100 Years Ago: August 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: August 1925

 

This is the 127^th entry in my series of abridged, one-hundred-year-old issues of the National Geographic Magazine.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Waimangu and the Hot-spring Country of New Zealand” and was written by Joseph C. Grew, Undersecretary of State, U. S. State Department, Author of “Sports and Travel in the Far East.”  The article has an internal subtitle: “The World’s Greatest Geyser Is One of Many Natural Wonders in a Land of Inferno and Vernal Paradise.”  There is an italicized editorial paragraph before the main article mentioning that the American Fleet was visiting New Zealand and that Waimangu had resumed activity, but not on the scale the author observed.  The article contains nineteen black-and-white photographs, of which ten are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of the Rotorua Hot Springs region with an inset of New Zealand on page 113.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

On the North Island of New Zealand, if one drove from Rotorua straight back through the scarred, lava-strewn hills toward Mount Tarawera, they would come upon what appeared to be a peaceful pond in a depression among the hills.  Among its barren surroundings not a living thing was seen; the thin steam that rose from its surface and from the other pools nearby was the only movement that broke the stillness.  From the plateau in which it was sunk rose, in two directions, great rugged cliffs; and those formed a natural stadium in whose arena below was enacted at intervals one of the most sensational spectacles which the natural world produced.  For this was Waimangu, the largest geyser in the world, but a geyser whose action resembled far more the eruption of a great volcano than it did that of the slender jets of steam and water with which one usually associated the name.  When, in 1886, the appalling eruption of Mount Tarawera altered the face of the whole country, with widespread loss of life and destruction of villages and millions of acres of cultivated fields, a mighty landmark had been given as compensation.  Waimangu, though undoubtedly formed by that great upheaval, did not at once make known it birth.  For 14 years it laid quiescent, slowly gathering power for the day on which it would first leap into action and proclaim its sovereignty.  Suddenly, in 1900, the outburst came.  The quiet pool which lied within its crater was stirred, steam rose from its surface, and with no further warning the very bowels of the earth were hurled through it into the air in one tremendous explosion.  Two prospectors in the region saw the eruption and brought back the news that Waimangu had broken loose.  New Zealanders henceforth could boast the greatest and grandest geyser in the world.

It took the people of Rotorua little time to realize that, from the erratic and unforgiving character of Waimangu, a near approach to its crater must be attended with great personal risk.  Although explosions were found to come at intervals of roughly 36 hours, irregular eruptions frequently occurred without warning.  In the summer of 1903, two girls and a guide stood near the brink for a photograph when an eruption occurred.  All three were killed.  From that day, the geyser basin was railed off far enough away so no one could be in danger.  It was a few months before that mishap, in February 1903, that, while staying in Rotorua, the author and his friend visited Waimangu.  The only warning was a small signpost beside the path leading to the crater.  It simply said, “Danger Limit.”  What could be more innocent looking than that little pond, set deep down in the rocky basin between hills?  What were the odds that it would explode just when one was peering over the edge?  That was how people felt at the time of their visit, so they continued to the brim to take it in.  They were told that the geyser was active the night before so they could approach with impunity.  They were lucky; it erupted just after they had left the danger zone.  The road through the hills from Rotorua toward Waimangu led them over the most desolate country; in all directions only the lava-formed, rolling wilderness was seen.  Occasionally, they passed terraces were jets of steam or boiling mudholes attested to the volcanic nature of the land.  Then, after scrambling up a steep hill to the west of Rotorua, a superb view suddenly appeared.  At their feet laid the azure surface of Lake Rotomahana, a turquoise in gold setting, for the encircling mountains were bathed in the yellow haze of afternoon sunlight.

Grim and foreboding in the background stood Tarawera, now passive and smokeless, brooding over her dark deeds of bygone years.  From the hill beside Rotomahana, they descended to Waimangu’s basin.  The boiling pool in the center of the crater, some 300 feet in width, was still, except for the bubbles which rose to the surface and the thin steam drifting lazily upward.  They passed the danger line, threaded their way carefully between boiling springs, and then, climbing down to the crater, stood finally on the brink of the pool itself.  One cared to remain but a moment in such position, for although the geyser had exploded during the night and was not due to work again for 36 hours, the thought of what could happen caused them to climb without delay back to the plateau, and on up to the cliff above the basin.  It was well they did so.  Scarcely five minutes had elapsed from the moment they stood within the crater.  The author’s camera was pointing down for a photograph and he had made the exposure.  Then, even before he could change plates, the pool began seething.  Waimangu was in eruption.  The formerly placid pool was shot, in one terrifying blast, into the air far above their heads – black water, black mud, black rocks; and, following them with the roar of a thousand canons, a burst of whitest steam quickly outstripped and enveloped the up-rushing mass.  The explosion was awe-inspiring, terrible, grand beyond comparison.  The sight was worth traveling thousands of miles over land and water to behold.  The outburst had taken place in a fraction of a second.  Almost immediately they were pelted with sand and small stones which fell, as the exploded mass shot back into the crater.  That caused them to take shelter in the hut provided for that purpose on the summit of the cliff.

In a moment all was over; the pond regained its usual placid surface and no sign, save for the continued shower of sand, told of the mighty eruption which had taken place.  They descended again into the basin, thinking of their fate if the geyser had erupted five minutes earlier.  It was good that visitors may no longer approach within the zone of danger.  Waimangu, though the greatest, was not the only feature which made New Zealand a wonderland of never-failing interests.  A bad attack of malaria, contracted in the jungle of Malasia, took the author down there one winter to recuperate.  It was a long journey – seven days from Singapore to Ceylon, three weeks more to Sydney, and finally four days to Aukland, from where the railroad brought him to Rotorua, in the hot-spring country.  The long, lazy sea voyage and a few weeks in the clear and bracing air of New Zealand quickly cured the author.  Many invalids came to the hot-spring region for the curative powers of its mineral baths.  Rotorua was famous for its healing springs and baths of water, mud, and vapor.  The author’s favorite was the big, hot Sulphur swimming pool, whose waters, at times, were above 100 degrees F.  As the traveler approached Rotorua, a strange, unearthly smell of Sulphur filled the air; white puffs of steam rose from green hills and valleys; huge mudholes by the roadside seethed and bubbled like porridge; hot lakes of extraordinary colors – yellow, blue, pink, green – and brilliantly colored strata along the mountainsides, made one stare and rub their eyes to be sure that such apparent unrealities existed.  Ones conception of hell was realized when they entered the Valley of Tikitere, some ten miles from Rotorua.  The earth was hot beneath one’s feet, the ground gaped with steaming cracks, and, if one poked the ground with a stick, steam or boiling water would emerge.

One was surrounded by an inferno of boiling mudholes, bubbling lakes of hideous colors, and blasts of steam issuing from the hillsides.  One followed the guide closely, for a single misstep could prove fatal.  The guide pointed out the “Heavenly Twins,” two horrid bubbling mudholes side by side.  On one side “The Devil’s Porridge Pot” seethed and rumbled’ on the other, one looked down through the “Gates of Hell” into a slimy lake, whose sulphureous fumes sent one back, gasping for fresh air.  But heave and hell rubbed elbows in that country.  They left behand the boiling mud and Sulphur-ladened air, and crossed over to Rotorua Lake, where the fresh breeze washed the poisonous fumes from their lungs and cooled their skins from the burning breath of those horrors behind.  A small steamer carried them across the rippling lake, dotted with white sails of canoes, passed between green islands, and landed them in thick woods on the opposite shore where they entered a rowboat and proceeded lazily up an enchanted river to a fairyland of extraordinary beauty.  The banks were thickly grown with grew, overhanging trees, blossoming shrubs, ivy, and tall ferns, which shaded the clear depths of opalescent color.  Suddenly the river narrowed, turned, and stopped short, cut off and walled by the same wooded bank.  For a moment, they were astounded that a flowing river came suddenly to an end, until they looked over the boat’s side and saw far below, through transparent water, a jagged opening in the bed of the stream, from which a great quivering volume of ice-cold water welled up to the surface.  Then they saw the cause, for that was the famous Humurana Spring, the source of the beautiful river, which flowed full grown from that hidden wooded spot down into Rotorua Lake – a spring from which 5,000,000 gallons of water were poured forth each day.

