100 Years Ago: May 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: May 1925

 

This is the one hundred twenty-fourth installment in my series of abridgements of National Geographic Magazines when they reach the centennial of their publication.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Through the Back Doors of Belgium” and was written by Melville Chater, author of “Through the Back Doors of France,” “Zigzagging Through Sicily,” and “The Land of the Stalking Death,” in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article has the internal subtitle: “Artist and Author Paddle for Three Weeks Along 200 Miles of Low-Country Canals in a Canadian Canoe.”  The article contains thirty-nine black-and-white photographs; nine of which are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of the Netherlands with the author’s route on page 507.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

At last, a tourist-glutted train disgorged the author and his traveling companion into the four-o’clock gray of a Paris dawn.  An all-night coffeehouse sheltered them until sunrise.  At dawn began the hectic week of two American who, in addition to seeing the Olympic sports, were trying to catch up with Paris after several years’ absence.  One day, in a storage warehouse, they both looked at the 16-foot canoe that took them across Brittany in 1922 and got the same idea.  [See “Through the Back Doors of France: A Seven Weeks’ Voyage Through Brittany and the Chateau Country,” July 1923, National Geographic Magazine.]  They both had tasted the delights of back-doors travel – that vagabond realm where footpaths and canals replaced railways and rivers, and where Europe’s “Hotel Splendide” dwindled into “The Fisherman’s Inn.”  For of such was the Back Doors Country.  Belgium was decided upon.  They drew lots to decide a starting point and selected Bruges.  Within 48 hours they were enroute to Flanders, with their canoe, the Nageoma, shipped a day ahead of them.  Along the Paris to Bruges line, it was obvious from the intensive cultivation that they had entered Belgium.  Industry, in field and factory, was the keynote of that compact little country.  One-third larger than Massachusetts, with twice the population, Belgium, with 7,500,000 people, was the most densely populated State in Europe.  One could not travel more than 175 miles without leaving the country.  Bruges welcomed them from the Grand’ Place with an air-tingling succession of early Flemish tunes, flung abroad by 49 bronze tongues in the old, brown Belfry.  It was the night of the national holiday.  Throngs of sightseers were packing the hotels.  They were content with a furnished room on the Belfry square.

Dinner over, the hurried to the Quai Long, where a water festival was in progress.  Down the lamp-festooned canal slowly slid a procession of great barges bearing pageant groups.  Bruges museums were ransacked for arms and costumes to make the Middle Ages breath again.  The city fathers, historic figures, and a wedding feast all floated past.  The rich spectacle dwindled into a tailpiece of patriotic floats and red fire.  Next morning they began ransacking the shops for camping equipment.  They came across a map of Bruges showing its canals, the largest of which enclosed the city in a great circle, with a branch showing the way to Ghent.  They departed canal-ward with the canoe on a hand-truck.  They launched – and instantly the Nageoma developed leaks.  “She’s dried out, needs water,” said the author’s friend.  “All aboard for Ghent and all way station!”  The sylvan canal curved away all afternoon.  Ghent did not appear.  Meanwhile, the leaks got worse.  The author’s friend insisted it just needed water, and water came in the form of a downpour.  An hour later, with darkness deepening toward dinnertime, they saw lights.  They jumped ashore and overturned the canoe on the bank.  Thinking it was Ghent they found out it was still Bruges.  They had followed the encircling canal and turned up on the opposite side from their lodging.  After a day’s drying-out, they made a fresh start.  They made the canal side through the “Street of Geese.”  As they glided past a fork in the canal, they spied an old crone who seemed to be watching them.  They call out if that was the way to Ghent, but the figure was mute.  It was a carved effigy, dressed in peasant clothes.  By noon, they were well into what the French called “little country,” gliding along between Flanders fields, where cornflowers mingled with poppies.  Then came Eight-o’clock Town.

Across the canal they glimpsed the red roofs of its houses clumped about a gigantic windmill on a green ridge.  They went ashore.  Two rows of dollhouses, shuttered, a sleeping tobacco shop, a deserted dram-house, a lantern light on the quaint canal bridge, and overall, a peace.  They named the place Eight-o’clock Town and declared it the capital of the Back Door Country.  To have roused that twilit idyl with cries of hunger would have been sacrilegious.  So, they dined on canned goods, stretched the canoe’s tent from stem to stern, and slept aboard.  Next morning, the entire population of Eight-o’clock Town, including the cows, were along the canal bank staring at the “baby canal boat.”  On they went, spreading sensation in village after village.  Farm hands gaped.  Graybeards stared.  Small boys hastily hitched draft dogs to wagons and raced madly after them.  They would not have reached Ghent before nightfall, but for an idea the author’s friend had.  He threw a line to the boys, who instantly grinned their comprehension.  With three or four dog carts in tandem and the Nageoma hitched behind, they hurtled Ghent-ward at a dashing speed.  Hardly had St. Bavon’s Cathedral towers lifted across the rooftops when they spotted a precursor to the town, a canal-side smithy, whose ancient swing sign portrayed 24 types of shoes.  They had paddled through Ghent’s complex waterways and were looking for a place to safely leave their canoe, when some racing shells shot past, a boathouse pennant fluttered, and a cheery voice invited them to use the Royal Club Nautique.  So, they store their canoe in the club’s garage then drove through town to a quaint inn, which looked out upon a row of shops built into the outer walls of a great gothic church.  They were in the ancient quarter of the town.

They asked if it was an old inn and were told no – it was built in the 13^th century, so not particularly old.  On bustling, up-to-date Ghent, it was difficult to realize the great age of some of the buildings, which were still used for business, trade, and pleasure.  That the Flemish were excellent trenchermen was apparent in their street names and art galleries.  Ghent’s roll of famous men was a long one from the van Eyck brothers to Jacob van Artevelde.  The heart of Ghent was its great bell, Roland, whose vibrations were the pulse of centuries.  It was cast in 1314 and recast in 1659.  It was named for Charlemagne’s famous steed.  [See: “The Singing Towers of Holland and Belgium,” March 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  Though charming, Ghent was not a mere dream of olden glory; to the contrary, the 26 islets into which the Scheldt, Lys, and canal branches divided the city, included many miles of wharfage.  It was a port of call for 19 shipping lines, handling two million tons of vessels.  Its spinning mills employed 20,000, and its trade in flower seeds and bulbs was worldwide.  Ghent was at once a medieval picture and a modern mart.  The travelers’ introduction to the Crossbow Guild was through the happy accident of stumbling upon a half-hidden courtyard.  One by one contestants shot darts at small targets of clay.  Weekly archery tournaments were common throughout Flanders.  Regretfully, they reloaded the Nageoma and twisted their way in and out of many-towered Ghent to the great double-locks which held back the tidal Scheldt.  There laid several steam barges awaiting the ebb hour.  They looked like a minnow among a school of whales.  Mile by mile they drifted, rather than paddled, toward Antwerp, while periodically some red-roofed village lifted above the green plain.

