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RELIGIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT
Edited by DR. J. A. MONTGOMERY
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NO I' EM BER, 1918
VICTORY
Victory is a matter of "Human Machines." Your share in winning depends on your mental and physical fitness to do your utmost. Your country calls for no less.
Will power, alone, may carry your "Human Machine" over these tense times — but after- ward?
Don't wreck so beautiful a mechanism! At least give your own "Human Machine" the care you never refuse your car. Rest — timely taken, under intelligent directions, to make sure that your Heart engine is all right, will bring you through strong to the Victory.
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II
®
I T R A V
E
L
CONTENTS
vol. xxxn November, 1918 number i
The Trench Canteen Cover Design
"The Street Called Straight," Damascus Frontispiece
Up the Yangtze Into Szechuan. Lieut. M. C. Cheek 5
Polyglot Salonica. Robert Whitney Imbrie 11
Charting America's Jungle Land. Guy E. Mitchell 16
Bringing "Home" to the Doughboys. Jessie B. Payne 17
The Last American Frontier. M. E. Edwards 22
Sundays at the War. Lieut. Harold Lake 27
Queer Foods from the Orient. Judson D. Stuart 31
American Good Fellowship. Editorial. State Governors. .. . 36
Pen Pictures and Post Cards 37
Down the Andes, From Cuenca to Ona. Harry A. Frank. . . 38
The Travel Club of America 40
Drafted From the Soudan, Gasoline to Burn, Alaska's Unique
Graves. Guy E. Mitchell 41
Published monthly by Robert M. MoBride & Company, Inc., Union Square North, New York City; Bolls House. Breams Bldgs., London, E. C, 35 cents per copy; $4.00 per year. For foreign postage, add $1.00; Canadian. 50 cents. Entered as second- class matter January 9, 1911, at the Post Office, at New York, N. Y., under the act ot March 3, 1S79. and copyrighted 1918 by Robert M. Mc.Bride & Company, Inc. Change of Address: Change of address must be received prior to the 10th of the month to affect the forthcoming magazine. Both old and new address must be given.
TRAVEL assumes no responsibility for the damage or loss of manuscripts or photo- graphs submitted for publication, although due care will be taken to insure their safety. Full postage should always be sent for the return of unavailable material.
11
a
Hotels Selected and Recommended by the Travel Club of America
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Boston
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Shops Offering Discounts to Members of the Travel Club of America
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NOVEMBER, i 91 8
Old Point Comfort
At the Greatest Center of Military, Naval and Aerial Activity in America
The Hotel Chamberlin at Fortress Monroe,
Virginia, is one of the Finest Holiday Hotels
in the Western Hemisphere
HPHE CHAMBERLIN directly faces Hampton Roads, which is always the scene of marine activity. Just across the Roads, immediately in front of the Hotel, is the site of the New Naval Training Base and Aviation School. Langley Field, the Army Aviation Experiment Station, is but a few miles away. This is becoming the show place for aviation in America.
Among the other attractions of Old Point Comfort — and certainly one to be care- fully considered in these times— is the accessibil- ity. The fare to this thoroughly delightful winter resort is but a small fraction of the fare to any of those situated
in the far South. Not to mention the many hours of travel saved both going and returning.
The Medicinal Bath Department (under authoritative medical direction) is com- plete in every detail, and duplicates every bath and treatment given at European Spas, with the additional advantages of sea-air and sea-bathing.
A finer Eighteen Hole Golf Course was never laid down than the Cham- berlin's, with its turf fairways, grass putting greens, and chic Club House.
Send for colored Aeroplane Map of the Course (the only one of its kind ever made in America), which will be sent you with our booklet "Golf" if you desire it, as well as booklets deal- ing with different phases of life at the Chamberlin. Write to-day to:
Geo. F. Adams, Manager
Fortress Monroe, Va.
Nevu York Office: Bertha Ruffner Hotel Bureau, McAlpin Hotel, Cook's Tour, or "Ask Mr. Foster" at any of his offices
Stereo-Travel Co.
DAMASCUS, CONQUERED BY GENERAL ALLENBY'S TWENTIETH CENTURY CRUSADERS
For the first time in twelve hundred years a Christian power occupies ancient Damascus, a main prop of the crumbling Turkish Empire. Here is a view along the "Street Called Straight," which cuts across the center of the bazaar district dividing the Jewish and the Christian Quar- ters. This "best advertised street in the world" gets its publicity in Acts 9:11 — "And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias. . . . And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus." Damascus, with a population of about 200,000, is one of the oldest cities in the world, being mentioned in Genesis as
having been entered by Abraham
VOLUME XXXII
R F. ( ; I S T E R E D IN U . S . PATENT 0 I' F I ( I NOVEMBER, 1918
NUMBER I
UP THE YANGTZE INTO SZECHUAN
By Lieutenant M. C. Cheek Photographs by the Author and Others
[Lieutenant Cheek -writes of a recent house boat trip through the rapids of the Yangtze into the little known heart of China. Next month he will tell about the primitive people of the province. — Editor.]
FOR the traveler with time in abundance, a love of out-of-door life and the ability to make himself comfortable on a native house boat, the cruise up the Upper Yangtze is one of never- ending beauty, interest and wonder. One never tires of the rapids, the sunsets, the gorges and the primitive life along and on the river ; and the rhythmic, droning chant of the quadza (house boat) coolies will ring in one's ears for months and years after the journey's end. Few have followed this remarkable stream up through the vast coastal plain, the hills and the mountains to the head of navigation. Not until one approaches the remote prov- ince of Szechuan does the river and the surrounding country become worthy of traveling so far to view. Here the venturesome traveler finds reproduced the sunsets of the Alps, the gorgeously colored canyons of the Colorado, the Palisades of the Hudson, amidst a weird, wild oriental setting.
The Upper Yangtze is that part of the river above Ichang, the last port of call for lower river steamers. This busy little trans-shipping port lies about an even thousand miles from the sea, a run of eight to twelve days from Shanghai. From the latter place there are frequent sailings of well-appointed British, Japa- nese, and Chinese steamers for Hankau, where a change is made to a smaller vessel for the run to Ichang. Hankau being the terminus of the Peking-Hankau Railway, it is possible to make either Peking or Shanghai the starting point for a journey into Szechuan. Ichang, although the outlet for the exports of the vast province above and the inlet for the products consumed by the seventy million who populate Szechuan, is not a center of Euro- pean activity. The only Americans found there are missionaries and the estimable young men, and their families, who represent the Standard Oil Company.
\
m
"When all is ready the junk puts out into the river having only a fraction of her own complement aboard, her tracking lines manned by two or three hundred men, women and children — if it is a heavily laden cargo boat. . . . The trackers, who are harnessed to the line with shoulder yokes, lean forward, dig their toes in, and emit a series of rhythmic, long-drawn-out wails, . . . their hands touching the ground, as they strain with every fibre of muscle to gain another step, another inch. A tracking master is running up and down the line shouting, gesticu- lating and plying the bamboo rope end. . . ."
r R A V E L
One always has the rapids to contend with, but the
greatest danger is in summer when swirls
and whirlpools are enlarged
Windbound in one of the Yangtze gorges, this
sampan party makes use of the delay by
calling it dinner time
Photo by Wm. C. Larrab
The city is devoid of all tourist accommodations such as hotels, European shops, and conveyances other than the dirty sedan chairs and the rickshas the native public uses. There is one so-called hotel under Japanese management but no white man goes there except as a last resort. If one is fortunate enough to be taken in by one of the hospitable American or European families, all is well ; if not, an effort should be made immediately to charter a quadza in which to live the few days needed for the preparations to make the voyage up the river.
Because of the lack of accommodations it is advisable for one member of the party to arrive in Ichang three or four days in advance of the remainder. The first step is to charter a quadza, not a difficult undertaking if local assistance can be obtained. The rivermen are no exception to the average Chinese. If they can get two hundred dollars for a trip which would cost a native or a well-posted white man fifty dollars, they will take it. In other words, it is always necessary to bargain with the charterer until he comes down to a reasonable price. A quadza for the upward trip to Chungking may be had for from one hundred to one hun- dred and fifty dollars. Half or more of the contract price is paid in advance, for the junk master must lay in provisions for his crew and equipment for his quadza; and he in turn must pay the members of the crew a few cash advance money.
Next in order of importance is a cook, a cook who can super- vise the acquisition of a sufficient store of provisions, and who in addition to his culinary duties should be intelligent enough to act as interpreter. A few words of pidgin English, but the ability to understand better than he can make himself understood, is all that can be hoped for.
It must be borne in mind that the quadza is a vessel unfitted for the white man's use until bunks, lamps, a stove, food, fuel and other necessities and comforts of life are provided. There is plenty of room in the quadza' s hold for all the stores and luggage needed during the five weeks or so required to make the passage to Chungking. At various points en route the supply of fresh provisions may be replenished, drinking water being the only com- modity that is not to be had. It is an iron-bound custom among foreigners in China to drink no water that is of doubtful origin until it is boiled or filtered, and to eat no green uncooked vege-
A C; / l: M li h, K , I 9 i 5
tables. He who departs from this rule does so at his peril : he will stand in need of a physician.
When at last the quadsa is completely fitted out and the hour of sailing has arrived one has the feeling that all connection with the outside world is being severed and that a pilgrimage into an unknown world is beginning. If the gods favor with a fresh up-river breeze the venturesome traveler soon finds himself leav- ing the connecting link with civilization behind, while ahead the entrance to the first of the wonderful gorges of the Yangtze comes into view. Soon after getting under way it is quite likely that one's attention will for a time be diverted to interesting things near at hand. The forward and uncovered portion of the boat will be crowded with as motley an array of dirty, half naked cut- throats as could be found anywhere on earth. All will be whis- tling and shouting for more wind: "Plenty wind, no work; no wind, plenty work." These superstitious people believe that the gods may give them a stronger breeze if they ask for it ; at least if they keep silent they think that the wind will die down.
If the crew is engaged in any work — hoisting sail, rowing, whatnot — the lau-p.an, the quadza captain, will be rushing here and there shouting for dear life and occasionally whacking a coolie across the back with the end of a bamboo line. The coolie doesn't mind, in fact he expects it; and believing in preparedness he always keeps his coat or shirt on although he may have dis- carded trousers, sandals, hat, all save the back protection. If the la it-pan keeps his men well supplied with rice and gives them a ration of pork at intervals they will not complain at kicks, cuffs, and swearing.
An hour after leaving Ichang the gorge is entered, the gran- deur of the view causing one to forget all else in the contemplation of a mighty river cutting its narrowed path through a mountain chain. The broken, rocky sides rise almost vertically to a height of from seven hundred to eighteen hundred feet. To traverse this fifteen mile stretch of rugged hill and swirling river may require anywhere from six hours to two days, depending upon the time of year, the attendant water level and the prevailing breeze. During the summer the water rises and falls violently at times
The Chinese women have notoriously useless feet,
hut this carpenter has what one might call
a very handy foot
The canal at Shanghai, the starting point for the
journey up the Yangtze, presents a vivid scene of
junk and sampan life. The Russian consulate and
Astor House are seen in the background
Photo from Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
8
TRAVEL
but with a steady upward average height until August, when it starts back to the winter level. When the river is high the upward journey is extremely difficult, slow, and dangerous, especially through the gorges. One always has the rapids to contend with, for some which in winter are the worst disappear in the summer when the river rises, while on the other hand others just as violent appear in summer where none existed in the winter. But the greatest dangers are encountered in the summer months when the swirls and whirlpools become so large and violent that many junks are wrecked, and small ones as large as forty ton boats have been completely sucked down. During this period it fre- quently requires as long as three months to make the three hun- dred and fifty-eight miles from Ichang to Chunking. For this reason and on account of the grave danger it is inadvisable to attempt the trip between the first of June and the last of Septem- ber. The ideal time of the year to make the journey is in October, November or December. The river is falling then, rendering the upward passage safer, yet with thrills aplenty for him who looks for them, and though the journey is quicker yet there is plenty of time to enjoy the beauty of nature and the works of primitive man.
After the Ichang gorge is passed, a good mooring place as well as a point of interest is found at Ping Shan Pa, where upbound junks must stop for an examination of clearance papers by the customs officials. A few hundred yards above the village there is a remarkable cave, "The Dragon Cave" the Chinese aptly named it, which extends for several miles to the southward. In fact its southern entrance is sixty miles away in the province of Hunan according to native legend. No white man has penetrated to the
further end of the cave although the attempt has been made. The attraction of the place is the curious formation on the floor of the cave, only a few yards from the Yangtze entrance. It does not require a vivid imagination to agree with the natives that a giant dragon and his family died in the cave in prehistoric days and that the bodies petrified. Certainly there is an excellent reproduction in bas-relief of a monster dragon coiled in and along the sides of the cave. There is a large family of apparently petri- fied dragons ranging from more than a hundred feet to a few inches in length. The formation is a peculiar species of easily crumbled rock. It is probably a stalagmite formation but as yet there is no geological opinion to be had. The resemblance to a dragon is too marked for most of those who have seen it to dispel the idea that an actual dragon was not in some way connected with the formation. The head, claws, scales, and the serpent-like body are all there, the body standing up a foot to fifteen inches from the ground.
Above Ping Shan Pa the river takes on an entirely different aspect from that in the gorges or in any of the thousand-mile reach to the sea. It is now a rock-bound stream well-nigh obstructed in many places by huge piles of boulders and jagged reefs. The banks are much like the rocky shores of the sea, abounding in diminutive bays, sandy beaches, and rocky promon- tories. In this section of the river, known as the Yao Cha Ho — "Wild Duck River" — the first low river rapid, Ta Tong Tan. is encountered. Beyond Ta Tong Tan is the second of the series of gorges, Niukan — "Ox Liver Gorge" — so named because in the vivid imagination of the natives it resembles that organ of the sturdy ox.
H
The junk is just entering the strongest point of the rapid, her trackers straining with all their might to gain each short step they take
I Siei co-Travel Co
This archaic "Peking cart" with phaeton top and —
apparently! — modern rubber tires is frequently
seen elsewhere. Peking is now connected by
railway with Hankau
Photo by F. . clicks
Arriving from Mongolia with cargoes of tallow and hides, the camels are unloaded in Peking and go swinging back with lazy, pendulous strides. The extension of China's rail- way system will do away with much of the picturesque in transportation, but the camels from Mongolia are still a necessity
NOVEMBER, i 9 i S
The Chinese house boat or quadza may be used as a substitute for a
hotel at Ichang — which is quite devoid of tourist accommodations —
while one is making preparations for the voyage up river. But 'ware
the riverman ! If he can get two hundred dollars for a trip worth
fifty, he is no exception to the average Chinese
Upon emerging from the Niukan gorge a vast fleet of native boats, ranging from the big cargo junks to small wupans, are seen moored to the banks of the river awaiting their turn to pass over the Tsin Tan, one of the two most formidable low-river rapids on the Yangtze. The foreign devils have the privilege of passing on up to the head of the line if they so desire, a courtesy extended with a string tied to it ; for woe to the quadza thus availing itself should anything go wrong when it is being hauled inch by inch up the swift stream. It would suddenly find itself drifting broad- side down into the violently swirling waters at the toe of the rapid, for it is an unwritten law that no assistance be rendered to any boat not awaiting its regular turn. It is well for the voyager to spend the night below the rapid, even though the delay in await- ing one's turn appears irksome. The day can be well spent by taking a walk from one's mooring place up to the rapid — which is really three rapids separated by a few yards of comparatively slack water — and watching the junks ascend. The junk at the head of the column will have anywhere from two to seven or eight plaited bamboo lines led out up the bank ready to be manned by her own trackers and assisted by many more from the little "trackers" village perched on the hillside. When all is ready the junk puts out into the river, having only a fraction of her comple- ment aboard, her tracking lines manned by two or three hundred men, women and children — if it is a heavily laden cargo boat — and she is soon out in strong water. The trackers, who are har- nessed to the line with shoulder yokes, lean forward, dig their toes in, ar> 1 ~ ~:' \ series of rhythmic, long drawn out wails as the boat g^- ldually slowing down when the smooth racing
tonr- .id is reached. The trackers bend lower, their
har ">und as they strain with every fibre of
.tep, another inch. A tracking master is nn ^ , u. .ne line shouting, gesticulating, and plying i.he b boo rope end. If all goes well the junk makes her way into that part of the channel where the current is least strong, and the extra trackers taken on flick their harness loose and return to bring up the next boat, the regular crew continuing on up the river.
. ■■
© Stereo-Travel Co.
"Occasionally a pack-train of small asses is passed . . . and if the
traveler is riding one of the fat, sleek, sure-footed Szechuan ponies
this passing pack-train is more than a matter of casual interest. There
is great antipathy between the ponies and the asses — neither lets a
chance for a rearing, biting, kicking fight slip by"
But unfortunately all does not go well every time. A tracking line may part or a down-bound junk may careen into the ascend- ing boat. The long bow sweep used to aid the rudder in steering all upper Yangtze craft may snap off or be torn from its fasten- ings. In fact, a number of casualties are to be guarded against. If a mishap does occur the junk will probably be swept down stream in the twinkling of an eye and if she is fortunate enough not to capsize or be wrecked on the rocks which always abound, she will end up a few miles down the river and eventually regain her place at the tail end of the column, thereby entailing many hours' lost time while awaiting her next turn.
Descending a rapid is undoubtedly a more satisfying experi- ence than ascending. It is short and exciting. When the rapid is approached the coolies plying the oars take up a quicker and harder stroke in order to get the maximum headway on, which results in a maximum steerageway. It is absolutely essential to : keep from going down a rapid broadside on, for then the danger of capsizing is very great. The agitated water below the rapid can be seen and heard plainly a mile or two away, and as one draws nearer the objects on the banks are passed by more rapidly, until finally the clumsy old vessel apparently has the speed of a greyhound. With bated breath the plunge from the smooth racing tongue into the rough, swirling water is awaited, a shock- is felt, the junk careens over, ships a sea aboard, rights herself, and plunges on until she slows down clear of the broken water.
Immediately above the Tsin Tan Rapids is the Mitan — "Rice Granary" — Gorge, some two miles in length, the precipitousness of its banks surpassing any gorge yet encountered. From an eminence in the tracker's village at the eastern or lower end of the gorge one of the most wonderful views on the Yangtze is beheld, and when the sun is setting the western sky seen through the gorge and above the mountains is colored with the multitu- dinous shades that only one Artist can paint ; and the soul of the onlooker is lifted up and out, beyond China, beyond the universe itself, into an unknown Utopia. In no place other than the Alps are these glorious sunsets equaled.
