Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1922-04-25
fASCINATIONS OF FLYING
Ross Smith Describes ! Wonderful
Sensations.
FLOATING ABOVE VAST SEA- OF SNOW
Experience that Looked Like Death;
But All Came Out Well, and the
Aviators Descended Safely Through
a Vast Well that Was Adapted for

Dut All SdHle Sut WelIJ dHo tne
Aviators Descended Safely Through
Vast Well that Was Adapted for
the Purpose.
Kipling, not an engineer, wrote
most feelingly of the love Of the man
in the cab for his Locomotives; in the
field of aviation it was an aviator, Sir
Ross Smith, who has portrayed most
viTdly the fascination and romance
Of flying.
The aviator who met death upon the
eve Of a flight around the world,
wrote for the National Geographic
Magazine the story Of his epochal
London Australia air voyage-a
story which already has become the
classic Of aerial travel.
This story contained wealth sof
geographic detail and technical in
formation, but those portions which
described the sensation OF air travel
are, perhaps, the most unusual. He
wrote: I,
"A small machine is ideal for short
flights, joy riding in the heavens, or
sightseeing among the clouds, but
there is something more majestic and
stable about the big bombers which a
pilot begins to love. An exquisite
community grows up between ma
chine and pilot; each, as it were
merges into the other. The machine
is rudimentary and the pilot the INTEL
lectual forces. The levers and con-
Il OILS are the nervous system Of the
machine, through which the will Of
the pilot may be expressed-and ex-
pressed to an infinitely fine degree. A
fying-machine is something entirely
apart from and above all other con-
tr'ivances Of mans ingenuity.
Most Human-Like Machine.
1.-THE aeroplane is the nearest thing
to animate life that man has created.
In the air q machine ceases indeed to
be a mere piece Of mechanism; It be-
Of primary guidance and control, but
actually of expressing a pilots tenn
permanent. ..r..
THE lungs of the machine, its en-
gines, are again the crux OF mans
wisdom. Their marvellous reliability
and great intricacy are almost as
awesome as the human anatomy.
When both engines are going we'll
and synchronized to the same speed,
the roar Of the exhausts develops into
one long-sustained rhythmical BOOM
boom boom. 1t is song of pleasant
harmony to the pilot, a duet Of con-
/ tentment that signs Of a perfect firing
in both engines and says that all Is
we'll.
This melody Of power doomed
pleasantly in my ears, and my mind
sought to probe the inscrutable fu-
ture, as we swept over the coast of
England at 80 miles per hour"
Skimmins Tops Of the Clouds
OF another phase of the trip, when
it was determined to climb above the
| CLOUDS ne wrote:
$50 we climbed steadily in q wide,
ascending spiral, until we reached an
altitude of 5000 feet, and were then
| just above the clouds. Below us the
'snowstorm ragged, but we had entered
another world-a strange world, all
our own, with bright, dazzling sun
shine.
"It might have been a vision of the
polar regions; it undoubtedly felt like
! it. The mighty cloud ocean over
which we were scudding resembled a
polar landscape covered with snow.
The rounded cloud contours might
have been the domes Of snow- merged
SUBMITS. 1t was hard to conceive
that that amorphous expanse was not
actual solid. Here and there floccu-
lent towers and ramps heaved up,
piled like mighty snow dumps, top
Everything was so tremendous, so
vast, that ones sense Of proportion
swayed uncontrolled.
Eyes Stung by Snow Blast.
"The cold grew more intense. Our
hands and feet lost all feeling and
our bodies became well-nigh frozen.
Goggles were useless, owing to the
ice, and We suffered much agony
through being compelled to keep a
lookout with unprotected eyes-strain-
ing into the 90-miles -an-hou snow
blast. e.
"rhe only really cheerful objects Of
the whole outfit were our two engines.
They roared away and sang q deep
throated song, filled with contentment
and gladness; it did not worry them
that their radiator blinds, which we
kept shut, were thickly coated with
frozen snow.
Ahead lOomed up 4 beautiful dome
shaped cloud, lined with silver edges.
1t was symbolical; and when all
seemed dark. this rekindled in me the
srark of hope. BY the side of the
cloud with the silver lining there ex-
tended n gulf about two miles across.
| AS we burst out over it looked down
into it's abysmal depths.
"At the bottom lay the world. AS
far as the eye could reach, in every
direction stretched illimitnble cloud