Expeditions

Be it ever so humble, there is no place like a corner of the earth never before visited by white men. So think the ethnologists, natural historians, geologists, cartographers and peepers and priers and pushers of all sorts who year in and out spend money and lives on arduous museum expeditions. Some expeditions, and their results, of late months:

Dutch New Guinea. Professor Matthew W. Stirling of Berkeley, Calif., and comrades docked last week in Boston after a 15-month pilgrimage to the heart of Dutch New Guinea (between Australia and the Equator). Under Smithsonian auspices, and with the aid of admiring Dutch officers, they had flown a Liberty-motored seaplane to the upper reaches of the Mamberamo River, alighted and made friends with a myth. The latter was a most genteel, non-cannibalistic, Stone-age race of pygmies whose existence in the mountain fastnesses had been rumored but never proved. After some flitting through the undergrowth and bird-like calling back and forth, the pygmies presented their visitors with fatted pig, and posed affably--like milk chocolate babies with ruddy fuzz on their polls--for reels and reels of cinema. They explained why their married women lacked a forefinger: it was chopped off by the husband, as a honeymoon salutation. Before chopping, the husband had to qualify in bravery by letting his intended's male relatives shoot at him with arrows, which he dodged and returned. . . . Flora, fauna and pioneer maps bulged the Stirling party's homebound luggage.

Turkestan, Mongolia. Assistant Director James L. Clark of the American Museum of Natural History (Manhattan) and Explorer William J. Morden of Chicago reached home last fortnight with numerous Asiatic quadrupeds for stuffing--ovis poli, ibex, roe deer, gazelles, etc., etc.--and with anecdotes which needed no stuffing. Against all advice they had penetrated the snow-blocked Pamirs into Russian Turkestan, threaded the glaciered Tian-Shan range, crossed Chinese Turkestan and headed for Urga in Mongolia. One evening an armed band of Mongols surrounded their camel train, confiscated all arms and ammunition, waved aside the travelers' passports, tied their hands and soaked ropes to make them cut deeper. The Mongols explained they had never heard of America and were going to kill Messrs. Clark and Morden. These men discussed their insurance policies and "hoped they would shoot us and make it snappy." They tried to faint to escape the pains in their arms, but could not manage it. After much grunting and pipe-smoking the Mongols changed their minds, fed their captives tea, sent the caravan ahead under a guard.

Tibet. Colonel Peter Kozlov, foremost Russian explorer, last week published in Moscow a report on his recent discovery of Kharakota, dead Tibetan city. Huge stone figures of "evil-eyed females" and a wellful of buried treasure were prominent items. Colonel Kozlov estimated that the simian population of Tibet--monkeys, gorillas, mandrills--far outnumbered the human "and could supply the world's demand for rejuvenation glands for a century." In Kookooner Lake he came upon an island inhabited only by three large-framed, shaggy Buddhist monks who, never before having seen a civilized man, fled like pious cavemen.

Abyssinia. To "The Mountains of the Moon," which are in Abyssinia, which is flanked by the Sudan, Eritrea and British Somaliland in east Africa, have gone two expeditions. The earliest and largest, under Dr. Wilfred H. Osgood and Alfred M. Bailey of the Field Museum (Chicago), reached Addis Ababa, the heart and capital of the country, in January. Prince-Regent Ras Tafari put on his swallowtails and silk hat and gave a party. Able Reporter Jack Baum of the Chicago Daily News has kept his newspaper, which helped finance the trip, supplied with a running account of the specimen-collecting, with emphasis on "the Queen of Sheba's antelope" (mountain nyala), bushbucks, lammergeyers (kin to eagles) and francolins (kin to quail).

The second Abyssinian party left the U. S. last month under the auspices of Adventure magazine. Gordon MacCreagh, lively explorer of the Amazon, and Cameraman Earl Rossman, famed for his reporting in Alaska, are in command. They were to seek black-maned lions, rare monkeys and the Ark of the Covenant (believed to be in a jungle temple where it was taken by Solomon's son, Menelik I).

Haiti. Last fortnight came the first news, in characteristically colorful vein, from Explorer William Beebe of Manhattan, who is concerning himself this winter with Haitian ichthyology.* Anchored off Port-au-Prince he and his comrades fished early and late, experimenting with new methods of capture and study. With a Daisy air rifle they obtained surface species which would bite no bait. With "the largest diving bell ever made," a contrivance designed by Inventor Mark Barr, they explored deep bottoms, keeping details of this work secret until the bell's success should be proved. Plans for expeditions are published almost daily--Fridtjof Nansen's to the North Pole in a dirigible, Richard Evelyn Byrd's to the South Pole by seaplane, Theodore Roosevelt's to Portuguese Africa, John Borden's and the Field Museum's to Alaska by yacht, the Brooklyn Museum's to collect Persian lions, Caspian tigers, snow leopards.

Amateurs. Not to be confused with scientific expeditions, there is also a continual stream of sporting amateur trophy-and-thrill-hunters, such as Baron Paul Curt von Gontard, grandson of the late Brewer Adolphus Busch, and Baroness von Gontard (nee Wilson, of Philadelphia), who returned, last week, to St. Louis from slaughtering African lions, hippopotami, elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, antelope. The noble couple planned to proceed soon against bears in northern California. Said the Baroness: "My husband stalks his lions afoot and not from a car or a tree."

*His concern in winters gone by, before vigor and versatility took him into other fields, was ornithology, and notably the study of pheasants. Save for technical monographs in scientific publications, the fruits of his investigation, in Burma, Malay and Borneo, of this bird family whence came domestic poultry, remained unpublished in the U. S. until this winter. Pheasants, Their Lives and Homes, richly illustrated in color, appeared at Christmas (Doubleday Page, 2 vols., $15). Pheasant Jungles, description and narrative worked up from field notes of a 17-months trip, was published last week (Putnam, $3).