The Syracuse Journal, Volume 20, Number 28, Syracuse, Kosciusko County, 8 November 1928 — Page 2

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By ELMO SCOTT WATSON . XCE upon a time two young Amer- | icans—William Clark and Meriwether F I.ewis were their names—set out upon an expedition into the wilderness of the Great West. After being gone nearly two years, during which they had traveled more than 4,000 miles over a country unmapped, unknown, and a land filled with many

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perils, they returned to thrill a nation which had all hut given them up for lost. And of that expedition a famous American writer wrote a novel which he called “The Magnificent Adventure.” Lewis and Clark’s “magnificent adventure” took place more than a hundred years ago. Since that time the American wilderness has been conquered and there remains in it few, if any, spots which the white man has not trod. What is true of America is almost equally true of the rest of the world for the restlessness and adventure-seeking spirit of the Caucasian has driven him on and on until there are few places on earth into which he has not penetrated. This does not mean, however, that, even in this modern day when it would seem that our so-called civilization has spread everywhere, there-are no bits of terra incognita which lie far from the beaten paths and which st‘ll offer chances for dangerous adventure to those afflicted with the “itching foot.” Witness the cast, of a young American, the lone hero of a modern “magnificent adventure.” who has told the romantit story of his wanderings “out back of beyond” in a new book, “The Great Horn Spbon." published recently by the Bobbs-Merrill company. Eugene Wright is his name, twenty-four years his age. and he was a student at Columbia university until one day when The odors of cinnamon and cloves from Ceylon drifted from a musty doorway; farther on, the strong aroma of Brazilian coffee filled my nostrils. The tumbling, reckless life and rich smells of the water-front mingled with the clank and thunder of trucks and drays in one strenuous cheer of approval of my search for a ship that would carry me away. I crossed one side street, leaped across another. The smelly clothes of the Jewish wholesalers brushed my shoulders and the rollicking bodies of, negroes, horse-playing with their work, lurched about mo like trees in a flood. Along these streets, 1 knew, were shipping bureaus—little one-room affairs in the second stories of warehouses with blackboards set out in front. Once 1 had seen listed an ad for a pearl-diver; and several times I bad noticed seamen’s iobs on coastwise schooners. 1 had never been to sea as a sailor, but 1 had wanted to travel that way since childhood and felt that 1 could do anything aboard a ship. Ah, if I ; could only find an ordinary seaman’s job on an India-bound cargo steamer! 1 already had a seaman’s passport. One Saturday when 1 thought I could stand college no longer, I had slipped down to the Battery and filled one out. And now the time had come to go. 1 had left college, birds were flying north, ships were sailing east and the whole wide world was calling me to come and see. 1 wanted to go to India . Borneo Persia ... to al) the lands whose names 1 knew so well, to all the seas that washed their shores. I had to get away immediately, for I felt that if I stayed in New York another day I would turn into stone. So he got away. By a combination of good luck and the magnificent type of sheer bluff characteristic of young Americans he secured an “A. B. ticket” (certificate of able seamanship) and got a berth on the S. S. Hyacinth bound for India. Adventure beckoned over the horizon, but when he approached close to it, it welcomed him with a furnace breath. For five days and five nights the Red sea held us panting with its heat. The day men, working beneath awnings, shook themselves like wet dogs, and the sweat sizzled on the deck. I wore a huge pair of shoes insulated inside with newspapers, yet I could not stand on one spot very long with-, out extreme discomfort. The heat waves arose from the decks in a haze, making the entire forward part of the ship look as If I were seeing it through a pane of cheap glass. Arriving at Ceylon, the bos’n issued the edict of “No shore leave for nobody!” whereupon Wright, watching his chance, got overboard, hired a native boatman paddling nearby to take him * to shore and he spent two gorgeous days in the exotic bazaars of Colombo and amid the exquisite natural beauties of Kandy, where once Sinbad visited. But he paid for his holiday, for the furious bos’n piled work on him until he all but dropped from exhaustion. Although he had planned to take French leave at some Indian port (“It was a crooked idea, but if anything’s fair in love and war it was justifiable; for life on the Hyacinth was both!”) he was relieved of the necessity tor doing that by a stroke of luck. An injur received in the duty resulted in his being paid off and left in a hospital in Calcutta. After 16 days in the hospital, he read in a newspaper of a man-eating tiger that had been terrorizin o the countryside near Diamond Harbor, some 60 miles from Calcutta. So the young American immediately hied himself for Diamond Harbor, where he hired a dhow and a crew of two men and set off up the Hugli river in search of a man-eating tiger. More than that, he found one, too—this youth of twenty-four years who had never before hunted one of the most dangerous

Gorilla Fussy About His Sleeping Place

The main apparent preoccupation of the male gorilla Is fighting for the continued possession of his wives. As the family party moves along through the forest, rarely sleeping twice in the same spot, there is every night the business of making beds. For the gorilla has at least this in common with ids human cousins, that he likes and demands a comfortable sleeping place and, what Is more, he prefers to

