All Over Asia

One sharp dawn early last spring, seven clumsy, curious motor cars lumbered out of Beirut, Syria, while camels yawned. Big-nosed Levantine chauffeurs behind the wheels of sleek limousines laughed derisively as they whizzed past this caravan plodding East. Soon the caravan left the road and struck out into the desert, where limousines could not go. ...

This French expedition, backed by Motorman Andre Citroen, led by Explorer Georges-Marie Haardt, was headed for Peiping, China, 8,000 miles away. Before it lay deserts, wastelands, mountains no motor car, few men, had ever climbed. That was why, instead of rear wheels, the cars had tractor bands, why a heavy tanklike arrangement with auxiliary bands was mounted between the front wheels. On the expedition were a dozen men, including one American, the National Geographic Society's Dr. Maynard Owen Williams. For their use & comfort the cars carried stationery, typewriters, archives, maps, books, artists' materials, guns, ammunition, field glasses, compasses, sound picture equipment, botanical, taxidermy, archaeological, meteorological and geological supplies & equipment, wireless sets, a kitchen, an electric power plant, suitcases, shoe boxes, beds, tents, washstands, folding chairs, three-legged stools and a shower bath & water closet. For such a jaunt there must be comfort.

Through Damascus, Baghdad, Teheran, Kabul, 3.445 miles across Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan and northern India to Srinagar, Kashmir, the caravan plodded, while news of its progress was wirelessed to Beirut and thence to Europe and America. Now came the hardest part of the trip, for barring the way into Eastern Turkestan stretched the vast Karakoram Range of the Himalayas. North of Srinagar loomed massive mountains with scarcely a trail across them. Leader Haardt left five of his cars in Srinagar, started up the steep slopes of the Himalayas with the lightest two. Steadily they climbed, up 35DEG inclines, along narrow ledges, over slippery boulders. The snow was waist-deep, the cold bitter. On one trail a ledge gave way, the leading car hung suspended bridge-like over a deep gorge. Cables extricated it. Over Tragbal Pass, 11.560 feet high, the two cars struggled, then across Burzil Pass, 13,775 feet up. Weeks of snail-like progress brought them to Gilgit, 150 miles northwest of Srinagar. Leader Haardt considered the higher mountains before him, decided the two cars never would get over them. On 200 yaks and ponies the party went on, leaving the cars in Gilgit--first wheeled vehicles ever to reach that mountain outpost. Across the Himalayas, at Kashgar, Chinese Turkestan, almost in mid-Asia, the Haardt party was to be met by seven other cars which had left Peiping when the first party left Beirut. The party from Peiping, too, had encountered difficulties. Lieutenant Commander Victor Point was in charge. In the Gobi Desert two Chinese deserted the expedition, charged Commander Point had assaulted them. At Urumchi, in Chinese Turkestan, officials halted the party, held three of the cars there. With them was Vladimir Petropavlosky, Russian member of the expedition, who remained a prisoner for three months until he escaped in an automobile. The other four cars went on to Aksu, where they were again stopped. There they waited until Leader Haardt and his men rode up on yakback. Soon Explorer Petropavlosky turned up too, after having drunk all the water in his automobile. Then, with the entire expedition, they turned back, headed once more due East for Peiping.

Last week, tired and jaded, Explorer Haardt and his 27 men had done with mountains, deserts and bandits for a while. Last obstacle had been the theft by Mongolian bandits of tractor bands for the cars. On worn bands the cars carried the party to clean clothes, bath tubs, decorations* and a good long rest. But for intrepid Explorer Petropavlosky, Peiping meant a bride. He had met Miss Barbara Rose Schurman while her father, Cornell's Jacob Gould Schurman, was Minister to China, but to marry her he had waited until the completion of the expedition, for which the explorers were preparing for three years.

--To Leader Haardt the ribbon of a com-mander of the Lesion d'Honneur; to Explorer Williams a chevalier's ribbon.

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