A few miles above the Mitan gorge lies the quaint walled city of Lao Kwei Cho, built on a bluff about two hundred feet above low river. Another four and one-half miles brings one to the Ye Tan — "Wild Rapid" — the most violent on the river and one that remains a rapid of the first order except during extreme high water, although it is worst in September and May when the
10
TRA V EL
water-mark stands at about twenty-five feet above mean low river. Here the traveler will have during the winter months a repetition of the experiences at the Tsin Tan ; or if it is in the fall or spring Ye Tan will be running much stronger than the Tsin Tan.
Still another important high river rapid, the Niu Kou Tan, is found in this stretch. At extreme high river this rapid cannot be negotiated by junks on account of the tremendous swirls and eddies1. " Patong, a walled town situated a few miles above the Xiu Kou Tan, is populated by a desperately poor people who eke a living from the river and the rocky, sterile soil. One redeeming feature greatly appreciated, by the foreign traveler is the clear, cold water obtainable fresh from a spring on the river beach. Here the writer. had the most enjoyable bath of his life one hot, sultry day which had been preceded by other hot and bathless days. For a few cash coolies were induced to bring bucket after bucket of deliciously refreshing water to the junk from whence it was poured down into , an improvised shower bath, a small open boat.
Two or three hours out of Patong the entrance to the longest and most splendid gorge of the river looms up. For twenty-five miles the river bed lies in a winding valley, the cliff like banks rising to hundreds and thousands of feet. At intervals the con- fining cliffs are broken by turbulent little mountain streams which have cut their own diminutive gorges through the solid rock of the mountains.
The little village of Pei Shih clinging to a less abrupt hillside in the Wushan gorge marks the boundary between the provinces of Hupeh and Szechuan. Szechuan, with a population of some 70,000,000, is one of the innermost provinces of China, being bounded on the west by Tibet. This is the poorest and at the same time one of the richest of the provinces. The great masses of people are poor, desperately poor, while the natural resources of Szechuan are so vast, varied, and unexplored that no one knows the extent of her wealth. The wofully inadequate transportation facilities prohibit the economical progress enjoyed by the more accessible parts of the world.
The river and its tributaries are the carriers of practically the entire commerce of this province of seventy millions, the only other means of conveying goods being by packs borne by men or by a small species of mule, over trails and stone-paved roads never more than a few feet wide, and because of the mountainous nature of the country so abounding in steps that the use of wheeled vehicles is impossible. Along any of these trails scores of coolies are seen shuffling at a dog-trot with their burdens of silk, rice, corn, foreign products, in fact, everything from buttons to babies swinging from either end of a bamboo' pole balanced on their shoulders. Occasionally a pack train of small asses is passed, and if the traveler is riding one of the fat, sleek, sure- footed Szechuan ponies this passing pack-train is more than a matter of casual interest. There is a great antipathy between the ponies and the asses ; neither lets a chance for a rearing, biting, kicking fight slip by. The rider may find himself and his mount rolling down a jagged hillside as a result of the encounter.
Ponies are used by foreigners solely for exercise, the universal mode of conveyance about the cities and on cross-country trips being by sedan chair. On long trips relays of coolies are pro- vided, and about thirty miles a day up hill and down dale can be covered by these strong-legged sons of Szechuan. When an army is operating in the province (not an infrequent occurrence as Szechuan is southern and therefore revolutionary in its politics) the baggage train is formed by enforcing coolies and many of the small shopkeepers into service. These poor devils are re- quired to carry not only the ordinary impedimenta of an army, but in addition the personal equipment and even the rifles of the soldiers are piled on their backs by their overbearing masters. The Chinese soldier is quite Prussian in his attitude towards native civilians. If the coolies are slow, tired, sick, or impudent a bayonet jab usually instils a certain amount of energy into them. If that fails, a deeper thrust or a shot finishes a none too happy life — a mere incident not only to the army but to the civilian population.
{Continued on page 43)
Immediately above the Tsin Tan Rapids is the Rice Granary Gorge, some two miles in length, the precipitousness of its banks surpassing any gorge yet encountered. From an eminence at the eastern or lower end of the gorge one of the most wonderful views of the Yangtze is beheld; and when the sun is setting the western sky, seen through the gorge and above the mountains, is colored with the multitudinous shades that only one Artist can paint. . . . In no place other than the Alps are the glorious sunsets equaled."
NOVEMBER, 19 i 8
POLYGLOT SALONICA
Being the Impressions of a Driver in the American Ambulance Field Service
By Robert Whitney [mbrie
American Vice-Consul to Petrograd
Author of "Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance"
IT was on the morning of the ninth day after embarking at Marseilles for Salonica that we awakened to gaze out upon the most famous mountain and saw the sun reflected from the snow-clad Olympian slopes. A few hours later we passed the torpedo net which guards the outer harbor and presently caught our first glimpse of the white minarets of Salonica. About us were dozens of battleships and merchantmen, some flying the tricolor, others with the Union Jack, others with the green, white and red of Italy. A gigantic four funneler, the La France, since a hospital ship, rode at anchor while close inshore were ranged many wooden boats with the peculiar Peloponnesian rigging. We passed the length of the harbor before dropping anchor. The yellow quarantine flag flew from our mast-head and pres- ently the health officers came off. "We were all anxious to learn their ruling. Rumor spread that the entire ship was to be held forty days in quarantine. The thought of remaining two score days on that filthy craft, while she rode at anchor off shore, nearly made us wild. A line of signal flags was broken out and presently in answer three launches came alongside. Into these were loaded half a hundred of the yellow men, victims of spinal meningitis. The ship then swung about and we proceeded to the other end of the harbor where we again dropped anchor. The yellow flag was still flying. We lay here for the rest of the day and speculation ran rife on our chances of being held thus indefinitely. On the following morning, much to our relief, the yellow flag was lowered ; we warped alongside the quay and about noon disembarked. It was the tenth day after leaving Marseilles.
To the northeast of the city where the barren plains merge into the barren foothills which in turn rise into barren, scraggy mountains, was established our camp. It was night when we reached the spot and as our tents had not arrived we spread our blankets on the bare ground and turned in under the sky.
Until our cars should be unloaded there was no work for the Squad. We were therefore given every alternate day for "shore liberty," when we were free to go down into the city and wander at will.
We found it a city well worth seeing. Dating back three hundred years before the birth of Christ, it has been and is yet the stamping-ground of history. The Avar, the Goth, the Hun, the Saracen and the Norseman captured and sacked it. The Serb, the Bulgar, the Venetian and the Turk have fought over it. For five hundred years the Turk held it and ruled over it, when after the second Balkan war it passed to Greece, in 1913. "There will always be fighting in the Balkans," says one of Kipling's men, and when we found the armed men of six nations guarding the prisoners of four other nations through the streets of Salonica, we felt that it was so.
Before the allied occupation Salonica had a population of perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand, about fifty per cent of whom were Spanish Jews. The remainder of the population was divided among Turks, Serbs, Roumanians, Greeks, Czechs, Al- banians, Cretans and the bastardy tribes of the near East. With the coming of the allies and the influx of refugees, the population trebled. Rarely if ever in the world's history had there been such a mixture of men and races as now thronged the slippery streets of the city and filled the air with a conglomeration of languages unequaled since the I. W. W. knocked off work on the tower of Babel. All the characters of the Orient were there ; the veiled woman, the muezzin, the bearded and befezzed Turk, the vender of wine with his goat-skin, the money-changer, the char- coal seller, the Macedonian mountaineer with his ballet skirt and pomponed shoes, the rag-clad leper, the porter, the black- hatted Greek priest, women in bloomers, women with queer parrot-like head dresses, dignified, rabbinical-looking old men in white turbans and loose, flowing robes ; and mingling with this
[ I
Underw
ndcrwood
Prepared to bivouac wherever necessary this old Macedonian
priest journeys through the Balkans with the greatest
possible comfort — to the rider if not to the pony
throng in the narrow, twisting streets were the soldiers of France, Annamites, Senegalese, Moroccans, the English Tommy, the Italian in his uniform of elephant-hide gray, the sturdy Russ, the weary Serb, the Cretan Guards, soldiers of the newly formed Venizelos army, and now and again guarded German, Austrian, Bulgar and Turkish prisoners. From the ships in the bay came the sailors of four nations and from the merchantmen a half score representatives of other nationalities mingled with the crowd. Lest some fragment of the way remain unoccupied, that ubiquitous Ford of the East, the burro, jostled the passerby, and droves of sheep and goats scuttled about his legs. Over all this shifting mass was the curious hum of many languages, punctuated by the cries of the street venders and the honk and rattle of army motors.
You are led to believe that everybody is in the street until you enter a cafe and find it difficult to obtain a seat. Here you can drink delicious black Turkish coffee served in tiny brass cups, or, if you like, a sticky white liquid tasting exactly like sweetened paregoric, which is reminiscent of colicky nights. Here, too, you may try the giant hooka, or water pipe, though after reflecting on the generations of Turks who must have curled lips over its mouth-piece, you probably will refrain.
Then there are the bazaars. They are booth-like shops which open directly on the streets. And the streets on which they open are roofed over so that business is conducted in a subdued light conducive to meditation and also, perhaps (but whisper it) to the concealment of defects in the wares. Here are displayed flint- lock pistols, embroideries, laces, sheep-skin coats — and ye gods, how they do smell ! — leather sandals, beaten copper ware, knitted socks, beautiful lace silver work, amber beads and cigarette holders. And if you inquire "from whence come these things?"
12
TRA V EL
he of the shop will make answer, "From Albania, O Sire," where- as, be the truth known, none save perhaps the silver work ever saw Albania.
We had been told that the flies would be all over by October. They were — all over everywhere. In Salonica the fly is ever present ; it festoons every rope, crawls over every exposed article of food, flops into every liquid, swarms about your head, skates over your person and generally acts "just as happy as though invited." Heretofore, I had always considered a little restaurant in Gettysburg, Md., only slightly misnamed "The Busy Bee," as being the world's headquarters for flies, but a Salonica fly if transported to that restaurant would hunger for companionship and pining away die of lonesomeness. It is beyond dispute that should the rest of the world run out of flies, Salonica would be able to re-stock it and still have enough left to bat in the "300" class. They do not seem to bother the Turk. He accepts them as decreed by Allah; it is enough. As for the Greek, he is too busy frying fish to notice. The Greek considers that day lost whose low-descending sun sees not a mess of fish fried. Every- where in little open-faced booths you will see him with a tiny charcoal brazier — frying fish. At early morn, at dewy eve, all through the sunny day, this piscatorial pastime proceeds. What is done with these schools and oceans of fish, I wot not. Never have I beheld mortal man eat thereof. Indeed, I question whether he could eat one without giving quick proof of his mortality. Possibly the frying has to do with the mysteries of the Greek religion; possibly it is a form of sport, like tatting or solitaire, I know not. Whatever the cause, whatever the result, certain it is that its popularity is beyond question.
Of course there are other foodstuffs. Exposed to sale — and to flies — you will see them. Many weird and curious shapes they have, deterring to all save an ostrich or a Macedonian. One sort there is, a brown ball slightly larger than a shrapnel ball — also slightly heavier. This is served with honey. Having con- sumed a salvo of these, one is prone to meditate on the vicis- situdes of life. There is another dish resembling lamp chimney packing. This, too, is chaperoned by honey. The substance most in demand, however, is a ghastly sort of plaster exactly resembling putty. Personally, I have never eaten putty, but after trying this other stuff I am convinced that I should prefer putty as being more digestible and equally palatable. Then there are numerous white, fly-sprinkled sour-milk products, rather pleasing from a scenic standpoint, but fearful to the unaccustomed taste. All of these concoctions are regarded by the populace as being cibarious, nay more, as being delightful to eat. Truly the ways of the East are strange.
The setting for the street life and characters is appropriate. The quaintly-colored houses with their overhanging second stories and latticed windows, the narrow, twisting ways and the stately minarets add to the mystery and lend atmosphere. But incon- gruities there are, the West clashing with the East, the modern opposing the ancient. It was disheartening to the lover of the picturesque to behold motor lorries speeding down the Street of the Vardar, that street dating from Roman times, a part of the way over which passed the .caravans from the Bosporus to the Adriatic. Then, too, it jarred one's sensibilities to see a trolley car passing beneath the triumphal arch of Galerius, dating from 296, or the walls of the White Tower of Suleiman reflecting the lights of a cinema palace, or to hear broken by an auto hooter the plaintive cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. And the regrettable part of it all is that there is a co-mingling of the Occident with the Orient; it is the latter which gives way with a loss of the picturesque and the tranquil.
As the sun sinks across the harbor and the afterglow pricks out the jagged mountains and paints every spar and rope of the battle fleet with an orange glow, the bazaars become deserted and the easterner betakes himself within his doors and the life of the city moves down toward the waterfront. The night life of Salonica was not so extensive or unrestrained as that of Mar- seilles. While not under martial law, the streets were at all times patrolled by military police — French, English, Italian and Cretan — and no disorder was permitted. Along the great street which faces and follows the waterfront for several miles are scattered cafes, cinema palaces, restaurants, theatres and dance halls. The cinema shows are like such affairs the world over ; the restaurants are Greek — which is to say the worst in the world; the theatres produce mediocre burlesque, but the cafes and dance halls offer more that is of interest. There are a few dancing girls, mostly thick-ankled, swarthy Greeks, a singer or two and a persevering
pianist, to whom nobody pays any attention. Most of the enter- tainment, however, is furnished by the patrons themselves. You may see a couple of tipsy Zouaves from the Tell gravely perform- ing the "dance of the seven veils ;" a score of Serbs grouped around a table occasionally breaking into one of their wild, weird chants, thumping their mugs in rhythm but never laughing — I never saw a Serb laugh. If you call out "Dobra" — "good" — to them when they finish, however, they will smile. When things quiet down a bit someone starts "Keep the home fires burning," and instantly there is a thump of hobbed feet and every Tommy present swings into the chorus. Presently a poilu is pushed to his feet and in a rich voice he sings the Prologue from "Pagliacci.'" The Italians present applaud vociferously and everyone bangs on the floor while there come cries of "encore," "bravo," "dobra" and "good" which bring the singer back.
We fall into conversation with a Tommy at our table. He has been "up country," as he calls it, in fact, is just back. "How is it up there ?" we inquire.
"It's 'ell, that's wot it is, 'ell," he responds.
"Oui monsieur," chimes in a poilu, "it is all that there is of terrible".
Nice cheery talk this for us who are going up there. The Tommy is named " 'Arvey." In his opinion the " 'ole blinking country ain't fit to kill a barmy dog in." We have his mug re- plenished, in acknowledgment of which he hoists it, nods toward us and remarks "top 'ole," to which etiquette requires that we respond, "every time." His "pal" joins the group and 'Arvey informs the newcomer that we are "priceless fellows," which considering that we have paid for the round is an ambiguous compliment. The chum is full of dignity and beer. He regards 'Arvey solemnly, for some time listening to him describe his prowess with the bayonet. At the conclusion of this not overly modest recital, he leans forward, gravely wags his finger and demands, "tell me, 'Arvey, 'ave you ever 'it a 'Un ?"
On the days when we did not have permission to go into the city, we remained in the vicinity of camp or took walks back into the barren hills. The ground on which our tents were pitched was, I am convinced, the hardest in the world and it was a week or more before our bones and muscles accustomed themselves to its surface. Not far from the camp was a tiny cafe, kept by a Greek who spoke French, and here we would repair and in the course of the day drink quarts of thick Turkish coffee. Here, too, could be obtained sausages or at least what passes for sausages in Macedonia. Nearly everyone in the squad tried them — and found them guilty. They must have been heirlooms in that Greek's family. Certainly they antedated the first Balkan war.
At this time there was in progress one of those incompre- hensible revolutions without which no Macedonian or Central American is happy. No man knew what it was all about, but there were great marchings and countermarchings and as one of the revolutionary camps was near ours we saw considerable of the "goings on." They made a fearful row about it all and at night, when the moon shone, they would cluster together and with heads tilted upwards bay out some agonizing choruses. We fer- vently hoped that the revolution would suffer a speedy suppression and its participants meet a just retribution.
Our illusions, formed in France, respecting the warmth and sun of the Orient underwent speedy change. We found the climate much like that we had left. Heavy torrential rains set in. Outside our tents the yellow mud was inches deep. After a fort- night, with no work to occupy our attention, we became restless. The vessel containing our cars remained at anchor in the harbor and apparently did naught save issue bulletins that demain it would discharge .cargo. Our spirits were further depressed by a sad incident which happened about this time. Sortwell, whose "cot was right hand cot to mine," a splendid big chap, one of the most popular men in the Squad, was struck one night by a staff car and knocked unconscious. He never came to and died the following morning. He was buried with full military honors. On the morning of his burial we received word that our cars were ready for discharge at the dock.
We set to work the following day. That it rained goes with- out saying. The crated cars were lowered over the ship's side and with crow-bar, pick and sledge we crashed into them. As soon as the crates were knocked away, gas was put into the tanks and the cars driven out to camp. We worked throughout the day, and by ten that night had the satisfaction of releasing the last car.
N O V EMBER, i 9 i 8
This method of loading and un- loading livestock was an inter- esting sight en route from Marseilles to Salonica
An aeroplane view of Salonica, said to have been taken six months after the fires, shows a neatly laid out city of consid- erable extent and a busy harbor. "We found it a city well worth seeing. Dating back three hun- dred years before the birth of Christ, it has been and is yet the stamping ground of his- tory," says Mr. Imbrie
From Press Illustrating Service
1 Underwood & Underwood Salonica, almost in the shadow of Mt. Olympus, is punctuated here and there by white spires which catch and magically reflect the last flickering rays of the sun
© Underwood & Undeiwood
The Roman Arch of Galerius has elaborately decorated bases between
which passes a motley Balkan crowd. Note the horseback meat-shop
in the right background
14
The camp now became the scene of industry. The cars we parked in a hollow square formation. They had suffered some damage in transportation but this was soon remedied. The tire- racks, which had been demounted for the packing, were now reinstalled. The lockers were replenished with spare gas and oil ; tires were re-inflated and everything tuned up for departure. It had been determined to leave ten ambulances in Salonica as a reserve and we also established a depot of spare parts from which the field atelier could replenish its store from time to time. The remainder of our rolling stock, including the s t a ff cars and the kitchen truck, were now ready for departure. Re- ports had come in of lively fighting and a steady advance in the direction of Monastir, for which front rumor had it we were des- tined. We were anx- ious to be away. Fi- nally on an afternoon in the middle of No- vember we were re- viewed by the com- manding officer of the automobile corps of the A. F. O. Our cars were packed and it but remained to strike the tents and roll the blankets. Enfin, we awaited the word.