Toward sunset the author’s friend brought out his ukulele and serenaded the Scheldt with jazz.  The skipper of a steam tug slowed down his engine to listen.  The he warned them that the tide was turning and that there was no anchorage for another eight miles.  They hitched behind the tug and were towed to anchorage on Termonde.  They accepted the skipper’s further offer to tow them to Antwerp on the succeeding ebb, a 1 a. m.  Hardly had they closed their eyes when the tugs anchor chains rattled, and they were off through the pitchy darkness.  But suddenly the rush of water alongside ceased; the tugs lights dimmed in the distance; the tow line had snapped.  They were headed seaward on the onrushing tide in the dark, with shoals and barges to contend with.  Finally, they were able to tie up to what they thought was a stranded hulk.  It began to rain heavily.  Soon, a voice yelled at them that it was a ferry and to untie from her anchor chain.  They plowed through mud flats and reached shore, then waited for sunrise.  They caught a dropping tide which swept them along the Scheldt to its junction with the Rupel River.  There, they landed in the quaint remoteness of a red-roofed townlet, which should have been called Painters’ Paradise.  It was Rupelmonde.  A statue in the square caught their attention.  It was of Gerardus Mercator, the distinguished mapmaker, famous for the “Mercator’s Projection.”  A few hours later, the Nageoma was lying snugly in one of the many ship basins at Antwerp.  Shipping and art, throughout the centuries, had been the twin keynotes of the great port on the Scheldt.  Decimated by Spanish oppression, ruined afresh by 1830’s revolutions, hampered by trade rivals, and crippled once more during the World War, Antwerp always rose anew from commercial disaster.

Antwerp had come back from the war to the extent that it handled 14,000,000 tons of imports and exports per year, which was 28% less than before the war, while her annual passenger embarkations were 65,000, or one-half of what they were in 1913.  That Antwerp expected her phoenixlike history to repeat itself was shown in the installations which were doubling her port capacity.  Antwerp’s tradition of wealth was evident; from the paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, etc., to the diamond-cutting workshops.  Stately boulevards, rich art galleries, tangled side streets, flowers everywhere, and many humble cafes and bars, gave the pair the last impressions as they were carried up the swift-flowing Scheldt.  They regained the Rupel River and locked through into the Brussels Maritime Canal.  An enlargement of a 15^th century cut; it represented Belgium’s latest word in canal construction.  As they neared Willebroeck, late one Sunday evening, they glimpsed ahead what looked like a Venetian fete.  The long quay was crammed with huge, illuminated canal boats whose lanterns lit the mirroring water, and holiday makers danced along the canal and across its low bridges.  It was Sunday night, a bargeman’s holiday.  Willebroeck’s upper windows were dark, for its 12,000 people were all in the garishly lit streets.  They had been told that no permits were needed to use the Belgian canals, but the lock keepers at Willebroeck, demanded a document stating the canoe’s displacement.  With its steady stream of big barges, the Maritime Canal floated some 60,000,000 kilometric tons (a unit of one ton traveling one kilometer) per year, between Brussels and the sea.  Motorboats gave a fast delivery service between Belgium’s capital and its important towns.  Goods were loaded on seagoing vessels in Brussels for delivery in London.

The Terneuzen-Ghent canal was Belgium’s deep-sea connection for exportation of cotton goods, while the Hansweert Canal carried barges of 2,000 tons from Antwerp up the Rhine to Alsace and Switzerland.  Of her 1,600 kilometers of navigable waterways, 1,000 kilometers were canals.  Her interior water traffic over all routs exceeded annually 1 2/3 billion kilometric tons.  They solved the problem of dodging barges by hitching behind one.  The skipper’s wife invited them aboard for breakfast.  While she cooked it, her two little girls asked where they had come from in their little green boat.  “From America,” was the reply.  The eldest child asked. “Maybe you’d like to have your shirts washed.”  It was a Monday, the general cleaning day on canal boats as on shore.  On every barge, washing on stretched lines flapped in the wind.  Women were at scrubbing boards; the men repainted the sides of their craft.  Small boys were burnishing the decks, and little girls were watering window boxes.  Everyone worked; even the dog was hitched up and harnessed to the towrope.  The slowest barges sole motive power was the family’s biceps.  The sight of ocean freighters coaling at some nearby docks revealed that the Maritime Canal had brought them to Brussels.  They slipped their tow, stored the canoe at a hospitable boat club, then headed for the town.  At Brussels, one either wandered among the “hill’s” modern beauty spots or in the older “valley,” where a blaze of smart shops, radiated from the Grand’ Place – the city’s medieval masterpiece of architecture.  Brussels was as cosmopolitan as its gigantic neighbor on the Seine, Paris.  Quaint old ladies tended their garden spots of cut flowers from end to end of the gabled Grand’ Place.  Here were the guildhalls of the mercers, skippers, grease merchants, printers, bakers, brewers, and butchers.

The upper town contained, in Notre dame du Sablon, a reminder of the guilds’ wealth.  That of the Crossbowmen erected the original 14^th-century edifice; while the adjoining square had its rails topped by 48 bronze guildsmen, each bearing his appropriate tool.  Our state pensions and our fraternal societies’ mutual-aid schemes were legitimate descendants of the medieval guild’s provisions for supporting its members in sickness, old age, and poverty.  The guild helped to develop a civic consciousness and supplied a ready-made organization for rallying with weapons and trade banners.  The Grand’ Place of Brussels had often run with the blood of its guild leaders and patriotic burgomasters.  Belgium struggled for self-government from the Roman conquest to 1830.  Under Rome for 500 years; portioned between France and Germany in the 9^th century; divided into countships and duchies under the feudal system; successively governed as “the Spanish Netherlands” and “the Austrian Netherlands” for another four centuries; incorporated with revolutionary France; merged with Holland into “the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” that small, much quarreled-over people miraculously survived every form of exploitation, maladministration, and political experiment.  When, in 1830, revolution came to Paris, the final revolt started which transformed a vague, foreign-governed section of the Netherlands into a political entity named Belgium.  In the following year, a national congress elected a king from the house of Saxe-Coburg, and the Powers recognized Belgium’s sovereignty as a neutral state.  The many named battlefields indicated that, for centuries, the Low Countries had been the scene of international conflicts.  That, of course, continued throughout the World War.

