Evening Star Newspaper, February 11, 1923, Page 65

Part 5—8 Pages WASHINGTO ¢ Sunduy Shar. D. C., SUNDAY MORNI EBRUARY 11, 1923. | Savage Walrus Furnishes Most Dangerous Arctic Hunting DONALD MACMILLAN. This 15 the second Of two articles by the | famons arctic explorer, relating seme of ls most stirring adventures in hunting the great Fume of the morth. BY i HWERE is one animal in the Arctic which demands that you ; meet him on more equal terms than does the polar bear, that You pit your strength and your energy Qirectly against his, and that you do |and then takes them in her arms, and | it without the help of your fighting | dogs. That animal is the walru e was known to the early explorer| and sallor s the sea horse and the | # word really meaning ““whalcho " and fitting we too. | for walruscs have been killed measur- Ing fourtcen feet in length, twelve tect in girth. and weighing three tin nd five hundred pounds! Quite anfmal thix to attsek in & paper-thin skin boat o wenty ithehes wide and n inches deep! Tet that what the Smith Sound native is doing from early boyhood | to old uge. The danger of hunting the walrus is shown by the large number of fatalities In the tribe. I shall never forget my first en- counter with walruses. It left with me 2 very healthy respect for this forml- dable-looking brute. As assistants to Admiral Peary on that memorable and successful polar trip, each of us, when | we arrived Whale sound, ~was placed in charge of a whaleboat and an Eskimo crew. A herd of walruses | was sighted, asleep on a pan of ice, | and I was called upon to make the| attack. With Torup and Bosun Mur- | Phy as assistants and a good erew of harpooners and oarsmen, 1 headed | for the heard. quite unsuspecting and almost entirely ignorant as to the proper procedure. We knew enough. however, to caution the Eskimos not to talk, to muffle their oars and to pull with short strokes | When we came within one hundred yards of the herd T whispered to Mur- | phy to take the steering oar, while | T crept f ard with my .351 auto- matic Winehester and crouched in the | bow bestde Borup, who was clutching | his powertul Muuser. Up to this time the black mass of flesh before us had not moved. Al ere sound asleep in the warm summer sun. with bellies | Alled with newly dug clams, | Finglly one big bull slowly lifted | his head with its massive tusks and | calmly surveyed the approsching hoat. We expected him to give the alarm to his sleeping amily_and be off; but no. with a don't-bother-me look upon his face. he dropped his head for unother nup. T confess that ! this was @ bit of & siock to our cour- age. “If that's the way hs feels about it. perbaps we are near | enough.” 1 thought to myself. How- ever. we continued seulling until we | were within a few feet of the sieeping bodles: near, In faot. that 1 mo- | tioned to the Wskifwae, ofouching | behind the rail, to throw thelr hur- poons. They vigorously shook their | heads and said, “Id-li, id- (“You, ! vou!), which evidently meant for us | to shoot. | Two of the huge beasts were now fully awake. with heads high in the air. = “Take the oue to the left.” T whis- | pered to Borup, while I took careful aim at the one at the edge of the pan on the right. At the double report both dropped their heads. i “Got him!” Borup..yelled,. and swung for another, wriggling toward the water. sea maorse. at ITH automatic actlon and plenty | of clips on the for'ard thwart, we were able to sweep the pan.| After such a stream of bullets some- thing should have been dead, but, to our complete surprise. one walrus after another rolled over and fell Into the water with a tremendous splash until not a single one was left! “What do you think of that?" Borup exclaimed. Our chagrin was short lived, how- ever. The words were hardly out of Borup's mouth when up popped long white tusks and red-eyed, bewhis- kered heads all around us. The wounded from the pan had communi- catpd with their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters feeding on the hottom that “they were in need of help and here they were. Great heavens! What a mob! Enraged| clean through and saying so! “Gee! They're coming!” Borup shouted ard reached for his cartrldge hox. Pandemonium doesn’t begin to express what - followed—a raucous battle cry from at least forty throats, the ugly faces constantly breaking water, the roar of rifies. the ter- ritying yells of the' natives, the pounding of the rails with oars, the throwing of the harpoons‘and lances, the tangle of rawhide lines, floats and @rags in the bottom of the boat! It blood ever tingles it tingled then! One big fellow even came up under the barrel of my rifle and hooked his tusks over the rail. Fortunately, none of the others possessed equal courhge, else there might have been a repetition of the Spizbergen accldent, when the boat was capsized and all in it were killed. ‘ Almost uncanny was the abruptness with which the whole thing ceased. ‘Was it possible. that they.had. gone, or was this the lull which. generally precedes a squall? We looked into the‘blood-stained water and