Looking into the depths, they saw delicate shells and ferns growing far below.  The force of the up-rushing torrent was so tremendous that coins which were thrown in would remain suspended halfway to the bottom, and finally drop to one side of the spring, where they lied glittering below.  The Maoris, who were expert divers, tried again and again to reach that treasure, and only succeeded by using a pole jammed into a crevice and held by a partner.  Only by using the pole could a one withstand the force of the rising water.  They spent half a day and had lunch near that beautiful spot, and then, in the afternoon, rode over to the geyser region of Whakarewarewa, a small Maori settlement on the other side of Rotorua.  The country there was less fearful than at Tikitere, but none the less active.  Within a radius of less than 100 yards, some ten or twelve geysers played at intervals ranging from two minute to several hours.  The display, when several of them happened to be in action at the same time, was most effective.  When Waikite, the famous twin geyser, ceased working it was succeeded as queen of Whakarewarewa by Wairoa, but even Wairoa played no longer of her own accord.  Only under the inducement of a plentiful supply of soap did she consent to perform for the curious multitudes.  Too much soaping of a geyser caused it eventually to cease its action altogether, so the practice became an important ceremony.  In the Rotorua thermal country, it was allowed by the government only when some distinguished visitor came to see the display.  The author was fortunate in being on hand when Wairoa was thus induced to play for the son of a former premier of New Zealand.  The wooden cover was removed, the crowd warned to stand back, and a bag of bar soap thrown into the diminutive crater.

Almost immediately the water foamed, lathering up to the edge of the opening, but not until almost twenty minutes later did the actual playing begin.  There was a deep rumbling below, a chocking, gurgling noise came from the depths of the crater, and, with a last grand roar, Wairoa shot into the air, full 130 feet, a graceful, slender column of the whitest steam and water, breaking at the top into silvery feathers which drooped, dissolved, and drifted off into the sunlight.  Whakarewarewa was built in the midst of a hot-spring terrace, with boiling pools between the houses and steaming holes scattered about.  That was done on purpose.  The Maoris were a thrifty race; coal and firewood were expensive, a Nature provided constantly simmering kettles as free of charge as fresh air.  There, at the very doors of the natives, those fumaroles were at all times ready for use.  Over the openings were placed small, slate-bottomed boxes; the food, wrapped in leaves, was placed withing.  Soon, an appetizing smell announced that dinner was ready.  Monday clothes washing was done by kneeling beside one of the big hot pools and sousing the garments until they were white and clean.  Both clothes and dinner savored strongly of Sulphur.  The Maori possessed personal and national pride, dignity, fearless bearing, honorable instincts, and cheeriness of temperament.  There was no fawning, no bowing and scraping, and all his dealings were marked with straightforward manliness.  Mentally he was keen, physically superb.  The women were no less dignified and proud of bearing than the men, and litheness of body unknown in any but South Sea races.  Their speech was delightful to hear, since it totally lacked the harsh, guttural tones of the Arab and Hindu.  Their history was full of folklore, every landmark and custom having its own myth.

On Rotorua Lake, once a year, high carnival was held.  From all the villages of the surrounding country came the Maoris with their babies, tents, pots, and pans, to camp on the shores of the lake and make merry.  There was foot-racing on the beach, yacht-racing on the lake, and horse racing on the track behind the town.  What delighted the Maori heart above all else was the great race between the war canoes of the various villages, which took place on the last day as the crowning event of the celebration.  [See: “Hurdle Racing in Canoe: A Thrilling and Spectacular Sport Among the Maoris of New Zealand,” May 1920, National Geographic Magazine.]  It was a fine sight to see those great canoes, manned by from forty to fifty stalwart men, paddling like mad across the big lake for the honor of their respective villages.  The captain stood in the center to give the stroke, the men kept pace with a dash and snap, and great was the rejoicing over the winners.  Then there was the Ha Kahaka Tamahine, which meant “The Chase for a Maori Bride.”  They chose the most beautiful of all the girls in the surrounding country.  The lucky maiden, or wahine, was put in the bow of a small, swift canoe.  Her brother or some other relative took his place in the stern to paddle her through the chase.  The canoes of the chasers were light and fast, and paddled by five or six men with a vacant spot for the bride, in case she was captured before reaching the finish line.  At the signal, the bride’s canoe dashed away down the course, followed a minute later by her pursuers.  The object of the chase was to overtake the maiden and lift her into one’s canoe before she crosses the finish line.  Once in her seat, her new boat became the quarry for the others.  The one that crosses the finish line with the bride on board won the race.

Whether or not the lady chose her husband from the winning boat was a delicate question, which the author opined did not enter into the conditions of the race itself.  The bride was landed on the beach and had to run a gauntlet of deafening applause from enthusiastic thousands.  The author’s stay at Rotorua, like all good things, came to an end at last.  Rising very early one morning, they took regretful leave of the mist-wrapped lake and the steaming terraces and hillsides, whose beauties and horrors alike had been a source of such keen interest.  They were whirling off over the lava-roughened hills, past Waimangu, past the old Tarawera, and so down through the fern-clad jungles to Wairakei, Lake Taupo, and the Wanganui River, where new scenes of undreamed-of beauty awaited them in this imperial wonderland.

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Tripolitania, Where Rome Resumes Sway” and was written by Colonel Gordon Casserly, Indian Army (Retired).   The article has the internal subtitle: “The Ancient Trans- Mediterranean Empire, on the Fringe of the Libyan Desert, Becomes a Promising Modern Italian Colony.”  The article contains twenty-seven black-and-white photographs, of which only two are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of Italian Libya on page 138.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

On a low, sandy promontory of the North African coast stood the white city of Tripoli, capital of Tripolitania, the western province of the Italian colony of Libya, which lied between Tunisia and Egypt.  As the traveler approached from the sea, the tall, slender minarets of the city’s numerous mosques, rising high above the flat-roofed houses of the native town and the newer buildings of the European quarter, and its setting of white sand dunes and green oases of palm groves and gardens gave it a more truly African aspect than its sister cities of Tunis and Algiers.  Yet, when the steamer rounded the mole and entered the spacious new harbor, the stone-embanked esplanade, with ornamental balustrade and tall electric-light standards, and the large, modern buildings beginning to fringe the promenade, had nothing that was not European, except the Moorish style of architecture of the new and imposing Grand Hotel.  Even the storied old castle in the center of the esplanade was not Eastern, although for centuries Arab beys and Turkish viceroys, having turned the Knights of Malta out of it, lived there in state.  In 1911, the Italian flag replaced the crescent and star, and Rome of Today took back the city that, from the fall of Carthage to the coming of the Vandals, had acknowledged the rule of Rome of Yesterday.  But only the seafront and the first two streets behind it were modern.  The remainder of Tripoli looked much as it did before its latest conquerors landed.  Even in the principal streets, lined with cafes, banks, the post office, governor’s palace, shops, and offices, strings of camels lounged disdainfully past automobiles.  Arabs and Negroes, wrapped in dingy white shrouds shuffled by groups of smart Italian officers and Fascisti.