In Flanders, the dog was more than a pet.  He was a soldier-policeman-laborer.  They had heard of the dog’s war exploits; witnessed him harnessed, drawing milk, washing, and garbage.  He did night-patrol duty in city cemeteries.  He even went to boarding school to train for service in some municipal police force.  From Bussels, it was but a step to Louvain.  Remembering the charred war wreck that it was, the author could hardly believe his eyes.  The scrupulously trim squares and boulevards, where rose acre upon acre of quaintly gabled houses, was the scene of placid domesticity.  From Brussels southward, the Back Door Country grew hourly more charming, more remote from the industrial beehive which was Belgium.  Now at last Flander’s flatness gave way rising ridges, between which wandered a lovely tree-vistaed stream that their map called a mere canal.  In that fishermen’s realm, where yarn-spinners sat about sand-strewn taprooms, the pair noticed two posters, one advertising a fishing competition, and the other, a canal-boat picnic for singles from a matrimonial agency.  An old villager pointed to the posters and snarled sourly: “Fishing!  And marriage!   Same thing – never know what you’re going to hook!”  Possibly due to the matrimonial picnickers lunching so superbly that the Flemish inns, so far, had seemed to be cleaned out of food.  It was not like their trip through Franch, where they were well fed.  The author said “seemed” cleaned out, because it was merely a matter of prodding the innkeeper.  There was always something edible.  When they penetrated the Walloon country it was quite different.  There, instead of blue-eyed, flaxen-haired Flemings, they found the warm-faced, sprightly descendant of the Latin, speaking a tongue vaguely resembling French, quick to anticipate a traveler’s needs, and bubbling with questions.

It was at Virginal, a clump of little houses on the canal side, that they made the acquaintance with the Walloons in the person of an innkeeper’s wife.  Her cheery smile radiated through that humble establishment, half shop, half inn, from the time they arrived until they departed.  Nothing upset her.  She gladly bicycled for 20 minute to get them beefsteaks; she was not phased when they appeared at her threshold, next sunrise, like two drowned rats after their canoe capsized.  That happened when they tried to crawl aboard from a treacherous bank in pitch darkness.  The canoe settled on the bottom of the canal. For a half an hour they stood waist-deep fishing out their gear and tossing it ashore; then two hours carrying them to the inn.  Sunrise found them surrounded by a slush of blankets, pillows, clothing, guidebooks, cameras, and suitcases, all juicy as seaweed.  Then the innkeeper’s wife appeared and fell to work.  In a half hour she had thawed then out with coffee, in another half hour she had their effects clustered around cook-stove of spread out in the sun; and meanwhile she had made up two beds and told them to go to sleep, which they did.  When they awoke, their equipment was bone-dry and neatly piled, their torn garments had been repaired, and Madame was peeling potatoes while humming.  Draw a line westward from Vise through Brussels to Calais, and you would have approximately demarked Belgium’s two native languages, Flemish on the north and Walloon on the south.  Flemish was very near to Dutch, but Walloon was so far diverged from French that it was almost unintelligible to Frenchmen.  More than 3,000,000 Belgians spoke only Flemish, and nearly 3,000,000 spoke only Walloon or French, the kingdom’s official and upper-class language.

Even so countryfied a strip of canal as that which led them on to Charleroi exhibited Belgium’s idealization of the principle of industry.  There was no hamlet without its poster advertising current industrial fairs.  Another national poster, seen everywhere, showed the postwar spirit of Belgium.  It ran: “Save the franc by avoiding all waste of bread!”  The national precept of putting one’s back into it was illustrated by the small privately owned barges that they often passed.  Each was drawn by a mother and her children, all wearing leather chest bands attacked to the towline, while the father steered at the barge’s helm.  With the increasing press of traffic toward Charleroi, those hand-drawn barges, making perhaps two miles an hour, were their bane.  Whenever they beat a barge to a lock, they had to wait for the barge to get there; whenever a barge beat them, the locksmith did not wait for them.  Belgium’s black country loomed up in the form of endless wharfage, gangs of pit boys, forests of smokestacks, and an Alpine-like slag heaps, their sky-cutting peaks continually augmented by dump cars running on aerial railway tracks.  Lathes buzzed, chains clanged, factories and mineshafts roared – such was the voice of Charleroi.  The presence in that district of seventy odd coal seams had made Charleroi, with 40,000 iron, coal, and glass workers, the center of Belgium’s industrial region.  For an hour they inched through the grim, giant realm of King Steel and King Coal, before gaining the town.  It was a bustling town; its shop windows crammed with evidence of prosperity; its one old-world feature, the canal, was flanked by cobbled quays.  The lockkeeper told them that there was no place safe, it was a bad town full of thieves.  He told them to go on to Namur.  They asked if there were towns in between and was told there were agglomerations.

For another hour or two, the sight of coal dumps and factory hives accompanied them far into the countryside.  Ten showers and a couple of downpours – a fair day’s work for Belgian weather – were recorded in their logbook for those eight hours, during which they looked in vain for an “agglomeration.”  Meanwhile they pushed along under the high bank, with the Nageoma so closely curtained that nothing was exposed except two dipping paddles.  Suddenly, a towline swept against their bow, almost upsetting them.  They threw back the curtain and yelled.  That upset the barge horse, who reared and rattled the towline.  The man disengaged the tow line from their bow, then blindfolded the horse with a gunny sack.  Ha apologized for the horse saying it was a war horse who was blown up by a mine and never been the same.  They made a red-roofed “agglomeration” some miles beyond the shell-shocked horse.  They went ashore but found no lodging for the night.  The told their plight to a man they met on the village street.  He offered them a meal and a place to sleep.  The man’s wife cooked and served them, and they dined voraciously.  Then they were shown into a barrack, like a garage, adjoining their friend’s house.  It had two bare cots.  They slept like the dead.  Next morning, at parting, their friend asked if they minded if he put them down as homeless.  Puzzled, they agreed.  Then he explained that he was the constable and that they slept in the jail.  By that afternoon they were rounding the fortified heights where the Sambre and Meuse swept together at Namur; and there they ran headfirst into the unexpected.  The sunlit Meuse was out strung in lanes of gaily bedecked motorboats.  Parasols waved, binoculars were leveled, and cheers resounded as rows of racing shells shot by.  They had stumbled into the Front Doors Country!

