Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 199: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ask Adventure as you have shown me. The principal reason is the very often seen white shark of those waters; his teeth would not know they were ripping canvas or boat ribs. This gets to be thirty-five feet long and weighs two thousand pounds. He is called white, but he is really gray in color on the back, although white enough underneath. His head is large, and when he opens his mouth, to speak mildly, it is enormous. His body is stout, and his teeth are the most perfect ripping-apparatus that a human being ever looked at, and he can snap a man’s body in two pieces at a single bite. This fellow is the true man-eating shark, and in some cases when he has been cut open a bull’s head with horns complete has been found in his stomach. This will follow you day and night after you have thrown over your first garbage; you will see that triangular fin just above the surface until it gets on your nerves. We got one on a big hook with a piece of salt pork and hoisted him on to the deckload of lumber on a schooner, and his odor was so bad that he was got overboard, giving him the hook and twenty feet of line as a present, and the deckload smelled to high heaven of him until I was able to get on to land, and even then the thought of that smell imterfered with my meals for ten days. This gentleman (?) has a very keen sense of smell, and will follow his hoped-for prey untiringly. As to your rig; it is complete and fine in every way with the exception that with an outrigger added you could not be tipped over; which same I would think, was worth taking into serious consid- eration. Safety first! INOW answering your questions in order: 1. At the port of Corinto you take train for Managua and stop over at Leon, which city is larger than Managua (the capital). 2. Lake Nicaragua is 92 miles long by 34 miles wide. Lake Managua, not far distant, is 32 miles long and 16 miles wide, and the two lakes are con- nected by the river Tipitapa. Both lakes are same level, being 135 feet elevation above sea-level, so you will find no obstruction to your trip; and as I am much interested in this trip, you might write me the sensations pervading your system when you pass through the Tipitapa River. 3. Steamers ply that river; it is part of the much hoped-for Nicaragua Canal so much yearned for by the inhabitants of that country. This route for a canal would utilize Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River, which as you can see by map, flows east from the lake to the Caribbean Sea. Get a Rand, McNally’s Pocket Map of Central America. 4. The only navigable river of Guatemala is Rio Dulce, and only for launches and small craft. 5. Enclosed you will find some of Edgar Young’s monographs, and others, which you will enjoy read- ing. 6. Ask Captain Dingle, care of Adventure; he knows all the currents, winds, depths, etc., of the oceans. You mention “hair-brained cruise,” and I cer- tainly agree with you on the special name you have given it. If you don’t want an answer enough to enclose FULL return postage to carry it, you don’t want it. 189 The Greely Expedition OURCE-BOOKS dealing with the work of a group of Arctic explorers who made history: Question: —“Please will you give me information where I can get a book about the Greely Expedition in 1881-83. My uncle, Nick Saler, was a member of this expedition. I am over here in U. S. A. only three years now and I’d like to know more about this. All I know is what my mother told me, that one of my uncles was in the U. S. Army and went tojthe North Pole but never came back.””—ConsTANT ScHMIT, [ron Mountain, Mich. Answer, by Mr. Shaw:—There are two books which give the data you want. One is that pub- lished by Gen. Adolphus W. Greely himself, called, ‘Three Years of Arctic Service;” the other, by Ad- miral Schley, is “Rescue of Greely.” I was with the Peary Exp. of 1899, and we visited Cape Sabine and Cocked Hat Island, where the Greely party were found and rescued by Schley in the Thetis. No one had been there meanwhile un- til we arrived, and we found things in practically the same shape as when left some seventeen years previous. I do not recall the list of the members of Greely’s party but think there were about thirty-six, and seven were saved: Brainard, Beiderbick, Long, Greely himself and, I think, Lockwood and two others. I knew Long and Beiderbick well in New York, where we were all members of the Arctic Club, and had more or less correspondence with Gen. Greely, head of the Government Bureau of Mete- orology. Schley’s account of the rescue gives the names of the party and details of the voyage of the Thetis; Greely’s book of course gives intimate details of the expedition, with account of the two years at Fort Conger, his headquarters about two hundred miles north of Cape Sabine, in Robeson Channel. You can get these books at any good public li- brary, or probably of Brentano’s book-store, New York City. Get your local book-store to write to Brentano’s, if it doesn’t keep them. They may be out of print, in which case you’d have to comb the second-hand book-stores. But you can find copies in public libraries without doubt. Tahiti and Moorea [NCOMPARABLE islands; and lidless: Question: —“I have had twenty years of railroad work and am tired of it, and thought a year spent down in the South Sea Islands would do me good; and if I like it well enough there and can place my money to advantage I might remain longer. My capital is small—$5,000—but large enough for a start if placed in a safe, sensible investment to yield a moderate income sufficient to get by on. It occurred to me that a man of your experience could give me some good advice. If you think I should give up the idea and stick to railroad work, don’t hesitate to say so. Hard, plain talk is what I like. Which of the islands do you like best, and why? What are the chief characteristics of the whites and natives? Do North Americans grow tired of COMmiclbooks