Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1938-05-10
GARDENS Of EDEN
CALLED THE BUNK
There's Nothing to Do on
Them, Say Boys After
World Cruise.
Special Dispatch to The Star.

NEW 1OLA, May ~ MAN "A. -
After Is months Of sailing around the
world in Capt. Irving Johnson's o.
foot schooner yacht Yankee-out Of
Gloucester, bound for Gloucester
young David Donovan, son of Col.
William wild Bill Donovan, Wall
Street lawyer and prominent Repub-
lican, gathered here today with his
shipmate, Alan Zurich of Youngs-
town, Ohio, to tell about the trip
and about how they had made up
their minds that the worlds various
Gardens Of Eden were the bunk.
They found these Gardens of Eden
in the tabled South Seas, and their
memories of them are mixed up with
memories Of a cannibal who offered
them the partly boiled leg of a child
for lunch, bull elephant that GAL
lantly offered battle to their airplane
to defend his herd, power plant
which burns coconut shells for fuel,
primitive tribal villages with streets
OF cobble stone. war dances by alb
origines dressed in what resembled
medieval coats of armor. Pitcairn
Island. Easter Island, Zanzibar, Tahiti
and getting into the movies as back
ground for the picture, Hurricane"
The trouble with those paradises,"
said David. lis that there's nothing
to do on them"
Are Very Restless.
1t was suggested that most people
regarded having nothing to do except
reach up and pluck riches off a tree
as the first essential of a paradise.
We'll, II they get a taste Of it they'll
change their minds" he replied Il
know that all the young men on Pit
cairn Island are very restless and
want to get out into the world where
there's something to do
With something to do as a critic
rion, the two young men agreed that
what their trip around the world had
taught them was that America was
the best place in the world in which to
live
Present as they talked were Mrs
William Donovan. mother of David
and her energetic and pretty daughter,
=
planned with the scorn that can come
to man when he's had two years of
Harvard under his belt, were prac-
tically ringers on the voyage They
shipped on at Bali. when the cruise
was 10 months under way, and thus
had only eight months Of it. They
therefore remained dutifully silent for
long stretches.
Queer Kind Of Main Street.
Mrs. Donovan. however, did man
age to tell about the Island of Mas,
in the Indian Ocean of the coast of
Sumatra. Every time some one gets
married" she explained, they set a
stone into the street And now they
have a regular paved street. in some
villages 4 quarter of a mile long. The
houses are built on either side and it
looks like a queer kind of main street.
although. OF course, they don't have
any such things as wagons or wheels
or lights"
The cannibal and head hunters were
met in the New Hebrides and Solomon
Islands. Not, Alan explained, without
some difficulty We had to attract
their attention by exploding a bomb.
After that. they came trooping down
to the ship to find out what all the
shooting was about. They led us to
their village for swap-fest We talked
pidgin English to them I wanted. as a
souvenir, the long tusk OF wild pig
and asked for long pigs tusk. Very
cordially. they got out this partly
boiled leg of a child and offered it to
me. 1t seems the word for human
meat is long pig"
At Easter Island. they pondered the
problem Of the stone statues, without.
they admitted. beating the world to a
solution. There are well over 400 of
Them said David. They look like
death masks Of men with sloping noses
and thin lips. They were cut with
chisels Of stone out OF igneous rock
found on the only mountain on the is
land. One We measured was 40 feet
tall. Some OF them have been moved
az much as l8 miles without any
known means of transportation.
Remains Secret.
There are no trees on the island
which might have been cut down and
used as rollers. Why they were built,
why some were abandoned unfinished.
with the stone chisels just thrown
down. who built them and what hap
pened to the man who did-nobody
knows and, no doubt, nobody ever will
know"
At Tahiti they met James Nordhoff
and Norman Hall, the authors, in
spected their thatched-roofed homes,
complete with modern plumbing and
electric lights and their private beach
OF black sand. In Komodo they saw
dragon lizards and in Portuguese East
Africa flew low over a herd of ele-
plants, sending them into a panic
and causing the bull of the herd to
rear his trunk and prepare-patheti-
cally enough-to pit his might against
the strange bird whose war cry was
. drone that filled the air,
African buffalo, wildebeeste, coats
OF rhinoceros skin, fish poisoning of
Pitcairn, three weeks in Singapore,
Mangareva Island, the half-breed
Polynesians who. finding nothing else,
tried to steal the Delaying pins of the
ship. jungles, strange cities, palm trees
waving over miles Of glittering beach
what was it about the trip they
liked best?
The sea and sailing" the two