THE
Atlantic

JANUARY

Winter Travel and Resort
Supplement

CONTENTS

Mountains From the Sea • Superlative South America

• Florida • Bermuda • Nassau • California •

In Aztec Land • Polynesian Profile • American Spas

• Arizona Pueblo • Valley of the Sun •

New Ideas in Luggage • Plan Your Trip with Books

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Curaçao Harbor from Signal Hill.

# Mountains from the Sea

By George W. Seaton

Author of "What to See and Do in the South,"
"What to See and Do in Mexico," etc.

Perhaps even before there were any humans to make history, a great mountain range running north from South America to about the line of the Tropic of Cancer sank slowly beneath the sea, leaving only the tips of the peaks showing above the incredibly blue waters that cover most of their bulk. These peaks form the islands which we call the West Indies.

In all the world there are few regions of greater natural beauty or of greater human interest. For, although these islands all look alike on a map, each has an individuality of its own when visited. Just why that is I cannot imagine, for they are all of the same volcanic formation, all more or less examples of mountain scenery, all thickly populated by a few whites and a horde of blacks. I know only that it is so, even though it surprises me anew on each visit. Martinique is not a bit like Trinidad; Jamaica bears no resemblance to Puerto Rico; Curaçao is like nothing else on earth; islands within sight of each other vary in verdure, flowers, and language.

All too few people visit these dreamlike islands on our own doorstep, and at the moment even fewer than before are making one of the world's most fascinating trips. It is a pity, for the islands are just as easy to reach as they were before turmoil turned the world upside-down. It is true that most of the great foreign cruise ships have been withdrawn, but there are plenty of good American ships to take their places.

When I say "good" I mean exactly that. Some travelers, prejudiced against ships flying the American flag, prattle of the better food and service on boats of this or that other nation, convinced that they are proving their "sophistication" and great experience as travelers. All that they are proving is the contrary; if enough Americans try the splendid American ships plying the Caribbean waters today, they will help to spread the truth by the only sure process — by buying tickets on ships flying the American flag.

Now I do not mean to "knock" foreign ships. They were good, too, and they will be good again. All I am saying is that it is unnecessary to stay away from one of the world's high spots just because most of the superliners are carrying troops or are tied up in port.

Not only is it unnecessary to stay away; the traveler who goes to the West Indies now will have the advantage of enjoying them without the horde of tourists that crowd them in normal times. Instead of taking a sightseeing tour as one of a procession of a hundred cars, you will have the sense of being alone. Instead of finding every shop, restaurant, and bar crowded with the same people you have seen on your cruise ship, you will probably find your shipmates so scattered that to meet them you will have to make a definite appointment. You can shop in peace, eat a meal in quiet, relax over a drink, and really see the scenery without a familiar — sometimes all too familiar — face intruding between you and the view.

True, there are Americans around on most of the islands, but they are not tourist Americans, and consequently are busy at their tasks and out of the way when you want to sightsee and shop. But if you can get them talking in the evening you will have an experience that alone will make the trip to the West Indies worthwhile. For these are the men who are building the new air and naval bases for hemisphere defense, and many are the fascinating tales that each one has to tell.

These American bases are in themselves a point of immense interest. I am amazed at the ignorance of our public regarding the stupendous work being done at islands like Trinidad, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Antigua. It is worth a trip to Puerto Rico just to see the conversion of this island into the "Gibraltar of the Caribbean," a work which is not being allowed to spoil the ancient charm that makes a very cold-blooded guidebook call San Juan "a noble example of an old Spanish walled city."

Of the scenic interest there is little to say. Nothing is easier to write about and harder to read about than scenery. I could fill my permitted space ten times over with phrases like "where a fronded palm bowed toward silver sands" (that means a cocoanut palm leaned over a beach!), and when I got through I might have satisfied my yen for verbiage more lush than any herbage ever was, but a photograph would still give you a better idea of how it looked. So please glance at the photo-

34

The Old White, predecessor of the
Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs.

Above — The Homestead, Hot Springs.

