself, up to November 1923, when the League of Nations assumed the problem, had established 72,000 families in Macedonia, providing them with draft animals and seed grain.  Meanwhile, the remaining three-quarters of Greece’s mushroom-like increase continued to carry on.  From being parked in tents, schools, churches, and theaters, the exiles advanced in some cases to constructing suburbs for themselves.  At Athens, upon learning that some nearby mud flats could be squatted upon, 3,000 women, children, and old folk swarmed off to build themselves a village.  Soon miniature shops were selling nuts and dried figs, cobblers were working on rough benches, and girls were knotting and clipping at rug-making.  In a few short months that trek to mud tenements was accomplished.

A document was signed on January 30, 1923, entitled “A Convention concerning the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations.”  It had come about by Greece’s insistence that Turkey accept 450,000 Moslems resident in the kingdom to make room for the former’s million or more refugees.  Greece welcomed the Exchange as an economic necessity.  Turkey also welcomed the Exchange as an economic necessity, though in quite a different sense.  For two and a half centuries, her Crescent had been diminishing.  During the last hundred years, she had relinquished rule over twenty wide-flung territories.  Within the last thirty years, her area had shrunk from 1,500,000 to 350,000 square miles, and her population from 38,750,000 to 5,000,000.  Yet she favored the complete withdrawal of non-Moslems from Asia Minor.  That was because foreigners accumulated much of the wealth but never became part of the social organism.  So, Turkey cleaned house.  She would apply the radical remedy of eliminating several millions, representing her wealth and commerce, and would build up from her own people corresponding elements wherewith to form a Turkish middle class as the center of a homogeneous Turkish nation.  In that sense, the Exchange was for her, as for Greece, an economic necessity.  Here was an historical milestone on Turkey-in-Europe’s long road of 1453-1923.  No less was the Exchange Convention an international milestone.  It had its predecessors in population exchanges between the Turks and Bulgars in 1913, and between the Bulgars and the Greeks in 1919, but differed from those in being compulsory and being conducted under the auspices of the League of Nations.  Greeks established at Constantinople prior to October 30^th, 1918 and Moslem inhabitants of West Thrace were exempt.

The exemption clause, which rendered the Exchange incomplete to the extent of 650,000 people, sprang out of the liquidation difficulties – the Constantinople Greeks’ property amounted to many millions of dollars; hence the compromise to permit those and the West Thracian Moslems to remain undisturbed.  The temporary crisis which arose from differing interpretations of the phrase “established at Constantinople” seemed on the way to solution by the voluntary departure of large numbers of Greeks from the Turkish capital.  It was safe to say that history did not contain a more extraordinary document.  If the retroactive clause was applied, 3,000,000 people were exiled and readopted by the stroke of a pen.  Even if regarded as a voluntary trek, the movement was without parallel in the history of emigration.  The highest human tide that ever reached the U. S. shores in one year (1907) was less than the Greek-Turkish shift by 750,000 people.  The document was difficult to execute.  Those difficulties were lessened by the fact that the Exchange was based on religion, not race.  Due to five centuries of Turkish domination in Greece, it was difficult to determine an individual’s racial status.  To handle the Exchange a Mixed Commission, with 11 sub-commissions, was set up, with the Commission in Constantinople and the sub-commissions in Macedonia, West Thrace, Crete, and Asia Minor.  They handled the 450,000 Moslems and the 150,000 Greeks still left in Anatolia.  The other arm, the Refugee Settlement Commission, in Saloniki and Athens, was charged with settling all Greek refugees, including the 150,000 yet to arrive, upon lands assigned by the Greek Government.  The Lausanne Treaty, as it was called, was not ratified until July 1923.

During the week of October 15-21, 8,000 Moslems were evacuated from Mitylene to Aivali, in Asia Minor, in exchange for the same number of Greeks from Samsun to Saloniki.  To everyone’s surprise, that opening of the Exchange was pulled off with perfect harmony.  Believers in Hellenophobia-Turkophobia would have stared in disbelief at the sight of the Mitylene Greeks spreading farewell meals for their departing neighbors.  At Aivali, their “Ellis Island” of entry, interpreters speaking the familiar Greek and the unfamiliar Turkish installed them temporarily in waiting houses.  Later, they were distributed throughout the country according to trades and subject to a Turkish regulation limiting any village’s increase to one-fifth of the population.  While family units were preserved, the Mitylene communities were dissolved forever.  In November, the Refugee Settlement Commission began its program in Greece.  A month later, the Mixed Commission branches were preparing lists of exchangeable Moslems for by agreement, in consequence of Greece’s glut of refugees, evacuation of the Moslems was to precede by six months that of the Anatolian Greeks.  Throughout a year, Saloniki’s long quay beheld the mournful pageant of departing Moslems.  Notwithstanding their new government’s preparations to receive and care for them, many of the Moslems arriving in Asia Minor suffered more than the exchanged Greeks.  Some of the Former found themselves in a war-devastated region, others in villages whose best houses were taken and the poorer ones dismantled for firewood.  Unreckoned tens of thousands died by malaria or exposure, while multitudes of disillusioned families declined the secondhand pick of farms offered them and became wanderers.

