100 Years Ago: October 1926

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: October 1926

 

This is the one-hundred-forty-first entry in my series of National Geographic rewrites for their one-hundredth anniversary of publication.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Canada from the Air” and was written by J. A. Wilson, Secretary, Royal Canadian Air Force.  It has the internal subtitle: “Flights Aggregating 10,000 Miles Reveal the Marvelous Scenic Beauties and Amazing Natural Resources of the Dominion.”  The article contains seventy-six black-and-white photographs, of which thirty-two are full-page in size.  Sixteen of these full-page photos are duotones, which will be discussed later.  The article also contains a sketch map of Canada showing the routes travelled spanning the tops of pages 392 and 393.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Vision was required to see Canada as a whole, to grasp the magnitude of her heritage and its responsibilities.  Speed and freedom of movement throughout the length and breath of so large a country would bring provinces into closer touch, make the people of each section more familiar with their neighbors in other provinces, and thus give all a wider outlook and clearer understanding of the problems and duties of the Dominion as a whole.  The story of the discovery, exploration, and settlement of Canada, from the days of Jacques Cartier (1534), Samuel de Champlain (1603) and Henry Hudson (1610) down to the advent of the railroad was one of travel by sea, river, and lake.  The waterways of Canada provided easy access to the heart of the continent.  Nearly half the area of the Dominion, excluding the District of Franklyn, comprising of the Arctic islands, was drained by majestic rivers – on the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence; on Hudson Bay, the Nelson; and on the Arctic, the Mackensie.  No great natural obstacles divided those river basins, and passage from one to another was easily made by short portage.  Travel by boat or canoe throughout the northern and eastern parts of Canada, though slow, had always been easy.  Until the railroads were built, settlement and commerce were largely confined to the seacoast and the territories adjacent to the great rivers and lakes of the interior.  The age of railroad expansion followed the confederation of the colonies of British North America into the Dominion of Canada in 1867.  That had its chief effect in western Canada and made possible the settlement of the extensive farming districts of the prairies of that region, hitherto without access to any market.  In remoter districts, travel by water continued to hold sway.  Good roads also had been built throughout Canada.

But one who had flown over the forests of Canada and had seen from the air its thousands of lakes and beautiful rivers would not willingly travel again by any other method.  The routes generally followed the rivers, the natural highways of travel since the dawn of civilization.  During the prior five years [from 1926], a widely extended use of the airplane had been developed in the remoter parts of the Dominion, where modern facilities for travel were nonexistent and the alternatives were the canoe in summer and the dog team in winter.  Its use by foresters for fire patrol and timber cruising was, in 1926, well established, while the modern surveyor, with his aerial camera, flying at 5,000 or 10,000 feet above the ground, produced a complete photographic record of the country for many miles on each side of his line of flight, from which, with simple traverses on the ground for control, all the natural features of the region.  No regular air routes had yet been established between the large cities in the Dominion.  That phase of development necessarily was slower than in Europe or in the U. S., where populations were denser, the traffic heavier, and climatic conditions less severe.  The series of flights began in Ottawa, the Capital of the Dominion.  Queen Victoria was well advised when she named Bytown, as it was then called, the seat of government, after confederation in 1867.  Few capitals had a finer natural location.  The houses of Parliament and surrounding government offices were built on a high bluff on the south bank of the Ottawa River, just below the Chaudiere Falls.  To the north, forested spurs of the Laurentian Mountains extended almost to the river bank, while on the Ottawa side of the river the city was surrounded by a fine farming country.

Since the days of Champlain, the Ottawa River had been the main highway from the sea to the West.  Permanent settlements in the district, however, only began in the first decade of the nineteenth century.  After the War of 1812, the British Government, looking for a strategic route from the sea to the Great Lakes, which would avoid the international waterway of the St. Lawrence, decided to construct the Rideau Canal, which would give an alternative waterway from Montreal to Kingston, on Lake Ontario.  Built by the Royal Engineers, the canal was still in use in 1926, a monument to their skill and workmanship.  With the opening of the canal the little settlement grew in importance, and was called Bytown after Colonel By, commanding the Royal Engineers.  It soon became the center of a thriving Ottawa Valley lumber industry.  Their first flight was eastward, in a Royal Canadian Air Force flying boat, enroute to the Maritime Provinces for aerial survey.  As they rose from the Ottawa River, the city spread before them like a map, the great waterway running from the west to the east and expanding above the Chaudiere into Lake Deschenes.  Southward, narrow silver bands marked the course of the Rideau Canal and River across the fertile lands of Ontario into the Rideau Lakes, 40 miles away, while from the north the swift waters of the Gatineau rushed over their main rapids from the forests and hills of Laurentian country to join the Ottawa.  As height was gained, the St. Lawrence River could be seen 60 miles to the south, and beyond it the U. S.  An hour’s flight down the broad Ottawa brought them to the Lake of Two Mountains, and gradually the island of Montreal came into view, with Mount Royal towering above the smoky haze of the city.  The river divided into numerous channels at its junction with the St. Lawrence.

Turning southward and passing over Ste. Anne de Bellevue, they joined the main stream and saw, to the west, the power development at Cedar Rapids and the Soulanges Canal, the second of the series leading to Lake Ontario.  Then, taking their course over Lake St. Louis, they came to the Lachine Rapids, the first barrier to navigation from the Atlantic.  The city and harbor of Montreal now lied below them.  The site was first visited by Jacques Cartier, and the first permanent settlement was made by Maisonneuve in 1642.  Few cities had greater natural advantages.  At the head of ocean navigation, yet almost 1,000 miles from the Atlantic, it was a natural gateway for the commerce of the continent.  Unlimited water power drove her industries’ wheels, while an intelligent and thrifty people provided efficient labor for her factories.  Canada was one of the great commercial nations, and Montreal, the principal port for that trade, was the world’s greatest wheat exporter.  The city was bilingual, four-fifths of the population speaking French.  It was the seat of two noble institutions – the University of Montreal and McGill University.  Founded on the southern slope facing the river, the city had spread out in both directions and completely surrounded Mount Royal, which formed a natural park and playground in its center.  Their route followed the St. Lawrence east to Quebec.  To the right they saw the Richelieu River, once the chief trade and military route between Canada and the Hudson Rier by way of Lake Champlain.  Farther east lied the splendid farming country of the Eastern Townships, originally settled by United Empire Loyalists driven from the U. S. after the Revolutionary War.  Many prosperous industrial communities had grown up in the district, the greatest of which was Sherbrooke, just north of the New Hampshire and Vermont border.

On the northern bank of the St. Lawrence the Laurentian Mountains were never far away, and the numerous streams draining their valleys brought down the rich harvests of the forests of Quebec.  Three Rivers, halfway between Montreal and Quebec, at the mouth of the St. Maurice River, was the center of the largest pulp and paper industry on the continent.  As they neared Quebec the river narrowed, the banks became steeper and the mountains approached on each shore.  Seven miles above the city was the great Quebec Bridge, the largest single span in the world, 1,800 feet between supports, thrown across the river at its narrowest point.  No city in the New World had a more romantic history than the old French capital, nestled between the cliffs of the Citadel, and the Plains of Abraham, where was finally decided, in 1759, the great struggle between France and England for supremacy in the Western Hemisphere.  In a single morning’s flight, they had passed over three Canadian cities, each essentially different, but with one thing in common – magnificence of natural setting.  The St. Lawrence at Quebec narrowed for the last time, and the cliff on which stood the Citadel, at whose feet and around whose shoulders gathered the modern city, jutted out into the river.  The southern shore was also precipitous, and the St. Lawrence flowed through a narrow gorge to meet the ocean.  To the east of the city lied the fertile plain of the St. Charles River, encircled by the tall, timber-clad Laurentian Mountains, while in the river, below the city, rested the green Isle of Orleans.  On all sides were prosperous settlements.  They had been three hours in the air and had traveled some 260 miles.  The pilot suggested lunch while he obtained more fuel.  A landing was made in the mouth of the St. Charles River.

