The Coolidge examiner., 1936-09-11

offering to reSorterS the first sniff
of salt breeze before it reaches ma
tives on back streets. Through the
town runs Kartoffalallee, or Potato
Lane, bisecting the island through
garden patches of potatoes and cab
bage, through pasture spots where
Craze few sheep and goats, past
the red and white cone of the light
house, to the little cafe on the north
ern point where the Fog Cow
bellows warning every two minutes
when the mists swirl low.
The lower town, lacking horses
and vehicles of any sort, is not
without its own method of rapid
transit - namely, sliding down
banisters. Men of Helgoland have
been known to scorn the elevator
operating between the clifftop and
the downtown" level of the two
story town; they mount the iron
hand railing of the stairway along
the cliffs face and nonchalantly
oh10 OOWll w lllC 1OOI VI IIlS p1GC-
ipice. Here in the shelter of the
cliff, houses and shops cluster about
a knot of six-foot-wide concrete
streets.
Sun tan is the money crop of
Helgoland. This is raised chiefly at
the expense of summer visitors
basking on the fral half-moon of
barren beach of the Dune or Sand
Island, apparently melting into the
North sea mile southeast of the
main rock. Here has been located a
tiny graveyard for nameless bodies
washed up by the waves. AM
putated by a seaquake in 1720, the
Dune was previously joined to its
rocky home base by the tall White
Cliff of fine quality chalk, now visi-
BILE as a reef at low tide. Chalk
export, which occasionally attracted
as many as a hundred ships to Hell
goland's harbor at one time, grew
so great that it killed the chalk that
laid the golden egg; the White Cliff
caved in during a storm and turn-
bled into the sea.
Its People Are Frisians
Inhabited by Frisians, a rugged
race whom the Romans were proud
to call allies, Helgoland remained
independent of Europe's great
kingdoms for centuries, resisting in
vasions even of Christianity. In fact,
its lasting conservation to old Morse
gods, especially Forseti, god of JUS
tice, may mean that its name
developed from Heiligeland, of
Holy Land. Natives, however, call
their island simply Diet Lunn, The
Land. Although German is the Off
cial language, they speak a dialect
of Frisian, which resembles ancient
During the Middle Ages it was
theoretically controlled from the
duchy of Schleswig, the duke even
pawning it to Hamburg merchant,
but actually it was the irrepressi-
bic stronghold of those medic
val maritime racketeers-pirateS,
brigands, and beachcombers. The
Danes once got possession by
to hang all the men,
whom they had kidnapped while out
so that the women over
threw the small Schleswig garrison
and proclaimed Danish allegiance.
Thereafter, when improved water
transportation gave it greater con-
venience, it has been constantly in
demand and in use as a stepping
stone for larger countries.
1t was valuable smuggling head
quarters during the blockades of the
Napoleonic wars. Then England
sent seven ships to capture it, in
September, 1907, like ''plucking an
apple hanging over a neighbor's
WALL; Denmark finally relinquished
claims to it after seven years.
Helgoland was traded in 1890 to
Germany for Zanzibar, 5000 times
as large, and the exchange was
compared to an entire suit of
clothes sWapped for trouser but
ton. But the trouser button demon
strated that it could serve a purpose
OF vital Importance when it became
one of the worlds strongest fort
resses during the World war. Not
far away, on a misty morning in
August, 1914, occurred the first
serious naval clash of the war.
when British victory Uttered the
CLASSY smooth sea with wreckage.
Helgolanders acquired the habit
Of considering themselves fishermen
at the start of the Fifteenth century.
when a strange migration of her
ring brought them great harvests
Of fish for 200 years. An equally
strange emigration of their source
Of income left them catching only a
few Holsters.
Since the islands popularity as a
summer resort began in 1928 with
only hundred resorters, the Helgo-
Ianders derive their years income
from renting themselves out as
pilots and their homes as boarding
1OlSeS for the season of two Waakc