The main street continued beyond the massive stone bulk of the castle, whose exceedingly high walls towered above all other buildings in the town, old and new.  The castle suffered in the bombardment by the Italians in 1911, but its new masters had restored it.  It was no longer a citadel, but a relic, and contained offices of the governor, the headquarters of the police, and some other public departments, lodged high above the city, in quaint arcaded courts.  Its gates were held by soldiers – white, black, or brown – depending upon which troops: the Italian regiment, a battalion from Eritrea, or a local corps of recruits, were used that day.  At the main portal opening on the principal street, an interesting ceremony took place every afternoon.  Down the street, headed by a band, came a small column of troops.  They belonged to a battalion of Arabs of the Tripolitanian province of Libya.  They were dressed in dark khaki, with black-tasseled red fezzes, and their leather belts were buckled over broad, woolen cummerbunds of tartan, green, yellow, red, and blue.  Brass trumpets, drums, and short reed flageolets, which sounded like bagpipes, were played by the band.  A company color standard, borne aloft, headed the men of the main guard behind the musicians.  The sentry at the castle gate was a trooper of an Arab cavalry corps.  He wore a white cotton uniform, a pale-yellow jacket, and a red fez.  As the column approached, he turned out the guard, which fell in on one side of the gate.  The band wheeled into place beside it, and the new guard halted, facing the old guard.  Arms were presented, and the band played the Italian national anthem.  Soldiers and civilians passing by halted, stood at attention, and saluted.  When the song ceased, all passed on their way, the guard changed over, and the one relieved marched off behind the band.

Away from that main street, one plunged into the Arabian Nights.  There, an arched entrance led to a narrow, roofed alley, with apertures in the top for light.  On either side of it were dark, cavernlike openings, in each of which sat a native at a hand loom, weaving scarfs or long pieces of silk striped in bright colors.  Nearby was a similar arcade, in which each cave was filled with Oriental carpets, rugs, and round leather cushions with gay designs.  Out of the darkness of those arcades one passed into the brilliant sunshine of a narrow lane of dull, two-storied white-washed houses.  Only the doors and one or two tiny, barred windows broke the blankness of the walls.  One half-opened door gave a glimpse of a square courtyard inside, with pillared arches supporting a gallery on which all the rooms opened, well lighted by windows looking on the sunny court.  Along a narrow alley lurched a silent-footed camel, laden with bulky bales of wool, which almost touched the sides of the lane and forced passersby to take refuge in doorways.  Everywhere was a maze of similar streets.  The majority were lined with dwelling houses, in some of which large windows on the front and an occasional balcony showed where a poor Italian or Maltese family lived among the natives.  But there were a few shops.  There was one selling vegetables.  Its Negro owner dozed among baskets of carrots, cabbages, and pumpkins.  Farther on was an Arab café, a dingy room lighted only by its open door.  Inside, a brick fireplace had a pot of coffee boiling on a handful of charcoal. A lean Muslem dipped the thick, black liquid out with a long-handled measure, from which he poured it into tiny cups handed by a dirty-faced boy to customers squatting on mats on the floor.  Through an open door one heard a grating, grinding noise from a dark, low-ceilinged room on the street level.

Round and round stalked a camel, a piece of sack tied across his eyes.  He was harnessed to a long beam, turning a millstone in the center of the room, which ground the grain dropped into the hopper.  The flour poured out onto a cloth on the floor, from which a man, from time to time, scooped it up.  In the next lane, a brawny Negro baker sat beside a large oven which occupied the entire shop.  Jewish children squatted on the ground before him, each with a small board.  On some boards were lumps of dough ready for the oven, while others were empty, ready to receive the baked loaves.  Hardly ever was an Arab woman to be seen in any of the streets.  Around the next corner was the Jewish quarter.  A stranger would hardly realize the fact at first, for all the men wore the Moslem red fez.  But in the doorways stood groups of gossiping woman with faces exposed to view.  They were surprisingly light-complexioned, much fairer than the Sicilian and Maltese women living around them.  When young, they were often quite pretty, but, with advancing years, they were apt to get very fat.  In 1925, some of the richer and more modern Hebrew families had adopted European dress and ways.  But most Jewish women in Tripoli retained their picturesque Eastern garb, and on the Sabbath, the dingy alleys were enlivened by vivid hues.  They wore loose-sleeved, short bodices of pink, blue, white, or some other cheerful color and straight-hanging silk skirts, white, stripped black-and-white, or even gayer tints.  Their dark hair was bound in bright silk kerchiefs.  The men had more typical Jewish features and wore Oriental dress – red fez, long shirt hanging outside the trousers, a sleeveless, open waistcoat, and a long. Black, single-breasted coat reaching below the knees.  Outside Tripoli, many Jews were in garb indistinguishable from that of the Arabs.

As in Morocco, many trades were almost exclusively in Jewish hands, such as iron-working, cobbling, making jewelry, and working in precious metals.  Agriculture and stock-raising were left to the Arabs and Berbers.  As in Morocco, the Jews were desirous of education for their children and had some good schools.  There were many Negros in Tripoli, descendants of slaves brought from the Sudan.  Owing to much intermarriage with the Arabs, they had lost their distinctive facial features, but retained their color and characteristic hair.  Despite the intermingling and the adoption of Arab dress, they held to some of their customs and celebrated their feast with the same dances performed by their race in the Sahara and Sudan.  On the sand dunes outside the new walls of the city stood the Negro mosque, where the author witnessed one of their festivals.  Two flags were planted in the center of the crowd.  A group of men, in red fezzes, danced to the music made by large hand drums.  From time to time, some of the dancers dropped out, exhausted, and others rushed in to take their place.  At the conclusion of the dance, the women, with their faces for once exposed, gathered together.  They passed into the courtyard, and emerged later to form around the flags.  Two of their numbers shouldered the banners, and marched off, behind the musicians, followed by the other ladies, to the city gate.  All night, parties of Negros marched about the narrow lanes of the native quarter, and the drumming and shouting kept up until dawn.  Tripoli had many mosques, each with its distinctive, graceful minaret, generally tipped with green tiles.  Five times a day – at dawn, noon, vespers, sunset, and evening – the tiny figures of the muezzins passed around the gallery of the slender spires and leaned over to give, in high-pitched voice, the call to prayer.

The roofs of Tripoli’s mosques differed from the usual model in not having the conventional large dome.  Instead, they were flat, with several very small cupolas rising in lines.  The principal mosque belonged to the Caramanli family, formerly the rulers of Tripoli.  Under the lengthy portico of the outer wall along the street, several men sat all day.  They made the white, round caps worn by the poorer Moslems instead of the fez, which, being made in Europe, costed more.  The gate in the wall led into a courtyard with a cloister running down the side of the sacred building.  One portion was railed off and filled with tombs of the family, those of men marked by a carved turban crowning the headstone.  In a corner of the court rose the tall, slender minaret, with an inner stair winding up to the gallery, which furnished a fine view of the city, dunes, oases, and sea.  Near the base of the minaret was the ablution basin, where Moslems performed the ritual washing before entering the mosque.  The interior of the sacred fane was many-pillared, lofty, and imposing.  The high pulpit, with its marble balustraded flight of stairs, was a gem of artistic carving, inlay, and mosaic.  Beyond the Jewish quarter lied part of the old city wall, allowed to stand as a historical relic on the sea front past the harbor; between it and the rock-studded water ran another balustraded promenade.  The ancient rampart was replaced after the Italian occupation by a much wider loopholed and bastioned stone wall, cutting off the sandy promontory on which the city was built.  It enclosed a far greater space and included an oasis of vegetable gardens and palm trees, watered by many wells.  But the gates, in 1925, stood open and unguarded day and night, for during the last two years the Italian and native troops had ended the threat from the rebellious natives.

The story of Tripoli went back to the Phoenicians of Sidon, who founded it as a trading post, along with Sabrata and Lebda, the ruins of both of which were being excavated in 1925.  It was formerly known as Oea, the name Tripoli being derived from “Three Cities” and first given to the whole territory, but gradually restricted to that one town.  Later a Carthaginian possession, Tripoli passed, after the battle of Zama, in B. C. 202, to the Numidian Massinissa and his successors, and afterwards became a Roman province.  In turn the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Arabs in the seventh century; then the original inhabitants, the Berbers, and again the Arabs in the eleventh century, possessed the province.  In 1146, the Normans captured Tripoli, held it for 12 years, but lost it to the Moslems.  The Spanish occupied it from 1510 to 1530 when Charles V gave it to the Knights of Malta, who were expelled in 1551 by Turkish corsairs.  The Turks gradually extended their domain over all Tripolitania.  In 1714, one of their officers, Caramanli, made himself an independent sovereign.  His dynasty lasted until 1835, when the Turks seized the country again.  Long before Caramanli’s day, Tripoli had become infamous as a haunt of pirates. Cromwell sent a fleet, in 1655, to destroy the corsair ships and release the Christian slaves.  The Dutch, the French, the English, the Americans, and the Sardinians, all in turn attacked Tripoli in response to piracy, which was not finally ended until well into the nineteenth century.  In the war of 1911-1912, the Italians took Tripoli from the Turks and began the conquest of Libya, which was interrupted by the World War and the subsequent rebellion.  As a result, Libya was not completely conquered; the eastern province of Cyrenaica was still fighting hard against the Senussi.