After lunch and a stroll on Dufferin Terrace, overlooking the river, they again embarked and proceeded eastward.  After passing the Isle of Orleans the river gradually expanded into a broad stream from 10 to 20 miles wide.  The northern shore continued bold and mountainous.  To the south there was a wide belt of farmland between the river and the low, forest-crowned hills.  The forest industry in the Province of Quebec, together with her farms were the mainstay of her prosperity.  At Riviere du Loup they bid farewell to the great river for the time being and turning south, proceeded inland.  Since leaving Quebec they had been climbing steadily and had now reached the altitude necessary to give a larger gliding radius while flying over the relatively dry country between the St. Lawrence and Lake Temiscouata, 30 miles inland.  Their route followed, roughly, the railway line over the height of land into the Province of New Brunswick.  For half an hour there were few places suitable for landing a flying boat.  Soon they were over the lake, and they again breathed freely.  It was a long, narrow, winding stretch of water, draining into the upper waters of the St. John River, which they reached at Edmundston, on the border between Maine and New Brunswick, the center of a thriving lumber industry.  New Brunswick, which had an area of 28,000 square miles, was a generally fertile province, though only a small part of it was as yet under cultivation.  It was primarily a forested country of low hills and valleys.  Numerous rivers provided access to the forests of the interior, in which were found some of the most attractive hunting and fishing districts in the Dominion.  As they neared Fredericton the valley widened, settlements increased, farming became prominent again, and the forests receded.

The St. John River formed a natural waterway through the heart of the province, though in certain seasons it was full of logs, and in the event of engine trouble it would be preferable to land in a plowed field.  Fredericton, the capital of the province, was reached in late afternoon, and they landed to refuel and rest for the evening.  There, they said goodbye to the Vickers amphibian boat, which had brought them from Ottawa, and embarked on an HS2L flying boat sent by the RCAF from Halifax to pick them up and take them another stage on their way.  The course lied down the St. John River to the Bay of Fundy, which they reached at the city of St. John.  The first settlement in New Brunswick was in 1762, and 21 years later St. John was founded by United Empire Loyalists from the U. S.  This was a thriving seaport, the eastern terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and chief center of the export trade for the lumber and agricultural produce of the province.  Just above the city were the famous Reversing Falls, formed by a barrier of rock across the river, over which, when the tide was low, rushed the waters of the St. John.  When the tide was high the waters of the Bay of Fundy forced the river back upon itself and the sea rushed into the basin above the city.  They had now reached the Atlantic and the way lied straight across the Bay of Fundy to the Province of Nova Scotia, 40 miles away.  The peninsula of Nova Scotia, with its northward extension, Cape Breton Island, was about 400 miles long and from 50 to 100 miles wide.  Flying up its center, they saw that a ridge divided it roughly into two slopes; that facing the ocean was generally rocky, barren, and open to the sweep of Atlantic storms, while the other, facing the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy, consisted for the most part of arable, fertile plains and river valleys.

On the Atlantic coast were many well-sheltered harbors providing safe anchorage for the fleets of the fishing communities, so vital to the prosperity of the province.  Nearing the Atlantic coast on their way to Halifax, they passed over Lunenburg, the home of one of the largest fishing fleets on the Newfoundland Banks; then over the picturesque Bays of Mahone and St. Margaret to the harbor of Halifax.  The history of Acadia, as the French province was known, dated back to 1604.  Port Royal, Annapolis in 1926, was the seat of the French Government, and that old town had many vicissitudes.  It was captured by the British twice, but retaken each time by the French. Finally, in 1710, it captured by an Expedition from New England.  Halifax itself was founded in 1749 by British emigrants, and since then it had bee a naval base of great strategic importance.  Its magnificent harbor commanded the North Atlantic trade routes to Europe.  It was a center of naval activity during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and again during the World War.  The city was built on a tongue of land between the North West Arm and the harbor proper.  Bedford Basin, beyond the Narrows, provided an anchorage where great fleets might lie sheltered from Atlantic storms.  Fishing and hunting abounded and the province was well served by railways, coastal steamers, and good roads.  It was essentially a maritime province, with a seafaring population, and in the days of wooden ships, its vessels were to be seen in every port of the world.  Their next flight was to the center of the coal and iron industry, at New Glasgow and at Sydney, Cape Breton Island.  Along the rugged Atlantic coast, deeply indented by many fine harbors, and over the Strait of Canso they flew.  To the north lied the counties of Victoria and Inverness, remote from the ordinary routes of travel.

Fishing and farming communities were dotted along the coast and their rivers provided the finest salmon fishing.  Canada’s fisheries were second to none.  The cool waters of her coast teemed with the best food fishes.  Sydney Harbor, like Halifax, was a magnificent stretch of water, well sheltered from the sea.  It was a gathering point for convoys during the World War, and an air station was built there in 1918 and manned by the U. S. naval Air Service.  Louisburg, farther around the coast, was founded by the French in 1713.  Captured by the British in 1745 but retaken, it was finally taken in 1758.  Of its formidable fortifications little remained in 1926.  It was a busy export town for coal from the neighboring mines.  They retraced their steps back over the beautiful Bras d’Or Lake, stretching through the heart of Cape Breton Island, and along the northern coast of Noa Scotia, past Antigonish, to New Glasgow.  [See: “The Charm of Cape Breton Island,” July 1920, National Geographic Magazine.]  Their line of flight now crossed Northumberland Strait to Charlottetown, the capital of the Province of Prince Edward Island, 150 miles long and from 4 to 34 miles wide.  Its rich soil and red sandstone formations gave it a distinctive topography.  There were no great elevations there, and the climate of the island was tempered by the surrounding waters and was free from the rigors of Atlantic storms.  Its rolling plains, numerous rivers, and sheltered harbors offered great inducements to the pursuit of agriculture and fishing.  The island was a delightful summer resort.  Its picturesque countryside made it a haven of rest for many a tired city folk.  Over the broad strait which separated it from the mainland, they passed again to the northern coast of New Brunswick and soon reached the wide entrance of the Miramichi Bay.

Still keeping a northward course, they crossed the mouth of Chaleur Bay, reaching far inland, between Gaspe Peninsula and New Brunswick.  That bay was named by Jacques Cartier on his first expedition.  All around its shores were prosperous fishing and lumbering towns and villages.  Bathurst and Campbellton were its big timber-shipping ports.  Flowing into it were four famous salmon rivers.  The Gaspe Peninsula was mountainous; the high interior plateau was as yet little developed, and, in the remoter districts, barely explored.  The scenery along the coast was magnificent.  At Bonaventure Island, a great pile of rock, a bird sanctuary had been established by the Dominion Government.  Its fisheries had been famous for centuries and the lumber industry also was of growing importance.  The picturesque villages of Gaspe and Perce were delightful Old-World spots, remote and as yet unspoiled.  Gaspe Basin was a great natural harbor.  They finally bid a reluctant farewell to the Maritime Provinces – a delightful region by the sea, a paradise for the yachtsman, motorist, hunter, and fisherman.  During the great rush for the development of the West, those provinces had been more leisurely in their progress.  Their geographic position, resources, and people, however, assured them their rightful share in the prosperity of the Dominion.  Their destination was now the Natashkwan River, far down the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where a survey of timber was being undertaken by the Forestry Service of the Province of Quebec.  From Gaspe their route lied across the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Ellis Bay, the principal harbor on the island of Anticosti; thence across the northern channel and eastward along the coast of Natashkwan.  Anticosti was 140 miles long and had a maximum width of 35 miles.

On their landing they were heartily welcomed and treated as honor guests, with true French hospitality.  The island had been turned into a large game reserve.  Red deer were plentiful, a herd of caribou had been introduced, and it was proposed to add a herd of musk oxen for eventual domestication.  Fish, furs, and pulp wood were the main resources of the island.  The small streams teemed with salmon and there were numerous lakes well stocked with trout.  A railway had been built down the center of the island for some 40 or 50 miles.  It was unique in that it had no conductor and collected no fares.  Lying athwart the entrance to the St. Lawrence, the island, in sailing days, was a notoriously dangerous place, and many ships had wrecked on its shores.  In 1926, lighthouses had been built and connected by telegraph and cable, and the waters made safe.  From Ellis Bay their way lied northward across a 25-mile stretch separating Anticosti from the north shore.  Striking Mingan Island, they passed eastward along the rugged coast to the mouth of the Natashkwan River.  During the next two weeks they had an opportunity of exploring what was practically an unknown country in the interior along river valleys to a point 150 miles or more from the coast.  Time passed, however, and their slogan was now Westward Ho!  The route lied over the Laurentian Plateau, across an area of pre-Cambrian rocks, covering 2,000,000 square miles, or more than half of Canada.  Glacial action had denuded much of that region and conditions, for the most part, were not favorable for farming, but sufficient soil remained to support forest growth.  In many valleys softer rocks had produced an abundance of soil with cultivated farmlands.  Elsewhere, the sediments deposited in the basins of glacial lakes produced large areas of arable land.

