Expeditions

Sir George Hubert Wilkins, lacking his hat as he usually does in springtime, strode into an obscure store of lower Manhattan last week. The store is only locally obscure. Among explorers it is world famed. The sign outside carries the legend: Fiala Outfits. That is sufficient. Anthony Fiala, 61. is the foremost U. S. outfitter of expeditions. Originally a lithographer and photographer, he sidled into the outfitting business after twice trying to reach the North Pole--with the Baldwin-Ziegler (1901-02) and the Ziegler (1903-05) expeditions. He accompanied Roosevelt through Brazil in 1913-14. Explorer Wilkins found Outfitter Fiala sitting back of a glass partition at the store's rear. The proprietor was not busy. He rarely is these days. The exploring business is at low ebb. And that is strange. Heretofore during business depressions idling executives and fortune seekers have packed off to far wildernesses. But not this year. They visit Mr. Fiala, gossip wistfully a while, then go mooning home. He has perforce reduced his advertising. The exploring business this season is mainly professional. Mr. Fiala's big customers are the Wilkins and Williams expeditions into the Arctic, the Dickey expedition through the Orinoco country. A goodly number of U. S. amateurs, notably Artist Rockwell Kent, are heading for convenient subArctic regions. For the effete, the Soviet Government has organized a tour this summer aboard the icebreaker Maligin from Archangel to Franz Josef Land and Nova Zembla. When the Maligin reaches its "top," above 83DEG N. Latitude, ambitious tourists may make a short airplane flight towards the North Pole. The minute last week that hatless Explorer Wilkins had finished his rapid queries concerning stores for his Arctic-going submarine and had strode from the shop, Outfitter Fiala clapped on his hat and started on a minor expedition of his own. He lives in the far reaches of Brooklyn. Wending his way afoot to that remote region, he habitually guides himself by the stars. Arctica, Sir George Hubert Wilkins expects to take his submarine Nautilus to the North Pole this summer. Dr. Hugo Eckener may meet him there with the dirigible Graf Zeppelin. If those tours de force come to pass, the world may acquire important stores of meteorological data. Both men want to add to man's knowledge of weather. The Maligin tour is also primarily a weather hunting trip. Indeed the main purpose of every serious current Arctic expedition is to record weather conditions. Both the British and the Germans have had parties on the Greenland ice cap all winter. The German leader. Professor Alfred Wegener, is now considered dead (TIME, May 18). The isolated British watcher, Augustine Courtauld, feared dead, was reported safe last fortnight. Packing up in Manhattan is the Williams American Polar Expedition, under Flavel Manley Williams, retired Navy officer. The Williams party will go to northern Greenland where they will set up a strong radio station. The station will collect and relay weather reports of the 1932-33 Polar Year, observations to which official expeditions from all the northern nations will contribute. Artist Rockwell Kent will be at southern Greenland, more for solitude than for science. David Binney Putnam, 18, as soon as school term ends will go on the Johalla to Labrador and Iceland in order to write another "David Goes" book. Commander Donald Baxter MacMillan will make his annual skirt of Labrador and Baffin Land, this time with a flotilla of three boats. Antarctica. A tourist trip to Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd's Little America last Antarctic summer was abandoned, may occur next December. Last season Consul Lars Christensen, Norwegian whaling tycoon, steamed completely around the Antarctic Continent, looking out for whale feeding grounds and spotting a few landmarks. Sir Douglas Mawson, the Australian, spotted a few more. Africa-- On Jan. 27, 1863 the late David Livingstone took a sheet of blue foolscap* and wrote to "His Excellency the Governor of the Cape" a report on trade and slavery. The old letter was found this Spring. It reads in part: "Marianno was a guest last year at the Governor's [of Quelimane] table after undergoing punishment for some 40 murders and attacking the village of Senna. He then ran away and the Governor ran after him, and, of course, could not catch him. "Another, and yet another, turned slave hunter. Indeed, any one may do so who has a few slaves and guns. No notice is taken of him till he has plundered enough to stand a good squeeze. He is fined and then allowed to begin again. "This system, carried on from Cape Delgado to Delagoa Bay, completely neutralizes all the efforts of our citizens. On the West Coast the squadron kept down slaving till the influences of civilization and Christianity spread inland. Twenty missions have been established and 20 dialects have been reduced to writing. Over 12,000 communicants sit down in various churches. And lawful commerce has increased from -L-20,000 to between -L-2,000,000 and -L-3,000,000." In the Belgian Congo Dr. Arthur Torranee, Los Angeles wanderer, is now seeking a tribe of black hermaphrodites. Near Lake Chad Herbert Edwin Bradley and Harry Augustus Bigelow, Chicago lawyers, are trying to accumulate a sideshow for Chicago's 1933 Exposition--a village of pygmies. (Next week TIME will report the progress of other expeditions, coming & going.)

* Real British foolscap, 13 1/2 x 17 in., is so-called because the watermark is a fool's cap & jells. U. S. foolscap measures 13 x 16 in., the same as legal cap.

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