The first, faint flicker was just beginning to show as we wound our way down through the outlying parts of the city, a sinuous line of ambulances and- auxiliary cars. Along the waterfront the convoy halted for final adjustment. The fore-glow coming across the harbor filtered through the spars of the shipping and gave promise of a clear day. A few early porters and beachcomb- ers paused to gaze wonderingly upon us. The C. O. passed down the line to see if all was ready ; the whistle sounded and we were off.
P a s ' s: i n g through the al- ready livening streets we paral1 leled the quay, turned toward the northwest and then, as the muez- zins in the min- arets were calling upon the faithful to greet the day, entered upon the great caravan trail, which runs back into the mountains and — Allah knows where. Past pack trains of little mountain ponies laden with hides, past lumbering solid - wheeled wagons drawn by water buffaloes and piled high with roughly baled tobacco, to- bacco from which is made some of
From International Film Service
King George of Greece entered Salonica with considerable pomp and dignity
TRAVEL
the choicest Turkish cigarettes in the world, past other wagons . towering with coarse native matting, past the herdsman and his flock, his ballet skirt blowing in the morning wind, past the solemn Turk, mounted athwart his drooping burro, his veiled woman trudging behind. Now the city lay behind us ; the passersby be- came fewer until only an occasional wayfarer and his burro were sighted. The road, pitted and gutted, stretched away through a
barren, dreary coun- try. The sun's early promise had not been fulfilled and a gray, slaty day emphasized the dreariness of the landscape. To our right, bleak mountains rose to meet a dull sky. Nowhere ap- peared tree or shrub ; not even a fence broke the barren mo- notony of the scene. Never a house, not even a road, though occasionally a muddy track wandered aim- lessly through the waste. We rounded the mountains and crossed a sluggish stream, the Galiko. Pnce we saw a village nestling at the base of a mountain, its white minarets rising above the dull gray of the ensemble. Then, the desolation closed down. Farther on, over a shaky, wooden bridge, we crossed the Vardar, the Axius of Virgil. Hereabout the country was flat and swampy, but suddenly it changed. Scat- tered trees began to appear; here and there rocks jutted out. The trail began to mount and presently we twisted our way through the first settlement, the village of Yenize. More moun- tains came into view towards the northeast and then towards the south and west. About eleven we sighted some whitewashed
houses, clinging to the side of a cliff, the over- flow of the town of Vodena, through which we presently passed over a road of mountainous steepness. Up, up we went, three hundred, four hundred meters, finally stopping where a fountain gushed from the roadside a kilo- meter or so be- yond the town.
We were in the
heart of the hills
On three
the raoun-
rose to a
ht of
now. sides tains h e i s
six
© Underwood & Underwood
'Then there are the bazaars. They are boothlike shops which open directly on the streets. And
the streets on which they open are roofed over so that business is conducted in a subdued light
conducive to meditation and also, perhaps (but whisper it), to the concealment
of defects in the wares"
thousand feet or more. Their tops were covered with snow and from this time on we were never to lose sight of it.
Some biscuits, ham and choco- late found a good
NO J' EMBER, 19 i 8
15
"The remainder of our rolling stock, including the staff cars and the kitchen truck, were now ready for departure"
home and there was time for a couple of pipes he fore the whistle blew and we again cast off. A n d no w our troubles began. Up to this time our way could at least lay claim to the name "road," but now even an attorney, working on a percentage basis, could establish no such iden- tity for the straggling gully through which we struggled — sometimes a heap of boulders, sometimes a mire, but always it climbed. The cars coughed and grunted and often we were forced to halt while the motors cooled. In mid-after- noon the rain, which had been threatening for some hours, set in and the ground quickly assumed the consistency of sticky paste, through which we sloughed our way. About four we spoke the Lake of Ostrovo and shortly after- wards passed through the straggling village of the same name. Deep sand here made the going hard, but we soon left the shores of the lake and again headed straight into the mountains. So far as possible the trail held to the passes, but even so the ascent was very great. As night fell we came to an especially steep stretch slanting up between snow-covered mountains. From a little distance it looked as though someone, tiring of
road building, had leaned the unfinished product up against a mountain side. Time and again we charged but without avail ; no engine built could take that grade. Physics books tell us "that which causes or tends to cause a body to pass from a state of rest to one of motion is known as Force." With twenty men to a car, pulling, pushing and dragging, w e assumed the function of "•force" and ''caused a body' ' — t h e cars — to "pass f r o m a state of rest to one of motion," hoisting them by main strength over the crest.
Night had shut down for some hours when the last car had topped the r i s e . A
b. .... Courtesy of American Red Cross
one-c hulling , ,
wind had swent Tnis looks like tne nrst day of Mav? ** is' however, a day in that black August of 1917 when the city
wmu iiau swept o), Salonica fe]t twice the ravages 0f fire started by enemy bombs, and the homeless inhabitants filled down from the tne streets with what effects they had been able to rescue from their homes. The White
snow, the rain Tower, built by Suleiman the Magnificent, shows in the background
"Reports had come in of lively fighting and a steady advance in the
direction of Monastir. . . . We were anxious to be
away. . . . We waited the word"
still fell. The lights were sv\ itched on and over a trail flanked on one side; by a tow - ering cliff, on the. other b) a black chasm of nothingniss, w <■ kepi on. ( >nce we rounded a sharp curve, there was a sudden dip in the trail and in the darkness we almost shot off into the space below.
It still lacked some two hours of midnight when ahead we discerned a few flickering lights. The Lieutenant gave the signal and we came to a stop at the fringe of a miser- able village. We had been sixteen hours at the wheel but had covered no more than one hundred and fifty kilo- meters. We were all cold and hungry, but the soup batten- was mired somewhere miles in the rear. Our lanterns showed us but a few stone hovels. Had we known more of the Balkans, we would not even have thought of finding a shop. We gave up thoughts of dinner, crawled within our cars and, wrapping our great- coats about us, sought to dream of "a cleaner, greener land."
The tramping of many feet and the sobbing of a man woke me next morning. I looked out to see a column of Russian infantry passing. One big fellow was crying as though his heart would break. Ba-ne-a or Ba-netz-a — the village at which we had halted — proved to be a miserable collection of huts constructed of rounded stones, writh which the surrounding hills were covered. Like most Turk- ish villages, it clung to the side of a hill, sprawling there with no a t - tempt at sys- tem or a view to streets. The buildings were of one story ; a few had glass but in far the most part straw was employed to bloc k the windows. The twisting paths which wan- dered about be- t w e e n the houses were knee deep in black mud. There were no shops, not even a cafe.
Other and higher hills rose above the one on which the village was situated. These hills were bar- (Continued on page 42)
i6
TRA V EL
Mangroves, bay trees, magnolias and other water-loving growths are typical of the Everglade jungles of Florida
CHARTING AMERICA'S JUNGLE LAND
By Guy E. Mitchell
INDIA'S jungles, aside from the man-eaters, can boast of little or no superiority to jungles in our own country. Some of the jungles of southern Florida, Louisiana, and even the Sacramento Valley of California, for instance, are practically impenetrable without the constant use of an axe or machete. And in Florida and Louisiana the huge diamond-back rattlesnake and the venom- ous cotton-mouth moccasin are perhaps good seconds to the cobra. Rattlesnake venom is not as poisonous as that of the India cobra but a seven or eight foot rattler, by no means an un- common inhabitant of the southern swamps, carries back of his jaws a charge of poison sufficient to kill three or four men. How- ever, of the rattlesnake it may be said that he is a real gentle- man, never at- tacking unless badly pro- voked, while he always gives polite and dis- tinctive warn- i n g of his presence.
None know
of the various American jungles so well as the map-makers of the Government. Especially the topographic maps made by the engineers of the United States Geological Survey are produced right on the ground, and the surveyor covers every acre of the territory. He goes far in advance of the outposts of civilization, and carries these most accurate surveys into the very heart of the wilderness. This careful work is necessary since the maps must show not only natural and political boundaries but every mountain, valley and stream and every variation in altitude, or elevation above sea level.
Real map-making means field work, of course. The genuine surveying map-maker must do his work with the mountains and the hills and the valleys actually before him. In some sections, like the Great Plains, he has a simple problem ; he can cover a large amount of territory in a day ; he can travel easily and noth- ing obstructs his vision. In other sections he may be able to get good sights from bold and lofty mountain peaks, but reaching these points of vantage laden with his surveying instruments may be back-breaking business. In still other places he may have to hack his way through to enable the running of his lines.
In Florida, Government surveys have penetrated into some of (Continued on page 46)
This is not a wire entanglement at the front, but an almost impenetrable maze of bulrushes in the Tule Swamp of the Sacramento Valley
"In the mountains of Hawaii ... is found one of the worst jungles in the world. It
consists of a veritable network of apparently endless limbs and branches of haw, so dense
that none but the smallest animal can force its way through"
NOVEMBER, 1918
17
"There isn't anything in the world, even letters from home, that will raise the soldier's spirits like a good marching tune," says Major- General Leonard Wood. The great organization of the Salvation Army works quietly with its music and its scores of motor trucks
In the center the doughboys at "chow" are listening in- tently to a high Salvation Army officer. It is not all prayer and song and dough- nuts, either, in the Salvation Army. There is much heavy work to be done
The Shakespeare, the most artistic British Y. M. C. A. hut in London.
The largest American Association hut for our boys in
London is the Eagle
BRINGING "HOME" TO THE DOUGHBOYS
By Jessie B. Payne
(( A LL the modern inconveniences," grumbled an American Tx. doughboy good-naturedly as he tried to wash his hands from a small-sized portable cup which was also collapsible. It was near St. Mihiel that his voice was raised recently when the Americans were pushing the Germans out of the salient, and had them, in fact, so successfully pushed that our men, always keen on the trail of cleanliness, were making furtive attempts here and there to wash off the grime.
"Take the water hinternally, old dear," came a cockney sug- gestion from nearby, "then try some blooming sand on your 'ands. Modern hinconveniences — well, I'll be blowed "
And then a queer thing happened. Overhead the whiz of American airplanes and suddenly a shower of cigarettes fell from the heavens. Although the doughboy and his cockney critic didn't know it, 20,000 packages were being dropped all along the salient as the two were delightedly falling on their share.
"Marked for me, this is," muttered the erstwhile grumbler, then examining the package in his hand, he read, " 'Compliments of the Knights of Columbus.' Well, here's the thanks of a per- fectly good Baptist, and over there a silent vote goes out from the Church of Hengland. Eh — Tommy?"
At the same time that the cigarettes fell from this ultra modern delivery service, the Y. M. C. A. workers on foot moved among the infantrymen and artillerymen who were still pressing forward in that victorious squeeze which dislodged the enemy from the stronghold they had held for three years. Further on, secretaries from the Jewish Welfare Board with their packs of chocolate and cigarettes, and the Salvation Army with coffee and doughnuts were passing among the soldiers, so that both on land and in the
air these fearless workers kept pace with the fearless fighters.
And the splendid personal thing about these upkeepers of morale is their co-operative spirit.
While the main line of endeavor of all the war agencies is the same, to combat homesickness and keep up the morale, there is no duplication of effort anywhere. In the larger home canton- ments, for instance, soldiers will find huts and canteens of all five of the camp agencies, the Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., K. of C, Jewish Welfare Board and the Salvation Army. But in the smaller camps the organizations have working agreements which prevent duplication.
In the overseas work the establishers of any hut gladly share it with workers from all the other organizations, just as they welcome men of all faiths into its shelter and hospitality. Not only does the "thanks of a perfectly good Baptist" frequently go out to the K. of C, but the good-will and thanks of every known denomination is going out, with reason, to every other.
To realize what the chain of helping hands held out to the soldier, sailor or marine means, one must follow one of our men from his own doorway where he says goodbye to his family and his familiar environment, to the training camps here, and on to France and to the front lines. Let us take for the purpose one of the youngest of our soldiers, for, using the word "men," one thinks involuntarily of the hordes of boys one sees everywhere in uniform who are nevertheless fighting men, youthfulness not- withstanding.
The camp agencies have established clubs and canteens for our warrior in any camp in the United States, and the American {Continued on page 45)
18
TRAVEL
Those of us who have no intimate acquaintance with the Salvation Army lass cannot fail to envy our soldiers the opportunity of testing her warm friendliness, her motherhness, her cheeriness. The Salvation Army has endeared itself to every "doughboy at the front by the invention of dough- nuts as an antidote to war weariness. Establishing themselves up near the front line, the Salvation Army 'lassies, taking possession of old houses and barns, many ot them partly wrecked by shells, have served the American soldier with unlimited hot doughnuts "like mother used to make." There is never an hour when the boys cannot get refreshments and the popularity of these canteens is increased by the fact that the cost of living has not gone up there. Then, too, there is always a motherly hand ready with needle and thread
NOVEMBER, 191S
i')
1^1 III
The canteens of the Salvation Army are not popular because of their location but because of the warm hospitality that prevails inside. These pic- tures show a variety of entrances and a suggestion of interiors. Some of the canteens are in old stables, partly demolished houses, in barns and mere holes in the ground. The Salvation Army workers are never satisfied unless they are up with the fighting men. The central photograph at the top is of a recreation hut used with the mobile units of the army. The steel helmets worn by the soldiers and the Salvation Army workers indicate that the dug-outs are near the front line. The lower and the central pictures show the gas mask worn in the alert position which indicates nearness to the trenches. The lower left picture shows the clublike effect that can be produced in an old stable
20
TRA V EL
This might be called the recreation page, for it shows a few of the things the Yf M. C. A. and the War Camp Community Service are doing to keep the boys in America and the boys "over there" from that homesick feeling. The upper picture shows a corner in the homelike reading- room in the National Defenders Club of the Presidio, California, the book supply being furnished by the American Library Association. More than a thousand of these cheery soldiers' clubs have been opened in American cities through the efforts of the W. C. C. S. The sight-seeing tour at the top shows a visit to the tomb of General Grant, New York; and below, wounded soldiers visiting historic Tours, France. The boys around the talking machine are in the Eagle Hut, London. At the Fort Snelling, Minnesota, Y. M. C. A. is a gentle reminder of the home folks. The oval shows one of the Information Booths in hundreds of American cities
NOl-'EM BER, i 9 i 8
21
The vast organizations for maintaining high morale among soldiers, sailors and marines link the earth. The first picture is a British Y. M. C. A. hut of the Egyptian forces. The orchestra is composed of war prisoners in Siberia, the instruments having been made in the Y. M. C. A. work- shop. Below is a tentlike Y. M. C. A. hut on the Tigris, and the ovals are huts in Palestine. At the bottom is a temporary British Y. M. C. A. camp on a beach in Egypt. The boys in "B. V. D.'s" are patronizing the soft drink counter at a Y. M. C. A. canteen in torrid Mesopotamia! While no photographs are shown of the Young Women's Christian Association, we must pay tribute to the efficient and unostentatious manner in which this Association is caring for the needs of women war workers in all parts of the world; also for women visiting the camps and cantonments in America, and in maintaining attractive Hostess Houses with canteens for soldiers and their women friends
22
THE
LAST
TRAVEL
AMERICAN ER
A careful search will reveal one small burro south of the huge pile of lumber in the foreground. It seems unnecessary to add that the burro is the
most useful animal in the Southwest
Unique, Bizarre, Unparalleled on Our Continent, the Turbu- lent Section of California's Border That Is Neighbor to Wicked Lozver California Is Doomed to Become Civilised
By M. E. Edwards
Photographs by the Author and Others
AROUND the movie studios of Hollywood there is, of course, a horde of graceful gun-men and coy cow-girls who now and then "shoot up" a tolerant California town — that we of the east may have our regular five-reel thrill of Wild West life. But the real
" — — days of old,
The days of gold,
The days of Forty-nine" are but a memory now, even to the most hoary pioneer. A preju- dice has developed against mur- der, too, since the halcyon days of "Tennessee's Pardner;" and to- day it is more genteel to run an orange ranch than a faro layout. I am speaking now of our own American California — what pur- ists might call California proper to distinguish it, perhaps, from California improper — that reck- less Mexican state of the same name, just across the line.
Here, indeed, in the wide-open Mexican border towns something of the wild-and-woolly life still flourishes. "Baja California," this eight hundred mile long, Italy- shaped peninsula is called on the Mexican maps ; "The Mother of California" the Jesuits named it when they tramped up its weary hostile length on their way to build the missions of San Juan Bautista and Monterey. And from their day to this it has been the home of tumult, of romance and adven- ture. Cortez robbed its pearl fish- ers at La Paz ; Sir Francis Drake dropped his pirate anchor in Mag- dalena Bay; and "Nicaragua Walker, the gray-eyed man of destiny," invaded it, decades ago, raising the Confederate flag and
declaring it another slave state.
"In a lonely cave on the hostile slopes of the great Carisso
gorge, one of the engineers found a pile of broken pottery,
and amid the wreck one perfect and beautiful Indian olla,
covered with a swastika design and a frame of ferns"
So its topsy-turvy course has run, and to-day it's Colonel Estaban Cantu, self-appointed governor, guides its uncertain destinies, ruling it as might a Prince of Monaco ; a bizarre principality aloof from the rest of Mexico.
From Yuma to the sea, for two hundred rough, rocky miles this turbulent territory joins our own — or is separated from it — by the magic "line," depending on the humor of border sheriffs at particular moments. Now a boundary, they used to tell us in
school, is an imaginary line be- tween two countries. But in vari- ous jails hard by that long row of stone obelisks that marches from the Texas coast to the Pacific, marking where the U. S. A. quits and trouble begins, there are many sad persons who deny that this boundary is imaginary.
Once, at Calexico, a fugitive from American justice, hard pressed by the Yankee police, fell sprawling fairly across this line, his head and shoulders in Mexico, his feet in California. Right man- fully his Mexican friends grabbed him by the hair and hands, seeking to drag him over to safety. But an American cop fell heavily on the fugitive's feet, a pistol against the American part of his anatomy, bawling such ominous threats that the runaway squirmed hastily back to his own country. More than one border bad man has bit the desert dust because he didn't know exactly where this line was — or didn't reach it in time.
