Young Explorers

Young Explorers Terry. "We found our water and shot our food, in a country people thought no vehicle could ever pass through. The blacks in that district live on snakes, kangaroos and grubs. If there is no rain, the animals die, and the natives die too."

Thus laconic Michael Terry, "world's youngest explorer" (aged 25), concerning the trek he and a companion made across the northern hinterland of Australia two years ago. Last week, he departed London for another journey to the antipodes, this time as special envoy of the Royal Geographical Society to report on the Great Australian Desert, still blank on the maps and inhabited by savage aborigines.

McGovern. Another young explorer is Dr. William Montgomery McGovern, now 26, who, in 1923, penetrated to Lhasa, sacred city of Bhuddism in Tibet, by traveling as his servant's servant at great personal discomfort. Dr. McGovern, an Anglo-American, was graduated by Christ's College, Oxford. Soon after (at 22), he adopted Buddhism and became a priest in that faith. An accomplished linguist, he lectured in the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London before his Lhasa trip. When he returned, wearing an apostolic beard and looking a man of 40, he hired a theatre in London and for weeks kept it filled with Britishers who thronged to see his cinemas, hear his story. Later, he toured the U. S.

Last week, Dr. McGovern gave out new plans for entering the Amazon River Valley this summer for anthropological study. He will remember to take a cinematographer, to jot notes on Indian modes and manners for lectures that should supplement the findings of Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice, who has been on the Amazonian scene these many years (TIME, May 11).