This region contained a variety of valuable minerals.  A large part of the area had not yet been prospected and new discoveries were constantly extending the mining industry of Canada.  The first stop on the westward flight was at Clark City, the scene of a large hydroelectric development and pulp and paper mills.  After refueling they proceeded Tadoussac, the oldest settlement in Canada, founded by Jacques Cartier in the early days of the sixteenth century.  Built where the Saguenay entered the St. Lawrence, it was still beyond the reach of railways, but was well served in the summer by passenger ships.  The Saguenay’s valley was a gigantic cleft in the Laurentian Mountains, navigable for ocean steamers as far as Chicoutimi, 70 miles upstream.  The famous white porpoises haunted the stream, and near the wharf huge salmon were seen in a clear, shallow pool.  The Saguenay drained an inland basin more than 35,000 square miles, surrounding Lake St. John, into which flowed four great rivers. Their combined waters flowed over the Grand Discharge to form the Saguenay River, which fell 300 feet from the lake to the sea within 50 miles, thus providing sites for one of the greatest hydroelectric developments in the world.  Moose and caribou abounded, as well as all furbearing animals, and the rivers teemed with fish.  Lake St. John was home to the ouananiche, a landlocked salmon.  The Forest Service of the province was now their host.  The flight to Chicoutimi and Roberval had been made on one of its flying boats.  Their flight now lied southward over the Laurentides Park, a vast game and forest reserve.  At La Tuque they swung westward into the valley of St. Maurice and followed it downstream to Grand Mere and Shawinigan Falls.  Hydroelectric power had led to those towns for pulp, paper, and electro-chemical industries.

The next stage was flown in a seaplane of the Fairchild Aerial Survey Company, from Lac a la Tortue, two miles from Grand Mere, straight across country by the Mattawin River into the Lievre watershed to Mont Laurier.  After a flight over silent forests on the headwaters of the Ottawa, they entered the mineral belt and noticed signs of human activity.  Smoke from prospectors’ camps rose in little blue clouds everywhere.  They landed on Lake Osisko, at the famous Noranda Claim.  It was a smelting proposition and had to wait for the railway to reach the mine before it could be developed.  After lunch, they again took to the air and, passing southward, reached Lac des Quinze, on the Ottawa River, and then Lake Timiskaming.  There, they again entered a settled farming country surrounding the eastern shore of the lake and stretching north into the clay belt running through northern Ontario and Quebec for hundreds of miles.  The majority of the settlers in both provinces were French-Canadians.  As they crossed Lake Timiskaming, they left behind the Province of Quebec.  Their next stopping place was Haileybury, on the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway.  During its construction the silver county of Cobalt was discovered, and, in 1926, the whole district was a series of mining camps.  Haileybury was the headquarters of the only regular air passenger, mail, and express service in Canada – the Elliot-Fairchild Air Service, Ltd., operating daily to the gold field in the Rouyn area.  They now met the Air Service of the Province of Ontario, formed in 1924, as a division of the Forestry Service.  It had a fleet of more than 17 seaplanes.  Sault Ste. Marie was the main base and the chief stations were at Sudbury, in the eastern district, and Sioux Lookout, in the western.

To Sudbury the route was over the Cobalt mining district, a desolate, rocky country where the timber had all been burned.  Everywhere one saw the shafts and buildings of many mines.  One passed with relief to Lake Timagami, one of Canada’s loveliest lakes, with many islands and deep bays reaching into the forest.  The Ontario Air Service had a subbase there, on Bear Island, the Forestry headquarters.  From Timagami their way lied westward over the forest reserve toward Sudbury.  Long before they reached the town, they saw the smoke from the chimneys of smelters of the copper-nickel mines.  They were fortunate to receive an invitation to join an expedition to Moose Factory far to the north. Two flying boats were going and they were given seats on one of them.  Fist flying southwest, Lake Huron soon became visible, as they gained height.  On reaching its shore they swung west, then north in a wide circle, and after three hours landed at Biscotasing.  After lunch at a fire ranger’s lodge the flight continued over a chain of lakes northward, across the height of land, to the headwaters of the Groundhog River.  Its course toward James Bay was followed over a wonderful belt of spruce and poplar, unspoiled as yet by fire.  Toward evening they landed on Remi Lake.  They were again in the great clay belt, and the rugged Laurentian country, with its rapid streams and many lakes, was left behind.  The land was level and, where the timber had been cleared, good farms were to be seen.  From Remi in the morning, they still followed the Groundhog River to its junction with the Mattagami over a flat, level country, the timber becoming poorer as they traveled north.  Down the Mattagami to its junction with the Missinaibi River to form the Moose River, which flowed 50 miles northward into James Bay, they passed over a flat, uninteresting country.

Moose Factory was an old trading post where was gathered the fur harvest of the North each spring.  There was a large school for Indian children.  After an interesting day spent with the hospitable folks of Moose Factory, the flight continued over James Bay to Charlton Island, where supply ships discharged their cargoes.  From that point they were distributed by smaller craft.  The next stop was Rupert House, on the Quebec side of the bay, named after Prince Rupert, the first Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, founded in 1670.  Their arrival at Rupert House was the cause of much excitement among the Indian population.  Returning to Moose Factory, they now joined the Indian Treaty Paying Expedition to Fort Albany and Attawapiskat, on the western shore of the bay.  The Indians, in return for ceding their lands, were guaranteed by the British Government a certain annual payment.  Each year expeditions were sent out to meet the natives, to whom the treaty money was paid.  A physician accompanied the party and gave the Indians medical treatment and advice.  The shores of the bay were low-lying and uninteresting.  The water for many miles out was extremely shallow and navigation, even by light craft and canoes, presented great difficulties, owing to the ebb and flow of the tide.  From Attawapiskat they returned to Fort Albany and proceeded up the Albany River through the heart of the District of Patrick, still practically unexplored save along that river.  Treaty money was paid at Martin House, Fort Hope, and Osnaburgh House, three Hudson Bay posts, the last at the head of Lake St. Joseph, some 450 miles from the mouth of the river.  From Osnaburgh House they followed Lake St. Joseph west to Lac Seul, and thence south to the railway at Sioux Lookout, the western headquarters of the Ontario Air Service.

South and west of Sioux Lookout was a forest district, with many beautiful lakes; in fact, there was almost as much water as land in the southwestern corner of Ontario.  They were now in Kenora, a great summer resort for the Prairie Provinces.  On hundreds of island delightful summer homes were seen on all sides.  Launches, sailing boats, and canoes plied over clear waters.  From Kenora the Winnipeg River was followed through a chain of lakes north to Minaki, where they bid the Ontario Air Service au revoir and met again the Royal Canadian Air Force, one of whose amphibians was on photographic survey work over the unmapped regions near the Ontario-Manitoba boundary.  Permission had been granted for flights over eastern and northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  The summer operating bases for the planes were at Victoria Beach, at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House at its northern extremity and at Cormorant Lake, on the Hudson Bay line east of The Pas.  Their flight into that new territory was north from Minaki to the junction of the English and Winnipeg rivers; then westward across the boundary into Manitoba, past Lac du Bonnet to Lake Winnipeg at Fort Alexander; thence a few miles to Victoria Beach.  On the Winnipeg River were seen the great power plants at Great Falls, Pinawa, and Point du Bois.  They followed the historic trade route of bygone days, from the Great Lakes to the Northwest, through the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg, and thence to Hudson Bay by the Nelson River, and to the west and north by the Saskatchewan.  They were now in the Prairie Provences.  Their westward crossing of Manitoba and Saskatchewan continued along the old trade route of the North, leaving for their return journey the passage over the newer farming districts of the prairies.

