at official receptions. But the end of the third day found us at Natal, with 1,200 miles to go the next day!

And what a country! An infinity of oozy, sluggish flats, apparently as empty now of human life as when giant things, half beast and half lizard, wallowed in oceans of mud while the world was young. "This coast is little known" was the warning written on our maps, which vaguely showed the shore with a few uncertain dotted lines.

Till we got there and saw this dreary, empty expanse, we could not understand why a country as rich and old as Brazil had not properly mapped its coast lines. But, actually, no honest cartographer could do that job intelligently. For hundreds and hundreds of miles that wild region is a flat, watery waste, with mangroves growing far out to sea at high tide and far inland at low tide, for here the tide is 21 feet. When it rises, the coast line moves back into the jungles; when it falls, the coast line moves out to sea.

The only living things we saw, besides an occasional crocodile, were flocks of red flamingoes flying over the jungle. For hundreds of miles we saw not a single hut, not even a native canoe; nor did we see any signs of sails out at sea. It was an empty, forgotten world.

over

Twelve hours of flying put us the Amazon Valley, where dense forests crowd up against the city of Pará. This is the entrepôt of the great valley. Thence river boats ply as far upstream as the Peruvian frontier. We wanted to explore this great river, but our schedule drove us on (see page 484).*

In a 500-mile hop across the many jungle mouths of the muddy Amazon, we jumped to Cayenne, French Guiana. A hospitable night there, and then away early for Paramaribo, capital of Dutch Guiana. Here at least 3,000 people, on bicycles, followed us down the quaint streets of this bit of Old Holland. Then up and off for Georgetown, in British Guiana.

*See, also, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for April, 1926, "The Amazon. Father of Waters," by W. L. Schurz; and "Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a Hydroplane," by Capt. Albert W. Stevens.

Trees hid flat, low-lying Georgetown a bit, as we neared it. Protecting it from high seas is a large stone wall, the favorite promenade in the cool of the evening. Here our British friends introduced to us the "swizzle stick," an implement of fancy design used with some violence in making mixed drinks. One they swizzled for us was called "pepper punch"; it was nonintoxicating, but after one scorching swallow we decided that temperance is not without its terrors.

FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT, OVER A BRIDGE OF ISLANDS

Uninhabited jungle fringed the mouth of the Orinoco, as we saw it next day on our way to Trinidad. With the exception of Jamaica, this is the largest of

Prob

the British West Indian islands. ably it was once attached to the mainland of Venezuela.

Much of the asphalt in the streets of American cities comes from the singular Pitch Lake on Trinidad.

A side flight to Caracas, capital of Venezuela, was planned when we hopped from Trinidad; but, because of heavy clouds and bad landing facilities, we flew to Puerto Cabello. Here Weddington and Whitehead, who had left us at Buenos Aires to get a new plane in Panama, came down the coast and met us. We all went by motor car to call on the President of Venezuela at Caracas.

Rough weather made it impossible to rise from the sea, as we sought to leave; so we ran the planes out on the beach, hired natives to chop down a clear runway through the woods, and took off by land. Returning via Trinidad, we jumped like frogs from island to island across the Leeward and Windward groups, visiting Granada, St. Vincent, Martinique Guadeloupe, and the Virgins. Some of these flights were, for a hundred miles or so, out of sight of land.

From the Virgins we jumped to Porto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Thence to Cuba, over Havana and Morro Castlehomeward bound.

Nearing Key West my partner scribbled a note: "We have jumped the last hurdle in the Pan American flight."

OLUMBUS had failed! True, he found land, but the land did not yield ginger or cloves, nutmegs or cinnamon. Natives with naked, coppery bodies painted in fantastic colors, who were overjoyed with glass beads, hawks' bells, and tinsel trinkets, did not promise a rich overseas market.

"After all, King John was right," murmured the big business men of Lisbon, who had many anxious weeks after their monarch had let the persistent Christopher Columbus slip through his fingers and Spain had sponsored his voyage.

"Now," they sagely surmised, "it is time to resume our explorations on the sane lines laid out by Prince Henry the Navigator."

That great seer, with the garb of a monk and the soul of a sailor, dreaming among his charts and instruments in a bleak, lofty room at Sagres, where the salty winds blew from unknown seas through the paneless windows of intricate Moorish design, had dreamed aright. Overland travelers kept coming in with reports of the fabled Prester John, who had vast resources to help crush Islam, and other reports, not fabulous enough, it

later was shown, of the wealth of the Indies.

So the brisk young King Manoel did not wait for importunate explorers to besiege him with proposals. He planned a trade quest along the route that Bartholomew Diaz had blazed, and engaged a likely young man to command the expedition.

Vasco da Gama was his name.

The first Portuguese from Gama's fleet to set foot on the soil of India summed up his king's purpose and unwittingly formulated one of the greatest slogans in maritime history.

"The devil take you! What has brought you here?" exclaimed an Arab.

"Christians and spices," retorted the Portuguese.

DAZZLED BY SPLENDORS OF A "SAVAGE" COURT

And Vasco da Gama's reception at the court of the Zamorin of Calicut confirmed the wisdom, to his own generation, of his king. What a contrast to Columbus's meeting with the primitive, ingenuous American Indians!

The Portuguese admiral and thirteen picked men marched into Calicut, elbowed