The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST" SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1938. This Contracting World

Northern Advocate, 16 July 1938, Page 6

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST"

SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1938. This Contracting World

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper

IN 1872 that imaginative Frenchman, Jules Verne, wrote a tale that fascinated generations of boys, and is still to be found in any well stocked school library. “Round the World in 80 Days” was its name. Sixty years ago this hurried bit of globe trotting was a feat of sensational speed. But today we have diffeient standards of speed and our sophisticated youngsters of today are able to read actual accounts of performances that makes the Jules Verne hero look like a tortoise. The feat of Howard Hughes, the young American millionaire, in flying round the world in less than four days in 91 hours, to be precise—is a remarkable enough exploit of itself, without needjug such embellishment as a romance with a film actress to add to the world’s interest in it. Such a flight emphasises how completely distance and space have been annihilated by the aeroplane. The records of human progress are telescoped into sudden and almost bewildering insignificance by the knowledge that a powerful aeroplane can leap oceans and continents and hurdle all these immense natural obstacles over which the travellers of other ages laborously fought their way. Out of the pages of history come heroic figures who did not have wings and engines to speed their progress, or radio to report them to a listening world. It is strange to think of Drake breasting unknown seas in the Golden Hind, and of 'Magellan and his tiny flotilla lost to the sight of Europe for three long years while they made the first fabulous voyage round the world. Then there were the famous travellers by land. Marco Polo rode across Asia on horses and camels, or trudged on foot. Today the aeroplane wings its way serenely over those burning deserts and forbidding mountains. Howard Hughes sped in a few hours from Paris to Moscow. A whole chapter in the history of Napoleon’s romantic ambition is written in the distance separating those two capitals; a distance so long and weary in 1812, yet so brief an interlude in a millionaire’s monoplane in 1938.

There is something; fascinating in the utter and complete contempt with which a set of groaning engines enables the voyager of the skies to hold frozen wastes, mountains and all the other obstacles which appear so puny to the modern voyagers. So long as neither his engine nor his navigation fails him, sevenleagued boots are slow by comparison, and the magic carpet is obsolete. Yet somehow these frantic flights do not seem to have the glamour of the old patient journeying. These is something grim and austere in the thought of Mr Howard Hughes roaring round the world, a robot in goggles, while continents pass beneath him, unseen and unheeded. Romance is lacking in a race against the clock when everything depends upon navigation instruments and an engine.

It is a relief' to return to the sedate but no less fascinating travels of the Jules Verne hero, Phileas Fogg, who wagered £20,000 that he could get round the world in 80 days in 1872, and did it in spite of being mistaken for a bank robber and arrested. The timetable he followed is interesting, for it was, of course, based on actual services available at that time:—

London to Suez, via Mont Cents and Brindisi, rail and steamboat .. 7 days. Suez to Bombay, steamer 13 days. Bombay to Calcutta, rail 3 days. Calcutta to Hongkong, steamer 13 days. Hongkong to Yokohama, steamer 6 days. Yokohama to San Francisco, steamer 22 days. San Francisco to New York, rail 7 days. New York to London, steamer and rail 9 days. Chivalrous Phileas Fogg had many adventures, including a. fight with Indians, before arriving baick on time in London, plus a beautiful bride rescued from an Indian funeral pyre. Tie was ■acclaimed by shouting crowds, just as Howard Hughes was acclaimed at New York. All the Jules Verne dreams came true. Submarines, aeroplanes, radio —be foresaw them all. Howard Hughes is the P'hileas Fogg of today—and perhaps Katherine Hepburn is theequivalent of Aouda, the lovely Hindu.