10ANS SCIENTIPOLE INITIATIVE

In the scientific but on some nights we even had a tropical temperature of 85°F., which was needed to defrost the perspex dome where the camera which automatically photographed the aurorae australes was housed. It was really quite a sight to see the met. men on the night watch working stripped to the waist in this but interpreting the information on atmospheric conditions trans­mitted by the radiosonde. But when they emerged into the night to make their outside observations, they frequently experienced a drop in tempera­ture of 125°F., as the temperature in winter out of doors was often 70°F. below freezing-point.

Our cuisine was excellent, thanks to our cater­ing officer, who had forgotten nothing and who, above all, made an innovation by supplying us with deep-frozen provisions, so that we had fresh meat and vegetables once a week. This frozen food stayed good for fourteen months in a big cellar scooped out of the ice: we had at our dis­posal the biggest refrigerator in the world!

We took turns at doing the housekeeping for the day. This particular job consisted of laying the table, getting some snow and making it dis­solve into water in a retort heated by the exhaust gases of the generators, cleaning our quarters and doing the washing-up, emptying the rubbish, and so on. You can be sure we shall never let on to our wives how skilful we became in these arts!

Though living conditions inside the camp were comfortable, it was another matter out of doors. In the first place there was the blizzard which in some months howled for two days out of three; and there was also the snowing up of the camp, which meant that we had to keep on clearing the snow away to reach the equipment stored out­side. If we ever had to choose a new coat-of-arms for our expedition, I think we would unani­mously decide on a pair of crossed snow-shovels, as this was the implement we handled most dur­ing all our time in the Antarctic. Furthermore, by one of the laws of universal vexation well known down there, it was enough for us to start digging our equipment out of the snow for the blizzard to get up and fill the hole as quickly as we dug it.

October 1, 1958, marked the transition to more intensive activity out of doors. The aeroplane and the helicopter came out of their shelters and the vehicles were made ready for the summer exploration. We organized several expeditions of a few days to the coast. Previously, in March, we had made a reconnaissance trip of three weeks to the mountains which were situated 125 miles to the south of our base; we went off again at the end of October, for two months with nine men, to explore this range more systematically.

The two dog-teams and their leaders under­took the geological survey. They brought back hundreds of pounds of rock samples, from intru­sive granite and diorite, gneiss and magmatites, granitic and pegmatitic veins.

The men of the motorized column devoted themselves to the measurement of geomagnetism and especially to the determination of astronomi­cal positions. The aeroplane took aerial photo­graphs of the coast and of the mountains. In this way two exact maps of the region would be completed on our return to Belgium, a 1 : 200,000 map of the coast and a 1 :50,000 map of the mountains.

At recent talks in Tobago a junior find a pure-blood Carib, member of a big island delegation remarked to Old tales of long-dead heroes incline us to Paul Southwell, First Minister of St Kitts: a romantic view of the rainbow arc of islands, `Before I came here small islanders were “hurry­but it would be more realistic to admit that come-up men” to me; now I have met you and Caribbean history is a chaos of lust, greed, heard you speak, I shall support you against all treachery, conquistadors, buccaneers, priests, outsiders. We are all West Indians, we talk the pirates, missionaries, slavers, sugar and rum.

If racial feeling is unlikely to bedevil the infant Federation, geographical difficulties are formid­able.

Jamaica is further from Trinidad than London is from Rome, and the little islands delightfully `strung like a necklace of jewels across the throat of the Caribbean’ are inconveniently small from an economic point of view. With the exception of the big three, Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados, visitors range from 88,000 in apartments in New York to 12,000 in studio flats to rent in London and even less in Edinburgh bed and breakfast and the Grenadines. With such small home markets it is hardly practical to establish even the lightest industries, and agriculture must con­tinue to be the bread and butter.

In Antigua—pronounced `Anteega’—and St Kitts, sugar is the economic mainstay, but in drought years the crops can be cut to half. (In the drought of 1731 water cost the then consider­able sum of 3s. a bucket.) In these last few years enough wells have been drilled to supply piped water to all the villages, but even if it were financially possible to tap for irrigation, sufficient subterranean water does not exist.

The minor Leewards, Montserrat, Nevis, Barbuda, struggle along with sea-island cotton (badly hit by modern synthetics), tomatoes and a new small experiment, castor oil. The lesser Windwards supplements a meagre living with fishing and boat-building. Since the French islands raised the price of liquor a possible side­line in smuggling, alas, no longer pays.