Their route lied through a continuation of the vast forest belt over which they had traveled in Quebec and Ontario.  It was a flatter country and the forest wealth was not comparable to that of the eastern provinces.  At the northern end of Winnipeg Lake, Warrens Landing was the headquarters of a large fishing industry.  Fishing, trapping, and hunting were still the mainstay of the Population.  The mineral wealth of the North was still undeveloped, though prospecting was going on everywhere.  A network of radio stations all over the North, from Yukon to Winnipeg, had been built the last few years.  Communications were maintained with patrol aircraft at all times, for fire alerts.  The way north from Victoria Beach lied over unmapped wilderness east of the lake.  Aerial surveys were being carried out for its exploration and mapping.  Their flight was made with an air survey party taking oblique photographs over a long and intricate chain of waterways stretching in a wide semicircle through western Ontario, northward to meet the Manitoba-Ontario boundary near Little Grand Rapids; thence, after refueling, in another semicircle by Moose Little Trout, Favorable, Lost, to Island Lake.  The journey was continued in a third wide sweep by Beaverhill and Goose lakes to Gods Lake, and thence by Clearwater, Oxford, and Pipestone lakes to Norway House, by the eastern channel of the Nelson River.  At Norway House they visited the famous old Hudson’s Bay post.  In pre-Confederation days, it was the seat of government in the West and North.  From Nelson House their next flight was northeast down the Nelson River, over Cross Lake.  At Thicket they reached the Hudson Bay Railway.  Steel was laid to the crossing at Kettle Rapids of the Nelson River, some 90 miles from Port Nelson.

Port Nelson was nearer to Liverpool by sea than Montreal.  More than a thousand miles of lake or rail transport would be saved if the northern route could be developed.  From Port Nelson their flight continued round the coast of Hudson Bay to Churchill; thence up the Churchill River through Southern Indian Lake to Pukatawagan; thence west, over the border into Saskatchewan, north up the Reindeer River to Reindeer Lake as far as Brochet, at the head of the lake; and, returning to the Churchill, on past Stanley Mission to Lac Ile-a-la-Crosse; thence southward, by the Beaver River and Cowan Lake, to civilization again at Prince Albert, on the Saskatchewan River.  Stanley Mission was a very old post, and at Ile-a-la-Crosse, also, there was a large mission.  Tradition had it that the Canadian national game, lacrosse, had its origins there, on the shores of the lake, where the Indians came to trade.  At Prince Albert they reached the edge of prairie country, but the settlement was spreading into the park lands north of the Saskatchewan River.  South of that, wheat farming predominated.  The flight was continued by the South Saskatchewan to Saskatoon, in the heart of the wheat-growing country.  This was a thriving town, the seat of the University of Saskatchewan, pleasantly situated on the high banks of the river.  For the first time they were now flying an airplane, as on the prairie good landing fields could be found everywhere.  From Saskatoon they proceeded to Wainwright, in Alberta, to visit the great buffalo reserve.  In 1926, the animals numbered some 9,000, and 2,000 were being shipped to the new reserve in the Mackenzie basin to augment the last remnants of the once vast herds which still roamed wild in that remote district.  Besides the buffalo, there was a very fine herd of elk and a few antelope.

Their next landing was at Edmonton, a generation prior a mere trading post and village, in 1926, a fine city of 70,000 people and the capital of the thriving Province of Alberta.  Formerly almost exclusively a ranching country, Alberta had now become a grain-growing and dairy province.  Its resources were more varied than the other Prairie Provinces, its timber valuable, and its coal mines practically inexhaustible.  Natural gas was found in quantities, providing cheap light, heat, and power, while its oil fields were also being developed.  Edmonton was the distribution point for the Mackenzie and Peace River valleys.  A railway ran to McMurray, and from there steamers plied, over 1,200 miles, with one break at the rapids on the Slave River, to the Arctic Ocean.  Their way west from Edmonton lied first over rolling parkland, well watered, well settled, and prosperous.  Gradually, the country became wilder and more broken.  Muskeg (swamp) and forests increased till the railway reached the valley of the mighty Athabaska, rushing down from its glacier source on its long course to the Arctic Ocean.  They followed that river upstream through the foothills and finally reached the Rocky Mountains.  On all sides, gray limestone mountains, crowned by the snowfields and glaciers of the continental watershed, lifted their heads toward the sky.  [See: “The Mother of Rivers – the Great Columbia Ice Field in the Canadian Rockies,” April 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  The valley was wide and the Yellowhead Pass was comparatively low.  Of all the railway crossings of the Cordillera in North America, it had the easiest gradients, both east and west.  Their landing place was near the site of Henry House, an old Hudson’s Bay post now in ruins, for they were once more on one of the early trade routes.

An open prairie between the railroad and the river made a natural airdrome a few miles from Jasper, the headquarters of the National Park Administration.  Jasper Park was the greatest of the national playgrounds established by the Dominion Government for the preservation of the scenery and wildlife in the mountains.  The National Railway had built a series of lodges there, on the shores of Lake Beauvert.  Their aircraft had come to seek out possible routes for new trails in the park, and photograph as yet unexplored valleys.  They were fortunate to participate in one of those flights, west up the valley of the Miette, round the south and west faces of Mount Robson, then north over the Continental Divide for a distance of 100 miles.  Mount Robson, more than 13,000 feet high, was one of the giants of the Rockies.  Its northern slopes were hung with glaciers and snow fields.  Beyond the limit of the flight, north of Mount Sir Alexander, the mountains were lower, more rounded, and the scene lost its Titanic splendor.  From Jasper the way to the Pacific lied by the Yellowhead Pass over Moose and Lucerne lakes at the summit, where rose the Fraser River.  They followed its course to Prince George, and thence by the Nechaco Valley to Fraser Lake.  There, they again changed aircraft, their aircraft returning to the prairie, while they proceeded westward in a flying boat operated in northern British Columbia, with headquarters at Hazelton.  At Hazelton, where the Bulkley River joined the Babine to form the Skeena, they again changed aircraft and were once more in the hands of the RCAF, and with them flew down the Skeena Valley to Prince Rupert, the Pacific terminus of the Canadian National Line.  Prince Rupert was the headquarters of an immense fishing industry.  Its halibut grounds were among the finest in the world.

The Province of British Columbia had an area of more than 355,000 square miles, or more than three times that of the United Kingdom.  Though much of the province was mountainous, the valleys were extremely fertile.  In the interior, vast areas were suitable for grazing and ranching, grain-growing and diversified farming.  The forests were second to none in the Dominion.  The flight southward from Prince Rupert along the coast, through the inland passages and fjords, was wonderful.  The channels between the islands and the mainland were narrow and only occasionally was the route opened to the wide waters of the Pacific.  Lofty mountain ranges rose on either side.  Halfway down they reached the northern end of Vancouver Island, entered the Queen Charlotte Strait, and then, passing through the narrows of Johnstown Strait and Discovery Passage, emerged into the broader waters of the Strait of Georgia.  Crossing the island at its narrowest point to Alberni, the aircraft flew down the Alberni Canal to Barkley Sound and out into the open Pacific.  In the heart of Vancouver Island another national park had been created by the Provincial Government around Buttle Lake.  Passing south down the Juan de Fuca Strait they approached Victoria.  That city, the capital of the province, was founded in 1842 by Sir James Douglas, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who moved the Pacific coast headquarters there from Fort Vancouver, in the State of Washington, after the Oregon boundary settlement.  Victoria was the first port of call for liners from the Orient.  Their next flight lied across the Strait of Georgia, thickly dotted with picturesque islands, to Vancouver, the metropolis of the Pacific coast. A thriving city, still in the making, each year its importance and trade increased.

