The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-18
SCHOOL ON ITS TRAVELS
A PLEASING GEOGRAPHICAL AND
HISTORICAL OBJECT LESSON.
Prof. Gos-'s Pupils, Indiana Boys
Among Them, Enjoy an Instruc-
tive Mountaineering Tour.

Occasional Correspondence Of the Journal
NEW YORK, May III promised the
Journal line now and then, but have hard
" kept my word. This line is TO say that
I have just reached New York on the
Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse and after
few days in New York hope TO spend A few
weeks among my Indianapolis and Indiana
friends. Just now it is more pleasant in
Uncle Sans dominions than in France
which was cold and clammy at date of our
sailing In Normandy the snow lay an
inch deep the afternoon of May I.
You have probably noted that the Will
helm has just broken her own record for
the western passage. steaming the course
from Cherbourg TO Sandy Hook lightship
at an average speed OF psi knots. We
were evidently not seen by the lightship
on our arrival, for we came to rest at. 6:52
a. m. in a CHEEKY" fog and were COM
PEELED TO wait for light to see our way into
harbor. 1t is uneasy feeling one has
plunging into a fog bank at that speed.
Commend me to the big boats that are not
in such hurry.
! Our boys at Strassburg have done some
travel and mountain climbing this spring
in our own way. Indiana is great State,
but as a school for mountaineering it lacks
some essentials. Therefore to get our
mountain legs" on we began operations
on the VOsges. All winter we had peeped
out of our western windows at the dome
of the Great Donor, exactly the French
line where the boundary turns northwest
and cuts Lorraine into French and German
halves. We moved on the enemys works
at daylight. Up the valley Of the Breusch
we went, turning the left flank and attack
| ing where the sun had already opened a
| breach in the SHOWS. The mountain tor
rents chartered and leaped. the boys
| frolicked and scampered among the pines
| and the camera shutters clicked like guinea
| hens in a barnyard. But that was in the
| foothills and lower slopes. Gradually the
snow deepened, the wind arose on the bare
sides of the mountain wall and the laugh
| ing ceased. They climbing now in
! dead earnest. Occasionally a little fellow
/ would fall head and ears into a snow hole
/ and a larger boy would pull him out with
/ appropriate remarks. But on the whole
! the little chap had the advantage, for he
/ could walk where a man fell through the
| snow crust w to his neck. and the school
baby was the first fellow to perch on the
summit and call to us to come on and see
! 1.-The grand sight"
SIGHT WORTH SEEING.
| And what a view from Donon it is, The
! whole range of the Black Forest east of the
/ Rhine, that river from Basel to Mannheim,
| the whole range of the Vosges. northwest
ern France. with the plateau of Lorraine
studded with those fine little lakes of Lor-
raine; and to the far southeast when the
clouds blew away the giant heads of the
| Alps rose over the wall of the Black For
est
Grovelers i'm the plain! Climb to the
mountain tops and you'll need no antiquar-
ian to tell YOU why prehistoric man built
sacrifcial affairs here nor why Christianity
still maintains here its cloister churches
and shrines. We had come for day, but
the boys looked out over the Incompatible
landscape to the west and voted for ar
other day of it, and that in Francei So
down the slope we went and across the
/ boundary. singing the "Marseillaise."
/ which no man dare sing in Alsace. We
+ had a right 10 sing that song, for we are
| democrats, and that song was written by
/ De Isle in Strassburg and not in Mar
/ settles. We scampered down the valley of
/ the PLANE to Raon and all climbed into
/ and on to one crazy stage coach and bowled
! down to Raon IEtape The boys outside
! ieered us who had to ride inside but all
/ things come to him who waits When the
/ sun went down and the quiet stars came
| out we could hear those fellows teeth
chatter. At Raon TEtape Max Parry said
| he was too cold to speak the truth. The
| boys inside encouraged him with CHEEKY
words. We pulled him down at 10 o'clock,
and he said he felt like plaster cast in
/ a museum of classical archaeology. He
| thawed out before we reached st. Die, and
froze UP again in a hotel, which was being
| put in order to garner the spring and sum-
mer crop of English and American Phil
| istines. We went to st. Die because there
/ old Martin Waldmueller baptized the
! American continent in 1907. OF course, the
/ name was not deserved, but it has stuck.
/ and our dear land shall have to put up
/ with it. By the way. one of our good Amer
| lean universities had just closed purchase
at large sum upon the advice of expert
| cartographers) for the oldest map bearing
| the name America, when the map of
! Waldmueler. vainly sought for 400 years,
/ turned up in a princely library just east
of us, across the Black forest in Wuertem-
/ berg That university and the experts
preserving dense silence.
! St. Die is one of the great national mon
uments Of France. Here lives the noted
| Ferry family. and the great bronze monu-
ment to Jules Ferry is worthy of the ma
/ ton and the radical leader His monument
] in the cemetery bears an exquisite medal
| lion and the lines of his last utterance:
! ~ wish 10 repOse in the same tomb with
1 my father and my sister, in sight of the
/ blue line of the Vosges, whence come the
/ plants of the conquered There was easier
/ breathing on the line of the Rhine when
/ Ferry died. The younger brother Charles
has just been defeated for the Chamber of
/ Deputies by the reactionary forces of the
i department.
READY FOR SWITZERLAND
/ We snapped our cameras. wrote postal
/ cards. studied maps and time tables and
coached through another valley again 10
/ the Vosges crest and 10 the national boun-
dairy at Saales. Down the Breusch. in an
other two hours, we passed the language
/ border at I-ruatt and another two hours