LONG JOHN GLOATING IN THE FACE OF A HOODOO For many centuries mariners have frowned at the catching of the beautiful, changing-hued dolphins, alleged to bring luck and fair winds to the sailing ship (see text below). and sea serpents, and many other animals of fable and antiquity. The violent death of some of these is considered by mariners to be a sure way of bringing trouble on one's head. And when one starts out avowedly to hunt for trouble he usually finds it. Thus did our men explain why ill luck dogged our schooner's wake. We met storms, head winds, and disheartening calms; men were sick from fevers and exposure, usually when they were most needed; our small boats were battered on hidden reefs and iron-bound shores, and one whaleboat was wrecked in making a difficult landing. In distant ports, of Africa and South America, there were wearisome delays while the schooner underwent the repairs always needed after many months at sea. Fortunately, the tragic drama at times. became melodrama and even light operaa background of native huts with too much covering and native maidens with plaintive minors of a primitive people; the hypnotic beat of a Senegambian tomtom, summoning ebony damsels to quiver in the throes of a voodoo dance; shabby beach-combers and thirsty mariners; soldiers-of-fortune and the multihued warriors of colorful nations; and girls to lure the sailors from their duty-girls ranging in complexion from the sun at high noon, through the café-au-lait of Brazil and the Cape Verdes, to the blackest blue-black of Africa. VICARIOUS ADVENTURERS The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a comparative infant in the circle of scientific institutions, for it was not organized until 1920, by Harold T. Clark, Lewis B. Williams, Alwin C. Ernst, and Dr. George W. Crile. Infused with the enthusiasm of a loyal group of sponsors and patrons, at the tender age of two and a half years it looked about for fields of endeavor beyond those of Ohio. At the Embarking on the coast of New England in a three-masted schooner, smaller than the Santa Maria of Christopher Columbus, the author and fifteen other men of the Cleveland Museum's South Atlantic Expedition voyaged 20,000 miles by sail alone in a search for rare birds and queer beasts of land and sea. The Blossom visited the famed Sargasso Sea, prowled four and a half months among the islands of the Cape Verde Archipelago, and then sailed over to Senegambian Africa, where her men spent another four and a half months in the interior seeking Sudan birds and big game. South Trinidad, the little-known Martin Vas group, Rio de Janeiro, St. Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha, and Rocas Reef were then visited and studies in biology carried on. among museums, it decided to investigate almost inaccessible islands and shores of the South Atlantic, of which but little was known. In addition to specimens secured on the islands visited, the Cleveland Museum was to receive, for undertaking this difficult work and bringing study material to America, many rare birds from North and South America and the South Pacific islands from the collections of Dr. Leonard Sanford and the American Museum of Natural History. Mrs. Dudley S. Blossom, trustee of the Cleveland Museum, made the voyage financially possible, and Captain George Comer, retired from the sea after half a century on sea-elephant ships, who had collected birds in the Antarctic and seen service with MacMillan in the Arctic, was sent along the New England coast to search for sailing ships. There was but small choice, and from the few available the Lucy R., a Nova Scotia three-masted schooner built in 1920, was purchased for the voyage by the museum's director, Paul M. Rea, and placed for overhauling and refitting on the ways of a New London, Connecticut, shipyard. Warehouses in the old whaling port THE "BLOSSOM" CREEPS ALONG THE EDGE OF THE SARGASSO SEA For centuries a large area in the Atlantic, filled with weird and shifting masses of gulfweed (see map, page 5), was supposed to be the graveyard of the derelicts of the sea. In the course of its cruise of two and a half years the Blossom passed through this area twice and many Sticklers for etiquette might find fault with the author's interpretation of what the welldressed man should wear for dinner on the rolling decks of the Blossom. Which fork should be used for the "salt horse"? of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were searched for gear, whaleboats were chosen, and a selected lot of old whaling casks was set aside for water. I came east from Texas to assume the leadership of the expedition and made the acquaintance of the little schooner just as she was ready to go on the ways. SHOES AND SHIPS AND SAILING WAX Almost complete reconstruction of the ship was necessary to make her ready for the long ocean voyage. Her decks were torn open, her hackmatack frame strengthened by the addition of many oak knees, her keel increased, her hull below the water line covered with heavy copper sheeting. The whole appearance of the craft was changed by the addition of an enlarged cabin aft, with eight tiny cubbyholes of staterooms for officers and scientists, a deckhouse forward, a heavy windlass with new Samson post and bitts protected by the raised decking of a new forecastle head, side davits for the whaleboats and stern davits for the dory, and heavy ground tackle for holding the ship in difficult anchorages. Fine wireless equipment was used only a few times during the early months of the expedition. Sea water went through everything aboard in bad weather, and men could not be spared from the decks to help recondition the set. Still less could men be spared later, when, with |