listened, but there was not a sign or sound. Ondoubtedly the leaders had been Xilled and the others lacked courage to lead another attack, Two, badly wounded, were swimming. In small circles. Four were dead and sup- ported by the sealskin floats. . ‘We waved our canvas hats to Capt, Bartlett standing upon the bridge of the 8. S.. Roosevelt, and he was soon under way to help us with our catch. Accounts written by. the early ex- plorers bear.testimony to the bellig- erent qualities of the so-called ses horse, . De Veer wrote as follows: ¢he @ea. horse .is a. wonderfully streng . moASter of the . sea, much Jarger.than @n ox, which keeps con- tingally in ghe seas,” having a skin Uke a sew et or seal, with very |as good as any lvar | teeth.” short hayre, mouthed like a lion: and many times they. lie upon the ice they are hardly killed unless you strike them just upon the forehead: it hath four feete, but no cars, and commonly it hath young, one at a time. “And when the fishermen chance to find them upon a flake of ice with thelr young ones, shee casteth her young ones before her into the water, 50 plungeth up and down with them; and when she will revenge herself upon the boates or make resistance against them, then she casts her young from her againe, and with all her force goeth toward the hoate (whereby our men were once in no small danger. for that the sca horse had almost sticken Ler teeth into the sterne of their boute). thinking overthrow it, but by means the great cry which the men made she was afraid and swomme away againe and took her voung ones againe in her arms. They have tw sticking out of their mouthes. on each side one, €ach being about halfe an ell long, and are estecraed to be e or elephant's Scoresby put sions in somewhat s “The walrus is a feariess animal. Its capture in the watler cannot always be accomplished without dan- ger: for, as the walrus go in herds, down his impres- similar words: an attack made upon one individual | draws all its companions to its de- fense. In such cases they frequently rally round the boat from whence the blow was struck, pierce its planks | with their tusks, and, though resist- ed in the most determined manner, sometimes raise themselves upon the gunwale and threaten to overset it. The best defense against these en- raged animals is, in this crisis, sex sand, which, being thrown into. their eyes, occasions a partial -blindness and obliges them to disperse.” P FTER a walrus hunt, which sulted in an attack upon his boat, Dr. Hayes, one of our early explorers, wrote: “1 never before regarded the wal- rus as a really formidable animal. but this contest convinced me that I | have done their courage great injus- tice. They are full of fight, and, had we not been very -active and self-possessed, our boat would have been ‘torn to pieces and’we either drowned or killed. A more fierce at- tack than that which they made updn us could hardly be imagined,-and ‘a more formidable-looking enemy than one of these huge monsters, with his immense tusks and bellowing throat, would be difficult to find. Next time I try them I will arm my boat’s crew with lances. The. rifle is a poor reli- ance, and, but for the oars, the herd would have been on top of us at any time.” N A study of the skull of a walrus reveals at.once its enormous strength and thickness, which fit it to serve 8s & bed for'the long, strong’ tusks, which the :animal uses in Qigging clams, in fighting nd in pulling itself out upon- the<ice. That'thick skull of the. walrus. explains the remarks of Charles. Francis . Hall: “Shoot & seal in the head,.and it dies. Shoot a walrus in the head, and the damage is; to the ball, which im- mediately flattens without effecting any injury whatever to the walrus.” But that waa id the days of the smooth-bore ‘rifte." "The ‘modern high- | power rifle is a muclt more effective weapon _against! this hard skull, which, the Eskimos declare, the wal- rus often drives’up through five inches of solid “ice; but it has re- sulted in- the “loss of hundreds of animals, for-a‘walrus sinks to-the bottom when mortally wounded and cannot be-recovered. | - . The Eskimo. method .of. capture with the harpoon is better in_ every way, ‘but’ dangerous for the inexpe- rienced white man, unacquainted with re- | I E plorer Tells of Some of His Experiences Which Were Featured by On- slaughts of Embattled Herds—Magnificent Courage Revealed by Eskimos in Encounters—Safety Comes in Midst of Peril When Walrus Leaders Are Killed. Stories Told by Early Visitors to Arctic—Narrow Escape When the Ice Fields ¢ Broke Away. the ways of a walrus and unskilled | in the handling of the frail kayaks, | the harpoon and the I There- | fore the explorer ju: riving in the no land sorts to the use of the large whaleboat in procuring food for his sled |0 bove NE later than the incident of the Peary expedition related | Borup and Murphy had 1the' year UP POPPED LONG WHITE T | experience of having a large bull) | walrus crash up through the bot- | tom of the boat! They crammed a coat into the hole and pulled for the nearest ice pan. That is exciting | enough for the most adventurous. | | Yet such an attack is a very rare | oceurrence. In general, walruses, | when on the pan, are wary. At the | | first sound or smell of a boat and its | occupants the; ay at a speed | | of about seven miles an hour, which | is faster than a good crew can row for any considerable distance. | This uncertainty as to just what | the walrus will do makes the hunt | exciting. T remember well when we | encountered a very large herd feed- | ing oft-the front of the glacier in Sonntag bay. The row of flerce heads. powerful necks and strong, white tusks on the outside of the herd, keeping a con- | stant watch of our boat, showed us [as ‘plainly as anything could that | they * accepted our challenge and dared us to come on. We all felt | that ‘our..twenty-one-foot dory was too small for the fight. We decided that it was tfie better part of valor to avoid such a large herd, for num- bers always lend caurage to the wal rus. In five vears of hunting walruses I have known of only one instance when a single animal attacked a boat. This was entirely uncalled for and wholly unexpected on.bur part, as we were quietly Towing Rlong the shore, without a- walrus in sight. -Suddenly one broke, water within a few feet of our stern and rushed angrily at the boat and Jabbed his tusks repeatedly into the rudder. The Eskimo boy seated in the stern' jumped up as if he were seated on a hot iron, shook the tiller, waved both arms and let ‘out a terri- Ifying yell, which had its cffect, for the walrus disappeared at once. Hunting in a large wooden boat is rather prosaic when compared with hunting - in the. tiny narrow seal- skin production of ‘the Eskimo. It seems almast suicidal to think of using such a frail contrivance to effect the capture of a giant walrus— a veritable sling of David against the giant Gollath. But to see that black dart, ‘propelled by a strong-armed Eskimo, with flashing paddle, shoot into the midst of a.herd removes all doubt as to its practical use and evokes a feeling of admiration for these polar children, whose life is a fight for food and clothing. * Although the kayak is efficient and far . superior to anything which could be substituted., its use is attended with a considerable amount of dan- | ger. Sipsoo, one of the ablest hunters in the tribe; nearly lost his life in 1908 while hunting walruses. He was attacked, his throat was cut and he was left for dead, hanging head down in the water. And yet his courage seems as good.today as it ever was. Arklio, our dog_driver and general assistant for four years, bears upon his right arm a"large,-ragged- scar, ARARA AR the result of an encounter with a walrus. The following account w given me by one of his companions: Arklio was just reaching for his harpoon when a female walrus with youns appeared above water beside him. She jabbed one of tusks ¢ throwgh arm between the muscle and the bone and pulled him ove: side in the water. We thought that he was close her petely hix gone, but he righted his kavak and came ashore. We bound a piece of caribou skin on the wound, then we went out and killed the walrus.” After such an experience I dered if Arklio had lost his When hunting, a few weeks near Oog-look-suah (Cape Alexan- der), we surrounded a herd in our kayaks, but delayed the attack be- cause of the decidedly hostile app ance of some of the males. Finall Arklio dug his water for a guick start and kayak right into the midst black heads. He reached for his harpoon lying upon the deck at his side. he raised high and drew it back for the won- nerve. later ot his of the addle deep into the ! he had grasped his ! swinging his kayak at right angles, one of the broken ends. he shot out into clear water * x * Ou.m,:m. FALL one of Peary's able assistants for me with a thrill one day. dents of which 1 shall alwa Four five upon years, furni the inci- vividly Iruses remember w were discovered asleep a of ice DEMONIUM DOE: holding it up to detect the direction of the light air, Oo-bloo-yah paddled to leeward and then turned slowly {toward the animals. It is a stirring sight to see a man. comparatively so small and weak. deliberately going up almost within arm’s reach to at- tack the life of a mass of bone and muscle one hundred times his supe- | rior. The Eskimo paddled so quietly that not a head was lifted in alarm. The huge beasts were sound asleep. Upon arriving at the right edge of the ice, he turned to the left and incréased his speed to add force and momen- tum to his blow. When kayvak and walrus were apparently one, I saw | him grab his harpoon from the deck. “] KNEW .BY, THE DRAG AND THI _POON HAD REACHED IT throw. to. my -alarm 1 discovered that in. drawing it from the deck the steel.tip had caught in the trans- verse. strap, which holds the paddie and hunting equipment in place when they are mot in use, and Arklio held nothing but the shaft of his harpoon with the bare ivory point. Imagine the shock’ to my fears upon hearing him laugh aloud when he discovered his blunder. Even in ‘extreme dan- ger he saw the funny side of -the situation. But while he