A generation prior, tall pine trees grew where Vancouver stood; in 1923 its shipping trade was second only to Montreal.  Vancouver was built on Burrard Inlet, north of the mouth of the Fraser River, and was the Pacific terminus of the two major railway systems of Canada.  Southeast of the town. On the Fraser River, lied the older city of New Westminster, headquarters of Canada’s fishing industry on the Pacific coast.  They made a short stay at the RCAF station on English Bay, and from there made many interesting flights in the neighborhood with aircraft flying on many different services.  The way home lied up the Fraser River valley, at first wide and fertile, hemmed in by timber-clad mountains, ad gradually narrowing as they proceeded inland, till they reached, at Yale, the entrance to the canyon through which the river flowed down from Ashcroft, falling 1,000 feet or more in 80 miles.  Threading their way through the canyon, on either side they saw the lines of Canada’s two great transcontinental railway systems, and in places the remains of the old Caribou Trail built in the 1850s.  At Ashcroft they left the old trail and turned eastward toward Kamloops, a prosperous town, the center of a ranching, farming, fruit-growing, and lumbering district, where, after refueling, they proceeded eastward, along the South Thompson River and over a wonderful country of mountains, forests, and lakes, over Shuswap Lake, with its many arms; on to Sicamous, at the head of the valley leading to the Okanagan fruit district; then on, over Eagle Pass, to Revelstoke.  They were now approaching the most hazardous part of their journey, the flight over the Selkirk and Rocky Mountains.  As far as the eye could see, it was a tumbled mass of rock, ice, and snow, intersected by deep valleys in whose depths, torrents rushed to swell the Columbia River.

They traced the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Selkirks, past Glacier, following the course of the Columbia for 20 miles, and then turned eastward into a narrow defile leading to the Kicking Horse Pass through the Rockies.  Once the summit was reached, near Lake Louise, the valley again widened, the hills receded, and, following the Bow, flowing eastward, they again breathed freely.  After passing Banff the mountains became lower and gradually shaded off into the foothill country.  They were now in sunny Alberta once more and over the most delightful part of the province.  The foothill region there was about 40 miles wide, a well-wooded parkland.  The RCAF had a station there for the protection of the foothill forest reserve from fire.  It was also the base of photographic mapping of those districts.  Calgary, the principal city of southern Alberta, was a busy town of 63,000 inhabitants.  The center of a ranching and farming district.  It has many industries and an unlimited supply of natural gas.  Their way lied over the C. P. R. main line to Medicine Hat, headquarters of the cattle-raising country; then over the Saskatchewan border steadily eastward for many hundreds of miles, past Moosejaw and Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, and into Manitoba.  Wheat was king everywhere, though mixed farming had not been neglected.  The grain fields of Canada stretched 800 miles east to west, from Calgary and beyond to the western boundary of Ontario.  Winnipeg was the distribution center for the west, and the neck of the bottle, where the railway lines converged.  It was a leafy city, far removed from one’s idea of a drab, treeless prairie.  There they left the airplane which had carried them across the prairie and again embarked on one of the RCAF flying boats.

They retraced their steps by the Red River to Victoria Beach, on Lake Winnipeg, and thence to Minaki and Kenora by the Winnipeg River.  At Kenora they again met their old friends, the Ontario Air Service, and in one of their flying boats followed the main line of the C. P. R. to Fort William and Port Arthur, the twin cities at the head of navigation on the Great Lakes, through whose ports flowed the golden harvests of the West.  Leaving Port Arthur, they hugged the northern shore of Lake Superior, over Thunder and Black bays; then proceeded northward by the Nipigon River to Lake Nipigon.  During their journey they had seen thousands of beautiful lakes.  Nipigon, from the air, was the queen of all.  It was a magnificent stretch of water, studded with islands to break the monotony.  Winging their way homeward from Nipigon, they bid farewell to the forests of and lakes of the North and, speeding across Lake Superior, they landed at the Ontario Air Service’s main base at Sault Ste. Marie.  At Sault Ste. Marie were the pulp and paper mills of the Spanish River Company and the steel works of the Algoma Company.  Southward the aircraft flew across Lake Huron along the St. Clair River, over Detroit on one side and Windsor on the other.  They proceeded above the shore of Lake Erie past the garden of Ontario, the southernmost part of the Dominion – a rich farming and orchard country with many thriving industrial towns.  The Niagara River was now below them and the great falls.  [See: “The World’s Great Waterfalls,” July 1926, National Geographic Magazine.]  In a few moments they passed down the gorge, over the Whirlpool Rapids, and out over Lake Ontario.   Left lied the Welland Canal connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.  The first canal was built in 1824-33 and the current one [in 1926] dated from 1872-87.

The construction of the new ship canal, begun in 1913, was delayed by the World War and would not be completed before 1930.  That waterway would enable the mammoth freighters from the upper Lakes to continue their passage uninterrupted to Lake Ontario and the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence.  Their course was now north, 26 miles across Lake Ontario, to Toronto, the capital of the Province of Ontario and the second city in Canada.  A lading was made on the natural harbor fronting the city and sheltered from the open waters of the lake by a long, narrow fringe of islands.  That city was a worthy capital of a great province, a financial and industrial center, and the seat of the largest university in Canada.  In all their flights across Canada they had seen no district where prosperity and a well-ordered civilization were more evident than in western Ontario.  Their last flight lied eastward along the northern shore of Lake Ontario, past the long-settled districts of Port Hope, Cobourg, and Prince Edward County, on to Kingston, the famous old town at the head of navigation on the Great Lakes, the seat of Queen’s university and the Royal Military College.  From Kingston by the Rideau Canal, over many beautiful lakes tributaries to its system and across the green fields of Carleton County, they sped to the Ottawa River and finished their voyage on its quiet waters, under the shelter of Parliament Hill.

 

 

As mentioned above, the first article has a batch of sixteen embedded duotones on pages 401 through 416.  Duotones are image transferred to paper using acid-etched metal plates and special ink.  The deeper the etch, the darker the transfer.  The ink used in this batch of duotone has a brown tint to it.

A list of caption titles for the sixteen duotones is as follows:

• “A Wild Life Sanctuary in the Province of Quebec”
• “Looking Down on Parliament Hill, Ottawa”
• “Quebec on Her Rocky Heights”
• “The Battle of Quebec”
• “One Mile of Toboggan Delight”
• “Grand’ Mere, Quebec, on the St. Maurice River”
• “The Home Port of a Famous Fleet of Fishing Schooners”
• “In the Valley of the Hanging Glaciers, British Columbia”
• “Climbing Mount Schaffer: British Columbia”
• “Bagging Onions on a Truck Farm Near Winnipeg”
• “The Real Makings of a Fish Story”
• “A Group of Royal Peaks in the Canadian Rockies”
• “Sprout Lake from Kleetza Lodge, Vancouver Island”
• “Looking West Down Bow Valley, with Mount Temple on the Left and Castle Mountain on the Right”
• “The Oat Harvest on Vancouver Island, British Columbia”
• “Mount Stephen, from the Slope of Mount Field”

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Carnival Days on the Riviera” and was written by Maynard Owen Williams, author of “Struggling Poland,” “Latvia, the Land of the Latts,” Through the Heart of Hindustan,” “The Coasts of Corsica,” etc., in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains twenty-one black-and-white photographs taken by the author.  Two of those photos are full-page in size.

Carnival seemed silly to the author’s fellow traveler.  He had arrived in Nice a scant 12 hours before King Carnival was to begin.  Unable to find a room, he was forced to share the author’s.  Usually good fun, the author though he was being a buzzkill, perhaps due to the gusty weather.  Their hotel faced the Promenade des Anglais, built a century before to provide employment for the unemployed, and still so used [in 1926].  The Jete-Promenade, a holiday structure, was a bright bubble of cheer amid the storm; but the space before it was blank.  All the vendors and shoppers had taken refuge from the gathering gloom.  Then, beyond the wide curve of the Bay of Angels, a ruddy sun beamed above the Esterel.  At 8 o’clock the Concierge announced that the jolly monarch would appear in person before his impetuous subjects.  The author’s roommate, too bored to stay alone, joined him.  Shivering and deject, they sat in the tribune seats which they had acquired because they were ignorant, new, and Anglo-Saxon.  Sellers of souvenir programs hawked their wares and vendors of lemon taffy relieved the tedium with something to chew on.  A small orchestra sat before them harping on the year’s carnival melody.  Then the lights blazed on, flooding the wet pavement with brilliance.  The Avenue of Victory, arcaded with electric bulbs, became a fairy tunnel stretching away into relative darkness.  Costumed revelers herded back and forth, passing the time until a band should animate their steps.  Tourists feverishly sought their seats.  Then came the outriders on splendid horses and a lumbering motor bearing His Majesty.  The show was on!  In each Brobdingnagian car, a band lured costumed crowds about it while a score or so of seeming Lilliputians danced as if on invisible wires.

