SWISS CASTLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 239, 9 October 1935, Page 12

SWISS CASTLE.

ELLSWORTH'S PLANS. ANTARCTIC AMBITION. AFTER JAGUAR WITH A SPEAR (By CLARENCE K. STREIT.) LENZBURG, Switzerland. There is a refrain that runs through the conversation when one is talking with Lincoln Ellsworth about his plans for his coining exploratory tlight across Antarctica. It conies as he answers questions in liis quiet, soft voice. It is a sort of refrain; just this: "No one knows." "What sort of conditions must you prepare for in this 2300-mile tlight?" "No one knows. Only perhaps 10 per cent of Antarctica has been roughly explored. No one has yet crossed the area I propose to cross." That seems to cover things pretty thoroughly, but it is hard nowadays to conceive land no one really knows. One is lured back into asking foolish ques-

tions. You listen while Ellsworth tells how he waited 44 days last year for as much as 12 hours of good living weather. You listen while he tells you that what he has been seeking for three years now is a 24-hour flight across Antarctica from Weddell Sea to Ross Sea 011 the Cape Horn side of the Pole. Twelve from 20 leave eight, you figure, and it comes over you rather forcibly that the risk of being forced down is great.

"The trouble," Ellsworth is saying, "is squally weather. But you usually see the storm coming and, with a plane such as mine, one can hope to outrun it. If not, you must try to land and dig a trench before it hits you. Ihc n-reat advantage of a low-wing plane, such'as I have, is that you can dig in better with it."

Practising Crevasse Work. "But if you land and can't take off and must walk for it—what is the country best adapted for—skis, snowshoes, or what?" "We are taking a hand sled, with five weeks' emergency rations for the pilo and me and skis—but no one knows foi sure what is best, for we don t know just what conditions we may meet. The 'plane he mentions has a ceiling of 24,000 ft, which .prompts the question, "How high do you plan to fly.' "As low as possible, for I want to photograph with my new German camera, which takes 250 shots vitliout reloading. But nobody knows whether or not there is a mountain range across this area that will force us up. I nope so, for it will make navigation easier. One's eye falls on Alpine pick and rope. Ellsworth explains lie has just been spending ten days at Pontresina with the famous Swiss guide, Simon Rehmi, practising pulling men out of ice | crevasses. The question seems to ask j itself: "Are there lots of crevasses ill this region you are tackling?" "No one knows. From what little we do know, it seems likely, and we must therefore be prepared. But no one knows."

Of course, "no one knows" doesn't come back all the time as in these samples, but it does recur in one form or another to make the least imaginative man finally begin to understand how many unexpected facets there are to man's ignorance of the Antarctic and the difficulties of planning a 2300-mile trip over the absolutely unknown. At Ccliloss Lenzburg. It seems impressive here, at Ellsworth's castle, Schloss Lenzburg, where he has been vacationing since .Tune 20 with his wife, her mother, Mrs. ,T. S. Ulmer, of Philadelphia, U.S.A. This is his home, where his father lived 17 years after buying it in 1913, and it may seem wrong to speak of vacationing at home. But Ellsworth hasn't been here more than three months yearly since he inherited the castle 'five years ago. He vacations here at home from the months spent in Antarctica waiting for a few hours of good weather. It is hard to imagine unknown lands, let alone the Antarctic, here in this great castle on a butte rising out of thickly-settled green hills. One drives up a corkscrew road through tunnels formed of the foliage of chestnut trees so thick one turns on the car lights. One crosses a drawbridge, passes through a gate, and enters a courtyard greev with maple and chestnut trees. Here there is a gaiety of geraniums, which relieves the battlemented walls. In Switzerland there is no more pic turesque castle outside or inside than this Ellsworth home. The first thing that strikes one on entering the living room is the ticking of several ancient clocks in different notes. One finds several of these ancient clocks in every

room one enters. It excites your curiosity to find that each one is running and telling a different hour. Ellsworth explains that there are 72 clocks in the castle. "My father collected them," lie says. Somehow one doesn't think of measuring time in the Antarctic. "As for me," says Ellsworth, "I am taking only one time piece with me —a chronometer." A Thousand Years of History. In the ancient Gothic fireplace a cedar lire crackles in the cool evening, on an extraordinarily high pile of wood ashes. "Those are aslies of all the fires that have ever burned in that fireplace in 22 years," Ellsworth says. "My father would never let them lie disturbed, and I have carried on." "You must often think of this old castle and this lire in the Antarctic," is ventured. "No, not so much. T adapt myself wherever I am. I am not interested in the past —only in the future." Mrs. Ellsworth happens to mention the trophy room. One is interested. Ellsworth takes one there. There are heads of buffalos, moose. Rocky Mountain sheep and other trophies of Ellsworth's hunting days in North America on the walls of this room in which Barbarossa once signed a treaty. This is no unknown castle. Men have been living in it a thousand years. This is one of the most storyed castles in Swit-

zerland. Everybody around here knows about (his castle, and it is within these walls that one hears Ellsworth talk of his plans for flying across a land 110 one knows. Plans to Sail on October 20. Ellsworth will leave tiie castle for Friedrichshaven whence he will sail with Mrs. Ellsworth in the Graf Zeppeli 11 for Rio de Janeiro. Thence lie will go to Sao Paulo, whence he will fly to Corumba in the wilderness of Matto (irosrto. He goes there to meet that strange Latvian, Saclia Siemel, celebrated in "green held" and reputed to be the one white man who hunts jaguars with a spear. Sieinel has invited him to hunt with a spear. After three weeks there, Ellsworth will return to Rio, then go to Montevideo, where his ship, Wyatt Earp, is outfitting. He sails from there to the Antarctic 011 October 20, planning to make Snowhill, Dundee, or one of the neighbouring islands a base for his flight.

There begins the wait for good weather. If he does not find it by January 1, he says he will renounce the flight for this time.

The 'plane will carry gas for 1000 extra miles, and two wireless sets—one portable for that hand sled. Ellsworth will radio via his ship to New. York during the flight and when he announces his landing in Ross Sea the ship will sail 3000 miles round in order to pick him up. That is expected to take five weeks. Hence live-week emergency rations.

There are two things more Ellsworth plans to take in the 'plane's precious load. They are two ox shoes, worn once, he says, by oxen that took pioneers to California. "I found them myself," he says, "in Death Valley." Now stealing a little space from the pemmican supplies, these former ox shoes are going to what remains of a once vast land nobody 'knew. To fly thereover, to plod thereover—nobody knows.— (N.A.N. A.)

[Since the above was written Mr. Ellsworth's 'plane, Polar Star, crashed at Montevideo and was considerably damaged. The explorer, however, expressed the opinion that the accident would not delay the departure of tho expedition in the Wyatt Earp, which he stated would leave Montevideo for the Weddell Sea 011 October 15.j