They had weathered some three weeks, or 200 miles, of purely picnicking existence, and the author doubted if two dirtier, more disreputable-looking canoeists ever snuck so guiltily across the pathway of a smart regatta.  But at the clubhouse float, instead of being arrested as river pirates, there stood the president waiting to welcome them!  “You’re crossing Belgium in a canoe – I know,” he said cheerily.  “The club at Ghent wrote us to expect you.  You’ll room in the concierge’s house.  Shower baths in the locker-room.  Dinner at seven, dancing at nine.  Make yourselves quite at home.”  Shower baths, a banquet, dancing – that after weeks of rough-and-ready gypsy-ing!     sudden issuance from Back Doors Country through the front doors of civilization left them dazed but far from disinclined.  As they shed their old clothes, casting off the memory of past discomforts, the author’s friend chuckled: “Some joke!  If they only knew we slept in jail last night!”  That evening, when they had talked long about Belgium with the genial clubmen, one of them said the final word on the subject.  They had remarked that never once during their three weeks’ cruise had they heard the War discussed.  He replied: “And you won’t.  For us Belgians there’s only one motto: Forget yesterday, work for tomorrow!”  And the word typified Belgium, the little, compact anvil, symbol of industry, quick to forge a valorous sword, as quick to beat it into the pruning hook of peace.

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Ferns as a Hobby” and was written by William R. Maxon, Associate Curator, U. S. National Herbarium.  It is comprised of two sections, the article proper and a series of names and descriptions of the various ferns.  Together with the third item listed on this month’s cover it comprises another in the series of field guides.  Twenty-nine black-and-white photographs are dispersed throughout the article and list.  Nine of these photos are full-page in size.

In the remarkable awakening of interest in Nature study during the prior three decades, ferns, oddly enough, had not received the general attention that had been accorded to other groups of plants and animals in the U. S.  Books had been written about them, yet the study of ferns, and particularly their cultivation had not attained anything like the widespread interest that existed in England, where, for more than a half century, the study and culture of ferns had amounted virtually to a hobby.  Perhaps the lag in interest on our part was due to a feeling that were hard to study and to grow; yet they were not more difficult than most plants.  In their unique attractiveness, ferns exerted an appeal that was almost universal.  Truly, in beauty of leaf, they were unsurpassed.  Grace and symmetry, absolute perfection to the smallest detail in regularity of form, were their outstanding characteristics.  Their variety was infinite.  In the main, ferns were of feathery aspect.  Thus, the term “fernlike” came to be used in botany to signify a feathery quality of foliage suggestive of ferns.  At this point, the author says a word concerning “ferns” that were not ferns.  The “Asparagus Fern,” for example, was no fern at all, but a vinelike species of asparagus.  In delicacy of its foliage, that plant was so notably fernlike that popular misuse of the word was readily understood.  So also, the Sweet-fern, a flowering plant of the bayberry family, whose leaves were coarsely and deeply lobed.  A large and wonderfully diverse group, with a long and ancient lineage far before the flowering plants, ferns had barely managed to win against heavy odds in the age-old evolutionary struggle.  Geographically, they range from well within the Arctic Circle to the lowland jungles and fog-clothed mountain forests of the equatorial regions.

In form and habit, they vary from tiny mosslike plants, a fraction of an inch in diameter, to towering tree ferns that lent distinctive character to great stretches of tropical rain forest.  The structure of present-day ferns, their mode of living, their geographic distribution and soil preferences, their variability, and even their relationships, we knew with some certainty.  But of the kinds that had flourished and become extinct, we shall never have a complete record – only signposts here and there in the form of fossil remains long buried.  Nevertheless, there were many volumes written about the early forms of ferns and fernlike plants that flourished a hundred million years ago, when they dominated the land vegetation.  Developing probably from some simple algal form, ferns had their origin far back in the Paleozoic era.  They were among the first and the simplest of larger land plants and were extremely abundant during the Carboniferous periods.  Their solidified remains make up in large part the coal of 1925, but only a few of the fern families that contributed to those deposits had living representatives in 1925.  Among those were the Flowering Ferns, a small but distinct widespread group, and the Marattiaceae, now few in species and confined wholly to tropical regions.  By the middle of the Mesozoic era, all the present families of ferns had come into existence, but apart from one, embracing the “true ferns,” they had since waned steadily in number of species and in importance as the flowering plants had become more numerous and abundant.  Of living ferns there were in 1925, not far from 8,000 known species, comprised in 12 families and about 175 genera.  Naturally, the ferns of long-settled temperate regions were best known, yet even in Europe, distinct new species were occasionally discovered.

In all North America north of Mexico, about 250 species were known, and the number was steadily growing, as botanical exploration went on in the Southwest and in Florida.  Notwithstanding their apparent abundance in favored northern localities, it was in truly tropical regions that ferns reached their highest development as to the number of species, for there only were combined the prime requisites: heavy rain and equitable temperatures throughout the year, with wide range in elevation.  Far from being rooted in the ground, as in the North, more than two-thirds of the ferns of tropical forests were likely to be found on trees.  Fern-collecting was thus not without its difficulties.  Instead of a scant 20 or 30 species to be collected in a given northern locality, here, in an area of equal size, were actually 200 or 300.  The island of Jamaca, botanically well explored, boasted nearly 500 kinds of ferns, the larger island of Haiti a few more.  The Andes region, from Mexico to Chile had several thousand, but would require a generation of exploration before that rich flora is ever known.  In our country we had in the fern flora of Florida a sort of connecting link between tropical and temperate regions.  With a few exceptions the ferns of “tropical” Florida were species of wide distribution in the West Indies and in tropical America generally.  They varied greatly in form and habit.  One of the most curious was the Grass-fern, or Shoestring-fern which usually grew on the trunks of the cabbage palmetto.  But strangest of all was the Hand-fern, a close ally of the Adder’s-tongue but differs in being a pendent epiphyte with thick fleshy leaves a foot in length, divided like a hand and bearing several club-shaped fertile spikers.  Of maidenhair ferns, there were three Florida species, two were of special interest: Venus’-hair and the Fan Maidenhair.

From West Indian plants of the latter species had arisen that beautiful, leafy form known as the Barbados Maidenhair, which was one of the finest and decorative greenhouse ferns in general cultivation.  Our common northern Maidenhair was quite as beautiful as any of those and did remarkably well under outdoor cultivation.  Granted that tropical ferns were more numerous and more varied in form and in manner of growth, it was equally true that our northern kinds had a special charm that sprang from familiarity with them.  The winter woods would be bare indeed without the Christmas Fern and the Marginal Fern, both evergreens too.  In all the tropics you would find nothing finer than the lacy loveliness of the Gossamer, or Hay-scented Fern, as it grows in low, thin northern woods or in sunny openings of mountain forests.  The Common Wood-fern, which was the best known, had its own niche in our affection.  A fair share of the commoner kinds of the Northeastern States were faithfully portrayed in the accompanying, colored plates, I to XVI.  Here and there in special localities in the North were a few ferns that were rare or otherwise of exceptional interest.  For the author, the Hart’s-tongue held first place, for it was a boyhood gift of two fronds of that remarkable plant that first excited his interest in ferns.  Another great rarity was the Curly-grass.  Hidden away in the pine barrens of New Jersey, that tiny cousin of the Climbing Fern flourished amazingly.  It was a stranded relic of a past age, when tropical plants grew far to the north.  In many respects, out-and-out desert ferns seemed to be the most remarkable of all.  Except for a few of the cliff-loving kinds, northern ferns lie in cool, shady situations, or at least where there was a generous supply of water throughout the year.