A herd of plutocratic bulls, looking like cartoons of Wall Street; nightmarish alarm clocks, ten feet high; chambermaids with brooms for hands and scrubbing brushes for feet; the perennial homely man’s contest; father wearing skirts and pushing a baby carriage overflowing with infants; an ejected householder endlessly carting his belongings about in a vain search of an apartment; jack-tars with sailboats for caps, reeling with studied inebriation – those were examples of ludicrous and occasionally witty masques.  Band drowning out band; a mass of red fire crashing from its pedestal, making shadow-players of the maskers and projecting spirits on the housefronts; youths so snapping the whip that a helpless policeman acted as bumper for the cast-off; girls in trousers, boys in petticoats, and gaiety in the van.  “No subtlety,” growled the author’s neighbor, turtling down into his raincoat.  When the blaring and dancing died away up the arcade of lamps, he still had not gotten into the spirit.  As they walked hotelward a gendarme barred their path.  There was a verbal dual.  A general sense of injury against King Carnival narrowed itself down to the definite fact that a man tired of silly clowning on streets sodden with confetti pulp could not take the shortest route to his hotel and bed.  Just then a bright-eyed girl, wearing a black velvet domino hat and a pink Pierrot, bombarded the author’s companion’s palate with purple confetti at close range.  The duel with the gendarme had stirred his heart to its task and the confetti almost choked one already disgruntled.  As he dashed from the author’s side, the author suspected that he resented such impudence.  The man would get himself laughed at!  He returned with a confetti sack.  The next the author knew, he and the girl were giggling, while they tried to scatter confetti where the other would be finding for weeks.

After that, the author’s friend was more Norman than Anglo-Saxon.  He must have exhausted three pillowcases of ammunition against countless Amazons.  Every time the author looked at him, he was spitting up bright bits of paper.  His boisterous laughter betrayed him into the swallowing some confetti.  Color not only suffused his face, but he was covered everywhere and his hat was askew.  It was nearly morning before the author could lure his roommate back to the hotel, where a scrubwoman, hoarding confetti in one corner of the lobby with a broom, seemed to resent the added treasure which they brought with them.  Before he dropped of to sleep the roommate chuckled to himself.  Evidently, the littered condition of their confetti-strewn room suggested to him the unmasking of the pink Pierrot.  Even as a spectacle, the carnival at Nice was amusing.  What the French could not think of, the Italians, to whom Nice belonged when the first carnivals were held, added in the way of human interest.  The carnival occupied scores of artists and hundreds of workmen for months.  Miles of silk and satin were dyed in the official colors of the year.  The business and appearance of the center of the city was transformed for weeks.  Tourist accustomed to the best were forced to humble themselves before haughty concierges and reception clerks.  Carnival spread his fame up Fifth Avenue and along Cockspur Street, so that winter sailing showed a marked increase and a place in the Train Bleu was worth a fight.  For him a big Comite des Fetes gambled peace of mind against unsettled and unsettling weather which mocked at prearranged schedules.  What made a carnival was not the elaborate plans of professionals, but the tousled-haired amateurs, their arms around girl companions, put in motion by the blare of a third-rate band.

Strange as it may seem, the frivolities at carnival time on the Riviera were as innocuous as “Needle’s Eye” and “Post Office” at a Donation Party at the little white church.  For a vapid dummy, Old King Carnival was a merry old soul.  But it was the free guests and spontaneous jollity that furnished a spectacle worth seeing and an experience that made boisterous revelers of staid visitors.  However unconventional it was, the Riviera had its hidebound, brass-tacked, three-ply conventions.  At baccarat, win or lose, one must look bored.  King Carnival knew no such restrictions.  “Do a you please” was his motto.  In his proclamation which he issued to his subjects, including the police force, there was no mention of the fact that “liberty did not mean license,” or that “true freedom was freedom to do right.”  Yet there were conventions, even amid confetti showers.  The masker must disguise voice as well as face, and preferably assume the costume of the opposite sex.  That led to some coarseness.  Nothing which the most resourceful clown did on purpose was as funny as the accident into which, sooner or later, mad masquerade betrayed the reveler.  It was forbidden for French soldiers in uniform to join in the fun.  The inevitable occurred.  A dutiful officer was on hand.  As if by magic, a motley crowd appeared.  His tight military collar was no proof against a flood of confetti.  One spirited maid pressed a kiss on his cheek.  Another, pushed his kepi over his eyes.  The home town of Massena, Garibaldi, and Catarina Segurana was a hulking place, a combination of ugliness and beauty, of industry and idleness, a city whose native life moved along independent of the tourist horde, numbering a quarter million visitors a year, just as the Paillon flowed unnoticed under the Casino, the Place Massena, and the Gardens.

Its very size was what gave the Nice festival precedence over the carnivals of Cannes, Mentone, and Grasse.  Carnival here had a popularity and a vivacity of its own, largely because 175,000 Niceans of French and Italian descent simply could not resist the temptation to pay court to King Carnival, dance to his piping, flutter about his bright lights in gay masquerade, and forget drab realities.  Nice pursued itswonted way in the crowded old town, in the industrial districts of St. Roch and Riquier, and in the business centers.  But let King Carnival issued his revolutionary manifesto and everyone, from wrinkled granny to stating infant, rushed to the show.  In their glad revolt against routine and boredom, those warm-blooded revelers kept their heads.  Wine flowed freely, but drunkenness was not common.  Thugs, pickpockets, and camp-followers were strangely absent.  Seldom did anything happen to which serious exception could be taken.  Carnival and paper confetti made a happy combination.  Carnival and plaster confetti was another matter.  Those who knew wore wire masks and dressed in cloaks with a hood to protect the ears.  Plaster confetti was the size of BB shot, but somewhat lighter, and friable enough to become chalky dust beneath one’s feet.  Some were humane enough to fight a plaster confetti battle with bare hands.  The proper way was to use a scoop.  With such equipment a sturdy and determined battler could draw blood from an unprotected face.  After the pellets were used up a mass of heavy dust remained.  As the author and his wife came away from the skirmish, trying to brush off their clothes and wondering in what tea room they could rinse the dust from their throats, a heavy truck of returning battlers rolled past and several pounds of lime engulfed them.  He was momentarily enraged, but his wife calmed him.

In a flower battle, Nice put the accent on battle instead of on the flowers.  It made the concession of forbidding the throwing of bouquets tied with baling wire, and no selling of nosegays rescues from the street, but the promenade was crowded and disordered.  A minimum decoration of sickly blooms tied to the lanterns of a carriage, enabled the driver to rent it to those who did not know better, and to occupy a place in the parade.  Bowers of beauty were sandwiched in between rheumatic hacks, which, obeying the letter of the law, had exhausted all spirit whatsoever.  Those obstructions were filled with deluded folk, who spent the morning picturing themselves in the heart of a flower battle and the rest of their lives wondering why they ever tried to compete in a beauty parade with those whose chariots were completely hidden by choice blooms.  For flower battles, one did better to go to Cannes, Cagnes, Grasse, Mentone, or Beaulieu, where the event was sort of a family affair, where the ammunition was sweeter, the carriages and cars more uniformly dainty, and the spirit more cognizant of the fact that flowers should be a graceful tribute and not a missile.  Wherever it took place, a flower battle was a charming spectacle.  Youth, beauty, and flowers, mixing with a gay and holiday spirit, made a combination hard to beat.  For many, carnival was only one event in the Riviera calendar.  In the low plains of La Napoule and at Cagnes, atop Mont Agel, and in the mountainous amphitheater at Sospel, there was golf; and there were tennis courts in Cannes, Nice, Beaulieu, Monte Carlo, and Mentone.  Motor cars dashed in from all over Europe, roaring their way up mountain roads.  In the hotels, artists were transforming dining rooms into Mexican jungles, Nikko temple area, Nero’s gardens, or Aladdin’s caves.

