Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, September 27, 1903, Page 28

The World’s Last “ Terra Incognita” (Copyright, 1908, by Willilam Thorp.) HEN S8ir Henry M. Stanley, th famous African explorer, list vi ited America, an ardent Harvard undergraduate Is said to asked him at a re “How can I become a great Uke you? 1 want to be one, but know where to begin.” “Try the moon,” sald laugh, “That's about the to explore nowadays.” But Stanley exaggerated, It is g#uch reputations as those of Humboldt, Livingstone and Stanley himself can no longt-r be made; but several tracts of the world's surface are still unexplored Of &ll the continents, SBouth doubtedly offers the most to the adventurous traveler “Explorers bhave gone up the rivers and &again,” a writer on the subject correctly observes, “but they have not penectrated any distance overland across the jungle covered watersheds,” It is strange how of South America countries If you have eption: traveler, I don't with a place left Stanley, only true that America un virgin ground come down Hittle know the about ask a Venezuelan at La Guayra, a Brazillan at Rio, a Colom- blan at Panama, or an E Guayaquil to tell about be will his shoulders “Quien w=abe, Senor?’ Certainly he does not know. If you told him that the dwellers in the un ettle), unexplored parts of his country “anthropophugi and men whose @o grow beneath their shoulders,” he not contradict “They are in theh the long their shoulder Walter Raleigh century, of u inhabitants their own uadorian at the interior, and answer: you shrug own were heads » could you reported to shoulders, middle of have their breasts, thelr eyes mouths in and that a back between the account 8y the and their train of hair groweth That i Rave n tvibe of reventeanth Indians living on the banks of the River Caura in Venezuela, Ot course, people do travelers' tales the days of matter not nowadays as Queen Elizabeth; of fact, nothing known today of this glon In which twentieth believe such they did In but, as a more definite js tribe. The re- live remains in thia the *“‘terra incognita' that it was in the days of Rale igh. Never a month without an dition leaving the confines of and plunging into the heart of some unex- plored region in South America. Little or nothing is heard of these expeditions, ex- cept in soclal and citles like Caracas, Port of Spain would furnish book if the about thelr ver: they century puasses expe- clvilization commerefal circ'es In Bogota, Sucre and Trinidad; but each of them material for a thrilling adventurers cared to write experiences, Usually they do not. Thay have other fish to fry They are orchld hunters, gold prospectors, dia- mond seekers or government officials en- gaged In delimiting boundaries between the various republics and colonles of South America, Three months, haps three years they left the last settlement on the fringe of the unknown, half of them return, tanned, haggard, half starved, fever stricken. The have been lost in the jungle, to perish miserab'y of hunger and thirst, or drowned in the rapids of some mighty river, or killed by hostile Indians, jaguars or sting rays. The Bouth American explorer lives {in the midst of alarms and there are a thousand ways in which he may violent death six months, a after year, per- rest meet a sudden and The survivors always tell the same story: “We have but they seen were that such some wonderful not even the part of which lies beyond. We climbed and such a mountain, as- cended =uch and such a river, dwelt among such and such a tribe; but we heard of other mountains, other rivers, other tribes far stranger and more interesting in the remoter regions to which we not penetrate.”’ Tuke, for example, of -unknown mountains the hinterland of “The known of these accessible mountains is undoubtedly Ror- aima,” sald Eugene Andre of Trinidad, a well known explorer of Venezuela, Colom- bia, the Gulanas ‘Since the Specta- tor for April, 1877, wrote, ‘Will no one ex- plore Roruima and bring us back the tid- fugs which it has been waiting these thou- sands of the mountain has ascended the secrets of its summit lald the Quelch-MceCon- nell expedition Is due the honor of having performed the sclentific work in the this interesting mountain things, thousandth could the Iimmense which runs the three Gulanas range along best so-called In- and years to glve us been and bare. To most valuable exploration of “Considering that a whole ence of suspected, we can remains to be the this little known part of When we consider summits of Roraima one of exist- is only series of such which may form some masses, Lhe not idea of what exploration of South America. moreover, that the mountains are plateaus, jssolated from the surrounding