How different were conditions in the arid mountain ranges and foothills of the Mexican border regions!  There, drought was perennial, and shade was rare.  In consequence, the ferns had managed to survive only by adapting themselves in remarkable ways to the severer conditions.  In general, desert ferns sought the shelter of seams and clefts in the rocks, where the soil was occasionally moistened by temporary rilles, and nearly all had put on an undercovering of wax, close-set hairs, or overlapping scales, thus enabling them to retain their water, without which growth could not go on.  The enormous length of time required for the evolution of those protective structures was quite beyond our comprehension.  As a further aid, most desert ferns had the habit of rolling up their fronds during the driest periods.  When the rains did come, the shriveled blades quickly expanded, and growth began again.  Contrasting sharply with the thick-leaved ferns of arid regions were the Filmy Ferns, an extensive group found mainly in the cool, cloud-drenched mountain forests of tropical regions, where there was a constant supply of water.  They grew mostly upon logs and mossy tree trunks.  A few kinds occurred in the lowlands, on trees and banks, or clinging to moist rocks, and some five species were found in the Southern States.  One of those “filmies” was our smallest fern, a veritable midget, its closely overlapping fronds barely a half inch long.  It grew in the spray of waterfalls or on wet shady ledges of sandstone, and from its small size and peculiar habit of growth must often have been mistaken for moss or liverwort.  More typical of the group was the Kentucky Filmy, also a dweller upon sandstone.  The form of leaf formed by the filmies were legion, ranging from simple or coarsely lobed to many times finely divided.  All had leafy tissue but one cell thick.

They had no means of storing water.  A few could live where it was merely damp, but most kinds could not let their delicate fronds dry out, if life was to go on.  A covering of hair was most common in species of drier or more exposed situations.  It protected the fronds by harboring a thin film of water over their surface.  With few exceptions, the Filmy Ferns were plants of extreme delicacy, and their translucent, lacelike fronds were among the most beautiful of natural objects.  The largest of all ferns were, of course, the Tree Ferns.  They were the glory of the Tropics.  Not one grew naturally in the continental U. S., but in Puerto Rico, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Philippines, they occurred widely from sea-level to the highest mountains and were especially common wherever filmies abounded.  There were a few small kinds, hardly larger than our Wood-ferns; but in general, their stems were rigidly erect and treelike, 20 to 80 feet high, surmounted by a palmlike crown of huge, dissected fronds.  The Australians called those Fern Trees, certainly an appropriate name.  In England, the cultivation of ferns, both native and exotic, had progressed to an extent not appreciated in America.  The great collection of living ferns at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew, numbering nearly 300 species, dated from the last of the 18^th century, and included plants from nearly all parts of the world.  Its influence in stimulating the cultivation of ferns as a hobby had doubtless been very great.  A recent illustrated catalogue of a British dealer listed fully 2,000 species and varieties.  Hundreds of the forms were tropical plants that must be grown under glass, but hundreds of others, classed as hardy, were well able to withstand an ordinary northern winter out of doors.  Many were “freak” forms, with ruffled, crested, or irregularly divided foliage.

In planning an outdoor fern garden and rockery, there was a chance for every bit of ingenuity and attention to detail one could muster.  With due care, ferns might be transplanted at any time of the year, though with least success in spring, when the leaves were still tender and not fully developed.  Midsummer was a goof time, for then the plants are at mature height and could be grouped to best advantage.  Most ferns preferred a moderately moist, well-drained soil, in partial shade – a northward exposure was usually best.  If the soil was heavy, sand and leaf peat should be worked into it.  Recently, the soil preference of nearly all our northeastern ferns had been worked out carefully.  It was found that generally ferns appeared to thrive best in moderately acid or “circumneutral” soil.  For rock ferns, a miniature cliff or rugged slope might be laid up against the foundation of a house, using irregular rocks of varying sizes and bedding them with moist earth.  Drainage would be ample, but great care must be taken to make the earth pockets of adequate depth and size.  Those who loved ferns as house plants soon came to know their need for regular watering, moderate temperatures, and ample sunlight, and the necessity for occasional repotting and the application of a little fertilizer.  They found perpetual delight in the response of the plants to tender care.  For growing indoors, ferns taken directly from the woods were rarely satisfactory.  Plants bought from a florist were far better, for those had been selected and raise for the purpose.  For table use, the Maidenheads were less satisfactory than the small Holly-ferns, because of their delicate texture.  Several varieties of the Cretan Brake and the Spider Brake were much used for that purpose, and they served admirably also as potted house plants.

But the best and most popular of all ferns for general house culture were the Boston Fern and its numerous horticultural varieties.  Those had almost supplanted other kinds.  The parent form of the Boston Fern was the Sword Fern, common in Florida and the Topics, which was first introduced into cultivation in 1793, from Jamaca.  Eventually, it became one of the common greenhouse ferns, and was noted for variability.  But about thirty years ago [in 1925], a florist near Boston found among his Sword Ferns a new sort, with softer, more graceful, and more numerous leaves.  That variety, an offshoot of the Sword Fern, came to be known as the Boston Fern.  It grew rapidly in public favor, and at the end of a few years, hundreds of thousands were being sold annually by florists throughout the U. S.  The plants were “thrifty,” tolerant of ordinary conditions within doors, and easily cared for.  Also, they were uniform all over the country.  Then the Boston Fern started on its mad career.  Almost simultaneously there appeared in widely separate greenhouses an even half-dozen plants which differed strikingly in several ways.  The horticultural value of those sports was evident enough.  They were at once multiplied, and from that time to the present [in 1925], there has been a constant succession of new and improved varieties that had brought those ferns into American homes by the millions.  More than 200 distinct forms had been propagated, and of that number, about were recognized as named variants.  All the variants so far had arisen from buds developing upon the numerous “runners” given off by mature plants.  The newest and most remarkable form of all was a little plant whose fronds appear like tiny balls an inch or two thick.  In that one direction it seemed as if the Boston Fern could vary no further.