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- >, , IK x K animals in the world. One night when the dhow was tied up to the shore, Wright sat watching with h's rifle across his knee. Suddenly the moon came out and I saw the head and shoulders of an enormous tiger crouched at the water’s edge. I was chilled with fright. The gun seemed no larger and of no more use than-a burned match; the eighteen-odd feet between me and that massive head shrank to a face-to-face meeting: and the eyes, which now glowed in everenlarging circles, held a hypnotism that turned me into an agony of rigid flesh. 1 might have awakened Mohammed. I might have cut the mooring rope and pushed out into the lagoon; but I was too frightened to release a muscle; frightened lest the tiger, in one tremendous leap, should fall upon the the dhow and rip me to pieces. It seemed hours before my courage returned. My fingers tightened upon the gun, my forefinger felt the trigger. Suddenly 1 became as cool and steady as if I were about to shoot a rpbbit. I cocked both hammers noiselessly, drew a bead and fired between the two eyes. A tremendous roar and splash stunned me. Automatically I had reloaded, and I again emptied both barrels into the frenzied mass of boiling water and roaring tiger. You have no idea of the terror in a tiger’s roikr. It drags the blood from one’s veins by the quart, and seems to dislocate every bone in one’s body. It is volcanic, immense and utterly devastating to all that lives. It was the roar ot a tiger, I am convinced, that announced the creation of hell. Before I could reload a third time he had disappeared into the darkness with long crashing bounds and I was left quivering with hair-trigger excitement. And the next day they took up the trail of the tiger and deep in the jungle found him dead. Then with the praises of the natives for having delivered them from this terror ringing in his ears, the young American returned to Calcutta, there to get mixed up in a lively little religious riot between the fanatic Moslems and the equally fanatic Hindus. Escaping with his life from that, he Investigated the swarming streets of Calcutta in the blazing sun until a sudden and unexpected collapse sent him to the hospital for nine days with the dengue fever. During the heat wave that had struck him down, fever and disease ran riot through the city and four hundred natives died every week. But some Providence pulled the young American through and as soon as he was able to stagger away from the hospital, he took ship for Rangoon, where he /Pandered around the Chinese quarter looking (for trouble,” and, failing to find it. went od to Singapore, “city of blood and pearls.” p All afternoon I honeycombed the town, running Into weddings, quarrels, gaudy (funerals, and all manner of activities typical of/Chinese life. One beautiful funeral stretched through the winding streets for blocks. Some of the men were dressed In stiff collars and straw hats, all were having a wonderful holiday and a discordant brass band played “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” I followed the procession for an hour, but it went around and around the town, getting nowhere. But though he nearly died of exposure and fever on the beautiful island of Flores, the big thrill of his life was still ahead. That came when he arrived in Borneo, “the darkest jungle on the face of the earth.” There, with the aid of the Dutch governor, he outfitted an expedition, which was to take him past Poeroek-Tjahoe, the most remote outpost in Borneo, up the Barito river into the land of the °oon.vaboong, who “eat snakes, drink blood for strength and take heads for strength,” the “last of the wild men of Borneo.” En route to this forbidden land he visited a demented chief who possesseo fabulous wealth in diamonds that he had got from the

make his sleeping arrangements well before darkness falls. For this purpose paterfamilias bends down saplings and covers them with leafy branches, while the members of his harem, who are sent up neighboring trees, make each her own bed In a suitable fork by breaking off branches within her reach. Their beds are never very high up—neyer too high for the old man to be able

to keep his eye upon them. You may find chimpanzees nesting in the treetops, but never gorillas. Once 1 had a chance of studying this proceeding. 1 made my camp close to two parties of gorillas. My own bed was made in five minutes, but the gorillas took twenty minutes to finish theirs to their liking, and probably were more comfortable than 1. They are certainly very fastidious tn this matter. Even when they remain tn the same spot ’for a few days they make fresh beds every night, some-