Old Provencal costumes were brought out and the farandole danced.  Village girls in striped skirts, fancy shawls, and lace caps made the visiting movie queen with the single-track eyebrows look artificial and forced.  The Prince of Monaco had his birthday during the tourist season, and the ramparts of the great rock were outlined with red and white glasses of oil with floating wicks, which cast Monaco’s colors on the weatherbeaten walls.  Up the incline facing Monte Carlo a noisy torchlight parade climbed, with its flames reflected in the chic little harbor, in which a dozen very superior yachts paddled in the same pool as fishing boats and the tenders serving the tourist steamers, which there unloaded their “cargoes of millionaires” from the Mediterranean and Around-the-World cruises.  On the terrace outside the wedding-cake Casino a poor but enthusiastic band played for the locals.  In the salons, people divided their attention between a record book, a green cloth marked like a complicated hopscotch field, and a playful little ball.  Across the way, at the Sporting Club, such folk that did not like Cannes or the Greek gambling syndicate did their playing in fresher air than which was sealed into “The Kitchen” when the Casino gaming rooms were built.  About that time the often silly, but seldom vicious, Cote d’Azur offered to its visitors a spectacle which seemed more wicked than all the gamboling indulged in under the lenient eyes of King Carnival or all the gambling at the casinos.  Below the railway tracks, toward the walls of Fort Antoine, there was a semicircle of sward with several paths leading from innocent looking boxes to a place where a fat man awaited with a gun.  A trap was sprung and a pigeon made a dazed dash for liberty.  There was a sharp crack from a barrel and a gentle bird became a crazy, mangled thing flopping on the grass.

King Carnival knew his business.  He crowded the hotels so full that during his reign no one dared leave one place for another.  Travelers accustomed to luxury tucked themselves into hallways or bathrooms and smiled at the discomfort.  When they secured decent rooms, they stayed on to enjoy them.  There was noise and glamour and rush and color and go.  Then one day the special events were over.  The leisurely traveler awoke to the fact that, perched on the cliffs of Provence, there were rows of old hill towns, once cities of refuge from the Saracens or Barbary corsairs.  Also stretching out into the sea, were irregular peninsulas where one may spend hours scrambling among the pines.  And beyond all that charming countryside, changing so rapidly before realtors, there was a land to see.  Then spring took command.  Flowers in bewildering variety diverted one’s attention from the imported palms and aloes.  The manicured parks and gardens of stock and pansies lost the appeal which they had when winter hid in the shade.  One hotel after another closed its doors.  One bonne-a-toute-faire after another returned from the service of the funny foreigner to some gray-brown old town in the Alpes Maritimes.  The plain below Grasse became a rose garden.  In the Esterel, the genet lifted its golden blossoms from the red sandstone soil under the evergreens.  The nature-lover felt the world awaking from the exotic greenness of winter to the lush freshness of the real spring.  Suddenly the question came, “How did I ever have the audacity to pour confetti down the little wildcat’s neck?” and as if by telepathy the mild-mannered woman mused: “I wonder if that solemn old man ever did get my pink and green confetti out of that huge gray beard?”  But King Carnival, undergoing a metamorphosis in the shed at Nice, had no fear of such disloyalty.

Cynic that he was, King Carnival knew that when the bands blared forth again and the maskers danced, the average traveler and the cruising millionaire would be there, breaking with conventions, finding laughter hitherto hidden even from themselves, and clowning in so wholehearted a way that it was amusing, even in retrospect.

 

 

The third item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “The France of Sunshine and Flowers” and has Williams-Courtellemont-Hildenbrand in the byline.  It is not an article but the “Sixteen Pages of Illustrations in Full Color” headlining the cover.  The last names of the three photographers are in the byline.  The cover does not document the number of illustrations, but there are twenty-one color photos on the sixteen plates, which are numbered I through XVI in Roman numerals representing pages 481 through 496 of the issue.  Eleven of those color photos are full-page in size, the other five pages contain two half-page photos.

A list of caption titles for the color photographs with their associated plate number is as follows:

• “A Daughter of the Sun” – Plate I
• “Along the Coast of Blue” – Plate II
• “Monte Carlo from the Rock of Monaco” – Plate III
• “King Carnival’s Capital, Seen from Chateau Hill” – Plate I
• “Mentone Is a Climatic Paradise” – Plate V
• “A Sentinel of the Coast: The Golden Islet, at Agay” – Plate VI
• “The Gourd Festival at Cimiez” – Plate VI
• “The Queen of youth and Beauty and Her Maids in Vence” – Plate VII
• “Brilliant Arabesques of the Midland Sea at Agay” – Plate VIII
• “Flower-Mantled Piety at Pont Du Loup” – Plate VIII
• “Martial Music for the Flower Battle at Grasse” – Plate IX
• “The Harbor of the Pearl of the Riviera” – Plate X
• “Maids and Youths of Grasse” – Plate XI
• “Exotic Flowers of the Azure Coast” – Plate XII
• “Floral Treasures of Theoule’s Crannied Walls” – Plate XII
• “Mistral-Swept St. Raphael Fronts Julius Caesar’s Bay” – Plate XIII
• “A Villa at Rock-Clinging Roquebrune” – Plate XIII
• “Sixteenth-Century Tourette-Sur-Loup Seems Glued to the Top of a Cliff” – Plate XIV
• “A Shrine of Napoleonic Memories” – Plate XIV
• “Classic Beauty Distinguishes the Provencale” – Plate XV
• “The Rock of Monaco” – Plate XVI

 

 

The fourth item (third article) in this month’s issue is entitled “Hunting an Observatory” and was written by Charles G. Abbot, Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.  It has the internal subtitle: “A Successful Search for a Dry Mountain on Which to Establish the National Geographic Society’s Solar Radiation Station.”  The article contains thirteen black-and-white photographs, of which five are full-page in size.  One of those full-page photos serves as the frontispiece to the article.  The article also contains of sketch map of Southwest Africa with an inset of Africa on page 504.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

They laid out under the southern stars on a knoll in a Hottentot village all through the last night before they found it.  There was not a cloud in the sky.  No one recollected if it had rained for ten months.  Just before dark they had half-driven, half-pushed their auto through the dry, sandy bed of the Great Fish River.  Tomorrow, they were to climb Mount Brukkaros and fix upon the exact spot for the construction of the observatory.  [See: “Measuring the Sun’s Heat and Forecasting the Weather,” January 1926, National Geographic Magazine.]  There had been many famous big-game hunters in Africa and Asia, but not many of them went after observatories.  The exceptions were Jai Singh II, the Indian monarch, who established his instruments in six of his capitals, and Sir John Herschel, son of the great Sir William, whose expedition to Cape Town recorded, for the first time, the marvels of the southern heavens.  As they stretched out on the ground, after their supper, there shone the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds.  The very rays they were seeing started from the Clouds of Magellan a hundred thousand years before the building of the Great Pyramids.  Humanity would very likely be extinct for millenniums before the rays those stars were emitting reached the earth.  It was a glorious sky.  At one time 16 of the 21 brightest stars were visible.  So clear was the atmosphere that the great stars went blazing down to the horizon and were blotted out, one by one, by the hills 30 miles away.  Before such an inspiring sight sleep came but fitfully.  When Jupiter and Venus rose together to announce the coming of the sun, hardly a single great constellation had arrived upon the scene who’s rising the author had not noted.  The black boys made breakfast before dawn and, in twilight, the Hottentot guide came to take them to the mountain.