It reveals, too, the clannish co- herence of races, does this so- called imaginary line. And in sharp, startling cleavage it shows a curious "cross section" of the social life of the two peoples, di- verse in manners and habits, in standards and traditions.
NOVEMBER, i 9 i 8
25
Flat, dirty-brown Mexicali, with its three thousand daylight population, boasts the greatest gambling house in all the Americas — and the highest known percent- age in favor of the house ! Here is an odd town whose population doubles at night when hundreds of devotees swarm over from the American side to follow the fickle bouncing marble in the roulette wheel, or to shoot Spanish dice or buck the Keno game.
The "Owl," or El Tecolote as the Mexi- cans call this sordid palace of chance, houses a bar one hundred and fifty feet long, with forty bartenders working on big nights. Tourists who have studied the liquor prob- lem from Pekin to Paris tell me there is no bar in the world as big as this.
Quitting the American town of Calexico, twin sister of Mexicali but not on speaking terms with her sister, I ventured across the line myself, to see what the "chile-con-car- nage" night life was like.
It was a ravishing night, the tinkling, murmuring town bathed in a silver haze, with faint night odors of sage drifting in from the desert. Somewhere in the dis- tance a burro brayed mourn- fully. "The national anthem," muttered my companion dis- respectfully.
Groping down narrow, murky streets, past the low open doors of adobe shacks where blanketed, sombreroed figures lurked ; past tiny cafes where guitars droned and women laughed ; through an increasing aroma of chile and garlic, we held our course.
"Everybody goes once, anyway, just to see it," runs the Calexico compromise.
They did well to call it "Owl." Long before we came to it we heard its evil voice lifted in the night — the blare of bands, a tumult of shouting. Inside it was all aglitter with a thousand lamps ; above the music and the rattle of dice rose the shouts of gamblers and the hard laughter of an army of Car- mens, bare of shoulder and bold of smile, who danced and swayed to the strains of Paloma, Machiche and company.
The bluish air was stifling, foul with dust and smoke and the reek of excited, per- spiring men — a veritable babel, a congress of all nations it was, surging to the bar, crowding about the noisy gaming tables, dan- cing with the hundred odd girls in the ball- room adjacent; the "corral," cowmen had styled the dancing place, separated as it was from the main floor by a mere picket fence to keep the crowd from trampling down the dancers.
Millionaires were there from the coast cities and east ; tourists too, like ourselves, who had gotten Calexico's special dispen- sation to "see it once ;" there were "cow persons" from Arizona in spurs and hairy "chaps," and cotton kings from the Im- perial Valley rubbing elbows with Hindus, Chinos, Japs, and Mexicans, and Cocopah Indians with hair long like Absalom's. "The confusion of tongues," muttered my com- panion.1 : .
"Let's climb up above, like Nebuchad-
A hair cut "between the acts" in rebel
life. A Mexican's razor is put
to many uses
What the volunteer soldiers of the Mexican border lack in military form they make up for in abundance of ammunition
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On the so-called "imaginary line" of school days, the Mexican border
nezzar," said I, "so we can look down at the wicked city.''
So we went up into a tiny box in a tier that runs along one side of the building, opposite the bar and above the game tables and the dance-hall. 1 pulled aside the dingy, plush curtains and looked down — or back, back to "The days of gold, the days of Forty-nine!" It was a picture from "The Luck of Roaring Camp," or a night in "Red I )og." It was the supreme essence of Wild \\ est realism. It has never been filmed or photographed, the local authorities do not want the outside world to know the whole truth about the "Owl." But what a show it would make if one could lift it bodily and set it down, say, on the big stage of the New York Hippodrome.
Our elbows on the tiny table between us, we squeezed forward in the little box, peering down at the swirling, smoking^ swearing throng below — surging now to this game, now to that, as it was bruited about that someone was having a "run of luck." "Que quieren?" interrupted a dull voice. It was a shabby Mexican waiter with a tray. "Nada — nothing," I said. But he tarried, repeating his familiar formula.
"Bueno — dos limonadas." Two lemonades ! And from the insolent shrug of his shoulders I divined that he knew we were interlopers — of no consequence — for it was a tradition that guests who sat in boxes should buy wine.
With a drawing-pad on her knee, half hidden beneath the table, my companion was busily sketching. The fat man who drummed up partners for the girls in the dance-hall made a striking sketch, he had a shape like a bottle of milk. Suddenly all was silent be- low, all but the metallic click of a fateful hopping marble. Hardly another game was go- ing now; even the music was hushed. A boy, scarcely sev- enteen, in overalls and a bat- tered hat, was bucking the wheel and win- ning, winning!
"It's the freckled kid that drives Beals' meat wagon on the American side!" piped a girl's shrill voice, as she scrambled atop a card table and peered over the heads of men intently watching. Quickly, and in whispers, so as not to change his luck, the word went round. The kid had started with a five dollar piece — and was winning hundreds. He played the black and won- and then the red ; the "oo's"— and still the dealer pushed the gold and silver and bills back to the boy. He had money in every pocket; six months' wages on the delivery wagon. A year's; two years— four— three thousand dollars. "Gawd! All from a skinny fiver !" gasped the blonde, covetously.
Then an odd thing happened. Seized with panic — or was it sense? — the boy, jamming his winnings deep into his baggy clothes, fought his way through the press- ing crowd and ran for the door — literally ran — wild-eyed, but resolute. "Wait, fool — your luck ain't broke!" yelled the girl. But the boy was gone.
Straight across the line he ran, I heard
24
TRA V BL
Dictionaries to the contrary notwithstanding, the sea elephant is not yet extinct, as witness this great twenty-foot bull of the last herd, photographed at Guadeloupe Island off the coast of Lower Cali- fornia. His face is reminiscent rather of a parrot than of an elephant
later, and bought a ticket for Boone, Iowa, his old home town ; that very night he abandoned Calexico forever, fleeing as he was in overalls and battered hat, bidding none good-bye, taking not even his shabby effects from his boarding-house, not even wait- ing to collect his last week's pay from the butcher.
But accidents will happen even in the "Owl." They are rare, these accidents, like the one that happened to the freckled boy from Iowa, yet they occur often enough to keep the -suckers coming. Of other "accidents" the police seldom speak. In fact since the Owl installed its famous "bird cage" these accidents have been less frequent. It is unique, and of singular moral effect, this odd "bird cage" in the "Owl."
From the ceiling, and reached only by a trap door through
the roof above, is
suspended an omi- nous-looking circular cage, with loop-holes all around it. Inside this cage, and armed with sawed-off shot guns, there sit a half dozen hawk-eyed guards, watching the seething crowd be- 1 o w . Considering the nature of the business done and
the antecedents of some of the habitues, the subduing influence of the invisible guards in the cage is remarkable. But the guards are small protection against the wiles of those who run the games, or against the flock of "dips" who prey on the unwary sightseers, "frisking" with apparent immunity.
At no other section of the international border did I find mutual relations between Americans and Mexicans more friendly and hospitable than here between the two Californias. Back and forth across the line a constant stream is passing, buying and sell- ing, carrying bundles — like a train of busy ants.
The Mexican boys and girls of Baja California nearly all speak English ; most of them have been educated in the Catholic schools of California or have lived in Los Angeles or San Diego. They have acquired American habits and customs and have ab- sorbed American ideas and ideals. Down in Mexico their houses are now fitted with American furniture and musical instruments, and many own American automobiles. Th'ey are prosperous, happy patrons of Uncle Sam. Gone from Baja California, how- ever, are the old days of ignorance and poverty, when as one sacrilegious traveler said, "All the peon needs to furnish his house is a picture of a saint and a string of red peppers."
California merchants sell enormous quantities of farming ma- chinery, supplies, provisions, clothing and other necessities to the inhabitants along the Mexican side of the line ; and they, in turn, ship all their cattle, their grain and cotton to the California markets.
Governor Cantu is building a network of roads throughout his district, and I traveled for some three hundred miles through his realm in comfort and safety.
South of Mexicali there spit and bubble the so-called mud volcanoes, boiling holes of hot, steaming ooze that keep the whole earth trembling about the margin of Volcano Lake. Out on the lake itself, here and there, tiny clouds of steam arise, showing where hot water is coming up. I noticed that the wild duck and geese kept a safe distance from these hot pools in the lake.
Tradition says the Cocopah Indians, who still lurk among the rock peaks to the south, used to cast their enemies into these bubbling hot wells. Only a few months ago an American engi- neer wandering too near one of these mud pots broke through the yellowish sulphur crust about it and was badly scalded.
Here and there, stuck off in the scenic hills of this historic peninsula, are8 to be found the homes of ranchers — haciendas, the Mexicans call these old estates. I stopped at one overnight; a vast, rambling edifice the house was, built of adobe, Moorish style, with a flower- choked patio. And such an army of pets ! There was a goat, a lamb, a troop of dogs, cats every- where, guinea-pigs in crates — and birds ! birds ! birds ! A cockatoo or two rounded out the menagerie.
"I am quite hap- py," explained the
Separate the Mexican miner from his din- ner pail, and the camera man's "Look pleasant, please" would have an opposite effect. The U. S. A. pail contrasts strangely with the Mexican footgear
The Dead Rat of Calexico, California, and The Owl of its twin town across the border, Mexicali, where "night life" is the attrac- tion with the blare and glare and gaming and women, are doomed to extinction
Along the grave-bordered, sand-blown
trail blazed by those pioneers who "saw
California first," the stately cactus offers
water from its succulent stems to
the desert-weary traveler
NOVEMBER, i 9 i 8
^ >'r7J
Fifty miles over the border-line in Lower California,
the doubtful joys of a real Mexican bull fight
are to be found at Ensenada
Great precautions are taken at the International Line
to guard against the carrying of cattle diseases into the
United States. Dipping for disinfecting purposes is
"a good show" for the cowmen and soldiers, but
a doubtful joy for the "actors"
A common sight in the narrow, murky streets of Mexicali, where sombreroed figures
lurk in the low open doors of adobe shacks, is the portly porker. Here he has the
appearance of possessing six legs — but a closer view will reveal a team
Over the border this Mexican con- ception of "Home Sweet Home" is in keeping with the arid surroundings. Notwiths tanding the lack of our northern ideas of comfort and order, these half-gypsy families seem to thrive, doubtless due to plenty of air and sunshine
26
TRAVEL
Water for drinking is carried in these huge cow's horn is inserted in one
old man, "except for the mountain lions. Last night one leaped a ten-foot thorn fence, killed my best colt right there in the cor- ral— and got away. I can hardly raise colts any more, the lions have become so plen- tiful."
It's a new, worth- while, and even excit- ing course to the coast — this border path from Yuma to the sea. It does not fol- low the grave-bor- d e r e d , sand-blown trail blazed by those hardy souls of Forty- nine who "saw Cali- f o r n i a first," and whose stray bones and rusty wagon tires still mark their camp sites on the dead desert. Part rail and part auto trail it is, and it hugs the border line ; it plays leap-frog across it, and at one place even runs under it !
Next time you're going to California, get off at Yuma and take the "bob-tail hookworm line" as the cow-men call this rail- road; cut down into Mexico just beyond the Colorado, and ride for sixty miles through the new American Egypt, through endless seas of flat, heat-shivering cotton fields, till you come to Mexicali, boom-town and hell-hole, vortex of sin and last retreat of bad men.
Cross back to Calexico (in California), and take the stage on west to Campo, far up in the Lagunas. Thence by rail to the racy, frivolous Mexican town of Tia Juana ("Aunt Jane" in English) ; back and forth across the border till you come to San Diego, mecca of the idle rich and the richly idle, with climate incomparable.
This new railroad is designed to tie up southern California with the southland trunk lines to the east, to give Arizona and the vast Imperial Valley a straight haul to tidewater.
With two adventurous camera men, who were making "news pictures" for one of the illustrated weeklies, I went over the whole length of the new line. A flat-car was put in front of the engine on a regular passenger train. With cameras mounted and cranks turning we ate up that mountain scenery, tunnels, construction gangs and all. A civil engineer who is now flying over less peaceful scenery went with us, pointing out the kinks and feats in this rather unusual job of railway building.
Construction gangs, dynamiting their way into flinty boulders and mountains of rock, have attacked the range from both sides at once. Sixty miles of track are built, and trains are running on the west end. On the east, the line is built from Seely to Coyote Wells; and now they're battling up the vast, dizzy, and once unknown Carisso Gorge, long ago marked "unsurveyable"
canvas bags slung over the burro's back, corner which serves as a spout
A
on the maps of gov- ernment engineers. Through the worst of this hostile zone the road will cost half a million a mile.
In a lonely cave on the hostile slopes of the great Carisso gorge, one of the en- gineers found a pile of broken pottery, and amid the wreck one perfect and beau- tiful Indian olla, cov- ered with a swastika design and a frame of ferns. Mats of hu- man hair, arrow heads and ashes have also been found in some of these caves.
Weird obstacles beset the chain-gang and the builders. There's the desert oc- tallia or the barbed- wire plant, the fish- hook cactus, and the jumping cholla devil with a hundred prickly needles to the square inch — "Everything," as the engineer put it, "from dizzy cliffs and rattlesnakes to sand storms and arsenic springs."
At the Lindero tunnel your train speeds through a California canyon choked with scrub oaks and juniper trees and dives into the side of an ugly "hogback." Racing along in darkness you suddenly emerge into Mexico, having literally entered the Re- public by an underground route.
"A weak feature of this road, as regards its strategic value to Uncle Sam," observed the engineer, "is the fact that it runs over into Mexico and has so many bridges and tunnels on its Mexican section. But to cross this coast range we had to go back and forth across the line hunting a possible grade."
He was a philosopher of the wilderness, this engineer, true to the reckless, capable types that have built the Roosevelt dams, the Panama canals, and have pushed railroads into frozen Alaska and through the reek and ooze of Philippine jungles. It was 126° in the shade of his dingy tent the day I visited his humble camp at Coyote Wells — 126°, and the wind blowing a gale that swept hot stinging sand before it! (Be assured you don't have to go to Egypt or Arabia to meet a simoon ; ask any old pros- pector who has braved the Yuma desert.) He was working over his plans, stripped to the waist, his body brown as a Chinaman's. At his bunkside I bumped into a box covered with a wire screen and a warning buzz sent me stumbling for safety.
"That's my new alarm clock," grinned the engineer. "Caught him on the rocks the other day. He wakes me every morning at five — got him trained to rattle to me. One of the most syste- matic and dependable snakes I ever met."
(Continued on page 43)
Pelicans "at attention" on the coast near Tia Juana-
— they have suddenly discovered a school of fish
NOVEMBER , 1918
27
By Lieutenant Harold Lake Author of "Campaigning in the Balkans"
WE left Giivezne and marched away up the Seres road to Lahana, which stands just below the highest point which the road reaches on its journey from Salonica to the Struma. What we did there is a question of no importance but we took three weeks in doing it, and on the Sundays we used to go to the war, because Sun- day was a holiday and we could do what we liked. It was possible to start quite early in the morning because we had left the padre with the rest of the battalion lower down the road, so there were no church parades to hinder us. The cook was inclined to be grieved because he had to get up at unconscionable hours to give us breakfast, but that could not be helped. We had to make the most of the holiday.
It is quite easy to go to the war from Lahana. All that you have to do is to stop the first motor that comes along — so long as it is not a Red Cross car — and go as far as it will take you. If it is one of those modest, retiring motors that does not like to push itself forward too faryou can always jump off when it stops and board one which is going further. Those lorries have to go fairly close to the trouble. They have shells to take to the batteries and food for the men in the front line. Of course they don't go up to the front line, but there are times when they find them- A trench mortar on the
selves under fire. At the period of which I am writing, the Bul- gar was in the habit of dropping an occasional shell on the road. His attentions did not make the road much worse than it was before, but they served to put a spice of adventure into our
journeying.
The proper thing to do first of all was to go and call on a battery. There was sure to be one about somewhere if only you could find it. Locat- ing batteries is not the easiest job in the world, even when they are on your own side and you are free to move where you will in search of them. It is more difficult than usual in Macedonia because the coun- try is so very complex. But one learns in time to track the guns to their hiding place in some secret valley, and there they are, sending little mes- sengers out across the river and the plain to some village which is suspected of conceal- ing the enemy.
There is at least one thing to be said in favor of our war in Macedonia — it is pos- sible to look at it. There is no question of sitting dismally in a trench and squinting round corners through a peri- scope. When you are up with • the battery, you can generally watch the shells arrive at their journey's end, which is much more satisfactory than being informed through a telephone that some invisible target has
© Underwood & Underwood been hit. It IS possible to sit
Serbian front in Macedonia on a hill above the guns and
28
TRAVEL
see quite plainly what they are doing. You may watch a village being literally taken to pieces.
It is all rather curious. One cannot feel much sympathy for the average Macedonian village. It does not look as if anybody loved it; if one had the dreadful misfortune to be born in such a place one would, I think, desire most urgently to forget the fact. But even so it is not possible to forget that it was once the habitation of men, and that children played round those ugly little houses before war came and sent the bullock wagons creak- ing down the road. It all seems rather a pity. . . . But presently interest gets the better of emotion and one watches with an increasing pride the careful, accurate work of the men at the guns, as bit by bit the village jumps into the air amid a cloud of dust, and vanishes. How such accuracy is achieved one cannot tell, but there it is, and it is a fascinating thing to watch.
Observed under these conditions, war becomes almost im- personal. Instead of being a thing of passion and emotion, it is a cold-blooded game of skill in which all the players, down to one's very self, are just pawns. Possibly the enemy is trying to find and silence the battery and his exploring shells are bursting at varying distances around. It does not matter. There may be the consciousness that if a shell landed at one's feet the conse- quences would be disastrous, but it seems — and is — so very un- likely that any shell would land in so inconvenient a spot that the question of personal peril simply does not arise. So, too, if the glasses show little figures flying from the village below and some of them crumple up and fall — it does not seem as if the final catastrophe had overtaken some human beings ; it is simply that some pawns have been removed from the board. It is all in the game, the fate of those little distant figures, the fate of the men one knows, one's own fate. Those shells bursting around do not stand so much for the menace of pain and death as for
tokens of- the enemy's failure to be as clever as our men. The gunner is more of a scientist than a warrior, and the emotions he gets out of war are not unlike those which you find in golf or cricket, or any game of skill.
