The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-08-22
The COLUMBUS
OF THE CAPITAL
Makes Long Journeys for Dis
covery
A REAL GLOBE TR0TTER
F. N. Meyer of the Agricultural De-
partment Goes to All Corners
of the Earth In Search =.
of New Plants.
A REAL GLOBE TR0TTER
From the Washington Post.


Standing in the middle of a tiny, trunk
| Uttered room on the third floor of the
plant industry building, at 1905 B street
southwest, F. N. Meyer, hot and worried,
hardly filled the mental picture of a.
great explorer when the Post reporter
walked In upon his last week. But it
only took a few words from this serious
minded, direct, ob1iging Hollander to I'M
press the caller with the fact that he
was a man out of the ordinary. He Is
! the agricultural departments Christopher
Columbus, who returned to the United
States some months ago, after one of
the most thrilling voyages of discovery
:, In the history of modern times, and who
starts this week upon another trip of
more than 10000 miles, which will be
fraught. in all probability. with even
greater dangers and hardships than that
through Manchuria and Siberia In 1905.
1905 and 1907
Mr.. Meyer, who came to America eight
years ago, equipped with a splendid
knowledge of botany and biology, is to-
day the most successful of all the agri-
cultural explorers. The term agricul-
tural explorer is new, but the idea is
1000 years old, for. according to Mr..
Meyer, tho Emperor Wu-Ti of China,
shortly before the Christian era, sent
out band of explorers to all parts of
his vast empire, commanding them to
bring to Pekin new trees and plants
which bore fruit and vegetables.
Mr.. Meyers Mission.
This is what agricultural explorers are
doing-going to all parts of the world
aw Of
grapes, grains, alfalfas, and all other
products of the soil which might be i'm
ported to America and add to our farm
and orchard wealth.
And this is Mr.. Meyers mission. He
sails from New York this week for Eng
land. But he will waste no time there.
He will go directly to st. Petersburg,
there to procure his passports, then
straight for the Crimea and the Caucasus
REGIONS. And then for a two-year plunge
through the desert Businesses of interior
China. 1t is one of the most daring ex-
petitions ever undertaken. for he will
go alone into the widest parts of the I'M
civilized globe. For weeks and months
| he will be the only white man amid
hordes of untamed barbarans; he will be
surrounded by burning sands, by alkaline
! plains, by frozen steppes, by mountain
Businesses, and all other dangers of which
| the mind of man can conceive.
And all this because reports have come
from these regions that there are won
derful peaches and grapes and a peculiar
kind of alfalfa grown in central China.
The United States wants these new varie-
! ties, and Mr. Meyer has undertaken the
mission of securing them and bringing
/ them back to this country in such condi-
| ton that they can be grown here
According to his present plan Mr..
Meyer will spend nearly two years In the
heart of Asia, and will come out at Pc
| king in 1911.
Mr.. Meyers Trunk.
When seen in his rooms last week he
was packing the last of his six fiat. in
| destructible, waterproof trunks He
| opened some of these to show the Post
! reporter some of his equipment There
was small medicine chest containing a
great variety of drugs and few simple
] surgical Instruments, for as the explorer
! explains, In these trips a man must be
/ his own doctor, preacher and devil.
/ Then there was a big supply of chemi-
Gals to be used in preserving seeds and
plants one trunk for summer clothing.
and another with the heaviest of furs
| and .f1annels. Mr.. Meyer meets with the
greatest extremes of temperature the
baking Suns of the desert and the frozen
! plateaus of northern China. Another
, trunk contained a batch of notebooks and
writing materials, also a small eompart-
ment for moneys. One small bag con-
| tanned Jumps of unconed silver, current
! in certain parts of China. and another
! bag, weighing several pounds, with a
| great string of copper coins-valued at Is
| cents for the lot. These also were for
| use In China. Camera supplies were
tucked away in another place, with gar
den tools and hatchets.
| To gain a clear impression of the hard
! ships and dangers which Mr.. Meyer will
| face on this great expedition, one need
| only to read of few of his many ex-
periences during his last trip of three
years in Manchuria.
Cabbages at Mings' Tombs.
| 1t was in 1905 that he began his trip
| through the mountainous region east of
| the Yalu river in northern Corea, never
| before traversed by a white man. He
| went as far south as Kiukiang or the
Yangtze, as far north as the Thabarowck
| in northern Manchuria and east and
| west from Nangpo to Hankau. In the first
| year he made an extensive circuit through
| central China, and although COMPARE
! lively few travellers have journeyed over
| land from the capital, Pekin, to the sea-
| port of Hankau, this feat seems slight
] when compared with the intrepid ex-
| plorer's expedition of the following year.
| OpOH approaching f1dNKdu, MT. meyer
| fell in with a band of robbers, who, the
preceding week had held up and plum
| dered clergyman and a vice consul
The display of his revolver saved him
| from molestation. The recent disastrous
ending Of the Douglas-Clark expedition
and the murder of one of the party, IL
| Illustrates forcibly the real danger of tray
ell in China.
Proceeding from Shanghai, Mr.. Meyer
| left that place by steamer for Chefu.
| and from there went on to Shanghai
! kuan, town on the Chinese Eastern
railway. Here he found species of wal
nut with a shell so thin that it can be
broken between the fingers as easily as
that of a peanut. From Shanhai-kuan
he went to Pekin, where he spent some
months visiting gardens in and around
the city, where he discovered a luscious
persimmon. without seeds and devoid of
the ''puckering" quality. This persim-
mon is about the size of a fairly large
peach, and is now being cultivated here
Mr.. Meyer visited the famous valley
of the gigantic and grotesQue tombs of
the Ming dynasty. 1t was not these
monuments, however. which engaged
his attention, but fields of white cab
bages, some of which weighed 40
pounds. These huge vegetables, he
found, were odorless and would keep
all winter Moreover, they give excel
L. ,4rxfxe t.. L.