In the western province, Tripolitania, the Italians had established themselves firmly throughout the greater, most valuable part.  They held Ghadames, Sinaun, Nalut, Misda, Beni Ulid, Bir el-Hasciadia, Bir el-Gheddahia, Buerat el-Hsun, Tsemed Hassan, and Kasr Zafran (Sitre).  Inside their zone were peace, justice, order, freedom, and coming prosperity.  Outside it lied the stony desert of the Hammada el-Homra and the sands and oases of the Fezzan depression, where lawlessness still existed.  The few rebels who held out were so scattered and dispirited that, even in that desert zone, Pax Italica reigned.  In March 1925, an automobile expedition from Tripoli to Ghadames, 366 miles distance, and back, was undertaken.  The party included 12 Italian officers and soldiers, a photographer, and a journalist.  They were not disturbed while passing through the No Man’s Land outside the zone policed by the troops.  The object of the journey was to find a route over the trackless desert for automobile traffic between Tripoli and Ghadames, the oasis near the border of French Sahara and the southernmost spot held by Italian troops.  The party traveled in one Ford and five Fiats, with ordinary tires and without caterpillar bands.  At one point, the expedition encountered great dunes, some 600 feet high.   As a result, it took 30 hours to go 500 yards, and only after nets had been put down could that formidable area be crossed.  The oasis of Ghadames, which has an artesian well of warm water rich in mineral salts, had 6,000 inhabitants a short time prior, but the caravans were deserting it, most of the trade going to Lake Chad or to Dakar.  The inhabitants, too, were leaving it and only old men, women, and children remained.  That deviation of the French Saharan commerce would mean a serious loss to Tripolitania.

The population of Tripolitania was estimated at about 550,000, a large portion being nomads.  Tripoli had 15,000 Italians, 2,000 Maltese, more than 8,000 Jews, and 32,000 Arabs and Negroes.  The coastline, from Cape Ras Ajir to Kasr el-Muktar was 600 miles in length.  Except for the small gulf of Bu Kemesh and a few other small features, it was unintended and devoid of natural harbors.  For the greater part of its length, the coast district, plentifully supplied with well water, had a chain of fertile oases of date palms, barley, fruit trees, and vegetables.  The Italians had built a railway from Tripoli for 74 miles along the coast to Suara, in the west, another to Tajura, 12 miles east of the capital, and a third line south for 31 miles to Azizia.  The last two were being continued, and the government was ready to extend the Suara Railway to the frontier of Tunisia, if that protectorate would extend their line from Gabes.  Like their Roman ancestors, the Italians constructed splendid roads and were doing so in Tripolitania.  One fine highway extended 75 miles east along the coast to and beyond Homs.  Another went south for the same distance to Gharyan and was being continued west to Yefren.  That latter route traversed the maritime plain and ascended into the Jebel, or mountain region.  Outside the gates of Tripoli, the country consisted of undulating dunes, generally covered with coarse vegetation, but, in part, bare.  To prevent movement of the sand, squares of stubble grass were pinned down, inside of which eucalyptus and other trees were being planted.  The railway was approached and crossed several times, but the region looked unpeopled and devoid of houses, the inhabitants being nomads.  At Azizia, however, there was a fort on a small hill, a government dispensary for the natives, a railway station, and some one-storied buildings.

There were no troops, but a few European civilians resided there.  Beyond, the plain, having become more level, was covered with grass and, in spring, with a profusion of wild flowers.  Vast fields of barley planted by the nomads stretched to the horizon on both sides of the road.  Presently, the long line of hills ran across the country east and west, and up its steep face, by sharp zigzags, climbed the road made by the Alpini in 1913, a splendid example of military engineering.  From the summit, the traveler found himself in a new world, a land reminiscent of fertile Sicily.  Green fields of barley, corn, and vegetables, groves of olive trees, fig, pear, and other fruit trees covered the undulating tableland.  Here and there rose higher hills, and, in one place, the crater of an extinct volcano.  The soil was good, but its cultivation haphazard.  The mystery was, where were the inhabitants who tilled it?  Scarcely a human was visible, and no villages or houses were to be seen along the way.  This, the territory of Gharyan, which had a population of 30,000, was the country of the Troglodytes, the dwellers under the earth.  {See: “The Mole Men: An Account of the Troglodytes of Southern Tunisia,” September 1911, National Geographic Magazine.]  They did not live in caves, but dug pits from 20 to 30 feet square and 30 to 40 feet deep.  To one side of each an inclined tunnel was burrowed down toward the bottom of the pit.  Off the passage, at one or two levels, rooms were hollowed out, with openings for light and air, on to a face of the pit.  The ceiling and sides of the chambers and tunnels were damp with exuding moisture.  A wooden door closed the entrance above, around which the excavated earth was spread in low mounds.  This strange type of dwelling was cheap and easy to keep in repair, was cool in summer and warm in winter.

As one proceeded along the road, a few buildings were seen at last, but they were evidently European.  They constituted Gharyan, until November 1922, the headquarters of a rebel chief.  In 1925, it was the center of a military and civil administrative district under a general and a civil commissioner.  The post consisted of a fort at the edge of a precipice, on the site of a Roman castle; the beehive huts of the native infantry battalion; a few stone houses, a military club’ a mosque’ and a hospital.  All around were the pits and yellow-clay heaps of the Troglodytes, but no above-ground villages or habitations.  The district of Gharyan was from 1,800 to 2,100 feet above the sea, and its climate was good, resembling that of central Italy.  Snow fell sometimes and there was an abundance of water for irrigation, from springs, wells, and cisterns.  The inhabitants subsisted largely on figs, of which they had 60,000 trees.  That district was a fair sample of the hilly region of Tripolitania and was suited to colonization.  The coastal road from Tripoli to Homs would soon be well known to tourists, for it led to excavations that were revealing the wonders of the buried city of Leptis Magna, at one time the most populous in Roman Africa.  It ran parallel to the sea all the way, and for the first 12 miles passed through a rich agricultural district, with many wells for irrigation.  Two or three miles beyond Homs, a stretch of barren sand dunes lied between the road and the sea.  One would not suspect that under those white mounds lied a city founded by the Phoenicians, which in the Christian Era gave a ruler to the Roman Empire.  But the spade was laying bare the ruins of Leptis Magna.  Already the walls and arched gateway of the palace had been exposed after 1,200 years of burial.  There were also baths, city gates and walls, a theater, and a couple of streets.

From the dunes that had so long covered them were emerging the beautifully carved marble columns of the palace, erect and in position.  Some were round, with artistic capitals; others were squared and chiseled with designs of flowers, heads of animals, and groups of humans.  All were snow-white and nearly perfect.  The thermae, or baths, were even more surprising, for some of the walls stood 30 feet high.  There were gigantic columns of colored marble and smaller white ones.  Two marble-lines swimming baths, wonderfully preserved, still showed the steps, plumbing, and dressing rooms.  All those wonders laid under 40 feet od sand.  Down by the sea were the remains of the harbor mole, with the quay to which galleys were made fast.  But the greatest treasure was several beautiful white marble statues and carving as fresh as if they were made yesterday.  A beautiful Venus was the gem of all.  Leptis Magna bid fair to rival Pompeii.  But Tripolitania was daily revealing, at Sabrata and elsewhere, other ruins of the trans-Mediterranean empire that the modern Romans were reviving.