If you wish to get down to the stark realities of war, out- post and patrol work can be recommended. Charging trenches or other positions is all very well for war-frenzy, but the night work is the thing to drive home the sheer facts of conflict and peril and the worth of individual superiority. Sometimes if you go down from the batteries to call on the men in the front line they will let you lend a hand if anything is going to happen. It is necessary, of course, to be careful how you invite yourself and to avoid attracting the attention of commanding officers and adjutants. It is not altogether that they want the whole affair to themselves. They are not so much greedy over the war as concerned about what might happen to them if by chance you were killed while on their hands, and they were called upon to explain why you were there. I am not aware of any regulation forbidding one to go and study the war at close quarters, but there are so many regulations in army life that one is always apt to think that anything out of the ordinary must be in disobedience of an order which one has for the moment forgotten.
Going as a member of an outpost company in unfamiliar coun- try at night is always a good adventure. The men fall in so quietly on the dim parade-ground, wherever and whatever it may be, and the business begins to be interesting at once. It grows still more interesting when, with only a whispered word of com- mand, they begin to move off and vanish, so that when your turn comes and you follow, it is only possible to see the few who are immediately in front of you, and all the rest are folded away in the darkness. That is the time to test a man's power of march- ing at night. If the battalion is without experience of tne game
"The proper tiling to do first of all was to go and call on a battery. There was sure to be one about somewhere if only you could find it. Locating
batteries is not the easiest job in the world. . . . But one learns in time to track the guns to their hiding-place in some secret valley, and there
they are, sending little messengers out across the river and the plain to some village which is suspected of concealing the enemy"
N OF EM BER , i 9 i 8
29
that progress will bo slow, very uneasy, and very noisy. But the
old hands go very softly and quickly onward. They avoid ob- stacles at whose existence they can scarcely guess ; they choose the surest way by instinct and never do they commit that major crime of showing themselves on the skyline.
Outpost work in Macedonia is fascinating because the country varies so incessantly and so greatly. There is a different problem to solve every time. You have to choose the line which, in your opinion, can be held, and then you have to make your arrange- ments for holding it, and that in a country of innumerable hills and valleys. There come crowding to the mind all sorts of pic- tures. The golf enthusiast- goes about the country planning imaginary links across each fresh landscape ; the soldier, if he is just an ordinary infantryman, is more likely to be arranging outpost schemes. And when it is night, and the tangle of hills is suggested rather than seen, and roving bands of the enemy may be anywhere in the darkness, the game becomes really worth
JL--
playing. Sitting now in quiet security and look- ing back, one sees how- good a game it was.
One night there was a sharp little rock-strewn hill to climb, and the ridge of it had to be crossed somehow. Luck- ily the ridge itself was covered with great boul- ders and we threaded and crawled through them till we were safely established on the far slope. Then, just as we were about to make our
&
V
"One cannot feel much sympathy for the average Macedonian village. It does not look as if any- body loved it. . . . It is not possible to forget that it was once the habitation of men, and that children played around those ugly little houses. ... It all seems rather a pity. . . . But presently interest gets the better of emotion and one watches with an increasing pride the careful, accurate work of the men at the guns"
"Those shells bursting around do not
stand so much for the menace of
pain and death as for tokens of the
enemy's failure to be as clever
as our men"
"Bit by bit the village jumps into the air amid a cloud of dust, and vanishes. How such accuracy is achieved one cannot tell, but there it is and
it is a fascinating thing to watch. Observed under these conditions war becomes almost impersonal. Instead of being a thing of passion and emotion,
it is a cold-blooded game of skill in which all the players, down to one's very self, are just pawns"
30
TRA VBL
dispositions a messenger came back from the scouts who were pushing on ahead. A party of the enemy was crossing our front. There was a quick, whispered word, and our men sank out of sight among the rocks, and no sound gave warning of our pres- ence. But very soon there were sounds which told of the coming of the others, and they came and passed, not twenty yards away. Their strength was about equal to our own, and, taking them by surprise, we should have had all the advantage, but it was not our business to advertise our presence, and so long as they did not turn towards our camp in the rear they must go unharmed and in ignorance. In ignorance they went, turning back to their own place, and presently the sound of their passing died away, and we could get on with our own work.
Encounters Of that kind have been frequent on the Struma front, and most men who have been down there for any length of time could tell of something of the sort happening to them when they have been out on patrol duty. Sometimes, of course, it is necessary or advisable to fight. Rather I should say it is permissible. There is no waiting for necessity, and the patrol commander who, acting on strict orders, forbids an encounter is rather more unhappy than the men under him. Those are the occasions when the bayonet does some of its deadliest work. Shooting is usually to be avoided, since it gives away so much in- formation and wakes up the artillery, so there is the fierce, quiet struggle in the dark, till the survivors of one side or the other realize that there is nothing for it but to slip away among the shadows.
In these affairs, as in all the operations of war, the tricks of chance are unaccountable. One man I knew had a piece of bad luck quite equal to that of the man who got a bullet through his body while he was sitting at tea. This other had been out with a patrol. They had had a highly successful trip and were return- ing unharmed and jubilant. They were close to our lines when some distant Bulgar loosed off another of those random shots
at the sky. In its downward flight the bullet took out my friend's right eye almost as neatly as a surgeon could have done it. He felt, so he says, very little pain either at the time or at any time afterwards, but his disgust was tragic. Later on I found him, still fuming, in a hospital in Salonica, roaming round the wards in pajamas and a dressing gown, because he had nothing else to wear. His kit had vanished. When he was hit he had been wearing only a shirt and shorts, and he had been waiting for some clothes for a fortnight, waiting for them to come so that he might sail for home. He seemed to consider that luck had deserted him completely.
But on the whole the Struma valley would be quite a happy place if it were not for the mosquitoes. The trouble about Mace- donia is that you have so many things to fight. There is the landscape to be conquered,, and the water to be kept in order, and malaria to be opposed, and all these things must be done -before you can pay any serious attention to the Hun and his com- panions. So on the Struma the real weapons are mosquito nets and quinine, and the real enemy is that deplorable insect which sits on the side of the bivouac hanging its head so sheepishly in the morning when it has spent all the night in taking blood out of one's body and putting poison in.
In spite of mosquitoes, however, we always looked forward to those Sundays. It is true that the work we were doing was im- portant, but it was very dull, and it was not a bit like war.
Playtime is really a serious problem in Macedonia. While we remained at Lahana and could have those Sunday excursions we were quite happy, but there were only three such Sundays, and then we returned to the old, familiar condition of having plenty of time to spare and absolutely nothing to do with it. I should think there never was a country so empty of the means of enter- tainment. Since our transport usually consisted of pack mules, we could carry nothing with us that was not absolutely essential. (Continued on page 44)
"It is quite easy to get to the war. . . . All that you have to do is to stop the first motor that comes along — so long as it is not a Red Cross car —
and go as far as it will take you. . . . Those lorries have to go fairly close to the trouble. . . . The Bulgar was in the habit of dropping an
occasional shell on the road. His attentions did not make the road much worse than it was before, but they served
to put a spice of adventure into our journeying"
NOVEMBER, i 9 i 8
3i
QUEER FOODS FROM THE ORIENT
By Judson D. Stuart
Fried Centipedes, Stewed Bamboo, Goat Sausage, Seaweed, Goose Gizzards, Dried Oysters and Lily Bulbs Are Among the Edibles of Asia, Upon Which Her Soldier and Civilian Life Thrive
IN justice to the Orient it should he said that most of the Asiatic foods which seem so extraordinary to us contain a little more nourishment, more carbohydrates, proteins and fats than the aver- age of our own foods. But in the matter of "looks" these foods form a sad group. With some rare exceptions, there is nothing pleasing to the eye in Asiatic foods either as they are preserved or prepared over there or as they reach this country. But for economy, for strength-building, for the ease with which meals may be prepared from them few of these eastern foods are ex- celled.
For centuries there has been little change in many of the Asiatic foods. In fact, many are preserved today exactly as they were long before the time of Christ. The peculiar, ill-smelling lumps of damp soil from China, each of which contains a duck egg, look exactly as they did in the time of Confucius, 500 B. C, when he delivered the sentence so like the Golden Rule which was spoken five centuries later — "If you would be respected and well treated, respect others and treat them well."
It has been claimed that the simple process of wrapping a fresh duck egg in the damp soil of the barnyard and put- ting it away in a cool place will keep it for two hundred years. Such eggs fifty years old have been found palatable. The eggshells turn nearly black, the whites change into a coffee-colored, thick, hard jelly ; and the yolks become gray paste almost the consist- ency of modeling clay. They are a trifle pungent but may be eaten raw, put in soup and prepared in other ways, al- though they are not good when boiled.
Contrary to popular belief, dog flesh is not a staple arti- cle of diet in China ; but there is one Chinese food that will doubtless cause every occiden- tal to shudder when he learns exactly what it is. This is tinned in China, with English labels for the trade, under the name of "Fried Rice Fish in Lard." It has the appearance of the tiny smelt of New Eng- land mountain streams but a close inspection will show rows of legs down each side of the body. It is, in fact, a harmless sort of centipede, or as we call them, "thousand- legs," which infest the rice fields of China. As they are caught, they are washed, dropped in hot lard, and put up in tins. Ordinary earth worms are also tinned in China for oriental trade but are not marketed abroad.
Far more pleasant to con- template and especially to eat, are the famous Chinese white strawberries. These are not white at all but big, luscious red strawberries like our home-grown kind, strung on bamboo threads
The bread seller of Bombay has a greater regard for quantity than quality in her wares. The great factories of the densely packed native quarters belch forth volumes of black smoke which settles upon the loaves in most unhygienic fashion. Note the bracelets of the baker. Indian women trust not in banks but wear their wealth as bracelets and anklets
and put up in tins. The preserving fluid, said to be a secret, turns them snow white. They have a delicate flavor resembling that of rose leaves.
We of the Occident are acquainted only with the soft, tooth- some dates so carefully packed, but from many parts of Asia comes another sort. These are commonly called "petrified dates" because they are so hard. They contain no syrup, are not sticky, and when dried they will keep indefinitely. They are to be found from the region of Bagdad overland to south of Hankau. Natives carry them loose in their pockets or "purses" where they rattle about like pebbles. Asiatic travelers always provide themselves with a supply when starting on a journey as they are very nutri- tious— their function is much that of the "chocolate bar" of the American traveler.
In the region of Bagdad is prepared the famous goat-meat sausage, locally famed as a good food. It is prepared without salt, a pure dark wine being used as preservative, and hence
possesses a slight vinous flavor and a rather marked vinous odor. While the Koran for- bids the use of wine as a bev- erage it is not forbidden as a preservative, hence all good Mohammedans may eat goat- meat sausages.
A favorite dish throughout Asia is stewed bamboo roots. These roots are pulled before the bamboo has grown many feet, for they become tough as the shoots grow taller. They dry out much like damp raw- hide and keep indefinitely. They correspond somewhat to the continental truffle, and must always be served in the liquor in which they are stewed as this contains the flavor and much nutriment.
A pouch full of sun-dried geese gizzards will help the desert traveler when other' foods become scarce. Boiled with the addition of a little salt they are delicious and sus- taining, being exceedingly rich in proteins. They are found at the market places through- out the desert sections of Asia. Our New England fore- bears used to go to the wood- en bucket and scoop out suf- ficient buckwheat flour for the breakfast "flapjacks," but in Asia the cook takes down a bundle of little yellow sticks so soft they easily crumble, rubs them into flour between her palms and — presto ! — there is as good buckwheat flour as can be desired. These sticks, known as buckwheat mac- aroni, may be made into cakes or added to soups.
The miniature cocoanut grows in Persia and many other sections of the east. It is about the size of a filbert or small walnut, but in every other respect it duplicates the cocoanut, having the fibrous covering, the
TRA VBL
© Stereo-Travel Cc. Cutting bamboo for baskets in Ceylon. The roots of young plants make favorite oriental stews
The apparent fun- gus growth at top of left column is nothing more dan- gerous than Turk- ish oven-flopped bread
This nutritious deli- cacy is not fried rice fish in lard, as labeled, but Chi- nese centipede worms
The Turkish offi- cers' insatiable thirst for coffee is provided for in a clever collapsible convertible coffee pot
The oriental sweet tooth is titillated by sorghum sugar, and pink cherry and strawberry wafers
Beautiful plump
"white" Chinese
strawberries are
strung on bamboo
Seaweed possesses nourishing proper- ties which all coast countries save ours have long recog- nized
"Ram's head nuts" are not nuts — just another Chinese de- ception at which the lily bulb doubt- less blushes. Be- neath them are sor- ghum sugar bars
Arabian rice cakes rival the snow in whiteness and Jack Frost in decoration. Below are goose gizzards dried in the sun
The Chinese are adept at preserving eggs in soil. These are duck eggs, the pale one preserved in lime
Water-lily flour is in the package, and petrified dates be- side it. The dates are largely used by Asiatic travelers
This large basket- like affair is the cocoa nut shell which houses the midget Persian co- coanut shown in- side and above
$»"<?
© Stereo-Travel Co. Cocoanuts for oil are ground in Ceylon by this laborious ancient method. A pile of small nuts is seen in the background
NOVEMBER. 1918
33
hard shell, wait over night for the dough to "rise" and several hours more
the three for it to bake as we do in the Occident. If you will be patient
"eyes" and for thirty seconds while the cook throws together a little flour
the sweet and water and "oil," which is a form of melted butter, she will
white meat pat out the substance, slap it on a hot cylinder, and in half a
of the big minute it will fall off the cylinder ready to eat. Or you may put
cocoanut. To it away in a dry place and eat it next year when you return — it
complete the will be quite as good. It is called "oven-flopped" bread. The
resemblance, fire is in the metal cylinder and the thin plate of dough is cooked
there is a just right when the heat makes it fall off the "oven." It has a
half thimble- delicious "grainy" taste and is so good a food that one could live
ful of cocoa- on it without any other solids.
nut milk in Pure white rice cakes, quite hard and ornamented with birds,
it. It grows flowers, windmills and other designs, are common through Asia,
in a great especially a sort known as snow-white-rice biscuits which are
outer shell made in Arabia. The windmill, by the way, which is one standard
or husk rice biscuit design, was invented in Arabia. The oriental can do
about the wonders with rice and makes almost everything out of it from
size of a real knoak (brandy) to loaves of bread or rain-proof coats. The rice
cocoanut cakes are made from the size of buttons to the size of the top of
husk. When a piano stool. Many are tinted, flavored, coated with sugar and
ripe it forces prepared in other forms.
itself out All orientals are fond of sweets. They know little of the
one end of peculiar forms of sweets we have — chocolates, bon-bons and the
the husk, like — but with various vegetables, with wild honey and flowers
leaving and other simple ingredients they prepare pastes, hard confections
a hole as and many cloying sweets. The brown bar sugar made from
round and sorghum, a form of sugar cane, is common among the poorer
smooth a s classes. It is much sweeter than our granulated sugar and costs
In the Bazaar at Shiraz, Persia, we find d r i e d-f ruit stalls where are displayed the fa- mous Shiraz grapes and raisins, dates, figs, persimmons, and nuts
The small farmer in Japan, earning about ten sen (five cents) a day, must work early and late to make twenty dollars a year. What wonder that he looks longingly at the profits of the manufacturer
though it had been cut with saw or knife. This shell is used in various ways, often as a drinking cup or other receptacle, and the cap is used as a brush.
Dried persimmons having the appearance of mushrooms are also much eaten. The pits are removed and the ripe plums deftly turned inside out to the sun. In this way they are soon dried. Our modern evaporation of fruits is quite the same as this form of evaporation and drying that was in use in Asia in the days when Omar, as Kipling says, "smote 'is bloomin' lyre." Dried persimmons are not as sweet as figs or dates, and have about the same food value as our prunes.
Tea is put up in bulk for the American trade, but in the Asiatic tea-growing countries no one would think of buying a pound of loose tea. It comes in an endless form of bricks or in bunches of whole leaves, its value being anywhere from ten cents a pound for the "waste" to four dollars a pound for bricks of the choicest leaves. It may be secured in thin wafers, round balls, long sticks, square bricks and in a sort of horseshoe form.
Kaktos, or cactus candy, is a delicious confection. It is made from the pulp of certain cactus plants, is of about the same tex- ture as candied ginger root, is very sweet and of a peculiar violet flavor. Cactus candy is quite unlike any other confection and is a favorite in every Asiatic harem. A similar dainty made in America can now be bought in our own southwest.
Slabs of preserved strawberries, prepared in China, are hard, slightly sticky and very dark red. When thoroughly soaked in water these slabs make a most delicious preserve, returning to the strawberry color and having a surprisingly fresh strawberry flavor.
In Turkey if you wish a loaf of bread there is no need to
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker — all who have anything
to market in Bombay — find free shop space in the Erskine Road
where gypsies camp, where barbers ply their trade, and the
four-footed as well as two-footed rest their weary bones
34
TRA VBL
Pomegranates and grapes are found in profusion in Persian shops. The blood-red husks of the former are
gathered from the streets by Persian youngsters and sold to dyers for use in making
the famous reds in Persian ruas
such a trifle that few have to go without it. A more expensive sweet is "strawberry sugar," a wafer about as thick as cardboard, approaching strawberry in color and possessing the delicate flavor of the berry.
Nearly every coast nation except the United States uses sea- weed as a food. We are beginning to use it a little. In Asia didce is used in soups and the flavor is delightful. The American housewife should take pattern after her oriental sister, and secure a little fresh dulce to add to her soup stock. In Japan the didce is pounded or macerated into a sort of oval mat or "doily," about a foot long. Five hundred are stacked in a bundle and are readily sold in the markets.
Many visitors to the "Chinatowns" in America and many travelers in China have bought the peculiar "ram's-head" nuts and probably most people here believe they are nuts. They are really water lily bulbs. Within the hard shell is a big kernel of white bulb meat. This kernel is removed by the Chinese, dried, ground into a flour and put up in bags. By adding hot water and allowing it to cool, this lily bulb flour makes a delicious jelly. The Chinese flavor and tint it much as we tint our jellies ; and it can be made quite as quickly as any of the pat- ented jellies on our market. Chinese cooks were making such jelly in a jiffy thousands of years before trade names were invented.
