GREAT MOTOR RACE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 173, 15 April 1908, Page 7

GREAT MOTOR RACE.

FROH NEW YORK, TO PARIS: ROUTE CHANCED. ELIMINATION OF BEHRING STRAIT AND ALASKA. "■ . i iX TELEGRAm—PREE3 ASSOCIATION— COPTHIGOT. '' London, April 13. Owing to a thaw in Alaska rendering tho route through that territory impracticable, it has been eliminated from tho New York to ■ Paris motor . race; The motorists aro going to Vladivostock. / TERRORS OF THE FORMER ROUTE,. ".When the roUnd-the-world motor race,was first mooted (says the "Bulletin"), the track or,route rail from New York to Chicago,.thcnco across the Rocky", Mountains to 'Seattle, whore it was confidently predicted trouble-would begin.- 'For.the lino'then led. over the snow-clad mountains of the glacier coast of 'British Columbia to Skagway, where tho cars wero to strike the formation that .lies between Skagway'and Dawson in the Klondjke. After Dawson, the - route lay through a wilderness of silonco, the place where people are not, and where-the only sign of life is the solitary bear, some deer of sorts; and the swift . wolf that racos the car by day and oats the motorist by night: In fact, fho route lay along the Arctic circle right away to where Capo Princo of '.Wales looks: down on Behring Strait. Explorers who went there by ship describe the soenery as oharroing, and the promoters of tha race wero originally 'anxious that tho competitors should have delightful scenery.. " Tho cars wero. to cross Behring Strait on tho ice, and as tho strait'is, at its narrowest, 30 miles wide, there were some choerful possibilities. - Aoross the: strait tho advonturers. were: to enter the Russian province of Anadir, elinib the, stupendous Stanavel Range, -make down through Yakutsk and Manchuria, • and thence over the route followed by Scipio Borghese. Then tho promoters began" to consider. " The - motor trip through British Columbia had been, tried before, and the record-breakor, Emile do Laihare; a French Canadian,' got stuck. 400 miles from Dawson City, and narrowly escaped,with his life. Moreover, ,evon . supposing the cars had, got across Behring Strait, ■ thej- had no chance of traversing the-triicklcss; wilderness of deep forests; awful morasses, and - thick ' undergrowth,. out of which'the-Stnnavol Range rises liko a wall. Arid' on the Yakutsk sido the motorists would h'ave been blocked by, the .mighty rivers that pour;.down from the .Stanavel to the Arctic Ocean." .Consequently, the "Bulletin" I continues,'the route was altered by striking out some of the principal 'dangers,. v The present. change of,.route, however, represents something; more sweeping. 'To ship from tho-North Amorican coast to Vladivostock means eliminating nearly all • those terrors at which . the world lias been . standing. aghast. No doubt discretion is tho better part of valour.