 

 

The third item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “Under Italian Libya’s Burning Sun” and has Luigi Pellerano in the byline.  It is not an article, but a set of “9 Autochromes Lumiere” embedded within the second article but not counted towards its listed illustrations.  These nine images are true color photographs.  These photos appear on “Eight Pages of Illustrations in Full Color,” eight plates numbered I through VIII in Roman numerals and representing pages 141 through 148 in the issue.  All plates contain a full-page color photo, except plate IV, which has two half-page photos.

A list of caption titles for the nine Autochromes with Plate numbers is as follows:

• “A Spahi, or Native Cavalryman, of Tripolitania” – Plate I
• “Veiled Men of the Sahara” – Plate II
• “Young Woman of Tripoli in Holiday Dress” – Plate III
• “A Soldier of Italian Libya” – Plate IV
• “The Governor’s Bodyguard in Tripoli” – Plate IV
• “One of Italy’s Battalions in Libya” – Plate V
• “A Mohammedan Priest of Tripoli” – Plate VI
• “A Daughter of the Libyan Desert” – Plate VII
• “A Town-bred Arab Woman: Tripoli” – Plate VIII

 

 

The third article (fourth item) listed on this month’s cover is entitled “Toilers of the Sky” and was written by McFall Kerbey.  It has the internal subtitle: “Tenuous Clouds Perform the Mighty Task of Shaping the Earth and Sustaining Terrestrial Life.”  Of the thirty-three illustrations listed on the cover, seventeen of them are black-and-white photographs of which seven are full-page in size.  One of those full-page photos serves as the frontispiece for the article.  The remaining sixteen illustrations are duotones and will be discussed later.

The clouds of the sky may have seemed, like the lilies of the field, to toil not.  But they did toil ceaselessly, and the record of their labors may be read in the mighty things they had done to and for the world.  Over and over again, in the millions of years they had been at work, they had carried all the oceans and had hurled them down upon the land – billions of cubic miles of water.  They had washed away mountains greater than the Himalayas.  They had filled up oceans as broad as the Atlantic.  If we dug down five miles, even ten, we would carve through cloud-built rocks, sediments laid down, grain upon grain, each carried by drops of water that had fallen from the sky.  The clouds had carved great valleys.  The Grand Canyon was but one of their minor works, a labor of their yesterdays.  They bore the feathery snowflakes which built up the huge glaciers that crushed and ground their way Equatorward during the Ice Age.  They furnished the chief reagent for Nature’s laboratory, dissolving and bringing together the minerals scattered through the rocks.  Those were the labors of the past.  But the clouds were working, in 1925, as ceaselessly as they worked eons before man came upon the earth.  They were steadily shaping the earth day by day.  They spent themselves to make the streams, to water the crops, to feed the world.  But new cloud generations were ever coming on to take their place.  They were mist; yet they formed one of the staunchest pillars of life itself.  Clouds started from any water that could evaporate – a tiny dewdrop on a rose; a family washing hanging on the line; a bead of perspiration on one’s brow; spray from the garden hose; steam from the family teakettle or a speeding locomotive; puddles left by yesterday’s rain; little brooks and great rivers; lakes of every size, and broad oceans.

Most clouds had their beginning in the oceans, started by the restlessness of the water molecules.  In the form of water, those little molecules were relatively at rest, huddled close to their fellows, but fairly free to slip about the crowd of water particles.  As they were pressed together, they vibrated, as did all other molecules of matter.  There was more room at the top than anywhere else, and there, the most active molecules – made more active by greater heat – made their way. Some jumped or were pushed above the surface.  Many of the molecules fell back into the water; but some tore themselves entirely free.  The escaped molecules were, in a sense, no longer water; they had evaporated into a vapor or gas.  Countless millions of billions of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen already occupied the space over the water, and the newcomers could advance into that crowd only by shouldering their way.  The water vapor would eventually saturate the atmosphere if the latter remained motionless, neither drifting aside nor rising, or if further changes in temperature did not occur.  But the wind usually moved blocks of air from the water when they still were only partly saturated and shifted drier air blocks in.  Temperature was really the master cloud-builder.  It made the water molecules leap from the water, and it provided the energy of the interfering air molecules.  So, too, it made the winds that transported the vapor and mixed it with dry air.  Only futile fog could be built close to the earth.  If vapor molecules were ever to form rain-giving clouds, the must be raised aloft to the cloud regions; and, again, it was heat which took them there.  The region of the atmosphere in which water vapor could exist in appreciable quantities towered some seven miles upward in the U. S., higher in the Tropics, and lower near the poles.

The atmosphere itself, in a rarer and rarer form, reached upward for many scores of leagues.  But beyond a certain point no considerable amount of moisture could go, because it was squeezed out by cold.  Beyond the dead-line, no cloud could form.  It was wholly within that seven-mile region that water vapor fought its battles and performed its manifold services.  Vapor molecules were lighter than the oxygen and nitrogen molecules of the air.  The vapor-ladened air therefore rose.  The warmer the air, the more vapor it could contain.  If, on the other hand, warm air containing vapor was cooled, its capacity for vapor diminished.  This decease in vapor capacity took place in a block of moist air as it rose into cooler upper regions, and if it rose high enough to cool to the critical point, it simply dropped part of its vapor load.  That was the real birth of a cloud.  The molecules that jumped out of the water, needed to return to water.  Frantically they grabbed their nearest fellows and formed tiny droplets that were hardly large enough to be seen.  As more and more droplets gathered, they formed a great misty mass thick and dense enough to obscure the sky.  There was a heavy mortality among the clouds, and rain was not always the immediate end of them.  The fleecy formations made up the munition trains of the warrior clouds.  The water of the average cloud did not always pass on directly to the rain clouds.  It might pass through many forms, and be in the sky for weeks before conditions were right to begin its journey back to the sea.  Clouds could be blown into drier air, or be warmed by the sun; evaporating as a result.  When water-vapor particles condensed into water droplets, they not only grasp their nearest fellow molecules, but the found infinitesimal bits of floating material, such a dust motes and crowd upon them.

Dust was usually abundant thanks to winds and volcanoes; and from thousands of chimneys.  Gradually, the cold of the upper regions caused more and more of the vapor molecules to jump out of gaseous form and attach themselves to existing droplets until the latter were built up enough to fall earthward.  Sometimes, the first drops of a thunder shower seemed huge, but even the largest raindrops were relatively small.  The largest raindrops that struck the earth had diameters about equal to that of the average lead pencil.  The greatest speed at which a raindrop struck the earth, no matter how great a height it fell, was close to 30 feet a second – a speed less than that of a pebble dropped from a fourth-story window.  In the average cloud there were about two tablespoonfuls of water in cloud enough to fill the largest furniture van.  Trying to count the molecules that jumped from the sea was not practicable.  It was estimated that, in a third of a thimbleful of water, there were more than 32 trillion-billion molecules, and in a glass of water, 240 times as many!  The water-supply system of a great city ate clouds by the skyful.  New York City needed more than 730 million gallons a water a day, and had provided hundreds of square miles of watershed to catch the necessary rain.  Clouds provided power for man by way of hydroelectric power generated by its rain working its way back to the sea.  Fortunate it was that that portion of the sea which hung ever in the air was scattered, for if it all fell in one place and then another, the flooding would be catastrophic.  It was no less fortunate that rivers and glaciers and clouds were pouring water into the sea almost exactly as fast as it was being taken out by the sun.  If that evaporation was not replaced, the oceans would last less than 2,700 years.