In India rice is made into a flat sort of macaroni and is issued to the soldiers. Both the native and the British soldiers are fond of their rice in this macaroni form. It takes much - less time to cook it than to cook the natural rice, although the covering is left on the rice when it is made into this form. In this way the most nutritious part of the rice is retained. Another form is the rice-cake, parboiled rice pressed into cakes something like our popcorn cakes. This is issued to Chinese soldiers. A
similar cake is made in Japan and used as an army ration there. Perhaps the oddest of all breads is that made in Northern Turkey from the pith 6f certain trees. It is admitted that it has not much nutritious value, but there is bulk to it and it tempo- rarily satisfies hunger. This bread is by no means of the "staff of life" variety, but it has saved lives by assuaging hunger until some more nourishing food could be procured. It is a sort of emergency food used largely by soldiers and caravan drivers. Queer Asiatic sausages are made, of caviar. The sausage skins are stuffed with the fish- eggs and then are thrust into boiling beeswax, which process renders them weather-proof. They will keep thus for years. This is a favorite food in Tur- key among the working men as it is easily carried about and provides more nourishment in less bulk than almost any other foodstuff.
Every Turkish officer carries a hand-made, hand-engraved, circular brass utensil that is rather puzzling until one sees it in operation. It is well known that the Turk, especially the Turkish gentleman, must have his thick black coffee several times a day. The Turkish army officer accomplishes this by means of the combination coffee pot, mill, can and cup. The illustration shows it taken apart. The coffee beans are kept in the lower section. To make a cup of coffee the beans are dumped out and three or four of them are put in the middle section. The steel crank at the. right is fitted over the squared rod projecting from the middle section which revolves, setting in motion the grinding apparatus inside. The ground coffee falls-into the bottom section and water is added. The pot is placed on the fire and the con- tents brought to a boil. The coffee pot serves as a cup. The process requires but a few minutes. The cup is rinsed out, the beans replaced, the utensil put together, the whole thing is slipped into the officer's tunic and he goes on, refreshed.
Russian soldiers are given a sort of sun-dried beef or pork; {Continued o.n page 46)
^NT-
"Cheat the other fellow before he cheats you" seems to be the law of Constantinople shops, and the green- grocer is no exception to the rule
NOVEMBER, 1918
35
Even on the borders of the Nile the ubiquitou
egg is subject to the well-known effects
of the international high cost of livina;
At the top, left
hand, is pictured
the sun-dried pork
strips of China
Cactus candy is a
truly delicious
confection
These are not balls of twine, nor hanks of worsted, but mundane macaroni made of rice and used in India
Nor is this a rub- ber sponge — but a cake of hard- pressed tea and these macaroni sticks are used in making Asiatic buckwheat cakes
Such sausages would amaze an American ''hot dog." They are stuffed with caviar and dipped in beeswax
Popped rice is
made into bricks in
the rice country,
Japan
Mongolian soldiers eat with relish their bamboo - strung necklaces of oysters dried in the sun
Bamboo roots are considered a great delicacy in many parts of the East
Cut-plug? No, merely cakes of tea pressed in horse- s h o e form. No loose tea is sold in China
Strawberries are dried in bars in China, and soaked in water when de- sired for use
The tea pickers of India are lavishly decorated
with necklaces, bracelets and rings,
representing their earnings
These goat-meat sausages from Bag- dad are preserved without salt
Not mushrooms but nutritious sun-dried persimmons from Persia, to the right of the sau- sages
The circular ' pic- ture at the bottom is a Persian loaf of bread made of rye and blood
36
TRA VBL
ipilliillliiiilllliiiiilliiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillililiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiNiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
AMERICAN
GOOD
FELLOWSHIP
To Be an American Is the Greatest Privilege Given Mankind. To Be a Great American Is a Privilege Ac- corded the Few. But Good Fellowship Is Free to All and a Truly American Gift. Let Us Spread it from State to State
liluiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiN uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiu iiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i i mi i iniiuiiiiinj
... :ii:iiiui:iiiiiiiiiiiiiiuniiin
Governor Harding of Iowa
^lll!llllllllll!llllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!lllllllllllli!imilllllM^
Governor Burnquist of Minnesota
Iowa the Individual
iiT APPRECIATE this opportunity to secure mention of our
J. Commonwealth on the 'Good Fellowship Page' of your valued publication, and naturally am gratified, in availing myself of the space you so generously place at my disposal, to say some- thing of our State as we who dwell here have learned to know and love it.
"Iowa is more than a bit of territory lying between two great rivers ; Iowa is the sum total of the lives of all the men, women and children who ever lived or do now live within its borders.
"The material wealth with which we have been blessed is but a convenience for a great and good people to use to make the State what it ought to be, a leader in the real, human progress among all the States of the Union.
"The real Iowa is our schools, our churches, our homes, our men, our women, our boys, our girls. Our cattle, our hogs, our grain are not Iowa ; although we are known as a great farm State , they are but evidence of the thrift, energy and resources of the State and the people. History does not record the fact that there was an eight hundred pound hog in Iowa in 1861 ; but it is in the minds of all that our men and women sprang to the defense of the country at the request of President Lincoln.
"States, like individuals, have character. That Iowa can be trusted and is looked to for leadership is due to the splendid men and women who have builded in the past. The humble have had part in this character building as well as the more fortunate. This thought is our inspiration.
"We invite our neighbors to sojourn within our borders, that they may know the real, lasting Iowa, her men, her women, her institutions.
"W. L. Harding, Governor."
Minnesota's Many Missions
f SA/flNNESOTA has much that should interest the tourist. IV J. Many people who have toured the States declare we have in St. Paul the finest State Capitol in the country. In Minneapolis are the greatest flour mills in the world. At Duluth, the head of the Great Lakes, is a port which for some years has handled a greater tonnage than any other port in the world.
"Our State was once known principally as a great wheat producing State. As the State has developed, we have added other grains, corn and clover, so that Minnesota is also one of the greatest stock-raising and dairying States. It may not be so well known, however, that sixty-five per cent, of all the iron ore mined in the United States comes from the iron ranges north and west of Duluth.
"For the traveler seeking rest and recreation, we have ten thousand lakes scattered over the State. We have all the varieties
of fish that delight the sportsman, from the wily little trout to the monster muscallonge. The State has been a leader in game conservation, and big game as well as ducks and other fowl are plentiful. We still have much of the aboriginal forest and near our northern boundary are some of the most interesting canoe trails that can be imagined.
"Just now we are all intensely interested in winning the war and in doing our best to furnish bread, butter, beef and steel for our fighters. The development of roads to connect our parks, lakes and forests and the improvement of our cities and villages, have, on account of the war, been suspended to some extent. But we had already developed, before the war began, an excellent system of highways, making it possible to reach practically every recreation place and every corner of the State by automobile.
"People in other States, we know, are working as earnestly as we are to help win the war. But the harder they work, the greater is the need of rest and recreation. Minnesota welcomes them.
"J. A. A. Burnquist, Governor."
Idaho's War Offerings
44TDAHO, the Gem of the Mountains, extends its fraternal
I
hand to the citizens of this land of ours, regardless of State lines.
"Its mines are producing lead, zinc and copper to aid the Government in the conduct of the war. It has magnificent fields of grain to feed our Army and Navy and Allies ; it has the suit- able timber for the construction of airplanes ; it raises the sugar to sweeten the path of life ; it raises the wool to clothe our Army, and everywhere there is the mark of activity to outdo itself for the one purpose— that of winning the war.
"Idaho feels more than proud of the splendid body of young men it has been able to furnish to fight the battles of democracy ; they have been furnished through the Idaho National Guard, and the volunteer and selective draft service, with the result that we have furnished more than our quota of splendid manhood to the fighting forces of the Nation.
"In Idaho the women enjoy equal political rights with the men, and they are doing their share with the men in every occupa- tion and are proud of the privilege of doing so. The great and only object the Idaho people now have is the winning of the war, in order to attain everlasting peace for humanity through American ideas and American principles.
"Idaho is an intensely American State, we have very little percentage of foreign population within our borders. Idaho has donned its war uniform and will wear it until the full purpose of this object has been accomplished.
"M. Alexander, Governor."
NOVEMBER, i 9 i 8
37
POST CARD
THIS SPACB H KOR COKRK>P0SDI >
PEN PICTURES © POSTCARDS FROM PLACESofINTEREST
H
J
ERE are fifty or so of the one thousand stone pillars which stand on the spot where once was the Brazen Temple of Anuradhapura, Cey- lon, built by D u s h t a G a m i n i Abhaya, the eastern King who was the hero of exploits no less miraculous than those of King Arthur. The cost of the temple was one and one-half millions.
Today the ruins of the Brazen Temple re- s e m b 1 e somewhat the mysterious columns to be found at Stonehenge, England, familiar to all travelers, and also the Alignments of Carnac in Brittany, those monolith reminders of the greatness of rulers dead for centuries. -- A. B.
mm$
HP HE scribe or professional letter writer is a well-patronized ■"■ public functionary in India. Only about 5 per cent of the native Indians can read and write. Squatting on the ground, the scribe uses his knees for a desk, and laboriously wields his reed pen, writing with equal solemnity a business letter or an epistle of love, on veritable papyrus. His ink-pot is a piece of absorbent rag or sponge saturated with a blackish liquid, and sand is his blotter. The aristocrats of India in many instances con- sider themselves above the vulgar necessity of education ; hence the scribe caters to both rich and poor. B. N.
T
HE picturesque parades of the Philippines would startle even Broadway, as accustomed as New York is now to fifings and trampings and banners. During an exposition and military meet at Zamboanga, twenty thousand Moros and wild people from the remote regions of the Moro Province took part in the fair, the ex- hibitions of horsemanship and the daily parades. The picturesque- ness of the fair is comparable only with the Indian durbar. The thing that astonished Panglima Diki-Diki of the District of Sulu, then the smallest ruler among Uncle Sam's uncivilized wards, was, as the natives called it, "the turning of night into day" by the electric lights. Panglima Diki-Diki boasted thirty-one inches in height and twenty-five pounds of weight. . J. J. P.
>"9r ABOVE Sea level
MARSEIL
T T'S a bit cold at an altitude of 5,279 feet in Natal, East Africa, and these Basuto women protect themselves from the elements by woven blankets that look exactly like the parlor carpet of civilization. The other day I saw a Basuto woman, dressed in a section of red carpet, dashing for a train with a "picannin" perched on her hip and a tin trunk balanced dizzily on her head. One is forced in this section of the country to make use of some- thing more impervious than wood to the attack of ants — hence the tin trunk. The insects force themselves into every avail- able crevice, and often a perfectly good-looking wooden support will be hollowed out by the voracious ants. Beads and cheap jewelry appeal to the ladies of this section for exterior decoration, and monkey nuts, beans- and rice for interior decoration. W. S.
38
DOWN THE ANDES, FROM CUENCA
By Harry A. Frank Author of "Vagabonding Down the Andes"
TRAVEL
TO ONA
THE hope of securing an ass to stagger out of Cuenca under my possessions had melted day by day during my week there. In what I had been assured was the best donkey-market in Ecuador, those animals proved both scarce and high in price. Toward the end of my stay the baggage I had sent from Huigra had arrived, both developing tank and tray broken, in spite of the vociferous promises of the fletero, though still serviceable with elaborate manipulation. It was chiefly picture-taking that forced me to turn pack-horse. If only Edison would take a day off to invent a baggage on legs that would trot, dog-fashion, after its owner — just a modest little baggage of, say, fifty pounds — it would revolu- tionize life. ...
The broad highway was dry and hard as a floor. Prepared in my heavy hoots for the usual Andean trail, I could have walked it in dancing- pumps. The great Cuenca shrunk to an ever-narrower, fertile valley, stretching southward along a little stream called the Tarqui. A score of Indians was plowing a single field with ox-drawn plows fashioned from forest trees. So scant is his individual initiative that the Andean husbandman works well only in company with, his fellows, and the experienced mayor- domo conducts his farming in a suc- cession of "bees" in which all the em- ployees join efforts, as in the days of the Inca.
The Andes grow higher and more mountainous to the south. Beyond the hacienda and the hamlet of Cumbe next morning, the valley closed in and forced the highway to scale, like an escaping prisoner his walls, the great Andean "Knot" of Portet. Bit by bit it shrunk to a narrow road, then to a rocky trail, like a man about to begin some mighty task, with no longer time to 'consider his personal appearance, reducing him- self to the bare essentials. Through clumps of blackberries and frost-bitten corn it climbed, then shook off even these, and split into faint, diverging paths across another of those lofty, wind- swept, solitary paramos of the Andes, broken here and there, only scantily covered with the dreary dead-brown ichu. bunch-grass of the highlands, and low, bushy achupallas. . . .
Suddenly the paramo ended as if it had been hacked off with
One sees the "little father" in the Andean towns as well as the little mother
a dull gigantic machete, and the way-worn, haggard trail stumbled blindly down into a labyrinthian chaos of bagged white rocks,, like an arctic sea in upheaval, an earthquake section as split and smashed and broken as if the world had come into collision at this point with another planet or a celestial lamp-post. When at. last I sighted Nabon, long after I had entered it a score of times- in imagination, it was still a mere speck on a broken edge of the earth's crust which I reached by dusk only by dint of a herculean struggle, and glad enough was I to unbuckle my burden.
It was a cornfield town of thatched mud huts, of universally Indian blood. The alcalde was not at home, but the priest's word was law, and I soon dropped my bundle from my grateful shoulders in the "best room" of an Indian dwelling. My unwilling host removed the bedclothes and piled them. on the uneven earth floor in an ad- joining room, for himself, wife and child, and left me the wooden-floored bedstead. The mud walls were em- bellished not merely with the gaudy colored chromos of various "Virgins," but with scores of the advertising pages of American magazines, chiefly pictorial, for the family could not even read its own tongue. I did not suc- ceed in discovering how these exotic- reminders of home had found their way to this unknown village of the Andes. The Indian and his wife kept me awake half the night with their al- ternating prayers and responses before a candle-lighted lithograph in the ad- joining room, each prayer beginning,-. "Blessed Santa Maria, give us this; Blessed Santa Maria, give us that." One would have thought that Maria ran a department store. . . .
It is only eighteen miles from: Nabon to Oha, but no mere words can give any suggestion of the labyrinthian. toil that lies between them. Down in the bottom of the mightiest chasm of this tortured section of the earth sits an isolated peak shaped like an angular hay-cock. From the lowest point of the day's tramp I could not see its summit ; when I looked back hours later upon the immense stretch of gashed and tumbled world be- hind me, the peak had sunk to a mere dot on the landscape. Yet in a way it was an ideal tramp. A sun-flooded day in the exhilar- ating mountain air passed in absolute silence without even the
The Pied Piper of Hamelin has been found in Ecuador. The Indians
charm their cattle into following them by piping weird and mournful
notes on the bamboo bocina
This jungle woman of Jaen is cooking on the typical Ecuadorian stove. Peremptorily declining to pose for a photograph she nevertheless in- terestedly watched the author "dust" the kodak
X 0 1' EMBER, i 9 i 8
39
sight of a fellow mortal, except very rarely a lone shepherd SO far away on a bare brown mountainside as to be merely a tiny detail of the scenery. There was one drawback, also ; for the spider- leg trails split and spread at random aeross the world above at everv opportunity, and for several hours at a time I was not at all certain 1 was going to Peru.
At length I rounded a lofty spur, and another great valley opened out before me. An hour later I prepared to present my note to the cura of Oha. His two housekeepers, attractive chola girls, received me with the customary coldness of their class toward strangers, and the information that the padre "had gone to the mountain." "Ya no mis de venir — he should be back at any moment" — murmured one of them, which might mean, of course, that he would be hack in an hour or a week. There was no one else in this shelf-like hillside of mud huts around a dead plaza surrounded by cornfields who would be likely to house me, and I could only wait in hungry patience. Night was falling like a quick curtain at the end of a dismal act, when one of the stupid damsels admitted "'probably he will not be back to-night," but that they would serve "a little something to eat," if I could wait a while. I was already accustomed to that occupation. On a work-table of the earth-floored and walled corredor, among the parrots that kept calling the cholas by name. a chained monkey of homicidal ten- dencies, and other cural odds and ends, a meal of several courses was at length set before me as rapidly as the single tin plate could be washed and refilled. Oha does not eat bread, but so large a helping of mote was served that I succeeded in filling a coat pocket with it, knowing that no other pro- visions would be forthcoming for the morrow's uninhabited trail. As a food, this mess of boiled kernels of ripe corn, chief sustenance of the An- dean Indian on his travels, is like those medicines that are worse than the ail- ment they are designed to cure. Then there was a plate of black beans, a corn tamale, and a tasteless preserved fruit, all stone-cold, but red-hot with the aji, or green peppers, with which all food in the Andes is enlivened.
Hours later a group of horsemen rode up out of the night and halted be- fore the casa cural. I rose from a cramped doze from a corridor bench to find the priest dismounting. A brawny man of massive frame, more than six feet tall, with well-cut fea- tures and a powerful Roman nose, dressed in a black robe reaching to his spurs, and a huge "panama" hat of ex- ceedingly fine weave — a present, no
doubt, from some fond mother of his flock among the surrounding hills — he towered far above his companions. A cigarette smoul-
Th1s smiling individual is the undertaker — or
rather, his delivery wagon. Ecuadorian mountain
taste in coffins seems to run to sky blue
with gilt trimmings
Almost everything that is to be moved in Quito, and in fact every- where in the Andes, rides on the backs of Indians, who stagger up the mountains under heavy loads
Here is another instance of unwillingness to pose for a photograph.
The family, however, was willing to watch the author take a picture
of a dog down the street
d e r e d between his lips, a week's growth of black beard half-covered his face that bore testimony to long and deep experience in worldly mat- ters, and his voice boomed like Quito's largest church-bell. Yet his manner was that syrupy courtesy, accompanied by a whining speech, peculiar to the region. He fawned upon all who ap- proached him, addressing them with maudlin words of endearment, — "Ah, compadrecito!" "Oh, my dearest of friends!" "Oh, Josecito cholito, hi- jito m'w!" — with a long-drawn, rising and falling inflection that made his speech seem even more false and in- sincere than it was in reality. Me he greeted in the same tone, like a long- lost "amiguito" and assured me the casa cural was henceforth my personal property, expressing his deepest re- gret that he had just sent to Cuenca, where he was about to be transferred, his two phonographs and "dies mil pesos" ($5,000 worth) of other toys. It was a typical cural residence of the Andes. The rough adobe walls of his cluttered study, with mud benches in the form of divans around them, were almost completely covered with large lithographs advertising various brands of whiskey and cigarettes, more than half of them showing nude female fig- ures. Under his table was spread out to dry a six-foot square patch of to- bacco, and at frequent intervals the padre reached under it for the "makings" of a cigarette, without taking his eyes off his visitor nor ceasing his flow of cadenced endearments.