Scientifically, the Boston Fern was extreme importance, serving as the basis of experimental studies in evolution.  Despite the commercial importance of the Boston Fern and its numerous forms, one sometimes heard the statement that ferns were of no economic value; they served few important uses.  That was only partly true.  In olden times, many ferns were used as medicine.  One had abundant rootstocks which the natives in northern South America still used for sweetening [in 1925].  The rootstocks of a Polypody of the western U. S. also were intensely sweet and gave the plant its name, Licorice Fern; it was a great favorite with children.  The huge stems of a Hawaiian Tree Fern formerly provided the native Hawaiians with food in time of need, the starchy core when baked being regarded as a fair substitute for taro and the sweet potato.  In tropical America, the tall columnar trunks of Tree Ferns were used as telegraph poles, building timbers, and upright supports.  They were highly prized and exceedingly durable, being reused again and again.  They were not only resistant to rot, but to attacks of termites as well.  In Java, the long inner strands of the Vine-fern were woven into cigarette cases ad hats, and in Siam, closely woven, exquisite boxes were made from strands of the native Climbing Fern.  Among our northeastern ferns, three species were of special importance – the Christmas Fern, the Common Wood-fern, and the Cinnamon Fern.  The first two were exploited for their fronds.  They were gathered, packed in bales, and cold stored for later use.  They were supplied by florists with the purchase of cut flowers.  The Cinnamon Fern was useful in quite a different way.  Its great root-tussocks supplied thick masses of wiry interwoven rootlets, which were regarded as an ideal medium for growing tropical ferns.  Its material resisted decay and drained freely.

Thus far, fern study in the U. S. had centered in our native species.  The American Fern Society, which came into existence 33 years ago [in 1925], had a membership of several hundred, mostly amateurs, who had published a great amount of information upon ferns north of the Rio Grande.  By correspondence and exchange of specimens and through the medium of two journals devoted to ferns, that society had had a wide influence in arousing interest in the subject and in fostering close observation in every phase of fern study.  At the time the society began their work, there was little promise of the many popular volumes that now [in 1925] dealt with ferns in an authoritative and entertaining way.  The studies thus well begun should now be extended to the field of tropical America.  There, in the cool, wet, mountain forests there was a wealth of ferns beyond imagination.

Part two of the article is a series of seventeen entries.  Except for the first entry, they are a set of names and descriptions of ferns with a link to associated plates containing images of the plants.  Of the sixteen ferns described, two share a plate while the remainer have plates to themselves.  The first entry in the series is not of a particular fern but entitled “How Ferns Reproduce.”  To understand how ferns reproduce, it was first necessary to know something of their structure.  They existed in two separate and distinct phases, the nonsexual and the sexual.  The conspicuous plant we call “fern” represented the nonsexual stage.  It was known technically as the fern sporophyte, from the fact that it bore spore-cases on some of its leaves, commonly in clusters on the underside of ordinary leafy pinnae.  The stages in the birth of a new fern plant ware as follows:  The tiny spore, coming to rest on a moist bank, swelled, and after a few days burst its coat.  The contents protruded as a green tube.  By repeated cell division, it grew and assumed a flattish heart-shaped form attached closely to the moist earth by many rootlike hairs.  It was a small, self-sustaining plant, ready to bear the sex organs.  Those were of two sorts, borne on the underside of the plant: the female organs arose from a central cushion, and the male organs, which were more numerous and considerably smaller, borne near the edge.  At maturity the male organs burst releasing spermatozoids, which swam by means of cilia.  A single spermatozoid entered the ruptured female organ and there united with an egg cell.  The resulting cell was known as a zygote.  The zygote gave rise directly to the new fern plant.  Under favorable conditions the young plant grew rapidly, the very simple first leaf being followed by others that were larger and more like those of the adult plant.

 

 

The third item listed on this month’s cover is entitled “Marvels of Fern Life” and has E. J. Geske.  This item is not an article, but a set of “16 Paintings from Life,” and Mr. Geske is the artist.  The color paintings appear on a set of Plates embedded within the second article; are numbered I through XVI in Roman numerals; and represent pages 547 to 562 in the issue.

A list of the sixteen color paintings’ caption headings and their Plate numbers is as follows:

• “How Ferns Reproduce” – Plate I
• “Rattlesnake Fern” – Plate II
• “Adder’s-Tongue and Climbing Fern” – Plate III
• “Royal Fern” – Plate IV
• “Interrupted Fern” – Plate V
• “Maidenhair” – Plate VI
• “Bracken” – Plate VII
• “Common Wood-fern” – Plate VIII
• “Marsh Fern” – Plate IX
• “Marginal Fern” – Plate X
• “Christmas Fern” – Plate XI
• “Sensitive Fern” – Plate XII
• “Eastern Lady Fern” – Plate XIII
• “Walking-fern” – Plate XIV
• “Dwarf Spleenwort” – Plate XV
• “Bulblet Bladder Fern” – Plate XVI

 

 

The third article (fourth item) listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “Tracking the Columbian Ground-Squirrel to Its Burrow” and was written by William T. Shaw, Assistant Zoologist, Washington State Experiment Station.  The article has the internal subheading: “Loss of Millions to Crops and Danger of the Spread of Spotted Fever Necessitated Study of Peculiar Rodent of Western North America.”  The article contains thirteen black-and-white photographs taken by Mr. Shaw, none of which are full-page in size.

Extending widely over western North America and far into Siberia was a genus of ground-squirrel known as Citellus.  To it belonged numbers of species, many of which were represented by such multitudes of destructive individuals as to make their presence in a territory a matter of economic concern.  An annual loss of upward of $10,000,000 to crops in the U, S., the possibility of its transmitting the spotted fever in Montana and the bubonic plague in California and other southern and western States were considerations which had moved the Government to take serious steps toward its extermination.  The squirrels belonging to that group were truly ground-squirrels, living in elaborate burrows or dens.  They inhabited the prairies wherever there was sufficient vegetation to support them.  The Columbia ground-squirrel was the species found on the higher grass plateaus of eastern Washington and parts of Oregon and Idaho.  It was to that species that close study had been given.  Timid mammals living upon the surface of the earth or among the branches or trunks of trees, presented difficult problems of study.  When, however, the greater part of their life was spent in tortuous tunnels the problem became even more difficult.  The Columbia ground-squirrel was an active, nervous, sun-loving, gray-brown animal about the size of the eastern gray squirrel; differing from it, however, in that its body was less lithe, its tail much less bushy, and its ears noticeable short.  In cultivate wheat areas it soon became startlingly abundant; for, where not checked, it thrived with the raising of grain and alfalfa.  The ground-squirrel did not need water; it preferred succulent vegetation for the necessary moisture.  That fact was responsible for the great damage done by it to growing grain.