Though clouds were fairly well scattered over the earth, they had their favorite haunts and places which they shunned.   They colored the globe like a cartographer colored his maps.  The greens of fields, meadows, forests, and jungles showed where they favored, the browns of steppes and deserts marked where they rarely visited.  The favorite gathering place of clouds was the southern slopes of the Himalayas.  More than 38 feet of rain fell in an average year.  In an exceptional year, more than 75 feet fell.  From India and Burma down to the East Indies, astride the Equator, extended the greatest cloud and rain belt of the world.  The second greatest was in western Brazil and fed the greatest river, the Amazon.  Only in two other places did clouds gather as thick, and rain as hard, both were near each other in equatorial Africa.  Well outside the tropics the greatest concentration of rainclouds occurred in North America, along the southern “kite tail” of Alaska, though far to the south, a narrow strip of southern Chile was almost comparable.  On down into our northwestern States the cloud concentration extended in somewhat less degree.  Water power told the story of the generosity of the clouds in that region.  The State of Washington led all others in electricity produced by water and gravity.  Nearly one-third the potential hydroelectric power in the U. S. lied in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  Already, much of that power in use.  If fog was classed as cloud, there were regions of the earth where clouds blotted out a sight of sky for large parts of the year.  A fog bank closed down in autumn on the tiny island of St. Kilda, west of northern Scotland, and was practically unbroken until early summer.  On and near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland fogs occurred often in spring and summer, blotting out sky and sea alike.

On the other side of the picture were the world’s cloudless regions.  The people of the desert coast of Peru might go for years without the sight of a cloud.  Over parts of the Sahara and Gobi deserts and in the arid region that was German Southwest Africa clouds were scarce.  In our own southwest, near the mouth of the Colorado River, only five out of every hundred days were cloudy.  Clouds and vapor performed services not directly connected with the carrying of water and the creation of power.  Both as water droplets and as vapor, they served as screens by day to temper the sun whose unrestricted rays would parch and sear what was green and flourishing.  By night those same clouds were like a blanket keeping in the heat.  The author compared the shapes of clouds as a Sphinx, a Colossus, Icarus, a ship, and sheep.  He the explained that the Sphinx and the Colossus were cumulus banks and thunderheads; Icarus was but a fragment of a cirrus cloud.  The ship was a fracto-cumulus, while the sheep were alto-cumulus.  There were three major types of clouds: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus, and all forms were a combination of those three.  Fogs formed only because the wind had failed to play its part in cloud-building.  If moist air continued to lie just above the earth or water it might cool to the condensation point.  The upper reaches of fog were seldom more than 300 to 600 feet.  Clouds did not fly in a haphazard way in the sky.  Certain types floated in defined zones, and were seldom found elsewhere.  In between these cloud levels were cloudless zones; where moisture existed only as vapor.  Those levels varied somewhat, and great storm clouds ignored them and plunged through unbroken to a height of seven miles.  From day to day, the normal clouds ordinarily kept to their levels.

That cloud ladder of the sky, with its alternate spaces and rungs, was not a matter of practical importance to man in the past; but now, with air travel, the location of the clear spaces was of great importance.  The only terrifying cloud was that of the tornado.  Dropping its great tail from a blanket of nimbus clouds, it lashed the earth like some gigantic dinosaur.  The tail was really cloud and dust swirling around a suction tube that drew up everything in its path with an almost irresistible force – a Titanic vacuum cleaner.  Once that swirling chimney of air formed it persisted for long periods.  It was a dawn and sunset that Nature painted the clouds with a lavish hand.  A sunset sky was a blaze of glory or a delicate pastel study.  Dust in the sky sifted out the component colors in the sunlight, leaving reds and violets.  The more dust, the more sumptuously the clouds were bathed in rose and gold and fiery red.  The occasional storms that raised tons of dust into the sky of our own dry Southwest was a trying cross to bear.  But there was a wonderful compensation.  High in the air, the tiniest dust grains atoned for their coarser fellows.  Nowhere else in the U. S. did the skies burst into such glory of color at dawn and sunset, nor did the approach of twilight cast such magical, soft-hued shadows that transformed bare, rugged mountains into fairylands.  Of all the beautiful forms that clouds had brought to the world, the rainbow was undoubtedly that which had most stirred men’s imagination.  The rainbow resulted from rays of the sun that were bent and reflected by passing into and out of drops of water in the air.  That bow was always seen as the observer looked away from the sun.  The rainbow was not a material thing; it was a phantom of the sky.  The rainbow was a token that man shall not perish by water.  Clouds were the ever-redeemed promise of our daily bread.

 

 

As mentioned above, a set of sixteen half-page duotones on eight consecutive pages (181 through 188) are embedded within the third article.  Duotones, formerly called photogravures, are ink transfers using an etched metal plate.  The ink used in this batch is extremely, and probably intentionally, blue.

A list of the caption titles for these sixteen blue-and-white duotones is as follows:

• “Tuft Cirrus”
• “Cirrus: A Fibrous Form”
• “Cirrus: A Bunched Form”
• “Cirro-Stratus”
• “Cirro-Cumulus”
• “Cirro-Cumulus: Waved Form”
• “Alto-Stratus (Lower Part of Illustration)”
• “Alto-Cumulus: Somewhat Ragged”
• “Alto-Cumulus: Undulated Type”
• “Strato-Cumulus”
• “Strato-Cumulus”
• “Strato-Cumulus”
• “Cumulus”
• “Cumulus Rolls”
• “Cumulo-Nimbus, or Thunder Clouds”
• “Stratus”

 

 

The fourth article (fifth item) listed on the cover of this month’s article is entitled “From England to India by Automobile” and was written by Major F. A, C. Forbes-Leith.  It has the internal subtitle: “An 8,527-mile Trip Trough Ten Countries, from London to Quetta, Requires Five and a Half Months.”  The article contains thirty-three black-and-white photographs, of which six are full-page in size.  One of those full-page photos serves as the frontispiece for the article.  It also contains a sketch map of the author’s route on page 193.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Early last year [1924] the author decided to try to drive a motorcar from England to India, a journey that necessitated passing through ten countries and across two continents.  Airplanes had flown to India on several occasions, airships were being built for regular service, even a Royal Navy submarine was enroute, but no effort had been made to bridge that distance by car.  At least two-thirds of the journey would be made in Asia, through little-civilized country, with no help for car maintenance, so serious thought was given.  To carry every spare part that might have been needed would have required four cars.  That was impractical.  The author decided on one car.  Next, he decided the type of car he would use, weighing all the factors.  He chose a 14-horsepower Wolseley, with extra tankage.  Personnel was the next difficulty.  The author chose as diarist Mr. Allan Wroe, of Leeds, and Mr. Montague Redknap to make a travel film.  Dumps of tires, spare parts, and film were sent ahead to Belgrade, Constantinople, Alexandretta, and Bagdad, but they carried in the car nothing more than for a 100-mile trip.  Personal luggage was limited to 35 pounds per man, and camera, film, emergency rations, spare parts, tools, two spare tires, and the men weighed about 1,200 pounds.  With the car weighing 2,500 pounds, that made a total just under two tons.  The Lord Mayor of Leeds gave them a civic farewell. And, on passing through London, a large crowd assembled in Piccadilly Circus.  [See: “London,” September 1915, National Geographic Magazine.]  After a farewell lunch in London, they left for Folkstone and took the ferry across the 26 miles of sea that separated Great Britain from the continent.  They adopted as their mascot, “Felix,” the famous cat, and named the car “Felix the Second.”  What a lucky mascot he was.  The sight of Felix atop their spare wheel, made even the stern-faced customs officers smiled.

When they landed in France, the post-war changes were evident.  Humanity was working under full pressure, with only 16 registered unemployed men in Paris. Almost all land was under cultivation.  Men, women, and children were planting, plowing, and gathering in every field.  Although they passed through the war area on their run to Paris, not a trace of destruction could be seen.  In Paris, they had their first of two punctures, picking up a horseshoe and its nails.  While there, they met the famous film actor, Douglas Fairbanks, who gave them a send-off and whispered to Felix to “Keep on purring.”  Afterwards they adopted as their slogan, “Felix keeps on purring.”  The French were a delightful people.  Naturally, as a Latin race, their temperament was entirely different from ours. [See: “Our Friends the French,” November 1918, National Geographic Magazine.]  Their first stop after leaving the gay city was at Briare, a delightful little village 70 miles to the south.  Their hotel, a 14^th-century structure, was picturesque and the room in which the author slept was occupied by the Emperor Napoleon in 1813 when made the inn his military headquarters.  They lunched the second day out of Paris under the shadow of the 13^th-century Castle of Flassons, whose war-battered walls were in a wonderful state of preservation.  After three days of travel through the beautiful alleys of the Loire and Rhone, and a short stay in the industrial city of Lyon, they spied a blotch of blue on the horizon, and soon arrived at St. Raphael, a pretty, little seaport on the Mediterranean.  Along the coast, they ran through Cannes, Nice, and Antibes, to Monte Carlo.  Beyond Mentone, most delightful of all Riviera resorts, they crossed the Franco-Italian frontier – from the neat trimness of France to the careless picturesqueness of Italy.