Below — Glen Springs, Watkin's Glen.

your steam bath in a tiled room fitted with the most modern therapeutic equipment, or take it in a natural steam cave with no more complicated equipment than a nice warm stone to sit upon, as at Glenwood Hot Springs in Colorado, the only known natural rock caverns exhaling mineral vapors. And you have a choice of every mineral water and mud known to this planet.

Less than a thousand of our 8,000 mineral springs have been analyzed, either by government or state geologists, or by local physicians. Although we have hardly begun to evaluate the wealth of mineral waters Nature bequeathed to us, or to exploit them as the French and Germans have theirs for centuries, we find that we have counterparts of many of the great European waters.

Montana's waters in analysis closely resemble those of Prussia's famed Apollinaris Spring; Ozone Springs in Louisiana has waters similar to Vichy's Grande Grille; and California's Byron Hot Springs has a mineralized mud similar to the expensive "moor soil" which made Carlsbad famous. Poland Springs, French Lick, and Virginia Hot Springs have radio-active waters, and Mount Clemens in Michigan has waters comparable to Bavaria's Achel-Maunstein.

Then too, we have some of the biggest, hottest, and saltiest springs in the world. Big Horn Hot Springs in Wyoming has the largest warm spring in existence, a whole lake. A little upstate New York spring contains the only free sulphuric acid to be found in the entire world. And at Green Springs in Ohio is the biggest iron spring known, 200,000 gallons gushing daily from a deep fissure in a rock.

Balneotherapy (curing maladies by use of mineral waters) is a hard word to pronounce. But that was the origin of several of our smartest resorts whose pedigrees go back more than a century. Today, for example, the eastern socialite celebrates the holidays in the ballrooms of White Sulphur's Greenbrier and Virginia Hot Springs' Homestead, which look like vast château properties to guests arriving in planes at the resorts' private airports.

In the old days, instead of airports they had sumptuous stables, and belles and dandies arrived in dashing "cannon-ball" coaches that thundered over the turnpikes behind six racing horses. Retinues of servants and strings of bloodied saddle mares followed. In *The Springs of Virginia*, published by the University of North Carolina Press, Perceval Reniers describes this atmosphere of expansive living which was the stamp of the wealthy Southern planter.

There were brilliant dances at the Virginia spas before the Civil War, and champagne picnics in surrounding woodlands — *fêtes galantes* of Watteau come to life. Post-Civil-War poverty sobored them for a while, and then, at the end of the century, they saw a renaissance when a million dollar investment began a new era for Virginia Hot Springs, rechristened The Homestead.

To choose between these two Allegheny spas would require the judgment of a Paris; to the unprejudiced newcomer they both represent the ultimate in gracious living. Homestead "loyalists" like its conservative atmosphere and the feeling it gives that, although there is plenty of social life going on, you don't have to participate in it if you don't wish. The luxury of The Homestead is the luxury of simplicity. People wanting rest and quiet go here with their families, and there's a variety of diversions to satisfy every taste — riding, tennis, skeet-shooting, badminton, swimming, and golf. With all this, The Homestead is not, as some misguided ones think, a place only for the wealthy.

Both The Homestead and The Greenbrier have a special winter rate for a two weeks' stay which includes the baths and treatments for which these spas are famous. Here today, despite the most modern medical facilities, there is no con-

valent atmosphere, for smart Americans have long since learned that you don't have to be ailing to go to a spa. The beautiful living, reminiscent of the southern traditions that build these Allegheny spas, still continues, and their many sports and attractions are advantages their latter-day patrons enjoy over those of a hundred years ago.

Another special winter cure rate has been announced by The Glen Springs at Watkins Glen, New York, the northern resort which was a favorite in the Gay Nineties and is still one of those havens where easterners go to quiet the jangling nerves with baths and salt rubs and a bit of easy golf on the links overlooking Seneca Lake. Besides its excellent spa equipment, The Glen Springs has always been famous for its good food — dairy products, poultry and vegetables, all supplied from its own farms.

The influence of the southern planter and his expansive way of life can still be felt in a few of the northern spas — especially at Saratoga Springs, which gave its name to the old Allegheny trunk that had space under its rounded lid for the huge cardamoms that were carried those days. Saratoga chips, progenitors of our own, are now being made also from those early days — gay, inventive days when everything from a café-table delicacy to a new healthful way of recreation was introduced — days recalled by Edna Ferber in her newest book, *Saratoga Trunk*.