Two men, chiefly of Indian blood, soon joined us, one of the jefe politico, and the other what might be called in English chair- man of the town council. The former carried a guitar, the latter a quart bottle of aguardiente, and both a stimulated gaiety even greater than that of the priest. During an affectionate three hours the trio toasted each other alternately in large glasses of this double-voltage concoction, after suffering two or three rounds of which I was forced to allege a sore throat. The moving spirit of the feast was the priest, whose powerful frame carried his liquor well, and the evening raged on amid a riot of chatter and the savage thrumming of the guitar, little more than the flushed faces visible in the dense-clouded atmosphere of cigarette smoke within the tightly closed room. The cura spoke French readily, having been in earlier vears an inmate of the French monastery of Riobamba, and affected it with me all the evening. The jefe politico was childishly eager to hear us speak that strange tongue ; the town councilor roared with anger as often as either of us uttered a sound of it, charging us with abusing him under cover of "that cursed Castilian of the gringos." The cura maliciously {Continued on page 44)
40
TRA V EL
TSU!IBEl8!E5DS3!MEBBBBBKnBB*ns^nmti&iBnimMi&B9Mi
President, henry collins walsh Sec'y and Treas., b. t. babbitt hyde Corresponding Sec'y. e. c. turner
Club of America
fREAR-ADM. ROBERT E. PEARY, U. S. N. BRIG. -GEN. DAVID L. BRAINARD, U. S. A.
Vice-Presidents, J Anthony fiala
J FREDERICK MONSEN, F. R. G. S.
HENRY BREVOORT KANE (.ROBERT M. MC BRIDE
CHARLES H. DAVIS, PRESIDENT
NATIONAL HIGHWAYS ASSOCIATION
LOUIS W. HILL, PRESIDENT GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY
GEN. COLEMAN DU PONT
ADVISORY BOARD
ARTHUR H. BLANCHARD, PROFESSOR
HIGHWAY ENGINEER'G COLUMBIA UNIV. REAR-ADM. COLBY M. CHESTER, U. S. N. REAR-ADM. C. H. DAVIS, U. S. N. REAR-ADM. CASPAR F. GOODRICH, U. S. N.
MADISON C. PETERS REAR-ADM. JOHN LOWE, U. S. N. REAR-ADM. LOUIS KEMPFF, U. S. N. FREDERICK SIMPICH, U. S. CONSUL,
MEXICO CAPT. ROBERT E. BARTLETT
MAURICE F. EGAN, U. S. MINISTER,
DENMARK DILLON WALLACE EDWARD HUNGERFORD HUDSON MAXIM JAMES K. HACKETT
Dig Deep
TT goes without saying that Travel Club members did their duty by the Fourth Liberty Loan. Now — let us reach deep into our pockets with the desire to help others instead of investing money only for ourselves. Let us give, give, give to support the seven splendid organizations that are keeping up the morale of our army at home and abroad. Every cent given to the United War Work Campaign is an in- vestment to protect the civilized world from the attacks of the Hun — to protect our country, our future, and our women and children. So, all together, now, let's Give, Give, GIVE !
O
Musical Instruments Wanted for Army and Navy
,RLANDO ROULAND, of 130 West Fifty-seventh Street, New York, is collecting musical instruments for the use of our soldiers and sailors. Members of the Club are requested to send musical in- struments of all kinds, stringed and brass, in any state of repair, as there is a great shortage. Ditson & Co., of 8 East Thirty- fourth Street, New York, repair without charge all instruments received for this purpose. Instruments in perfect condi- tion should be sent to Mr. Rouland; and those out of order to Ditson & Co., with note stating for what purpose they are be- ing sent.
An Invitation to Non-members
If you are not a member of the Club, but are interested in its objects and privi- leges and would like further information relative to membership mail this coupon to the Secretary.
Secretary, Travel Club of America,
Union Square North, New York.
Please send me information about the Travel Club of America and membership application blank.
Bulletin Notes
\Jf EMBERS will please cross the fol- *~ lowing hotels from list allowing dis- counts :
Hotel Discounts Discontinued
Atlanta, Ga., Ansley; East Gloucester, Mass., Hawthorne Inn;- Excelsior Springs, Mo., Snapp; Atlantic' City, N. J., Alamac ; Point Pleasant, N. J., Pine Bluff Inn; Haines Falls, N. Y., Sunset Park Inn; Lake Placid, N. Y., Lake Placid Inn; New York City, N. Y., Al- bemarle, Holland House, Imperial.
Additional Discount Hotel
Hailey, Idaho, Clarendon, Hot Springs, 10%.
Shop Discounts
w;
Name
Address
HEN identified by membership card Travel Club members may secure dis- counts from the following firms, in addi- tion to those heretofore published :
New York City
American Auto School, 726 Lexington Ave., 10%.
The Economical Tire & Supply Co., 1932 Broadway, Hardware and Auto Supplies, 10%.
The Reischmann Co., 14-18 East Thirty- second St., Bedroom and Dining-room Fur- niture, 33V3%.
Richards Auto Supply Co., 1785 Broadway, Automobile Tires and Accessories, 10%
The Thonet-Wanner Co., Inc., 43-51 West Thirty-sixth St., Furniture, 10%.
Henry Schultheis Co., 142 Fulton St., Pic- tures and Frames, 10%.
Wilke's Pipe Shop, 287 Broadway, Pipes and Smokers' Articles, 10%.
Yorkville Auto Supply Depot, Inc., 1235-7 Lexington Ave., Automobile Tires and Acces- sories, except Goodyear Products, 10%.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Bacharach's Quality Shops, Inc., 1114 Chest- nut St., Men's Clothing, Furnishings and Ladies' Wear, 10%; 920 Chestnut St., Clothing and Furnishings, 10%; 6 S. Fifty-second St., Men's Clothing, Furnishings and Hats, 10%; 37 S. Thirteenth St., Men's Furnishings, 10%.
Beckers', 1338-40 South Penn Sq. (Widener Bldg.), 926 Chestnut St., Clothing, Hats, Shoes and Furnishings, 10%.
John Davis Co., 1120 Chestnut St., Furs and Millinery, 10%.
Davis & Nahikian, Thirteenth St., below Wal- nut, Rugs and Carpets, (Oriental and Domes- tic), 10%.
Fellman & Co., 1010 Chestnut St., Oculists and Opticians, Art Materials, Kodaks and Ac- cessories, 10%.
J. J. Habermehl's Sons, Bellevue-Stratford, Ritz-Carlton, Diamond and Twenty-second Sts., Florists, 10%.
Hawthorne's, 1626 Chestnut St., Women's Wear, 10%.
E. J. Hertz, Thirteenth St., below Chestnut, Diamonds, Watches and Jewelry, 10%.
The Juliet Shop, 1118 Chestnut St., Millinery and Ostrich Feathers, 10%. *
M. J. Lewis, 1206 Chestnut St., Children's Wear, Yarns and Novelties, 10%.
Godfrey S. Mahn, Cor. Thirteenth St. and Chestnut, Cigar Importer, Cigars, (all our stores), 10%.
John C. Fagan (The Luggage Shop), 1502 Walnut St., Sole Agency "Indestructo Baggage," 10%.
"Millards'," 127 South Thirteenth St., Ladies' Wear, 10%.
Adolph Newman & Son (Art Store), 1704 Chestnut St., Etchings, Engravings, Photo Frames, Mirrors, Graveurs, 10%.
Philadelphia Electric Co. Supply Dept., 132 S. Eleventh St., Electrical Supplies (except Edi- son Brand Lamps), 10%.
H. Terzian & Co., S. W. cor. Fifteenth and Walnut Sts., Oriental Rug Importers, 10%.
F. Weber & Co., 1125 Chestnut St., Artists' and Drawing Materials, (Except Surveying In- struments), 10%.
H. A. Weymann & Son, Inc., 1108 Chestnut St., Pianos and "Everything Musical," 10%.
Cleveland, O.
Cleveland Double Tread Tire Co., 5210 Euclid Ave., Complete Line of Tires and Tubes, 10%.
Cleveland-Gordon Sales Co., 1764 E. Twelfth St., Tires, Accessories and Repairs, 10%.
Goodyear Raincoat Co., 913 Euclid Ave., Waterproof Clothing for Men and Women, 10%.
Lewis Clothes Shop, 215 Prospect Ave., Suits and Overcoats, 10%.
S. Marcus, 35 Colonial Arcade, Skirt and Blouse Shoppe, 10%.
The Prospect Men's Shoppe Co., 22 Prospect Ave., Furnishings, Hats and Shoes, 10%.
The Roma, 1048-52 Prospect Ave., E., Italian Restaurant, 10%.
Rotbart Bros., Ninth and Prospect Sts., Jewelers, 10%.
Schweisthal & Cikra, 1272 Euclid Ave., Fur- riers, 10%.
Solomonson Optical Co., 731 Euclid Ave., Optical, Mathematical Instruments and Photo- graphic Supplies (except Eastman Kodaks and Films), 10%.
The A. F. Waite Auto Livery Co., 1457 East Sixth St., Auto Service, 10%.
Elsewhere
Easton Avenue Garage, 41 Easton Ave., New Brunswick, N. J., 10%.
Inglis Stationery Co., 206-08 Main St., Pater- son, N. J., 10%.
Lankering Cigar Co., 149 Market St., Pater- son, N. J., Cigars, Pipes and Smokers' Articles (except Imported Cigars), 10%.
M. J. Lewis, cor. Boardwalk and Virginia Ave., Atlantic City, N. J., Children's Wear, Yarns and Novelties, 10%.
Max Menein, 168 Market St., Paterson, N. J., Jeweler, 10%.
Michaelson (Agent for Stein-Bloch Smart Clothes), 158-60 Market St. (Katz Bldg.), Paterson, N. J., Clothing, Furnishings and Hats, etc., 10%.
"Millards'," 213 N. Charles St., Baltimore Md., Ladies' Wear, 10%.
N O V EM B BR . i q i 8
4i
Drafted from the Soudan
EVEN the patient camel is humping himself to win the war. The British Army in Palestine owes much of its success to the fine camel transport furnished with wise forethought of the army authorities who, immediately on Turkey's entrance into the war, drew on the resources of the Egyptian Soudan. Natives brought droves of the great creatures into the immense corrals established in Lower Egypt. From these corrals the best were taken for mounts for men of the Camel Corps, others for trans- port service. Our photograph shows a draught-camel team busy with the engineers of the field telegraph and telephone service. In desert and other ''soft" country it is necessary to use boxed-in wheels to facilitate travel.
duty with another lot of gas. An absorption plant has been constructed at Catletsburg, Ky., with a capacity of 80,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day. With about one and one-quarter pints of gasoline extracted from each thousand cubic feet of gas, the output of such a plant is 10,000 gal- lons of gasoline a day. Much of this "lean" gas, however, carries two pints to the thousand cubic feet.
If all the natural gas used last year had been treated it would have yielded at least 125,000,000 gallons of gasoline The removal of the gasoline from the natural gas does not appreciably re- duce the value of .he gas for domestic or factory use. On the other hand gasoline left in the gas destroys the rubber in the pipe couplings of the gas lines. The cost of replacing these rubbers, repairing broken connections and the resulting leaking of natural gas, has been a large item of ex- pense in the operating costs ot gas line companies. At least 100,000,000 gallons of gasoline a year, it is estimated, can be profitably recovered by absorption before gas is marketed, while as much as 150,000,000 gallons additional can be "absorbed" from the rich casinghead gas that is yet too lean to be recovered by the older compression method. The United States thus has a possible total, including that already produced, of fully 350,- 000,000 gallons of gasoline from our annual output of natural gas alone — a resource which until very recently had been wasted. The great possibilities in saving are readily apparent.
"Jfc*»
Gasoline to Burn !
Guv E. Mitchell
NATURAL gas from the bowels of the earth has been burned for light and fuel in the gas fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and other states for the greater part of two genera- tions, but until recently it was not suspected that great quantities of gasoline could be extracted from it. Last year over 84,000,000 gallons of raw gasoline (equivalent to about twice that quantity of commercial motor fuel) was literally squeezed out of about 37,000,000,000 cubic feet of what is known as casinghead gas. The average yield of gasoline was something over two and one-half gallons a thousand cubic feet of gas. This is a natural gas that formerly went largely to waste — a $20,000,000 conservation of a resource. Casinghead gas is a "rich" gas, containing a relatively large proportion of gasoline. Lean casinghead, more than half the available supply, is not now stripped of its gasoline, nor is a vast quantity of "dry" natural gas such as is used for heat and lighting in cities and for factory use. But at this crucial time a new process of treating this gas has been discovered — an absorption process which sucks the gasoline out of natural gas, where the
content is even as low as a pint to a thousand cubic feet. Certain oils absorb gasoline from natural gas. The process is simply to spray an appropriate oil downward through long pipes or towers, forcing the gas upward. When the gas emerges at the top of the pipe the gasoline has been absorbed by the descending oil. The gasoline is then distilled from the oil, the same oil doing
Photo by Philip S. Smith
Alaska's Unique Graves
Guy E. Mitchell
THE Alaskan Indian tribes have various methods of "bury- ing" their dead. In some of the tribes there is no fixed custom, the most handy way being employed in individual cases. What strikes the traveler as strange is that the dead man's last habitation is always above ground. The ground is seldom thawed out more than a few inches in depth, however, and to dig a regu- lation grave with crude native implements would be a stupendous task. About all that the natives attempt is to provide the bodies of their dead against the attacks of marauding animals by placing them in elevated places, but even this is not always possible in far northern Alaska, owing to the absence of sizable timbers. Graves are often' found flat on the ground, the body being covered with the skin of a deer or of some sea animal held down by stones.
The various personal belongings of the de- ceased are usually found at his side — his spear, bows and arrows, knives and clothing, and these are safe from human molestation. No Alaskan Indian will touch anything which has belonged to a dead brother.
One of the photographs shows a very com- mon character of grave — a body tied up in caribou skin and placed on elevated poles ; the other shows a less common form. In the lat- ter-fcfe*. elevated platform for the body is protected by poles set up in the form of a tepee ; but in this instance the body has fallen off the platform and some of the bones can be seen on the ground at the opening. These graves are on the upper reaches of the Notak,
42
TRAVEL
Think What She Can Do
With Puffed Rice, Puffed Wheat and Corn Puffs on hand, think of the possibilities.
Three kinds of bubble grains to serve, each with a dif- ferent flavor.
All can be served like other cereals, or served with melted butter.
All taste like airy nut meats. Salt or lightly butter, and they become food confections. They are ideal tidbits for hungry children after school.
Nothing else is half so welcome in a bowl of milk. The grains are thin, crisp, toasted, porous — puffed to eight times normal size.
Corn syrup fudge is made light and nutty by stirring in Puffed Rice or Corn Puffs.
Any fruit dish is made doubly delightful with these flimsy, flavory globules scattered in it.
They make an airy, nut-like garnish for ice cream. And they are ever-ready toasted wafers for a soup.
Puffed |
Puffed |
Corn |
|
Rice |
Wheat |
Puffs |
|
All |
Bubble Grains |
||
Each |
15c |
Except in Far |
West |
The Quaker Qats Company
Sole Makers
Polyglot Salonica
(Continued from page 15)
ren and covered with loose stones, their tops were crested with rough breastworks behind which were empty cartridge cases, torn clothing, ponchos, and scattered bodies in faded uniforms, for here the Bulgar and Serb had opposed each other. To the north of the vil- lage stood a few trees and here within a barbed-wire corral a few armed Serbs guarded several hundred Bulgar prisoners. The villagers were as unattractive as their surroundings, the men dull, dirt y-looking specimens, the women cleaner but far from comely. The latter were dressed in skirts and blouses of many colors. Their heads were cov- ered with shawls, the ends of which were wound about their necks. From beneath these straggled their hair, invariably woven into two plaits into which was interwoven hair from cow's tails dyed a bright orange. Upon their feet they wore wooden, heelless sandals which, when they walked, flapped about like shutters in a gale of wind. The little girls were miniature rep- licas of their mothers, save their faces were brighter — some al- most pretty. They wore their many petticoats like their moth- ers, at mid-leg length, tiny head buildings, pocked walls and
By evening of the third, day all the cars had come up and, with the kitchen wagons once more in our midst, we were again able to have a hot meal. Our spirits rose and that night, clus- tered round a small fire, we sang some mighty choruses. At nine on the morning of the twenty- fourth of November — a cold, drizzly morning — we wormed our way down through the vil- lage and out upon the transport road northeast toward the Ser- b i a n frontier. Though hun- dreds of German, Bulgar and Turkish prisoners were at work upon the road it was scarcely passable. Everywhere we passed mired couriers and camions, dead horses and abandoned wagons were scattered about.
As we advanced the road ac- complished something we had deemed impossible — it grew worse. The transport of five armies struggled along, or rather through it and contributed every- thing from huge tractors to little spool-wheeled cow-drawn Ser- bian carts. We passed through one squalid, war-festered village where the road reached the sub- limity of aw fulness and then about mid-day spoke the village of Sakulevo. Several demolished
shawls and striped wool stock- ings. The endless occupation, both of the women and children, was the carrying of water in clay jars. They must have been building a river somewhere and judging from the amount of water they were transporting, it was to be no small size stream either.
Not all of the cars had come through to Banetza and so we awaited their arrival. Several had broken axles and the big atelier car and the soup battery had mired in crossing the Os- trovo flats. Meanwhile, perched on the side of a hill with the snow above us and a falling tem- perature, we, of the advance squad, were reminded that win- ter was almost upon us. The days were gray and as there was nothing to do while await- ing the stragglers, save gaze across the valley which stretched southward below us, the time dragged.
The boom of heavy guns came to us from the northwest and occasionally, when the wind was right, we could hear the crackle of infantry fire. Some couriers riding back from the front brought word that Monastir had fallen after fierce fighting and the French were advancing northward.
shelled houses showed the place had been recently under fire. Passing through, we crossed a sluggish stream, from which the village takes its name, and on a shell-scarred flat on the north bank halted and pitched our tents.