In mid-July a drought came over the land of its habitat, and the squirrel could no longer find a trace of green vegetation.  It would have choked from sheer thirst, but instead it went to sleep!  That interesting adaptation might fittingly be called hibernation were it not that it was begun in midsummer.  About the first of July the numerous families gradually disappeared until. In the steady heat of early August, not a squirrel was left; nor were they seen again until the snows of February were melting.  During that interval they were found in a remarkable state of death-like sleep.  Their normal temperature of 98 degrees F. fell to the remarkably low point of 40 degrees F., and in a cold, clammy condition the animal existed for weeks at a time, exhibiting the merest traces of life, and in the later stages of the long sleep developing a startlingly death-like limpness which made one marvel that such objects could ever again regain warmth and form and life.  That they did, however, sometimes in the surprisingly short space of a few hours.  To understand that strange life cycle, we took it at the height of its activity.  Walking the Palouse River plains on a mid-February day, no signs of life were seen; yet it might be only a few days before those same southern slopes were alive.  It was in the burning heat of August that the squirrels went to sleep; in February, they awoke to the strange task of liberating themselves from the frozen crust of winter.  Soon, scurrying little creatures were everywhere.  The end of February was awakening time, and time was life to the squirrel.  He must be stirring.  In a scant five months his family must be born, reared, and allowed to develop to a stage where the young could safely survive their first hibernation.  By March 10, the more mature squirrels were mating, even when immature individuals were still hibernating in their dens.

The first of April found newborn young in the nest, but it was not until a month later that one might see dainty, fluffy little creatures crowded about the same small door.  There they remained for a few days only, exploring the great winding burrows of the summer dens in which they were born and playing little squirrel-family tussles with their brothers on the sunny mounds above their doors; then a few more days of family life and the squirrel nest was shaken out.  It was then when they did such serious damage to the developing grain.  The country seemed underlaid with a vast network of disconnected squirrel dens, many of them at times unused.  Their use or disuse depended on the presence of one of their enemies, the badger, or upon the war waged upon them by man.  Those young squirrels, together with the adults, scattered about over the fields, seeming to know where the old dens existed.  They soon opened those unused deserted places, and shortly the fields of wheat began to show circular areas of desolation.  With the advancing season and maturing fields came a cessation of rain.  That period, just before the ripening of the grain, was a time of great loss to the ultimate yield.  Experiments with squirrels showed that they consumed about one-third their body weight daily.  That was the equivalent to the destruction of 500 wheat stems, and consequently heads, per day.  Then followed some destruction to the actual grain itself, for its fattening properties, and the damage was done.  Drought returned; the squirrels must begin their long sleep.  Those observations applied to the country about Pullman, Washington, an elevation of 2,500 feet above sea level.  Twelve miles to the west, in the Canyon of the Snake River, an elevation of 600 feet, those activities began a month earlier and so varied with altitude throughout its range.

Perhaps the most arduous task connected with all the life study was that concerned with the findings associated with the long sleep.  So cleverly did they hide themselves that it was not until the second fall had closed without success and they were beginning excavation of the twenty-sixth den, in the early part of the third season that they found a squirrel in the condition of semi-estivation.  That was in mid-August.  It had been in estivation scarcely ten days and their find was not yet dormant – only drowsy.  In that discovery they established the truth of their surmise regarding the hibernation cell.  There, at least, was a beginning.  Again, they persevered for more data and were partially successful in the third season, but it was noy until the fourth winter that results of value were obtained.  On a December day, they were successful.  Excavation uncovered the top of a large burrow.  The burrow was dropping with a steep slant.  A drain shaft next revealed itself, while the burrow continuing beyond it raised slightly.  Carefully, heavy clay was shaved away from the location of the cell.  Suddenly its upper wall shelled in, and there, from the little round hole in the nesting material, laid the fuzzy gray tail-tip of a soundly hibernating ground-squirrel.  The nest was warm and dry and perfectly arched over.  The bottom of the nest was made of made of rather fine grass and some dry, dusty earth, in which were buried over 100 bulbs of wild onions.  That squirrel laid in the nest flatly on his sacrum, curled vertically, with the flat top of his skull pressed into his lap – a strangely uncomfortable position.  Their time had come!  For months they had followed that quest.  All that winter day they had toiled for it, and now, in the twilight, they obtained their first picture of a wild hibernating ground-squirrel, after a search of three years.

While making a vertical section of a hibernation den for the purposes of photography, the idea suggested itself that some use might be made of those closed-in dens for extermination of the animals when they awoke in the spring.  In the large summer dens the squirrels were at liberty to shift about at will, through a series of tunnels, with a capacity up to 300 feet of open burrow, together with many tunnels partially filled with loose earth, capable of being dug through rapidly or kicked up as a barrier in times of danger.  But it occurred to the team that gas might be used in the hibernating dens with deadly effect, for those contained not more than seven feet of burrow in contrast to the 300 feet of open tunnel in the summer den.  With the discovery of a shaft indicating where the spring exit would be, they realized the possibility of using the hibernation den as an aid in control methods.  When, in February, small round holes began to appear, they entered upon their work of control.  Carbon bisulphide, an inexpensive liquid, readily volatized when exposed to air, became a poisonous gas, suffocating in effect.  That substance, when introduced into the exit of the hibernating den immediately formed a heavy, deadly gas, which sank at once into the recesses and resulted in a painless anesthetic death to the animal.  The substance had long been used against many forms of injurious animal life, and had been used against squirrels, even in their summer dens; but its use in those restricted hibernating dens was proving wonderfully effective.  The winter den was indeed a death-trap.  A vital principle of that method of destruction was that the squirrels killed were destroyed before the breeding season.

 

 

The fourth and final article in this month’s issue is entitled “Helsingfors – A Contrast in Light and Shade” and was written by Frank P. S. Glassey, American Vice-Consul at Helsingfors.  It contains twenty black-and-white photographs, of which four are full-page in size.

A snow-covered city, muffled by a white cloak and shivering under a lowering gray sky – such was Helsingfors on almost any January day.  A city of darkness and brooding twilight, where the sun rose hesitatingly at 9 o’clock and then followed a quick course, always near the horizon, until it sunk rapidly again in midafternoon, as if eager to be on its way to a more hospitable land.  With the few daylight hours usually veiled by heavy clouds, electric lights burned overtime in offices and homes.  Finland in winter did not present a smiling face to the casual traveler, and although its capital was located on the southern shore of the country, its residents passed a long and dreary period, from December until April, in “the frozen North.”  The city seemed to be sleeping, even during the busiest hours of the day.  Early in January, the wide harbor was frozen over and the last vessel of the season scurried out in the trail of an icebreaker to avoid spending several inactive months in the tightly-locked embrace of an icy gulf.  The streets of the city itself were but sparsely populated, and that only by a hurrying few, intent on reaching a warm home.  Even the broad Esplanade was almost empty, and the only sound was the bright tinkle of the bells on a droshky, as it glided smoothly over the snow, or the guttural warning by the driver, as his horse made a sharp turn at some corner.  The droshkies themselves, reminiscent of Russia, struck the most picturesque note in the life of Helsingfors.  The old transportation by sleigh had successfully battled against the competition of the taxicab.  Although the Helsingfors winter was milder than one might have imagined from its situation as the northernmost capital in the world, the city nevertheless had an abundant amount of snow, particularly during the first three months of the year, when it snowed almost every day.

