Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-08-11
Geographic News
Bulletins by the
National Geographic Society
THE PRESENTATIONS OF FLYING

man in the cab for his locomotive;
in the field of aviation Ii was an
aviator, Sir Ross Smith. who has
portrayed most wildly the fascina-
ton and romance of flying.
The aviator who met death upon
the v of a flight around the world,
wrote for the National Geographic
Magazine the story of his epochal
Observation-Disclosures air voyage-a
story which already has become the
classic of aerial travel.
This story contained a wealth of
geographic detail and technical in
formation. but those portions which
described the sensations of air
travel are. perhaps the NEST unus-
ual.. He wrote:
"A small machine IS ideal for
short flights, Joy riding in the heav-
ems, or sight seeing 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 machine and pi-
lot; each, as it were merges into the
other. The machine is rudimentary
and the pilot the intellectual force
The levers and controls are the ner-
vous system of the machine, through
which the will of the pilot may be
expressed-and expressed to, an in
finitely fine degree. A flying ma
chine is something entirely apart
from and above all other contriv-
ances of mans ingenuity.
Most Human-1dke Machine
The aeroplane is the nearest
thing to animate life that man has
created. In the air a machine
eases to be a mere piece of mechan-
ism it becomes animate and is capa-
BILE not only Of primary guidance
and control, but actually of ex-
pressing a pilots temperament.
The lungs Of the machine, it's
engines, are again the crux Of
mans wisdom. Their marvellous re-
liability and great intricacy are al
most as awesome as the human
anatomy. When both engines are
going well and synchronised to the
same speed, the o a Of the exhausts
develops into n long-sustained
rhythmical boom-boom-boom. 1t
Is a song Of pleasant harmony to the
pilot, a duet of contentment that
sings of a perfect firing in both en-
gines and says that all is well.
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
Swimming Tops of the Clouds
OF another phase of the trip, when
it was determined to climb above
the clouds he wrote:
$50 we climbed steadily in a 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. daz-
cling sunshine.
1T might have been a vision of
the polar regions it undoubtedly felt
like It.. The mighty cloud ocean
over which we were scudding re-
sembled a polar landscape covered
with snow. The rounded cloud con-
tours might have been the domes
Of snow-merged submits. 1t was
hard to conceive that that amor
phous expanse was not actual, solid.
Here and there %1occulent towers
and ramps heaved up, piled like
mighty snow dumps, topping and
crushing into one another. Every
tIllUk was 81 tIclIlCIi0Ouos 81 NaoSs
that ones sense of proportion
swayed uncontrolled. =
Eyes Stung by Snow Blast
1.-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-straining into the 90-miles-
an-hour snow blast.
1.-THE only really cheerful objects
Of the whole outfit were u two
engines. They roared away and
| sang a Geey throated sang. filled
| with contentment and gladness it
| did not worry them that their radia-
tor blinds, which we kept shut, were
thickly coated with frozen snow.
ahead doomed up a beautiful
| d~ome-shaped cloud lined with sill
| yer edges. 1t was symbolical and
| when all seemed dark, this rek1n-
| died in me the spark of hope. BY
| the side Of the cloud with the sill
| Ger lining there extended a gull
| about two miles across. AS we burst
| out over 1t / looked down into its
abysmal depths.
"At the bottom lay the world. AS
far as the eye could reach. in ev-
cry direction stretched the illimita-
BILE cloud sea, and the only break
now lay beneath us. 1t resembled
a. tremendous crater, with sides
clean cut as a shaft. Down this won
derful avenue I headed the Vimy
slowly descending in a WIDE spirals
The escape through this arvelou
gateway, seven thousand feet deep;
that seemed to linls-the realms OF h
infinite with the lower world OF
m~ortals, was the most soul-stirring
episode of the whole voyage. Snow
was falling heavily from the clouds
that encircled, us, yet down, down
we went in Jan almost snow-free
atmosphere. The omen was good;
fair Fortune rode with us. The
landscape was covered deep in snow
but we picked out a fairly large
town. which my brother at once
said was Roanne. This indicated
that we were directly on our route;
hut it seemed too good to be true,
for we had been flying at over 80
miles per hour for three hours by
-, .,s~o%;on and had cen