The last output of the mauve decade as you move toward the western mineral springs is French Lick in Indiana, which draws its clientele largely from the east and midwest. The hotel is vast and luxurious, and the grounds have the combed and tended look of a French bois. Always the favored spa of politicians and conventions, French Lick draws as well devotees who go there year in and year out for the famous Pluto Spring water and healthful mineral baths. Located near Louisville, it is especially popular during Derby week, and bird-lovers, without a trace of kidney trouble, return there because of its numerous wood thrushes which flourish on peanuts that the hotel obligingly sells to its guests.

Southward and to the west are Arkansas Hot Springs, which lures big league baseball teams to enjoy workouts and conditioning unnoticed in a spa that has acres of bath houses and accommodations for 25,000 people. We're all part owners of Arkansas Hot Springs, for it was set aside in 1832 as our first national park.

In the Southwest, the mineral springs are mostly at the wooden-tub stage of development, comparable to White Sulphur in 1800, when its spa equipment was a hollowed-out tree trunk in a log cabin. New Mexico's "medicine waters" are nevertheless older than the Allegheny spas. Though there was no hotel register for the first paint-daubed Indians to sign, they left calling cards legible to archaeologists—flints, stone axes, and potsherdss. Mabel Luhan wrote of a mineral spring atop a mesa 7,000 feet high near Taos, where she took D. H. Lawrence for a swim. And there's a cliff dweller's "spa" at Jemez Hot Springs, not far off the main highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, with a soda dam bearded and crusted with mineral deposit which has not added more than two stalagmite whistkers since the first savages saw it. The canyon walls around Jemez are pitted with caves where the mysterious forebears of the Pueblo Indians took their cures, and where nowadays duudes from Rancho Real go on pack trips.

The Pacific coast spring resorts, from San Diego all the way up to British Columbia, run the gamut from a cosy little sulphur pool on a dude ranch to such luxury spas as Arrowhead in the foothill orange groves of Southern California. Nature endowed Arrowhead handsomely with arsenic springs comparable to France's celebrated La Bourbole, with natural steam caves that provide Turkish baths de luxe, and

35

FALL BOOKS
FROM CHAPEL HILL

## THE SPRINGS OF VIRGINIA

### LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH AT THE WATERS

BY PERCEVAL RENIERS. A fascinating saga of the South's fashionable watering places, in their heyday long before the automobile. Here are the beaux and belles of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, and their Colonial predecessors, including Washington and Jefferson, both ardent Bath-ires! 29 contemporary illustrations, 7 in full color. Endpaper maps. $10 pages, $4.00

## THROUGH THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE

BY KAJ KLITGAARD. A former sea captain, one of the country's leading teachers of painting, tours America in an open-top Ford from the Hudson Valley to California, looking both at paintings and at the America which our painters are recording. The result is delightful and informal—totally new kinds of travel-art criticism. Illustrated with many reproductions of paintings—8 in full color, 33 in black and white—by Bohrod, Mattson, Curry, Dehn, Benton and others. 375 pages, $3.50

The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

## A "HEALTH VACATION" AT THE HOMESTEAD SPA

### VIRGINIA HOT SPRINGS

Famous for Southern Service

14 Day Rate of $150 Includes

Medical Supervision

Spa Baths and Massage

Exercise in Zander Room and Other

Physical Therapy as prescribed

Use of Tile Swimming Pool

Luxurious Room with Bath

Homestead Meals

● The Homestead Spa urges you to discuss Spa treatments with your own physician. For booklets, etc., address The Homestead Hot Springs, V. 2, or its New York office in the Waldorf-Pullmans nightly from principal Eastern cities.

40

Plan Your Trip With Books

FARTHEST REACH

by Nancy Wilson Ross

$3.50

KNOPF

The recently history-conscious Pacific Northwest is still pioneering, and since it represents the last geographic reach of the American continent, the graph which shows it growth, setbacks and final achievement is as significant as the flowering and decline of New England. An inviting and exciting book.