was laughing he was acting, for in another second SEALSKIN FLOAT THAT THE HAR- ARK AND HE HAD WON.” - draw it far back over his right shoul- der and send it with all his might linto the back of the nearest walriis. | Quick as a flash he'seized his paddle | again as the blick mass of " flesh {Jumped_convulsively and rolied toward Jhim e hoved to avoid the impend ing splash and a possible capsizing of | his kayak. To my horror, the paddle snapped in his hands. s “He's .gone!” I sald to myself as I saw him silhouetted against the great splash of white' water.. Hut-in-an- other instant he was dashing rapldly pan | interest. Wetting his forefinger and | found us in camp at Sunrise Point, | S padadle and, | out of danger, vigorously applving The drag and sealskin float were jerked from his deck and went bounding away over the surface. I knew by this ed | sign that the harpoon had reached its | mark and that he had won. A with nov Ar 1 esperience when hunting -pood-a-shah-o may be of Every fair day in June N‘T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE WHAT FOLLOWED.” | four miles from Etah, north Green | 1and: for here walruses are constantly | migrating from the feeding grounds at Sulwuddy to Little island and be- yond. Something on the bottom here tempted the walruses to remain and feed for a few minutes. That gave us an opportunity to launch our kayaks and await patiently their re- appearance. Twice the herd of seven walruses came to the surface to breathe, as they do about every nine minutes, but Ark-pood-a-shah-o delayed his | attack upon seeing mothers and their | young, for he knew that they are far more dangerous when aroused than the males, the natural guardians of the herd. He did, however, finally harpoon a mother and off she went to the south, closely attended by all the others. Two Eskimo women with babies in the hood 3nd & little girl of eight helped me to launch our twenty-one- foot sailing dory from the ice foot which borders the shore. They all Zot in and we were Off as a support- ing party to Ark-pood-a-shah-o, who | now joined us to’ assist at the oars. | Overtaking the inflated sealskin float, which was attached to the end of the harpoon! line_to indicate the location of the wounded animals, we fastened {it to the forward seat and settled | down for a novel ride, but not a long one, as a small,“flat floe lay directly across our.course. . T suggested that we release the-float-and.let it pass under.the ice and recover it bevond, but, the Eskimo said: 1t _“No;’let's make it fast to'the floe and haveia fine :big ship. .followed his- suggestion, and off we ‘went, with: our black horse pulling’ Hke & Trojan and Sur white chariot as steady as a church. Discovering that a strong tide was carrying us rapidly southward, Ark- Pood-n-shah-o declded to halt our steed by shooting her. Accidentally he shot the young, and our troubles began. - The herd turned back, with the-mother leading- the charge. The Eskimo. women yelled their. loudest and.added a bit to the racket by ‘pouniding ,the rail with a tin dipper and’an oar. The bables, Deeping over. their mothers’ shoulders,” knew that things were not right,-and said 80 in full crescendo. The little Es- kimo ' girl was divided in her - fear between the actions of her mother and fi¥eactions of the walrus. Then ArK-povd-a-shah-o got busy with the rifle’and killed the walrus’leading Aire' churge and sank two others. AN S ok ke 0T | A LFHWOUGH 1 was more interested | & '%mflxolnphy than in shooting, [I‘vi' “eirfous to know .if ‘T 'could harpotn walruses and feed my six- teen dogs without the help of the natives. . It keeps a man busy to feed a family of this size. In front of our tent at Sulwuddy a large 'herd appeared .and began to feed at:the bottom, coming up in the n ot every few minutes for air. We_launched .our kayaks and slowly | paddled off, in the meantime studying { thelr actions, looking for “browns” | (belleved by the natives to be the | most dangerous), for large males and | for mothers with young. We lay upon our paddles and watched them for some time, but so massed was their formation that no opportunity pre- sented itself to sever any individual from the herd. After a long wait I discovered that one young bull had appeared twice in exactly the same spot, isolated by possibly ten yards. This was my op- portunity. I paddled a short dis- tance to the westward, so that I could approach him from the rear. As luck would have it, he soon ap- peared, headed from me. the fullness | of his back and sides preventing him from seeing what was going on be- hind. 1 immediately started the kayak directly toward him, endeavor- ing to gather enough speed to carry me well by and o his left after I had | thrown my harpoon | Inexperienced and a bit nervous, 1 ceased paddling too soon, and in addition to this T fumbled my harpoon in trying to grasp it right at the ivory button, which fits between the fingers of the right hand. Before 1 could regain it and raise it for the throw my kayak had glided up along- side the walrus, 6o near, in fact, that 1 might have placed my