country dur- ing countless cannot help think- fng that each of them must be a field of ab- sorbing interest to the naturalist bot- anist Andre himself, in 1%, tried in vain to scale the mighty helghts of Mount Ameha, some of even be done in these ages, we and on the River Merevari, in mountain ha its companions, Arawa The unknown, and so Parime the home of like any of America Bpeaking from the ter experiences vast region “Three « sald, reach the This nor have Mount them s distant said to be Venezuela never been climbed, Mount Arichi country all the which are tribes of Indians those already known in and around are moie mountains, utterly un fouth depths of his own bit Andre explains this is still why riddle away,” he tricd to supposcd to an unsolved nturie the have first golden land near the Caura passed ‘'since adventurers exist Caroni knowledge of somewhere sources of the and the the far shadowy it not eighteen century pelled the mythical the Eldorado of the The veil of the enchantment which shre s the unexplored interior of Guiana has, it is true, been torn aside. In place of the fairy city gleaming with gold and precious stones now know that there i= an immense stretch of impenetrable forest, interspersed here and there with mountains of fantastic shape and ing grandeur, riging abruptly rounding and yet interior of the and Indefinite until the beginning of that Humboldt finally beliefs ‘conquistadores our Guianas remains was the dis which clung to we open with sUrpuss - savannas, from the sur- country—a region of abundant rains emall have and rapid rivers, thinlys peopled by tribes of Indians, who for carried on a serles of cruel centuries blood Fannie Freemun, muld of hunwa, Clarke Powell, royal charlotee e QUEEN EPOLETNA AND HER ESCORT AT THE CARNI feuds with their in bird, ficult of and “"Heyond this our uncertain, neighbors—a region vegetable life, but deadly in climate knowledge i& vague and likely to remain =o for The difficulty of navi- consist of a series of the utter absence of popu- considerable « their almost impossible task of trans- sufficiency of rich insect and dif- ACCess and is some time to come. gating rivers, which rapids and falls lation for banks, the porting a oniy stances on provisions where employed portages regionz an under- taking replete with danger and hardship ‘Added to thes: natural difficulties there is a rooted disinclination on the part of the natives to undertake long and arduous journeys outside of the immediate district with which they are familiar.” The natives know that when they ven ture far from their home with an exploring party, it is an even chance whether I return. On Andre's last expedition six shed of ste ition, and the rest crawled back to civilization more dead than In 1901 J. J. Quelch, of Georgetown i*h Guiana, one of the two who climbed Mount Roraima, into the settlements of the unexplored the borderland Guiana and Brazil, *I though I was the first white man who had ever visited that region,” said Mr. boats of no great size can be of the frequent the exploration of these on account make they Brit- Englishmen penetrated the Macusi Kanaku moun- between Bt | sh alone Indiang in tains on Ce . Bump, queen, Quelch to his friends In Georgeeswn on Ny return, “but I found a couple of Germans settled on what is regarded as the British side of the frontier, although the Brazilians claim the territory as belonging to their republic. “They that the Brazilian gove ernment had sent them, years before, to ex- plore the country and introduce civilization among the Macusi Indians. But the Indians uncivilized instead. They had taken native renounced all their pros- pects of advancement under the Brazilian government, turned their back forever on civilization, and were contentedly leading the ful, pastoral life of the Indians. hese men spoke of some strange beasts which they the Warakabra tigers, They said tigers roamed about the country in large numb: , hunting in packs and any animals, including hu- man that crossed their path. The asserted that the only way to es- from these beasts was to get into run- where they would not follow told us them wives, peac called these attacking heings Germans cape ning waler, you." Mr. Quelch's expedition on behalf of the several was undertakon British museum. He dis~ covered mall mammals hitherto unknown to science, including a new kind LHf guinea pig and a new adouri, an animal of the rabbit tribe. He also discovered a number of new orchids of wonderful beauty. *“But what I have found,” he told (Continued on Page Sixteen.) Bert Wattles, royv.i equery. VAL AND FAIR AT NELIGH, DBCORATED CARRIAGE DRIVEN BY MRS GEORGE DUNN, WHICH WM KME FInsST PRIZE IN THE FLOW:R PARADE AT DEWITT, Neb Photo by Hare,