A great change had come over Italy since 1919.  In that year, when the author passed through the kingdom, everything was in a state of chaos.  Anarchy was rampant, and the police and army corrupt.  Unemployment was a problem that threatened the very heart of the country.  But, after six years, the author was impressed with the new Italy.  The police force was efficient, the army operated normally, seemingly every factory was working, and there was work for everyone.  His admirers attributed that change to Mussolini.  They soon reached Genoa, that great seaport which, next to Marseille, the author regarded as the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  [See: “Frontiers of Italy,” June 1915; and “Inexhaustible Italy,” October 1916; National Geographic Magazine.]  In a half an hour one saw people of nearly every nationality – Arab, Hindu, Chinese, Turk, Moor, Russian, Malay, Japanese, and more.  They traveled from Genoa across the fertile plains of Lombardy, on roads thick with dust.  In historic Padua, they found out that no road rules were enforce, so everyone took care and there were few accidents as a result.  At Venice, in a gondola, they wandered through the canals, past the haunts and homes of the doges.  One thing spoiled the beauty of Venice – the swarm of motorboats and launches that infested the Grand Canal.  The gondolier was the cab driver of Venice.  If you did not speak Italian, he had a language of his own to tell you about everything you wished to see.  [See: “Venice,” June 1915, National Geographic Magazine.]  On they moved, across the Italian-Austrian battlefront, through miles of concrete trenches, gun emplacements, and redoubts, soon crossing the 1914 frontier.  They stayed a while at Monfalcone, formerly a city of old Austria.  That town presented a sad sight; little had changed since the Armistice.

From there they had a long, steady climb through beautiful country and, an hour before sunset, breasted a hilltop and came to one of the most glorious views the author had ever seen – the city of Trieste, 1,500 feet below, beside a sea of blue glass.  Every building was a different color; large liners at anchor looked like canoes.  This beautiful city had fallen upon hard times.  Formerly the greatest port in the Austian Empire, commerce had declined since the city changed hands.  [See: “The Land of Contrast: Austria-Hungary,” December 1912, National Geographic Magazine.]  Their next stop was Fiume, the scene of the coup of Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italy’s poet patriot.  It was also a fine port, but a mean city compared with Trieste.  A narrow river separated it from Susak, the Yugoslavian frontier town.  After a night in Fiume, they crossed the frontier bridge to Yugoslavia.  The change was dramatic – from stagnation and slackness to hurry and bustle.  The only place not rushed was the customshouse.  It required six hours to deal with their small outfit.  They were now in a new kingdom, a charming country of delightful, music-loving people.  Every little village café had its orchestra, with men playing guitar and mandolin while girls sang.  The Croats and Serbs were fine fellows of good physique and very hard workers.  Serbia, before the World War, was spoken of as a little Balkan state; in 1925 she was a power in Europe.  At Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, they were shoch to see the police appeared to be Bobbys.  The were trained and outfitted in England.  In atmosphere, architecture, and general plan, Zagreb was a miniature Vienna.  It had a fine opera house, and the architecture was for the most part Austrian.  From Fiume onward, the war-worn roads had almost ceased to exist, and they had a weary struggle to Belgrade, the capital of the Kingdom.

A ruin at the time of the Armistice, Belgrade had made a remarkable recovery.  In five years, 4,000 new buildings had sprung up and all the railway bridges and culvers had been rebuilt.  Nearly every contract for reconstruction work had gone to Germany.  The Serbian government took a kindly interest in their plans, and wired ahead to every village on their route, ordering assistance.  As they moved slowly south, the gradual change between West and East became more noticeable.  In Nish, the hat was replaced by the tarboosh, carts by pack animals, and water-sellers, with full goatskins, rattled cups to attract attention.  All the Balkan nations were suspicious of each other and kept their frontiers in disrepair, making the railway the only easy means of passing from one country to another.  [See: “The Whirlpool of the Balkans,” February 1921, National Geographic Magazine.]  The road into Bulgaria had long been blocked by landslides, and, in Dragoman Pass, they were forced to run along the riverbed for miles.  On arrival at the frontier, they were informed that they were to be sent through the country duty free, as the government had taken an interest in their effort.  The author was impressed by the Bulgars hospitality.  One of the chief industries was the cultivation of roses. They passed through miles of roses in bloom.  On their second day in Sofia, they were received by King Boris III.  After the meeting, the king inspected “Felix.”  The next day, the president of the Bulgarian Automobile Association arrived as they were leaving the hotel.  He led a procession of thirty cars, formed as an escort to give them a sendoff.  A day’s journey east brought them to country which, up to a few years prior, was part of the Turkish Empire.  The trim, white-washed villages of Bulgaria were replaced by the shabby, gabled buildings of the Turk. 

Continual cloudbursts and thunderstorms dogged them for many days.  On the Bulgarian-Turkish frontier, many bridges were washed away.  Cartloads of timber were needed to build temporary bridges.  On the frontier, Bulgarian and Turkish soldiers united to get them through the swamps.  In Turkey their troubles commenced, and the found the Turks difficult to work with.  They were delayed at Adrianople and charged 300 pounds sterling duty on the car and its contents.  The city of Adrianople had changed hand three time since the Balkan War of 1911-13.  The population then was 110,000.  By 1925, it had been halved, with all Greeks and Armenians expelled.  After five days’ delay, the author convinced the governor to allow them to proceed.  With immense relief, they moved on to Constantinople through mud and swamp.  After four weary days they rested in the shadow of Sancta Sophia.  Constantinople of 1925 was very different from the city of 1919, for the policy now was “Turkey for the Turks.”  There were no motor roads in Asia Minor, but, some months after their visit, they began building road.  Apparently, their visit showed the possibilities of mechanical transport.  There were thousands of Russian royalist refugees in Constantinople.  [See: “Constantinople To-day,” June 1922, National Geographic Magazine.]  They crossed the B and moved on a road built by Alexander the Great about 330 B.C., and probably not repaired since.  For 880 miles after leaving Skutari, their average speed was two miles an hour.  Many days were spent negotiating swamps, hills, mountains, landslides, and broken bridges.  [See: “East of Constantinople: Glimpses of Village Life in Anatolia,” May 1923, National Geographic Magazine.]  They moved along many places where no wheeled vehicle had passed for 20 years, but their car emerged triumphant.

The peasant of Anatolia was one of Nature’s gentlemen.  [See: “Crossing Asia Minor, the Country of the New Turkish Republic,” October 1924, National Geographic Magazine.]  In nearly every village, they were welcomed by one or more ex-prisoners of war, who insisted on giving them food with no payment.  At night, they erected their camp beds beside the car.  After a hard day, they would only roll out their sleeping bags.  Halfway across Asia Minor, they stopped at Konia, capital of the Turkish Empire up until the end of the Seljuk dynasty.  It was a picturesque old city and contained the monastery and mosque which were the headquarters of the Mevlevi sect of dervishes.  Forward they went on their weary way, sticking in rivers for hours at a time, held up by landslides, bridging torrents on a few planks, climbing almost impassable hills, and plowing through swamps until they reached the Taurus Mountains.  After passing through the Cilician Gates, they rode over the plains of Tarsus, birthplace of St. Paul, thence to Adana, on the plain of Issus, where Alexander defeated Darius.  Finally, they crawled past the Turko-Syrian frontier to Alexandretta, in a land where the tarboosh was replaced by the flowing headdress of the Arab.  Breasting the famous Beilan Pass, and passing the Lake of Antioch, they soon struck the caravan track to Aleppo and struggled against the hot desert wind.  Long camel caravans, laden with carpets, spices, and riches of every kind from far-off places in Asia, continually passed them on their way to the coast.  They rode by a monument to the last battle fought by General Allenby against the Turks.  [See: “An Old Jewel in a Proper Setting: An Eye-Witness’s Account of the Reconquest of the Holy Land by Twentieth-century Crusaders,” October 1918, National Geographic Magazine.]