hand upon | his back. T had made a bungling job of the | whole thing and in the presence of | my Eskimos felt ashamed, chagrined, angry and everything else. Fortu- | nately, the walrus had his head low in the water and did not immediately detect me. The bow of my kayak was already forging past his head {and T knew what would happen as woon as he saw it. It was too late to attempt a getaway. as the siightest movement of my paddle be heard. What was I to do? | thing—strike: This T did with all my strength, using the harpoon a; one would use a dagger. There was a roar, followed by a dash of water and a flash of white tusks, | uncomfortably near that I felt like crawling into my hole in the kayak and yelling as the little boy did. “Oh, mister, it wasn't me!” Why he didn't kill me 1 do not know. Needless to state I didn't | main to argue the matter with him for any length of time. Twice the right end of my paddle struck his body in my efforts to get a grip on | the water. appeared. A glance over my shoulder revealed my sealskin float, now half- | submerged, going rapidiy off shore. 1 lknew that the fron was fast and that | the young bull was ours i Dr. Hunt, our surgeon, ran for the flat-bottomed punt and within a few | minutes was in pursuit of the float, [ which he grasped and fastened to the scat. With every reappearance of | the head and rounded back, crack would resound the Winchester .33 #pectal, plowing a furrow at nearly every shot. With the help of Ee- say-00 the walrus was finally killed and towed to the shore. ‘ TALRUS hunting at the edge of ! the ice in February and March is fully as interesting and at times as exciting as walrus hunting in kayaks wo =% nique, of currents, of wind and weather prevents these hardy boys of the northland from going to their death every spring. Each spring 1 visited the snow village at Peteravik, for it is the custom of the polar Eskimos to journey hither when the food caches are empty, which hap- pens only at the end of the long dark period, the very coldest time of the year. Seeing these men return each day from far-off shore with their loose, black hair white with frost, their cheeks often frostbitten and their dog traces coated with ice, I resolved to see for myself just how these na- tives fought for their living. As companions, I selected big Tung-we, the largest man in the tribe and noted for his skill with the harpoon; genial Teddy-ling-wa, a former a: sistant of Peary, and “New York’ Me-ne. a boy brought to this country ed to Greenland. No open water could be seen from the village. The ice fields extended far beyond the horizon. When well out on the trail, Tung-we quickly pulled the sealing iron out from un- the coil of rawhide line from the up- standers of the sledge and ran to the left. Knowing instantly the cause of his action. we continued on our course and called to his dogs to follow us, thus removing them and their scent from the immediate vi- cinity of the tiny breathing hole of the seal which the native had dis- covered. We saw him bending over the hole and listening intently for some minutes. Then the uplifted arm with the hazpoon lunged forward. We shipped the dogs around and gal- loped back over the trail, but before we reached the spot Tung-we had captured the seal, which now lay dead on the ice—a fortunate catch, tor our dogs were in need of meat. We traveled steadily outward over the floes, winding in and out between bergs, directing our course toward the | black blanket of vapor overlying a lead. The dogs were now tethered to the ice and left to rest and to sleep cuddled up in a drift of loose snow, while we plodded on with rifles, harpoons, killing irons and colls of 1ine from hole to hole. Not a thing was seen. When the sun, a lurid, distorted ball of fire, appeared over the ice horizon we walked back to our sledges for hot tea and biscuit, then on again into the southwest, gingerly passing over strips of thin ice to the edge of open water. As the great fleld of drift ice moved slowly by, we described two walrus asleep upon a pan. To my astonishment, Me-ne and Teddy-ling- wa prepared at once to get them with | their rifles by jumping from pan to pan. “Impossible!” I exclaimed, they persisted in trying. With interest, Tung-we and .| ! watched them slowly.and carefully picking their way, now stralght on, now deviating to the right. how to the left, ever drifting southward and the intervening lead of black water ever widening! Now we could see them creeping upon their breasts and knew that they were almost within rifle shot. With the reports of the rifles ‘the black mass disappeared Only one | all so| With a plunge he dis- | Only a perfect knowledge of ice tech- | several years ago, who lately return- | der the sledge lashing and grabbed | but | from the white ice, and our thoughts were all directed now toward the pos- sibility of Me-ne and Teddy-ling-wu failing to win their way back to the solid field. We walked rapidly eastward, sig- naling them to proceed in that direc- tion. Finally we arrived at a large berg projecting out from the solld fleld, which served