Thanks to the Associations of Banana Growers in Grenada, St Lucia, Dominica and St Vincent, stimulated by the enterprise of a Dutchman, John van Geest, who ships the fruit to Wales and northern England, the beautiful but formerly poverty-stricken Windward Isles are now enjoy­ing a modest prosperity, and after five years it is heartening to see the difference in the people and their outlook on life. But even so the Windwards as well as the Leewards are ‘Grant in Aid’ islands, depending at present on Great Britain; after 1962 the money will have to come from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad.

Barbados, a coral island not much larger than Greater London, is green, fertile and fairly flat. It is one of the most thickly populated areas in the world, with a density of 1398 people to the square mile. They earn their living through sugar or the tourist trade. There are more than forty hotels, with prices ranging from £4 to £15 a day. Unemployment is a nagging worry, though it is hoped that the new £4,500,000 eight-berth, deep-water harbour may stimulate the economy. The portents are good. The 6 per cent loan raised in London was over-subscribed in the first minute; the contractors, Richard Costain, finished months ahead of schedule; and some eighty-seven strategic reclaimed acres should tempt much-needed industrial development.

FAR BACK in the deepening shadows the haunting notes of a bugling bull elk suddenly lift above the trees, as clear and wild as the headwaters of the Yellowstone River flowing by my campsite. An elk’s bugling is simply a phe­nomenon of the fall rutting season. But to me, as I traveled down the Yellowstone, the elk’s cry, compounded of frustration and loneliness, seemed to epitomize the plight of this unique, untamed river.

Other rivers such as the Colorado, Co­lumbia, and Missouri have been broken by man with chains of dams, locks, and muddy lakes. Now the 671-mile Yellowstone is the longest free-flowing river left in the United States outside of Alaska. A virgin target for dam builders, a source of conflicting de­mands from environmentalists, sportsmen, farmers, industries, and growing cities, the Yellowstone is a last troubled reminder of the way the rivers used to run.

Born in melting snowpacks high on Younts Peak in Wyoming, it carves its way north out of the wild Absaroka Range through Yellowstone National Park and spills onto Montana’s plains. Above the city of Billings, halfway down its course, it is still fast and cold. Then gradually, it begins to warm as it flattens into a prairie river flow­ing east. Just across the North Dakota bor­der it meets the Missouri. At this confluence the Yellowstone is the larger of the two riv­ers, but it nevertheless loses its name to the Missouri.

Along the way to that unfair end the Yel­lowstone leaves a string of natural wonders: the national park that bears its name; a lake, at 7,733 feet the largest high-altitude body of water on the continent; falls that drop 109 and 308 feet in a spectacular riverine two-step; and its own grand canyon.

Mountain man Jim Bridger, one of the first to set eyes on the source of the Yellow­stone, came away nearly 150 years ago with tales of a river that straddled the Continen­tal Divide—a two-ocean waterway where trout could swim toward either the Atlantic or Pacific. For once Bridger, that weaver of campfire hyperbole, told the truth.

Not far from Younts Peak, the Continen­tal Divide sits astride Two Ocean Pass, its flanks already covered with snow when I saw it in early October. The snow, when it melts, forms a high-altitude creek system running off in two directions—west to the *A centennial salute to the Pacific and east to merge with the fledgling Yellowstone on its way to the Atlantic.

“You are about as far from a major road as anywhere you can go in the lower forty-eight states,” said Yellowstone National Park ranger Bob Jackson after my arrival at Thorofare Ranger Station near the pass.

“And that’s the way it ought to be,” he added. “If it wasn’t for the isolation, the grizzlies, and the general wildness of this place, the Yellowstone would be just an­other river full of people.”

From June through October it is the task of Bob and park volunteer Evelyn Wyman

to maintain a backcountry presence that helps keep poachers and illegal fishermen from crossing the park’s rugged south border. Their headquarters, a two-room log cabin, has a two-way radio to keep them in touch with the outside world 32 miles away.

While Evelyn baked biscuits in the cab­in’s wood-burning range, I tried Bob’s homemade outdoor shower—a 55-gallon drum mounted on a log scaffold and filled with water that had been “warming” in the afternoon sun. Bob laughed as I howled and danced under the frigid spray. But if you are not interested in the country way of living and wish to spend your vacation in more urban style city you can choose the beautiful London, where you can stay at one of the best serviced apartments london.

As the only semi permanent residents on the river’s headwaters, Bob and Evelyn maintain a lonely vigil, traveling by horseback through the wild. A backpacking or outfitter party may pass through every few days during the busy summer season. As many as a thousand travelers venture into the area each year, but few make the full 32mile trek to the ranger’s cabin. Until late July the river is usually too high and boister­ous with snowmelt to cross, even by horse.