Such motoring!  They came to a dry brook too deep to cross, and made ready to march.  But their driver told them to keep seated, and wormed a circuit over a bed of stones till he found a place where the banks were not more than four feet down.  Two jolts and over they went!  When at last even he could go no farther, they followed their Hottentot in single file up the mountain.  A venomous snake was killed, two springboks jumped away before their advance, and even a gemsbok was seen, but no leopards or koodoos, although they saw traces of them.  All about Mount Brukkaros, despite the fact that the annual rainfall averaged less than four inches, multitudes of game animals and wild ostriches picked their living among the stones that littered the ground.  It was a strange mountain.  Lying about 20 miles to the west of the railroad and 250 miles south of Windhoek, capital of Southwest Africa, Mount Brukkaros stuck out as the only peak of consequence in a circle at least 50 miles in diameter.  It was inaccessible on all sides except by the dry bed of a stream approaching in a gradual ascent from the south.  The mountain was 5,200 feet above sea level and quite 2,000 feet above the plateau.  Only four or five miles in its greatest length and with no neighboring peaks for many miles, its isolation and abruptness were uncanny.  The whole massif was composed of chocolate-colored rock with very little soil, though sparsely tufted with bunches of dry bush and grass, and here and there a queer cactus or dwarf tree.  The cliffs were seamed into great cubes and the slopes were littered with fallen fragments.  Seven hours of hard scrambling on the steep, rock-strewn slopes barely suffice to locate a single firm ledge lying favorably for the site of the observatory cave.  The summit was a cup with a flat bottom a half mile in diameter and a steep rim 1,000 feet high.

From a V-shaped break in the southeast side of the rim a precipice 60 feet high leapt to the bed of the dry stream, which led down a three-mile corridor to the plateau.  Formerly, there was a barracks of mud bricks built on the plateau bottom, built to shelter the German heliograph operators stationed there during the native wars, but those were now in ruins.  They had hoped that they might have proved useful for the observatory.  Since the observatory required the use of a bolometer, that electrical thermometer sensitive to a millionth of a degree, one required very constant temperature surroundings.  Those were most easily obtained by making a horizontal shaft or cave some 30 feet deep, right into the slope of the mountain.  As the sun rays were to be reflected into the cave in a southerly direction, and as it was necessary that the reflector should be exposed to the rays within an hour of sunrise, those requirements called for a firm, sloping ledge facing north in a place with clear eastern exposure.  The whole afternoon passed fruitlessly in search on the eastern rim for a firm ledge lying suitably, but the field glass disclosed a fair prospect near the top of the western rim.  By 1 o’clock everyone was tired, hungry, and thirsty, but since they had no provisions to spend the night, they pressed on.  The author took the guide and plodded up a gulch toward the western rim while the rest of the party went down to the pools.  Halfway up, he spotted a large cave in a firm limestone ledge.  They crawled up into it.  The exposure was not favorable for the observatory, but, with enlargement and modifications, it could be made into a comfortable and inexpensive for the observers.  Somewhat cheered, the author dragged on toward the top.  Two firm ledges were in sight, bot near the top and both having satisfactory eastern exposure.

The author reached the lower ledge and marked it with a cairn of stones, which the guide built under his direction.  The author was too exhausted to push on to the higher ledge.  He felt that he could leave it to the builder’s discretion to use the higher ledge if found equally as firm.  There was still a mile of the roughest descent before reaching the pools.  They kept on, resting frequently, and reached their party at the pools at 4:15.  After photographing the precipice and drinking from the pool, the author ate some crackers and laid down for half an hour.  Then they all set out and reached the automobile and supper at 6:30. Mount Brukkaros lied in a Hottentot reservation, and a vote of the tribe was needed to permit them to locate there.  That was easily carried out.  The Government of Southwest Africa was cordial to the project.  It assisted with maps and meteorological advice in the selection of the site, and constructed, at cost, the necessary caves and accessories.  Free importation of the observatory outfit was also guaranteed.  The author was 12 days in the vicinity during March, which was the rainiest time of year.  On 11 days they had fine observing sky conditions each forenoon, though rain fell sometimes toward nightfall.  That surely was a favorable record.  There were absolutely no cirrus clouds- those wisps that slightly veiled the sun and were fatal to their observing.  There was very little wind though he was told that in winter sometimes it blew hard.  Judging by rainfall records, his own observations, and those of others, the author expected fine conditions almost daily for 10 months and anticipated that in the remaining two months three-fourths of the days would be good.  If so, the station selected would be even better than their excellent location in Chile.  Not so high, yet the dryness and clearness of the air was extraordinary.

Some readers had begun to pity the observers, exiled to a crater in the wilderness seen miles even from Hottentot neighbors (at Berseba) and 60 miles from a fair-size town (Keetmanshoop).  They hoped their loneliness would be mitigated by the facts that they were both fine fellows, inured to camp life; that they would have interesting work; games, music, books, and radio to beguile leisure hours; and that leopards and other plentiful wild game would divert them.  Perhaps they would raise a garden on the level bottom of the cup, if they could arrange for enough water.  The water supply was not so great a difficulty as it seemed.  By making a reservoir in the gulch in front of the dwelling cave, the drainage of several square miles could be impounded.  Even a few inches of yearly rainfall thus conserved would be sufficient.  For provisions and mail the observers must arrange with the Hottentots.  With their own automobile they will make the 60-mile trip to Keetmanshoop frequently, where nearly everything needed could be obtained.  Construction work in Africa had proceeded so satisfactorily that they hopped to receive reports of observation this month (October).  Southwest Africa laid at the end of a very long and interesting journey in search of the observatory site.  Leaving Washington October 30, 1925, the author and his wife spent 10 days in England consulting weather experts.  After a brief stay in France, they crossed to Algiers, where they arrived in a downpour on the day before Thanksgiving.  Leaving his wife there, the author pushed on to Ain Sefra, an important military post 600 miles to the southwest.  The officers there help him make arrangements to climb the Jebel Mekter, a peak nearly 7,000 feet high, near the town.

After crossing a mile of sand dunes, a well-graded but rocky trail led up to a disused heliographic station near the top.  That strongly built stone structure could have been altered very inexpensively to serve as both observatory and dwelling.  The opinion was that in January through March one could expect 10 excellent days in each, and 25 day each in the rest of the months.  That estimate was backed up by three years’ worth of weather records for Ain Sefra.  The yearly rainfall at Ain Sefra averaged 8 inches which was twice as much as at Brukkaros.  While it would be easy to establish the observatory there, the author feared the locality would prove disappointing.  Recrossing the Mediterranean, they took ship to Egypt.  The author had little hope of finding a favorable site there, notwithstanding the famed cloudlessness of the country.  The Egyptian desert lacked easily accessible peaks, needed to get above the haze and sandstorms.  It was suggested the possible occupation of Mount Sinai.  Another suggestion was a peak near the Sudan border.  No site in Egypt had easy access, so they journeyed to Bombay, enroute for British Baluchistan.  Quetta lied far off the path of the tourist.  One reached it after a long journey through a very dusty desert.    In India, the traveler must carry his own bedding for night journeys.  Even hotels in large towns depended on the guest furnishing part or all of his bedding.  [Here, the author goes on a long tangent, much of it anecdotal, about the life and politics of British Baluchistan unrelated to the main story.  I have opted to omit it.]  After motoring about Baluchistan in search of an observatory location, the author settled upon Khojak Peak, 70 miles northwest of Quetta and only 10 miles from the Afghan border.  That peak was 7,500 feet high and half a mile from the Khojak Pass.

In going about in this neighborhood, it was the regulation that a loaded rifle and two men able to use it, beside the driver, shall be in the automobile.  If ladies were to be in the party, two days’ notice to the garrison near the pass was required.  The political authorities imposed the conditions that the observers must live at the garrison post of Shelabagh, three miles east; that a couple of native levies must be continually at the observatory on the peak; and that a thirs must always ride in the automobile to and fro.  From the nature of life in India, several other servants would have been necessary.  The author mentioned those things to emphasize some considerations other than meteorological which were taken into account in considering the Khojak Pass.  It lied very far away from Washington and, because of that, the occupation would be costly.  No assurance of free or compensated custom entry could be secured at that time.  The cost of construction was rather high.  The observers’ quarters being so far from the observatory was inconvenient.  There were two feet of snow while the author was there, and the road was impassable.  The pay of six or seven servants would have been considerable.  Daily telegrams to Washington would have been costly.  On all those and other accounts, the author could not choose the Khojak, although the prospects of good sky conditions there were superb.  Returning to Bombay, they sailed the Indian Ocean via the Seychelles, Mombasa, and the East African ports to Durban.  Like others, they rode in glee behind the wonderful ricksha men and saw the sights of that charming city.  Thence they journeyed to Johannesburg.  They happened across a company of Americans.  Thus, they had the opportunity to see a real African war dance before going on to Brukkaros, where their quest ended.

 

 

Tom Wilson