A COLD DINNER FOR THE WOOLLIES product. This is why wool-growing is The heaviest exporters of wool are the newly developed and as yet sparsely settled lands of Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa, and Uruguay. These countries produce fine wools; coarser grades, for carpets, come from China, India, and western Asia. Though the world wool trade centers in Europe, the port of Boston ranks second among all markets. The weaving of cloth from wool was one of the earliest industries developed in this country. A few English families settled in Rowley, Massachusetts, built a mill there in 1643, and were the first to make woolen cloth in America. Laws were early passed in New England to promote the woolen industry, and to this day our woolen mills are largely centered in the North Atlantic States. It is an odd fact that, although the United States uses from 550 to 750 million pounds of wool a year, it has no public wool market, like the Chicago or Kansas City grain and meat markets. Nearly all this huge pile of wool is bought by private agreement. Though any future expansion of the sheep industry will be at the cost of cattle and wheat production, the growing world will insist on more sheep. human race wants wool; and to-day's clip is hardly more than sufficient for present needs. THE COPYRIGHT 1928. BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY WASHINGTON DC IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN TO BOGOTÁ AND BACK BY AIR The Narrative of a 9,500-Mile Flight from Washington, T BY COL. CHARLES A. Lindbergh HUBBARD GOLD MEDALIST, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY HE modern airplane brings the remotest corner of the known world within a few hours of a metropolis. It makes every spot on this planet accessible to man. We can fly in comfort over the ice fields of the Arctic or above equatorial jungles. It is no longer necessary to remain close to a base and corps of mechanics. Our planes to-day will travel for thousands of miles with reasonable attention and carry passengers for but little more than the cost of rail transportation. In countries where few railroads exist, the airplane is the only feasible means of travel over long distances. The Spirit of St. Louis had covered only a little over thirty thousand miles at the end of its tour of the United States.* The plane was practically new and its engine was capable of many more hours of flying. THE START FROM BOLLING FIELD I always had a desire to fly in the Tropics; also, I was particularly interested in the feasibility of Pan American airlines; consequently, when I received an invitation from the President of Mexico to visit *See "Seeing America With Lindbergh," by Lieut. Donald E. Keyhoe, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for January, 1928. his country, it required less than a week to complete my preparation for the flight. The tail skid cut through the mud on Bolling Field for nearly 2,000 feet and the wheels ran along for another thousand before the Spirit of St. Louis lifted, hopped over the puddles and into the air. Thus, shortly after noon on December 13, 1927, began my flight from Washington to Mexico, to Central America, and home through South America and over the Caribbean (see map, page 532). Fog, clouds, and rain were all ahead. I had cloudy weather all the way to the Carolina mountains, where darkness began to fall. Up to midnight I saw no moon. All night the sky was overcast, with frequent rains. Occasionally I could make out lights on the ground, but seldom could I see any horizon. This made instrument flying necessary. I had never done so much of it before, even on the flight to Paris. By instrument flying I mean the use of instruments in the dark to keep the plane level and on its course. FLYING LESS THAN 100 FEET ABOVE THE WHITE LINE OF SURF As the sun went down I laid a course for the Gulf which, with the aid of an Official Photograph, U. S. Army Air Corps COLONEL LINDBERGH IN HIS PLANE, READY FOR THE LONG NONSTOP FLIGHT FROM THE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE As soon as the aviator had taken off from mud-soaked Bolling Field, expert photographers in a fast Army plane were supposed to follow and take-off that the pursuing Va. earth inductor compass, I hit fairly close to the point plotted on my map. On the Gulf coast I struck more fog; so I had to come down low over the water, sometimes less than a hundred feet above the white line of surf. Often I lost that and flew blind until I could pick it up again. Since the transatlantic flight I had added a supersensitive altimeter to my instrument board. Without this addition, blind flying at 150 and 200 feet over the coast line would have been impossible. One of the odd things about this flight was the length of night. On my flight to France I had only about five dark hours, because I flew from west to east, against the sun and north of 50° north latitude; but on this flight the direction was slightly west and in southern latitudes, where the nights are long; so I had thirteen hours and thirty minutes of darkness. I recognized Tampico, near the east coast of Mexico, by its oil tanks. There was a heavy fog and I came down within 50 feet of the Pánuco River. The fog was so low I could not stay under it, so I climbed again and set a compass course for Mexico City. LOST IN MEXICO A thousand feet up I got over the clouds, and less than two hours later had passed the first mountains. I crossed a railroad and a small town. It was at this point that I made an important error in navigation by mistaking my position as south of my course, whereas it was actually north. Consequently I changed in the wrong direction and greatly increased my course error. My mistake soon became apparent, but I was not able to locate my position. The only |