Shortly afterwards, they arrived at Aleppo, an ancient and great trade center.  The next day, they skirted the Syrian Desert.  At Khan Sheikhun, a picturesque Arab town, they camped one night on the roof of the local police station.  Through the ancient cities of Hama and Homs they moved slowly, until, on the fifth day from Aleppo, they reached Damascus, the city of seven rivers, and the ancient Paradise of the Moslem.  Although modernized, Damascus had lost none of its charm.  There, they had to prepare for a great test – the crossing of nearly 600 miles of desert to Bagdad.  There was only one well enroute, at Rutba, about half-way.  A company was already running a mail service with huge eight-cylinder cars.  Crossing the desert with a small car was a very different proposition.  An extra 200 pounds of petrol and water had to be carried.  They started to cross one afternoon but, after two hours, a sandstorm overtook them, and they had to wait the storm out.  They rested that night and pushed on the next day.  After 21 running-hours they sighted the palm-fringed Euphrates.  The only living souls they had seen while crossing the desert were a small tribe of Bedouins at the Rutba wells.  From the Euphrates, a run of two and a half hours brought them to the "City of the Caliphs."  [See: “A Visit to Three Arab Kingdoms,” May 1923, National Geographic Magazine.]  Until Bagdad came into prominence during the World War, it existed in the minds of most people as a mythical city from the Arabian Nights.  When the British entered the city in 1917, they were disappointed.  Although Bagdad had 300,000 inhabitants at that time, there were no thoroughfares wide enough for two small carriages to pass.  Sanitation was nonexistent; cholera and smallpox swept through the city.  Packs of dog acted as scavengers.

When General Townshend was threatening Bagdad, and the Turks found it impossible to move their heavy guns through the narrow streets, they cut their way through house, bazaar, and mosque, creatin a thoroughfare through the city from north to south.  That highway was called New Street by the British whey entered.  The Tigris, 300 yards wide, prior to British occupation, could be crossed only by a bridge of rickety old boats.  Summers were terrible; in July and August, temperatures reached 120 to 13 degrees F.  The British brought change quickly.  New Street was well metaled, and foot-walks built of solid brick skirted the road.  Two fine bridges across the Tigris opened and shut quickly by mechanical power to permit river traffic to pass, and both were approached by wide metal roads.  Hundreds of motor cars assed down New Street.  Two miles outside of the city, on what was barren desert a few years prior, had sprung a new town where all the Europeans resided.  An electric power station lit the buildings and streets, and ice factories produced, at low cost, an unlimited supply.  A railway connected Bagdad with Basra, and a motor mail service which bridged the Syrian Desert from Damascus, had brought it within nine days’ journey of London.  Nevertheless, Bagdad was still the real East.  At the bazaar gates, where Indian, Arab, Persian, Kurd, and Turk rubbed shoulders, civilization had halted.  From Bagdad, they visited the ruins of Babylon, a city which, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, covered a greater area than New York and London combined.  [See: “The Cradle of Civilization” and “Pushing Back History’s Horizon,” February 1916, National Geographic Magazine.]  They also visited Ctesiphon, where the vaulted halls of the winter palace of the Parthian kings still stood in a wonderful state of preservation.

After a prolonged stay in Bagdad, they moved on over 100 miles of desert to the foothills of Persia.  A day later, they climbed the famous Pai Tak Pass, and, on the great Persian plateaus, more than 6,000 feet above sea level, found relief from the scorching sun of the plains of Iraq.  Persia was generally believed to be a barren desert.  On the contrary, it was a glorious but vaster Switzerland.  On every side except the east, it was surrounded by hills leading up in gigantic steps to a vast plateau extending west, north, and south, and dropping suddenly in central Persia to a great desert, the Dasht-i-Lut.  The Persians were of pure Aryan stock, fairly like Europeans in appearance, but in temperament a race apart.  On they moved, through Kirmanshah, pausing a while at the tomb of Chosroes; thence through Hamadan where they visited the alleged tomb of Esther and the famous seven-walled citadel.  And so on to Teheran, the capital.  They visited the palace and allowed to see the famous Peacock Throne, taken by the Persians at the sack of Delhi.  They moved of on the last stage of their journey through the salt desert of Kum and rested a while at Ispahan.  They stopped at the ruins of Persepolis, that great relic of Persian civilization, which was burnt by Alexander the Great.  On again to Shiraz, a city studded with magnificent trees.  The next 750 miles to the Indian border were one long struggle with salt and sand.  On the border with Afghanistan, when they crossed the Indian frontier, their daily progress in the sand was a nightmare.  Weary and sore, they arrived on October 24 at their goal – Quetta.  Although they were 5½ months on the road, they ran for only 96 days.  Of the 8,527 miles covered, 3,000 were void of road or track and 1,500 over desert.  Their total bill for spare parts was less than $14.  They used but two sets of tires and had only two punctures.

 

 

The last article in this month’s issue is entitled “The MacMillan Arctic Expedition Sails” and has no byline.  This three-page editorial contains three black-and-white photographs, of which one is full-page in size.  That full-page photo serves as the frontispiece for the article.

Members of the National Geographic Society were gratified at the exceptional interest shown in the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, which went North under the Society’s auspices.  The Secretary of the Navy, Curtis D. Wilbur, had said that he regarded the Expedition as the best equipped, both as to material and personnel, ever sent into the Arctic.  Airplanes will explore in days icy areas of the Arctic which would take months to travers by dog sleds.  Radio was telling the daily progress which, in years past, would have been shrouded in silence for months.  For the first time in Arctic history, color photographers were recording the surprising tints of the Far North, the native life, birds, and many beautiful Arctic flowers.  Those new aids in travel and communication enabled the Expedition to engage upon a program of broader exploration and scientific study than any expedition heretofore had attempted.  The flying of the U. S. Navy airplanes under the direction of Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd, Jr., not only was epoch-making, but marked an important experiment in aviation.  If those air caravels of 1925 found a new continent, their pilots would have won a place in the Hall of Fame of great explorers.  New chapters in our knowledge of birds and fish, of interest alike to scientists and sportsmen, were being added by the studies of Dr. Walter N. Koelz, chief naturalist of the Expedition.  Information which would help navigate the ships and airplanes of the world was contained in the magnetic, tidal, and meteorological observations of Lt. Benjamin H. Rigg.

Another exceptional feature of the Expedition was its sponsorship noted by Commander Donald B. MacMillan in his farewell message radioed from Sydney: “We are fully equipped for exploration and the scientific study of northern lands, with the aid of new methods, such as airplanes, radio, and color photography, and with such support which places all of us on our mettle.  We are conscious of a high responsibility when the Government gives us its support, and when we set out under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, with its world-wide membership of 1,000,000 enthusiasts for geography and exploration, and when its President, Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, is here to aid personally in our final preparations.”  As soon as possible after the Expedition’s return, Commander MacMillan would prepare for the National Geographic Magazine an authoritative account of the results of the adventures and achievements of the Expedition.  That would be accomplished by the outstanding natural-color photographs and black-and-white illustrations from the 6,000 exposures The Society’s photographers were making.

 

At the bottom of the last page of this three-page editorial (page 226) is a notice with the heading “Index for January-June, 1925, Volume Ready”.  The one-line text of the notice states “Index for Volume XLVII (January-June, 1925) will be mailed to members upon request.”

 

 

Tom Wilson

[George Thomas Wilson]

Record number of links to earlier articles in this one (12).

Interestingly, all in the same article.