finally got into the air and sped southeast along the coast.

Minatitlán, on the Coatzacoalcos River, 20 miles from Puerto Mexico, where the British have developed an extensive oil enterprise, was our direct objective. Here we landed on the river and tied to an oil company's wharf. The New Year's holiday spent there with our English friends a regular, rousing hands-acrossthe-sea sort of party-remains one of the happiest memories of our eventful voyage.

A bumpy New Year's Day ride in the skies carried us across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from Minatitlán to Salina Cruz, on the Pacific coast. Borne by a howling gale, we made that 150-mile hop in 75 minutes flat, including the climb south of Mount Zempoaltepec, more than 11,000 feet high!

With the wind twisting our tails, we raced over swamps, jungles, and mountains. As we approached the heights, the velocity of the wind became terrific. As it swept around mountain peaks, we had to fight our controls every second. One moment an air wave would strike one wing and almost capsize the plane; the next moment another would strike the en

tire machine and it would skyrocket for several hundred feet; then a descending current would grab us and hurl us earthward.

With these angry wind gods we struggled all the way to Salina Cruz. Here, with rare luck, we managed to land behind a breakwater and get upon the windswept beach, where we made anchors for our tugging planes by burying railroad ties in the sand.

Salina Cruz itself, western terminus of the Transisthmian Railway, lies among bare brown hills that tumble down to sea. Long ago much of the land in this vicinity was granted to Cortez by the King of Spain, and it is said his descendants held it until within very recent years. I heard that the cross of Santiago, used as a cattle brand in the early days of Spanish rule, is still employed as a branding iron on the big haciendas of this Tehuantepec country.

For years American and European engineers talked of Salina Cruz as the possible western terminus of a ship railway across Tehuantepec. The Panama Canal, of course, marked the end of any such plan.

Now, to me, the busiest thing thereabout is the whirlwind. It seems to twist forever around those bare, empty hills. The sand it carries stung our faces like fine shot. Powdered sand got into our planes, our fountain pens, our watch cases. With eyes and mouths full of Salina Cruz sand, we were glad to get into the air next morning. But we don't know yet how we did it, for a 50-mile offshore gale was blowing, and the only possible way to start was by taking off from the rough, open sea. Tossed like corks from wave to wave, we finally jumped off, one after another, and headed for Guatemala. VOLCANOES GUIDE FLYERS IN GUATEMALA

Bucking a heavy offshore gale, we "crabbed" it slowly southeast over the long, almost straight, sandy Chiapas beach line, paralleled by jungles and lagoons.

Past the little ports of San Benito, Ocos, and Champérico we flew, and soon were circling over San José, chief seaport of Guatemala and Pacific terminus of the American-built railway which ties Guatemala City to the Pacific. Turning inland at San José and flying now almost northeast for the capital, we crossed over a section of what will some day be part of the long-talked-of Pan American Railway-a line to link up the Americas as the Cape-to-Cairo line plans to link Egypt with South Africa.

Guided by a giant smoke plume, puffed up from Fuego, hard by extinct Agua and Pacaya, triplet peaks of these earthquaky hills, we soon flew the 75 miles from the sea to Guatemala City and landed there at 5.000 feet.

To the President of Guatemala, who received us at the landing field, we presented an official letter of greeting from the President of the United States. This city, one of the most charming of Central American capitals, extended us the warmest hospitality.*

But Guatemala came near marking the end of the flight for Whitehead and me. As the fleet, heavily loaded with gas, took off in a wind, it was difficult at this elevation to clear certain obstacles bordering the flying field. "Trees in front of my

*See, also, "Guatemala: Land of Volcanoes and Progress," in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for November, 1926.

rising plane seemed to grow at the rate of 50 feet a second," one of our flyers afterward said. My own plane, the New York, developed a miss in the motor just after getting into the air. To avoid smashing into an old stone aqueduct, we shut off the gas and squatted in a cornfield, breaking our landing gear and damaging our hull Seeing us in trouble, the other planes came back.

After repairs, the New York, with the aid of the Guatemalan Government and kindly railroad officials, was hauled to near-by Lake Amatitlán, where once again we saw the advantage of flying an amphibian. Though too heavy, when fully loaded, to clear safely the obstacles about the small flying field, the flagship rose readily from the lake.

Amatitlán is as blue and beautiful as the lakes of Switzerland. Boiling springs near its shores hint at Nature's terrestrial unrest in that region. To these hot springs local washerwomen bring their laundry work. It saves fuel.