as a buttre: against the ice driving south, a nat- ural bridge between the two bodles. The boys regained this spot safely, but, strange, to relate, broke througn with one foot each on the very last step. As we stood there for a momen watching the moving mass of ice, sev eral heads popped up in an open pooi bout fifty yards e was excitement The scized their harpoons and rawhide and, crouchin edge of t emitted the deep. gui- tural cry of the walrus—a most strik- | ing imitation. The walruses could no resist it. They turned toward us al once and dived. “They are coming!” the Eskimos whispered, and clutched their harpoons in their right hands | now LMOST breathlessly we waited for the break in the water. I could not see how we could possibly miss them if they were considerate enough to stick their heads up within twenty- five feet. But the walruses did better than that—they burst out of the | water almost at our very toes, = near that all of us were startled Me-ne threw, but, as he was stand- ing upon a flake of his coi | poon fell flat on the water. threw right into the ma that he could not throw hout hit ting something: the result was that he missed clean Teddy-ling-wa | didn't know why he did not throw. e was still ~t the last time Tung-we thinking w Disgusted an tired now, and with hoots a n stiff with fro we ched our dogs to our sledges and headed for home. After traveling for an hour or so T notice that the Es mos appeared extrem nervous and were talking so rapidly in their own | tanguage that T could not cateh what they were saying. But by the was th snapped their whips and urged their dogs incessantly 1 knew that they were anxious to get ashore. The | cause of this hurry did not occur to | me until in passing over a crack in the sea e T di ed a rising and falling in the flocs. which indicated a heavy swell beneath us. Tho ice was breaking up! The dogs seemed to aense the ex- citement, conveyed to them by the tone of our voices. and would now and then race at breakneck speed. Crack after crack we crossed, some slowly widening as we changed our course more to the castward, know- ing that the western cdge of the field, contiguous to the open waters of the sound. would go first. Tn this the Eskimos judged rightly, for upon our arrival at Cape Chalon. from the clifts above we discovered to our amazement that everything between that point and Cape Alexander had been swept o taking with it the large twenty-elght-foot whaleboat belonging to R-ging-wa, a gift from Peary for his valuable services on the north pole dash. Thus it is in the northland. walrus demands in summer and winter that men o out to meet him and that they give him thelr very best, for he is worth it—a magnifi- cent fighter, king of the northern seas in (Copyright.) Health Drive Marks China’s Dragon Feast. TTHE dragon bout festival on the fifth day of the fifth moon, is {one of the most widely celebrated of the Chinese holidays. There are two ideas connmected with this festival, according to the World's Iealth. One in the commemoration of a legendary reformer who drowned himself be- cause of his seeming failure to put his reforms into effect. From this has developed the custom of the dragon boat races at this festival. The other idea is the use of pre~ ventive measures to keep away the “five poisons”—i. e, snakes, centi- pedes, lizards, spiders and toads. This accounts for the lime sprinkled around the houses and the special weeds hanging over each door which are designed to beat off the fateful “poisons.” the cause of much disease Since a suggestion of sanitation en-’ tered into the keeping of the dragon boat festival, the Hangchow Y C. A. assisted by the Council on Health Education in China (to whose energetic secretary, Dr. W. W. Peter, we are indebted for these details), decided to launch a health campaign during this festival. The campaign included film lectures and health ex- hibits, which were visited by 00 people. During the three days it was in progress all the rickshaws in the city carried flags, by order of the po- lice commissioner, advertising thes® exhibits. On the morning of the festival almost a thousand students paraded the principal streets of Hangchow carrying all kinds of ban- ners bearing health mottoes and large paper models of flies, mosqui- toes, fleas and rats. In the after- noon 400 students went in Eroups and covered the city by districts, glving health lectures and distribut- ing literature. Dr. Peter reports that the actual results of this cam= paign—in which 1,476 people took part as volunteer workers, 86,865 pieces of health literature were d tributed and 309,955 people were reached by exhibits, parades and lec- tures—have proved most encourag- in A few days after the campaign the police department issued new regu- lations for the handling and disposal of night soil. Several of the schools organized health and “kill-the-fly” campaigns. It is becoming quite common to see fruit stands and food shops using food screens to keep off the fiies, and it is noticeable that the city authorities are taking greater eare in removing filth "