The road at this point bends to the east before again turning northward, and enters the long valley at the farther end of which lies the city of Monastir. About a mile northward from our camp was a stone which marked the border between Ma- cedonia and Serbia. High ranges of mountain stretched along the side of the lonesome valley. No words of mine can describe the landscape as do the words of Service :
"The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate, The lordly mountains soar in
scorn As still as death, as stem as fate.
"The lonely sunsets flame and
die, The giant valleys gulp the night, The monster mountains scrape
the sky Where eager stars are diamond
bright."
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NOVEMBER. 1918
43
Up the Yangtze into Szechuan
{Continued from page 10)
Practically everything is cheap in Szechuan (fresh eggs were four cents a dozen), but the cheapest "commodity," due to the oversupply, is life. Thou- sands die of starvation every year; during famine years hun- dreds of thousands. But high as is the death rate the birth rate is higher. If on a hunting trip one unfortunately kills a na- tive there is no legal procedure to fear ; a few dollars' restitution to the family of the deceased set- tles the score and leaves the fam- ily in such a position of opu- lence that signs of grief are in- distinguishable.
The official executions in Szechuan total ten thousand a year according to conservative estimates. There are no records. During a period of seven months spent in Chungking, a city of about six or seven hundred thou- sand inhabitants, there were no less than two hundred execu- tions. On one occasion the local authorities reported to Chengtu, the capital, that in obedience to an order to capture and execute the brigands who had looted and burned a certain village, not for- getting to carry off all the young women, they had taken fourteen men and would shoot them im- mediately. The reply from the capital stated that fourteen exe- cutions were not sufficient to
atone for the heinous crime com- mitted and that at least twenty must be made to pay the su- preme penalty. Being unable to secure quickly six more brigands, soldiers were sent out to pick up six men from the streets of the city to complete the number. Whether any method of selec- tion was followed is not known,
executed." As the Chinese are notoriously poor rifle shots no chances are taken of missing the victim ; the gen- erally approved method of stand- ing the unfortunate "crim- inal" against a stone wall and giving him a volley at twenty paces is not in vogue in China. Twenty paces is a long distance.
PEKING •
but the version of the natives was that the unfortunate six were picked at random from the first coolies seen by the soldiers. Anyway, a telegram to Chengtu was sent : "Twenty brigands
The executioner, a lone soldier, places the muzzle of his rifle two feet from the breast of the con- demned man and fires the shot that may or may not sound his death knell, depending upon the
"marksmanship" of tin soldier. An officer is standing by with a pistol ready to finish the task i f it is bungled. After executions, which of course are witnessed by several hundred morbidly cu- rious natives, the bodies are placed in coffins apparently made according to modern ideas of standardization. They are all about five feet long and ten inches deep, large enough for one body out of fifty, perhaps. Were it not quite so pathetic, so grue- some, it would be ludicrous to see the bodies borne off to the nearby burying grounds in these misfit boxes, with two feet sticking out at the end or the head jammed in as though it didn't belong where it had to go. At times there are not as many coffins as victims — but what solution is more simple than placing two bodies in a space not large enough for one? In one city on the river the trouble and expense incident to interring these poor unfortu- nates proved too great; the bodies were thrown into a morgue — and left there indefi- nitely. If one gets near this place and wishes to go nearer the services of a guide may be dispensed with ! Is it any won- der that diseases of all kinds reap their bountiful harvest each year?
The Last American Frontier
{Continued from page 26)
From where we sat he pointed out another odd phenomenon. Age-old desert gales, gradually moving millions of tons of fine sand before their irresistible sweep, have piled it up in giant waves against the southeast slope of the Superstition Mountains ; far up their burnt and broken slopes it has crawled, filling every valley, drifting higher and higher up, till their peaks actually seem lower than they really are. So strong are these desert gales that motors spinning along the great pike that leads across the desert from El Centro to the west are at times steered with much diffi- culty, being actually blown from their course.
In the hot season, from five to six hundred motor parties leave the rich, populous but sizz- ling Imperial Valley, where in ten years sixty thousand people have settled and built up homes and farms worth a hundred mil- lion, to pass the week-end at cool mountain resorts.
Even the village liars feel the
heat, and its reaction has added much to the sum total of desert tales. One old-timer who has a chicken farm near the Salton Sea testifies as follows : Early one hot morning just after dawn he got up to feed his chickens. Paw- ing around in the yet obscure interior of his shack, he got what he supposed was his regular bag of chicken feed. Dumping its contents into the coyote-proof chicken-run, he went to cook his own breakfast, leaving the poul- try to partake at leisure.
He busied himself at other chores till late in the forenoon, then chanced to have a look at his hens. They were all dead — and badly mutilated. "It's all my fault," he mournfully admitted. "I gave 'em seed popcorn by mis- take, and when the sun got up it popped, and blowed my chickens to pieces."
Not even the delta of the Nile itself, or the valley of the fer- tile Amazon, surpasses this fa- mous Imperial Valley of Cali- fornia. The romantic conquest
of this below-the-sea valley, once an arid, empty wilderness, is graphically told in "The Winning of Barbara Worth." (Whether Mr. Wright is a real novelist or just an ad-writer, you've got to admit he did more than "fine writing" when he pictured the history of this great valley).
The digging of the great ditch, Harriman's fight against the riotous Colorado and the coming of the Salton Sea, is an epic theme of the virile, indom- itable west. It is a tale of big minds, big muscles and big mil- lions, and every settler out here knows it by heart.
To me its great feature is this, that a big river, the Colo- rado, running along on land higher than this valley for cen- turies, should suddenly break over and fill this depression, making the famous Salton Sea, and then — tamely submit to crawl back into its old course like a whipped lion into his cage, before the puny arm of man.
Men plowing near the Salton
Sea turned up odd fossils, relics of deep-sea creatures that squirmed and fretted in the mud about here when the world was young and the ocean pounded overhead. It is much like Galilee, this odd, inland water, except that no mullet are taken from Galilee and served at Levy's cafe in Los Angeles, and the El Cen- tro duck club has no license to shoot in Palestine.
The aviators tell me that from up in the air you can't see the Salton Sea, because of the haze or the blowing sand. Some time back two of our army fliers started from North Island to fol- low the line to Calexico. They meant to use this Salton Sea as a landmark. But they missed it, glimpsed the upper end of the Golfo de Cortes, and landed and nearly died on the empty Sonora desert. Eventually searching parties saved them ; but their broken machine, its nose thrust into a mesquite clump, still re- poses on the far and lonely waste, probably feared and
44
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BATTLEFIELDS
CAMPAIGNING IN THE BALKANS
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A Captive on a German Raider
By F. C. TRAYES
Dr. Trayes, who was formerly the principal of the Royal Nor- mal College at Bangkok, Siam, sailed with his wife on the steam- ship "Hitachi Maru," which was captured by the German raider "Wolf," and all the passengers and crew were made prisoners. For five months they shared the fortunes of their captors,' suffer- ing untold hardships and privations. The remarkable experiences of the author which have been equalled by few living people are here told in a simple and vivid narrative. $1.25 net.
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Rimes in Olive Drab
By SERGT. JOHN PIERRE ROCHE, U. S. A.
Doughboy verses by a dough- boy, celebrating the life in camp and field and love of the American fighting man. They'll appeal to every soldier or to anyone who ever knew a sol- dier. Second edition. Bound in olive drab cloth. $1.00 net.
Living the Creative Life
By JOSEPH H. APPEL
Most people will find a lot to interest and inspire them in this book. It is not merely a guide to material success but to the richer life which involves our spiritual welfare as well as our material well-being. The author tells how by following a definite plan of living he has secured an unusual amount of happiness and contentment. Just how he did it — and how you can do the same — this book explains. $1.50 net.
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dreaded by wandering, supersti- tious Papagoes.
Until the advent of Cantu, Mexico City paid out big sums each year, to rule and care for the Mexican end of California. Now, for the first time in his- tory, it pays its own way. Or, more candidly, the American set- tlers pay its way. For it is American pioneers who have built up the ranches, opened the mines, and developed the planta- tions. One cotton planter has sixteen thousand rich acres, level as a pool table. At feeding-time his herd of work mules look like the picket line of a cavalry regi- ment. Another American outfit holds land worth thirty millions.
The population of the whole peninsula does not exceed thirty thousand, or less than two per square mile ; half of these are crowded up in the north against the American border, close to Uncle Sam's markets. A fat slice of San Diego's trade, and even that of Los Angeles, comes from this peninsula. Last year the U. S. Customs House at Calexico showed clearings almost equal to the port of Los Angeles, and ten years ago it didn't pay the janitor's salary.
It's a booming, bonanza-land, this "American Egypt" with cot- ton kings and cow fortunes made over night. It's probably the last place on earth where a lucky man can still borrow ten thousand dol- lars on six skinny mules and a
TRA V EL
ramshackle wagon ; lease a big piece of rich land on credit, grow one crop and clean up maybe twenty thousand dollars ; and then, peradventure lose it all in the hungry maw of the "Owl."
But the handwriting is on the wall, even on the wall of the "Owl," and the gamblers have seen it. In the country around too many sane, safe, normal peo- ple are settling to build homes and raise their families ; Mexi- cans and Americans alike. The world needs cotton, and corn, and meat-bearing animals ; all that, these people can grow, and more. They pay higher taxes as farms multiply and values soar. Let the Government live on this rev- enue, they say, instead of on the income from licensed vice. They cry out against the shame of Mexicali ; they do not wish their children to see the "Owl," not even "just once."
So the "Owl," the "Dead Rat," and the gay "Casino" at Tia Juana, are all doomed — doomed to pass away, just as their prototypes at Yuma, Tucson and Tombstone passed away. Even the fat, flashy, shifty-eyed proprietors admit this, albeit re- luctantly, mournfully. "Times is changin', the crowds don't buck the games like they used to," wailed one dealer, sadly. "Every night a bunch o' sight-seers'll blow in from the other side. But they ain't spenders, they just rubber around like us folks was monks in a zoo."
Sundays at the War
(Continued from page 30)
The weight of our kit was con- stantly being checked, and if it exceeded the standard of the moment something had to be left behind, and our track was marked by abandoned articles of clothing and other personal tackle. Under those conditions the utmost that one could carry in the way of apparatus for recreation was a pack of cards, and, curiously, few of us had packs of cards to carry. Even if we had them, they were hardly
ever used. During the whole of the time I was in the country I only played bridge twice, till I went into hospital. It did not seem to occur to us to play games.
Lieutenant Lake's book, "Campaigning in the Balkans," gives not only a vivid picture of the country, but a lucid explana- tion of the Balkan situation. Just published by R. M. McBride & Co. at $1.50 net.
Down the Andes, from Cuenca to Ona
(Continued from page 39)
.:,!
m
added fuel to his wrath, unos- tentatiously keeping the bottle moving meanwhile, sending a boy to replenish it as often as it was emptied. The enraged councilor ended at last by staggering out into the night and across the plaza, shouting drunkenly that he was going for a gun or a machete. . . .
At the summit bevond the
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chaotic chasm into which the world falls away below Oha, the nature of the country changed. From an endless vista of barren and often soilless rocks, the en- tire landscape was transformed to a heavily wooded region of hardy undergrowth, somewhat like small, bushy oaks, at times almost approaching a forest, a shaggy world rolling away as far
NOVEMBER, 191S
45
as the eye could follow in every direction. Here and there was a larger bush completely covered with pink blossoms. Then the half-forested mountaintop took gradually to rocking, like a ship approaching a tempestuous sea, until all at once it spilled itself, like the cargo of an overturned freighter, into another enormous hole in the earth, hazy with the very depths of it. The trail pitched over the edge with the rest, like a bit of flotsam from a wreck, helplessly at the mercy of the waves. Thousands of little green farms, chiefly of corn,
with an Indian hut set in a cor- ner of each, hung at sharp angles about the enclosing walls of the valley. I had reached the famous Yale of Zaraguro, the Land of Corn — zara is Q u i c hu a for maize — to climb at last into the scattered grass-grown village it- self.
In "Vagabonding Down the Andes," Mr. Frank's six-hun- dred page pook of his travels, the reader continually follows a humorist as well as a globe trot- ter. (Published by The Centurv Co., $4.00 net.)
Bringing "Home" to the Doughboys
{Continued from page 17)
Library Association is seeing that he has the books he wants when he wants them. Then, too, when his mother or women friends come to camp the Y. M. C. A. hostess house provides an attractive place for them to visit. For his time on leave from home cantonments the War Camp Community Service has made ample provision for real and wel- coming hospitality. In the city or town nearest his camp there are motherly women, many of them with sons in service, at the Community Houses and clubs ; to insure his finding his way to them there are information booths bearing the red circle in- signia of the W. C. C. S. in rail- way stations and on street cor- ners. At the booths he is told just where there is a floating latch-string for men in uniform as well as other coveted bits of information. A record of the questions asked at the War Camp booths would include everything from the frequent one ''Where can one get a shoe shine?" to the unique query of two British officers in New York City who respectfully desired to know what a "banana split" is and if it has rum in it.
From training camp life on this side, then, where a man is surrounded by agencies which extend to him cheer and hospi- tality and the love of his home people who would do the min- istering personally were it possi- ble, he goes to a foreign environ- ment where he finds himself lo- cated finally in a little French village and drawing as his billet an ancient stable.
But here still the love of the home people follows him as somewhere nearby he sees the now familiar red triangle of the "Y," or the K. of C. waves a banner over a hut, and on be- yond are Jewish Welfare work- ers with packs of necessities,
and Salvation Army lassies bus- ily making the doughnuts that have made them famous. In any hut, no matter what insignia is written over the door, he finds books from the American Li- brary Association, writing paper, baseball equipment, chocolate, cigarettes, motion pictures, lec- tures and theatrical entertain- ments. Nor can he get far enough into the front lines to miss some phases of this all-per- vading service, as secretaries from the various agencies carry steaming drinks, chocolate and cigarettes down into the trenches at some time during every day.
If he is wounded the extend- ed hand is still there. When he reaches a base hospital he finds resourceful women from the American Library Associa- tion who trundle a tea wagon loaded with books into the wards every morning. From experi- ence she has learned that the men chiefly want books that will help them in the big job of win- ning the war, but if the books requested by the man we are fol- lowing are neither on the wagon nor on the supply shelves a wire is immediately sent to Paris. Sometimes the librarian tells him of the work women are doing and of the Y. W. C. A., the great "mothering" organization which has established hotels to house American and British women war-workers in France.
Gradually he comes to think of the ministrations of all these agencies as evidences of the love and care of his family, who have stayed behind, and frequently he adds a word of praise for all of them in his letters. No father or mother who has heard from sons at the front can fail to be generous to the organizations which are, every one, carrying "home" direct to the American fighting forces.
"Suppose the money should
Out of the Mouth of Hell
our boys come, nerve-racked, tense, exhausted by their sleepless vigil and harassed with tragic memories.
Rest they will have, but rest is not recreation. Mind must relax as well as body. They must forget a while, must turn their thoughts into their normal course before facing anew the horrors of the first-line trenches.
Courage they have always, but we can put fresh heart into them ; we can restore the high spirits of youth and send them singing into the fray.
They Are Fighting for You — Show Your Appreciation
When you give them arms, you give them only the instruments of your own de- fense; when you give for the wounded, you give only in common humanity; but when you give to the Y. M. C. A., you are extending to the boys the warm hand of gratitude, the last token of your ap- preciation of what they are doing for you. You are doing this by showing your inter- est in their welfare.
The Y. M. C. A. furnishes to the boys not only in its own "huts" — which are often close to the firing line — but in the
trenches, the material and intangible com- forts which mean much to morale. It furnishes free entertainment back of the lines. It supplies free writing paper and reading matter. It conducts all post ex- changes, selling general merchandise with- out profit. It has charge of and encour- ages athletics, and conducts a ''khaki col- lege" for liberal education. Its religious work is non-sectarian and non-propagand- ist. It keeps alive in the boys "over there" the life and the spirit of "over here."
Give Now — Before Their Sacrifice Is Made
Seven allied activities, all endorsed by the Govern- ment, are combined in the United War Campaign, ■with the budgets distributed as follows: Y. M. C. A., $100,000,000; Y. IV. C. A., $15,000,000; National Catholic War Council (including the work of the Knights of Columbus and special war activities for women), $30,000,000; Jewish Welfare Board. $3,- 500,000; American Library Association. $3,500,000; War Camp Community Service, $15,000,000; Salva- tion Army, $3,500,000.
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United States Gov't.
Comm. on Public
Information
'This Space contributed for the Winning of the War by
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Direct Entrance to Broadway Subway and Hudson Tubes
One Block from Pennsylvania Station
Equally Convenient for Amusements, Shopping or Business
Rates $2.00 Per Day and Up
400 Baths 600 Rooms
A SPECIALTY
155 Pleasant Rooms, with Private Bath
$3.00 Per Day
The Martinique Restaurants Are Well Known for Good Food and Reasonable Prices
In writing to advertisers, please mention Travel
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TRY THIS NOVEL AS AN ANTIDOTE FOR WAR BLUES
"It contains the delectable drug of.'real humor, rare as the elixir of life."— Sail Lake Herald. At all booksellers
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & CO., Publishers :: :: New York
THROUGH OUR UNKNOWN SOUTHWEST
By Agnes C. Laut
A delightful guide to the wonders of some of the beauty spots of America. Miss Laut has, to a remarkable degree, the faculty of mak- ing unknown and unvisited places real and attractive.
Illustrated. $2.00 net. Postage 15 cents.
THE PERSONALITY OF AMERICAN CITIES
By Edward Hungerford
Who says American cities are uninteresting? Mr. Hungerford has written a book to enlighten the skeptic and to serve as a guide for the American traveler *o the interesting and romantic qualities of our principal cities.
Illustrated. $2.00 net.
THREE BOOKS BY CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS FINDING THE WORTH WHILE IN CALIFORNIA
A guide for the visitor who can spend only a limited time in Cal- ifornia and who wishes to see its very best features.
121110. Illustrated. $1.00 net. Postage 6 cents.
UNDER THE SKY IN CALIFORNIA
A picture of out-of-door life that is of service to the tourist with a taste for exploring or to the native Californian as an intimate glimpse of the beauties of the State.
8^0. Illustrated. $2.00 net. Postage 16 cents.