A Pair of Skis

Like Death's beckoning fingers, two skis upright in a Greenland snow hummock last week signaled to searching Germans through the colored dawn of the returning midnight sun. Any unexplained man-made thing has awful import in the ice desert. The Germans clambered over the ridged ice to the skis, chopped them loose, chopped deeper into the frozen snow until they found the body of lost Professor Alfred Lothar Wegener. The body was carefully sewn within two blankets and covered with fur coats. The last chapter of Professor Wegener's career was clear.

Professor Wegener took a party of German scientists to Greenland a year ago. His immediate purpose was meteorological, his remote purpose geophysical. He had developed a highly regarded hypothesis that the continents are drifting away from each other. According to this hypothesis the core of Earth is very dense material called Nife. Incasing Nife is a shell of Sima. Floating on Sima are slabs of Sial, called continents. Evidence in support of the Wegener hypothesis is the fact that Greenland, Earth's largest island, is drifting westward 65 ft. a year.

Professor Wegener established his base station on the west coast of Greenland, at Kamarujuk. A central station he set up 250 mi. inland, on the Greenland icecap, slowly gestating mother of icebergs. Last September two men were at the central station. They expected to remain alone all winter. Professor Wegener, Dr. Fritz Loewe and an Eskimo named Rasmus left the west camp with supplies.

It took the Wegener party 40 days to sledge over the 250 mi. between the two camps. Temperature was 65DEG below Zero F. When they reached central station Dr. Loewe's feet were frozen. All his toes had to be cut off. Weather was so terrible that it was unwise for anyone to risk return to the coast. But only enough food remained to support three men until the end of May. Professor Wegener insisted that he and Rasmus leave. They rested a day and a half, then started back to the coast. But before they started they joined in a little merrymaking. The day was Nov. 1 and Professor Wegener's 50th birthday. A few gentle cheers of Hoch and Gesundheit were swallowed by the Greenland silence; then, a solemn shaking of hands all around, a hollowly hopeful Auf Wiedersehen; and Professor Wegener and Rasmus sledged westward into the Arctic twilight.

A Greenland hurricane, such as cause most of Europe's and North America's "weather," was roaring. The German and the Eskimo leaned into the wind. The dogs kept their ears back and their bellies close to the ice. They got 40 mi. from the central station. Then Professor Wegener died. Rasmus carefully buried him and marked the grave with the upright skis. The finders of the body last week placed it on a sledge. Around and over the sledge they built a mausoleum of ice blocks. Then they went hunting for Rasmus. For a space his spoor was plain. From the grave he had wavered twelve miles toward the coast. He left his tent pegs there. Ten miles further on was the debris of a dog camp. Beyond, no signs.

In Berlin, Professor Alfred Lothar Wegener's widow commissioned her brother-in-law, Professor Kurt Wegener, meteorologist, who at once prepared to go to Greenland to take command of the expedition. She told him to leave her husband's body at rest in its frigid tomb.

In addition to reports published last week (TIME, May 25), the progress of other expeditions, coming & going, include the following:

Arctica. Greenland expeditions may go hang, growled young Augustine Courtauld, the Britisher rescued last fortnight on the eastern side of the island. He was at Angmagsalik fretting for a ship to take him to England and sanitary plumbing. Trying vainly to josh him out of his ill humor was Captain Albin Ahrenberg, Danish flyer who had flown to the rescue. So Captain Ahrenberg, as soon as the sea fog lifted, flew to Reykjavik, Iceland, whence he took ship to Copenhagen and a hot massage.

British and German enterprise in Greenland since last summer has renewed Danish activities in regard to the island. Denmark claims ownership. Great Britain would like ownership. And Norway has pre-empted some territorial rights. In an attempt to clinch her suzerainty, Denmark this summer is sending two ships to reconnoitre the east coast from Scoresby Sound to Danmark Harbor. Fishing rights are one prize. Landing fields for intercontinental commercial flyers are another.

Another north-going party is the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Last week the museum despatched J. B. Semple and two companions to James Bay and Hudson Bay. They will catch birds.

Asia. Tibetan politics are keeping ambitious mountaineers from climbing Mount Everest (29,141 ft.), man's loftiest goal. So a party of Englishmen are now trying to scale Mount Kamet, a 25,447 ft. Everest neighbor from the Indian side. Leader is Frank S. Smythe, who upon failing to top Mount Kanchenjunga (28,225 ft.) last year climbed Jonsong Peak (24,344 ft.). Bavarians under Dr. Paul Bauer left Munich last week for a try at Kanchenjunga.

Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History is again in China, trying to blarney and bulldoze provincial bandits to let him make another expedition into the Gobi desert.

Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt killed a panda (bearlike raccoon) for the Field Museum of Natural History two years ago. The Field Museum wants more pandas. It sent Floyd T. Smith into south central China to get them. Last week he had no panda. But he did have a takin (goatlike antelope).

South America-- The difficult Orinoco country rivals the Matto Grosso region for difficulties and novelties. Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey and his wife last week were toiling up the Orinoco on their fifth excursion. They were loaded with trinkets for the natives and aspirin for themselves. Dr. Dickey hopes to locate the source of the Orinoco, and expects to bring out new knowledge of tropical peoples and relics.

Mrs. Dickey is seeking new birds, small animals. They will map unknown districts. Mrs. Dickey is "the-woman-who-wears-breeches" to Orinoco Indians. As the Dickey party approached the region this spring they encountered another "woman-who-wears-breeches" just emerging, Lady Dorothy Mills. Her excursion was to compare Indian customs and religion with those of Africa. A baby alligator bit her on the knee. An escaped Devil's Island convict, "a tall and handsome brute" whom she had fed, tried to assault her. She said she shot him in the leg, bandaged the wound, hastened out of the Orinoco.

Harold Elmer Anthony of the American Museum of Natural History is taking three airplanes to map the highlands between Mounts Duida and Roraima, Venezuela. His geologists think they will find gold in that district, perhaps diamonds.

Eldridge Reeves Fenimore Johnson,* chief backer of Captain Vladimir ("Vovo") Perfilieff's Matto Grosso expedition, was at Descalvados, their base camp, with a chartered Sikorsky amphibian last week. They will use the plane to scout for animals they wish to capture. Alexander Siemel, jaguar-spearer, was limping gingerly. An alligator chewed his leg in March. Two members of the party were back at their homes--John Newel, Augusta, Mich, radio and talkie man, weakened by sunstroke; and William E. Green, amateur taxidermist of Trenton. N. J., poisoned by bites of insects and the jararaca snake.

Hunting for Col. P. H. Fawcett, who disappeared in the Matto Grosso four years ago, has become almost a profession in itself. Alexander Siemel, now at the southwestern edge of the great forest, was a onetime Fawcett searcher. His onetime companions in the jungle were Mamerto Urriolagoitia. Bolivian consul general at London, and Julian Duguid (Green Hell). As soon as Consul Urriolagoitia gets his vacation from London this summer he will join Author Duguid for another search of the forest.

Los Gallitos (the cockerels)--George R. ("Tuck") Johnson, 30, Robert Shippe, 20, and their three young companions--are amazing Peruvians with their airplane jaunts over the Andean ridge. From a base at Lima they have air-photographed the mountain folds, Inca ruins, and near Huancayo "the Great Wall" of Peru. Last week they and their two planes were at Arequipa, whence they will try to reach Lake Titicaca.

*Son of Eldridge Reeves Johnson, founder of Victor Talking Machine Co.

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