A street-cleaning system which was a marvel of efficiency and speed coped with that situation.  Every person owning a home, apartment, or office building was responsible not only for cleaning the sidewalk in front of his property, but also for the removal of snow in the street his building fronted.  Every property owner either engaged private firms to keep his portion clean or paid the municipal authorities a fixed annual sum, thus shifting the entire responsibility to the shoulders of the city street cleaning department.  Law violation in that respect was almost unknown.  An hour after a heavy snowfall a force of men and women was at work shoveling the snow into boxlike sleighs, which were then driven to the harbor, where their loads were dumped.  In addition to that method, on the most important streets the snow was melted by machines which originated in Finland, and which had since found a market in other countries.  Those machines were fired with logs, while three men shoveled the snow into a hopper, where it melted and the water ran through an outlet into the gutter and down the drain.  Helsingfors in winter was for the most part silent and subdued, white and ghostlike, austere and forbidding; yet it had its moments of relaxation.  On Sundays, particularly, one emerged from his home to find a world on skis.  Man had abandoned walking to glide over the snow-coated ice of the harbor to the islands that fringed the city in every direction.  Occasionally in large parties, but more often in couples or alone, everybody was skiing.  Girls in flamboyant sports costumes, men in sweaters and knickerbockers – all pushed along.  On hills, one witnessed marvelous and hair-raising jumps and equally thrilling falls.  He would repeat the experiment until he met with success.  Skiing was a serious sport.  What baseball was to America, skiing was to Finland.

That was not, of course, the only winter sport, although the dominant one.  There was skating on the large public rinks in the harbor, and there were spirited ice-hockey contests.  Even automobile races were staged on the ice.  In the evening the restaurants, with dancing, the opera, and movies all drew an appreciable patronage from the city’s population.  But skiing was still unthreatened by any formidable competitor.  The transition from winter to spring and from spring to summer was something startling to an outlander, for a new world seemed to be created under his eyes overnight.  The rapid lengthening of the days lost its meaning, for there was still a sharp tang to the air morning and evening.  Yet that constant flood of light, prolonged through the greater part of every day had an uncanny effect upon the trees, grass, and foliage.  One night, after watching the sun set about 8 o’clock, you went to bed longing for a climate that would afford relief from a continually dreary and bleak outlook.  And when you awoke to find that spring had arrived unheralded; the trees showed a tinge of green, the grass was prying its way through the snow.  Patches of warm earth appeared in the parks, a few venturesome individuals rode to their work on bicycles, the ice in the harbor was losing its steadfastness, office managers ordered the removal of double windows – spring had come to Finland.  Within the next few days all the outposts of winter made an inglorious retreat.  The cobbled streets gleamed naked under the sun’s rays, and the droshky drivers consigned their sleighs to storage and appeared, jauntily flourishing their whips, in high-wheeled carriages resembling the old Victoria. The ice pack in the harbor finally disappeared, the first vessels of the year steamed in, and Finland’s short spring gave way to summer.  A cool, rainy summer, but summer, nonetheless.

There was endless outdoor life, endless daylight, and endless merrymaking.  Probably no activity in Helsingfors was more interesting to the summer visitor than the open-air market every morning on the broad square near the South Harbor.  Daily, before the average city dweller was awake, the peas as drove in their native carts from the nearby country with fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, flowers, dry goods, household utensils, and every other conceivable article of domestic commerce.  Those peasants, chiefly women, rapidly set up small booths or stalls in the places assigned them by the police, and for four hours they plied a busy and extensive trade with the city housewives, who usually came to vegetables and meat, and depart with the inevitable armful of flowers as well.  Meanwhile, other vendors who had made the journey to Helsingfors in small sailboats grouped their craft around the landing stage and drew their customers from the outskirts of the buying throng.  The market, with its hundreds of stalls, its shifting mass of humanity, and it occasionally vividly costumed fishwife, formed a spectacle picturesque in a superlative degree.  Only slightly less so was the activity at noon, when the booths were hastily dismantled and, with the unbought stock, piled again in the high-wheeled carts for the return trip to the farm or country cottage.  Then followed an example of 1finnish efficiency and the local passion for cleanliness.  Scores of women descended on the marketplace, armed with brooms, with which they attacked the waste and refuse, while men wielding hoses assisted them.  Within ten minutes the entire square was spotless, and so it remained until next morning.  Helsingfors in the summer was the commuter’s paradise.  On June first the entire middle class migrated to villas on the islands where they lived for 3 months.

Instead of sprinting madly for the morning train, the wage-earner strolled leisurely to his dock and waited for one of the small steamboats to take him to work.  The evening return boat was another story.  It was always wildly pursued by the last-second commuter who crossed the gangplank as it was being drawn in.  That island life was truly a worship of Nature.  The famous Midsummer Day was a survival of prehistoric sun adoration.  Every June 23^rd, Helsingfors declared a holiday, in common with all Finland, and spent 24 hours in the open beneath an endless bright sky.  As the sun made its temporary dip below the horizon about 11:30 p. m., the fires blazed in every direction – huge bonfires, thousands of them on hundreds of islands.  For the rest of the night every man joined with his neighbor in feasting, dancing, and community singing.  When the sun appeared again, about 1:30 a. m., its greeting from Findland was royal indeed.  With an almost continual outdoor existence among the Finlanders, summer sports flourished and thrived.  Track athletes set new records, football teams monopolized every playground, and swimmers invented new high dives to flirt with death.  And the winter’s ubiquitous skier figuratively beat his skis into a trim sailboat and went forth onto the gulf as another proof of the reason for Finland’s maritime fame.  Helsingfors was quiet at night, but one’s final impression in the early evening was of a changing crowd on the Esplanade, of a bright national costume flashing beside the brilliant uniform of an officer or the drab outfit of a soldier.  And those couples – for the mass seemed only composed of couples – all turned for one last round of coffee and sweet cakes toward an outdoor café, where the reveled in the strains of a lively military band which was playing a late American fox trot.

 

 

Tom Wilson