Safe and sound here at home, we Americans think little of volcanoes; but in our flight down Central America we saw plenty of evidence that the volcano business is still active. On the way to San Salvador we passed one mountain whose whole huge side had been completely blown away-a disaster which a few years ago destroyed fields, forests, and villages. And there was Izalco, so exact in its explosions that it might well serve as a master timepiece in this part of the world. Every 20 minutes it belches forth a great column of smoke and steam, serving as a beacon for ships as far out as 60 miles at sea (see page 455).

INTO A LAND OF STONE IDOLS AND
BANANAS

From Lake Ilopango, on which we rested during our pleasant visit at San Salvador, we hopped off for Amapala. Honduras, on the Gulf of Fonseca. Here a native army band played lively music for us, as we hauled our planes out on the beach of this tiny but happy land of bananas, stone idols, and giant mahogany trees (see illustration, page 454).

As the landing field at Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, is too small to accommodate heavy amphibians, we left our

ships at Amapala and motored inland, over hairpin turns and around dizzy slopes. In honor to the friendly nation we represented, the Honduran Congress adjourned during our visit.

Loath as we were to leave this pretty, peaceful, and railroadless mountain capital, rigid adherence to schedule called us quickly back to our waiting planes, and from Amapala we took the air for Nicaragua, flying over the extinct volcano of Coseguina. Twice I circled its fire-baked, rough old rim and saw my plane's shadow sweep over the lake of robin's-egg blue that lies in its crater.

Far ahead of us, rising from the crater cf Momotombo, a thin column of smoke, acting as a weather vane, showed us the wind's direction, as we flew for Lake Managua. Here we landed, opposite the capital city of Nicaragua. Quickly anchored, we called on the president of this restless republic, exchanged official greetings, and were off.

Flying southeast, we soon were crossing that large inland body of water called Lake Nicaragua. Our destination was the Gulf of Nicoya, whose stormswept shores are lined with shipwrecks. We realized that we were facing difficulties, as we approached these notoriously turbulent waters. And Nicoya did not belie its reputation. Until we finally succeeded in making a landing at Puntarenas, on this stormy gulf, we had not had time to see the big blisters worn on our hands through hard gripping of the controls.

"POKING OUR NOSES" TOWARD EQUATOR Cacao, coconuts, and coffee piled up at Costa Rica's busy port of Puntarenas, known to deep-water sailors for its hardblowing chubascos, reminded us we were well into tropic lands.* A short trip up to San José, the capital city, more official calls, and again we poked our buzzing noses toward the Equator.

Painted against the high green hills of Costa Rica, flocks of rainbows, formed by sun rays against mountain showers, followed us on our flight. In a dead calm we struck the low, green-timbered hills of Panama, habitat of the timid tapir and

* See, also, "Costa Rica, Land of the Banana," by Paul B. Popenoe, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for February, 1922.

the sleepy sloth. As we floated peacefully toward the Canal, I wrote letters home as comfortably as in the writing room of an ocean liner.

Then 27 U. S. Army planes, from France Field, on the Zone, came out to meet us. Waving a greeting from the air, they pulled into formation and escorted us to the landing.

WE STOP FOR MAIL IN PANAMA

Five motor trucks full of letters awaited us here. Our first duty of course, was to overhaul our planes for the long, hard grind ahead. Now and then, however, we would lay down our monkey wrenches and answer letters.

It was Sunday, January 22, when I lined up our fleet for the hop-off to Bogotá, in the high heart of Colombia. But the water was rough and the planes were heavy with gas for the first long leg across Darien Gulf to Barranquilla. Two ships, their hulls damaged, were left behind.

The St. Louis, Detroit, and San Francisco, safe in air, headed for the 400-mile cruise through trade winds along the north coast of Panama and Colombia.

Flying low over tiny, flat, coco-covered isles, where San Blas Indian huts rise thick as row houses in a realtor's dream, we got a good idea of how these people live. It was amazing how many Indians could crowd on one small isle-almost as cormorants or pelicans cover a rock off some favorite fishing beach.

Whizzing barely 50 feet over their palm-leaf homes, I fear the sudden roar of our planes scared many San Blas babies so badly they may never grow up. Even full-grown Indian men, we noted, leaped from beach to boat or scrambled up among the coconuts, as our planes went thundering by.

Towing a big sea turtle that he had harpooned, one San Blas buck paddled just under us. Tortoise-shell "plates" taken from the 5,000 or 10,000 big turtles killed by these Indians every year are sold to London, we were told, at fancy prices.

On the Zone they told us of one explorer who returned greatly excited from these islands, saying he had found a tribe there which belonged to a well-known American uniformed secret society. To