WINTER IN VERMONT

by Charles Edward Crane

$3.50

KNOPF

In turning the seasonal dial to winter, the author presents all the exhilaration in word and picture of the snow blessing in Vermont. It is fun to read about, but the best fun is to go right out to the source of emphasis, book in hand, to see if the author has missed anything. We think not.

PATTERN OF MEXICO

by Clifford Gessler and E. H. Suydam

$5.00

APPLETON

In this beautiful and informative book about the fabled land of Mexico, Mr. Gessler furnishes a brief sketch of colorful history, principal approaches from the U. S. and a valuable index of practical considerations for the tourist. E. H. Suydam's feather-touch illustrations give lasting expression to many of Mexico's most memorable scenes.

GHOST TOWN

by G. Ezra Dane

$3.50

KNOPF

American ghosts still haunt California's Gold Rush towns. Here are the forty-niners in their original vernacular and setting, with all their robust spirit.

WITHIN THE SOUND OF THESE WAVES

by William H. Chickering

$3.00

HARCOURT, BRACE

This is the story of old Hawaii, combining early legends and a history of the first kings down to the first comprehensive description of Captain Cook's death. The Fabulous Land has inspired a book, based on fact, but possessing the true timelessness of a fairy tale.

THE SPRINGS OF VIRGINIA

by Perceval Reniers

$4.00

CHAPEL HILL

An elegant and timely treatment of the once-fashionable spas of Virginia, to which everybody who was anybody went for reasons political, medicinal or social. The grace of the author's subject is enhanced by contemporary prints and watercolors. A thoroughly enjoyable book.

BRAZIL

by Stefan Zweig

$3.00

VIKING

Brazil, the land of the future, shows courage and generosity in all the modern things, with all the traces of a well-preserved ancient culture. The author's enthusiasm for this new, incredibly vast country, whose desires are aimed exclusively at pacific development, is quite infectious.

VERMONT IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

by Keith Jennison

$2.50

HARCOURT, BRACE

This is a thumb-through-and-keep book. A camera text, illustrated by colloquialisms, makes a lovable book about the hard-headed, speech-conservative, lovable Vermonters.

by Kaj Klitgaard

$3.50

CHAPEL HILL

Tour the States in color, along the trail of the American artist. Appreciate variegated American scenes as the inspirational environment of Hogue, Lockwood, Benton, Curry and many others. This delightful travel-diary is not mere art appreciation, for from it emerges the essential largeness of the American spirit.

WHAT TO SEE AND DO IN THE SOUTH

by George W. Seaton

$3.00

PRENTICE HALL

The roads are good; the time has come. Mr. Seaton will personally introduce you to all the pleasures and excitements of travel in the South. The new romance of bustling cities, the old romance of historical plantations blend into a well-nigh irresistible invitation.

SHORT GRASS COUNTRY

by Stanley Vestal

$3.00

DUELL, SLOAN & PEARCE

This is the third volume in the American Folkways Series. Over the short grass rolled prairie schooners, bull trains, pack mules, "windwagons" — and the pony express. Meet the valiant men and women who gave Oklahoma a history and flavor of its own.

BLOODY GROUND

by John F. Day

$3.00

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN

Birth, marriage, death — every phase of the life of Kentucky mountaineers has been shaded by poverty and isolation. They read no Greek, they live by the will of God — and they still distill. What to do about these people? The author seeks an answer to this typically American riddle.

THE PAGEANT OF SOUTH AMERICAN HISTORY

by Anne Merriman Peck

$3.00

LONGMANS-GREEN

The cultural and historical structure of South America is well presented. Accurate information in glowing terms of the progress from the ancient civilizations, through the gaudy medieval Spanish conquest, to modern concepts and reforms.

FORGOTTEN WATERS

by Randolph Leigh

$3.50

LIPPINCOTT

Far to the northwest of the main route of the Conquistadores, twice found and twice forgotten, the Gulf of California is the heart of one of the wildest and richest regions in the whole fabulous span of Spanish glory. Pursuing adventure, the author finds a treasure of travel.