By May 1, 1924, 250.000 Moslems had been evacuated; then the westbound flow of 150,000 Greeks set in, those moving simultaneously with the remaining 200,000 Moslems until, eight months later, the Exchange was complete.  In that mechanized exiling of 600,000 souls the individual heartbreak was lost in the all-embracing swirl of things.  Only here and there a glance, a gesture, a fragment of talk, revealed the undercurrents of that great Christian-Moslem drama.  Striking a fresh balance sheet early in 1924 and included therein the exchanged Greeks still to come, the Refugee Settlement Commission found itself to be the officially adopted father of 1,136,600 immigrants, of whom three-fifths were agriculturalist.  Against that tremendous debit, the Commission held in Macedonia and West Trace state-transferred lands totaling 1,250,000 acres for colonization purposes and as loan guarantees.  Those were pledged as against temporary financial advances until the Refugee Settlement Loan placed $50,000,000 at the Commission’s disposal.  Colonization had to start from the ground up, with surveying and motor plowing, for neither land maps nor boundaries existed in Macedonia, and the soil had been so long untilled that animal power was insufficient to break it.  Whether it was a question of houses, plows, draft animals, or grain, the Commission, when suppling its gigantic family, had to think in terms of hundreds of thousands.  When houses were not available, the colonist erected their own according to whatever the land offered.  The undrained, mosquito-breeding marshes brought malaria, and the gargantuan family had to be dosed with 15 tons of quinine.  Drought came, and 50,000 cultivators must be rehabilitated with a $1,000,000 worth of grain and forage.  Any misfortune always struck wholesale.

Meantime, the Commission’s civic work of settling city-dwellers, based on two rooms to a family, went on in those stucco suburbs, which eventually would change the appearance of every major city in Greece.  The urbans, with their instinct for trade, performed wonders in the way of self-rehabilitation, and before long were paying nominal room rentals and bidding competitively on shop rentals, with the Commission as landlord.  The Commission would continue in its part-paternal, part-directorial, part-creditor function until such time as the final settling occurred between the two governments, several million people, and itself.  Turkey, one-fourth larger than Texas, was left with a population of 5,000.000, of whom four-fifths were Turks.  Her naturally rich, but undeveloped, territory contained only 15 people to the square mile, yet, at last, she had a national homogeneity upon which to base her future.  Except for the Constantinople Greeks, whose fate lied with the League of Nations, her religious and racial minority problems had been wiped out.  Greece, with less than one-fifth of Turkey’s area, emerged with a population exceeding the latter’s for the first time by 1,500,000 people and averaging 123 to the square mile.  If the last traces of classic Ionia had vanished from Asia, the motherland, in receiving back the descendants of her Pilgrim Fathers after three thousand years, acquired a sturdy, invigorating stock of grain producers and, moreover, of industrial transplanters, who had brought with them the crafts of silk-weaving, rug-making, and ceramics.  As to the cost of history’s greatest trek, conservative estimates place it at 3000,000 lives lost by disease and exposure and at an expenditure mounting beyond $100,000,000.  By the winter of 1924, the human tidal waves of two years’ duration had subsided.

 

At the bottom of the last page of the last article in this issue (Page 590) 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 January issue redirected, the Society needed to know by December first.

 

The fourth item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “Sun-Painted Scenes in the Near East” and has Gervais Courtellemont in the byline.  It is not an article, but a set of “32 Autochromes Lumiere,” or color photographs.  These photos appear on sixteen plates, two per plate, which are embedded within the third article.  The plates are numbered I through XVI in Roman numerals and represent pages 541 through 556 of the issue.

A list of the caption titles for each color photograph, with their plate number, is as follows:  Note: Plates XI and XIV have one caption for both photos respectively.

• “They Must Begin School All Over Again” – Plate I
• “The First-born in His Cradle” – Plate I
• “The Fort of Rumeli Hissar on the European Side of the Bosporus” – Plate II
• “In the Golden Horn, Port of Stanboul” – Plate II
• “The Sweet Waters of Asia” – Plate III
• “In Stanboul’s Residential Quarter” – Plate III
• “The Hour of Rest” – Plate IV
• “A Street Scene in Brusa” – Plate IV
• “Mosques and Minarets of Brusa” – Plate V
• “Three Little Maids from Islamland” – Plate V
• “Galata Quay, Opposite Seraglio Point: Constantinople” – Plate VI
• “The Tomb of Murad II at Brusa” – Plate VI
• “Cypress-sentineled Brusa” – Plate VII
• “A Shop in Konia” – Plate VII
• “The Inner Courtyard of a Turkish Home” – Plate VIII
• “Giving Her Household Instructions for the Day” – Plate VIII
• “A Child of Damascus” – Plate IX
• “Melons and Pumpkins for Sale” – Plate IX
• “Resting on the Way from the Fountain” – Plate X
• “The Coffee Bearer” – Plate X
• “Syrian Fruit Vendors Displaying Grapes of Damascus and Melons of Hama” – Plate XI
• “The Court of a Mosque of a Tekkeh, or Monastery for Dervishes” – Plate XII
• “In the Courtyard of a Syrian Home” – Plate XII
• “A Sweetmeat Party on the Roof of a Mussulman Home” – Plate XIII
• “Ready for a Desert Journey” – Plate XIII
• “Christian Women of Palestine Who Were Formerly Turkish Subjects” – Plate XIV
• “A Young Woman of Bethlehem” – Plate XV
• “An Arabian Emir of Damascus” – Plate XV
• “Olive Dealers of Damascus” – Plate XVI
• “Christian Women of Damascus” – Plate XVI

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Scott T. Shier]

* the Arctic (North Polar regions) map supplement for this issue is one of my favorites.