THE SYRACUSE JOT RNAL

whirlpools of the Barito and he saw those diamonds —a dozen or more, “round, perfectly smooth •—ground smooth by thousands of years of swirling in the whirlpool pots at the bottom of the river. The largest of them was the size of a dime; it was invisible when dropped into a cup of water.” After a series of adventures in which his life was in constant danger from the rapids in the river, from crocodiles and a dozen other forms of deadly animal, reptile v and insect life in the jungle, the party reached the territory of the fierce and head-hunting Undaoems. As they penetrated deeper into the jungle, the booming of witch drums told them that they had been discovered and they were about to be attacked. After a nerve-racking period of suspense, the attack came —poisoned darts shot at them from blow-guns whiph laid one of the party low. But though three sang close to the young American, by some miracle he escaped unharmed and his followers beat off the attpck and continued on to their goal. At .ast they arrived in a Poonyaboong village and the young adventurer was successful in making friends with these head-hunting pygmies, who honored him by allowing him to attend one of their blood-chilling war dances and as a final honor invited him and his party into a long room, from the rafters of which hung nine human heads. There they sat silently for hours while Wright’s party squirmed uneasily, not knowing whether their silence meant good or ill. Then a thought, vague at first, took shape within my brain. I knew that I had solved the mystery of the silence: the Poonyaboongs believed that each of the heads above them was giving out the strength of a man and they were gathered together in the long room to absorb that strength. As a sign of friendliness, the greatest honor and compliment he could bestow, the chief had asked me and my men to sit within his long room and be- ! come stronger. I, squatting within the long room i of the Poonyaboong chief, absorbing the departing strength of nine heads! I, a white man, sharing the strange superstition which prompted the taking of those nine heads! It was almost unbelievable! It was the weirdest experience that I had ever undergone, and I sat quietly,, tingling with excitement until long after midnight, when the ' chief arose, and we trooped silently out of the hut That, combined with other ‘experiences among ; the Poonyaboongs, was undoubtedly the high point of the thrills which Wright experienced in his travels, although the rest of his stay in the Orient was far from being a life of ennui. Off the coast of India a fierce man-eating shark attacked the dhow in which he was riding and. gripping the keel in its teeth, almost upset the heavily laden boat. On the Gulf of Oman, a ; simal (sand storm), blowing off the Arabian desert, struck Wright and his boatmen and almost smothered them, finally filling the craft so full of sand that It began to sink. Fortunately they were near the shore and were able to wade to land, but soon afterwards they were captured by a party of Arabs and carried away to the' sheik’s • lair far into the desert. After twelve days’ captivity, Wright overpowered his guard and escaped on his horse. There were other and more amusing adventures in the ancient city of Lar in Persia, in Shiraz, in Persepolis, in Kazerun and in Bagdad. Babylon and the Golden Domes of Kadhimein lured him, but I could not bring myself to visit them. All that I had had so far, I had won. Borneo I had won, Oman I had won Flores, Persia and the Cave of Shapur I had won. They were mine forever; and no matter how many people saw them hereafter, they would always be mine; for I had suffered with them, I had given myself to them. Each hardship, each pain, had bound them up with the vitality of life. So he took ship for home. The modern “magnificent adventure” was ended.

times even tn the same trees as the night before, but in other forks.—Dr. N. A. Dyce Sharp in the Continental Edition of the London Daily Mail. Domestic Adjustments It is not a bad guess, says a prominent medical authority, that ft per cent of the better educated women in America find it very hard to adjust themselves to the duties and limita tions of domesticity.—Woman’s Home Companion.

| OUR COMIC SECTION Along the Concrete J |i. " f SE.EMS TO ME 'NE 11“ MOST UNINTERESTING -“ along the soap « AFTER Tht FIRST /Z A TEH THOUSAND MILtS (Copyrirht, W.N.P.->, • THE FEATHERHEADS Martyr to the Cause HEflE.BOCK Zg«7qeodX\ - <itrass someou> T? A \ . \ /** WE MoMoSfIAMY 4we KM PW/- HEHES W— (rSL!?! 0 ? WWW \ — /BfiCKOF A SCRFEN. \ Ai>ocksuders t S m C JI AX * lURXI ,TON AM ‘ MIMSIRGL SUoU)y —X VAttKCVDRtSS cotToMEy — j£st like / i ~\ WE'RE SIMGIAJ'/ / ■Wilßl jokes odT.V /ma sw? if we y /if sue- LICKS me- \—y/ / // /OF TUE PAPERS AM ) ( HAVE THE StlOUj ) -—YOU PERTEND LIKE/-# X-_ZZIZ2Z~Z/ \WE KIM LEARN 'EM/ I HERE IN 9OL)R# ~—y/X n $ PART OF VUE?#/- #/£2. Jy nr MMk i zx Aft. - Il ( M'fa-<E=iiߣ= /IV>lr\ Ilk W* ' zIM fKih? t Oc i'W'i ■•'<b > k *y 4frfy»te to mßhm i XttMitlW ?f iHr#®” lL - _2x—— »ZH4[6|y oSbcqos. r© WMtarn Newspaper Union / SBESbuSE FINNEY OF THE FORCE You Can Go Now, Finney Awowscftvw.) \ FAHNV/ /-*|| (TKnIKOtM t ®|f- SOMBTUi>i‘APOOT TASK I“ PO W \ DEEP?* rr/-DO»irMT’ER vw want ms | S USr' I®- 1 I 1 XZ>\l ~-fK / K"" b Wb# . " XTfrls " —jl J!" o Ifg (SMS3<]X L Z ■rS«“A) —. g Ml®rru ~H —J xllzt vw®\ XWL a ° r % 1 k n . Q ‘«.

CHEAP WRITING jy | _ Ji He—W hen I wanted to write you my thoughts were so heavy I couldn’t

express them.’* She (lightly)—-“Why didn’t you send them by freight?” With a Punch Edna—But, father. Clifford has character —you can read it in his eye. Her Father —Well, if that’s the case I’m going to blacken his character. Suspicious Student “What are you studying now?” “Caesar.” “Interested?” “Yes. But Caesar gets so much the

best of everything that it begins to sound to me like schoolbook propaganda.” Advice “There are many momentous questions before the people.” “There are,” answered Senator Sorghum. “What do you think Is the most important advice to be given?” “For a starter, the most. Important advice would be, ‘Don’t everybody try to talk at once.” —Washington Star.