VICTORY OVER DESERT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20058, 22 September 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

VICTORY OVER DESERT.

MOTORISTS' GREAT FEAT. THOUSAND ROUGH MILES. RACE AGAINST A FIRE. Tliero has been another victory over the desert. Six Englishmen with native guides lately made their way from Mafeking to Victoria Falls. They are the first white men to accomplish tho journey. Tho party left Mafeking on June 16, travelling in cars and motor-trucks. Beforo them lay a journey of a thousand miles through desert, swamp, and bush. They were outward bound on a route imtrncked by Europeans, where disaster might very well bo waiting for them. A few days out froni Mafeking the party turned into the dreaded Kalahari Desert, taking a route from East t<? West. This desert is a vast expanse of sand, thorn, and scrub, difficult to make way in and doubly difficult going in anything on wheels. Several .times, tho men had their hearts in their mouths, wondering if the machinery would hold out.

For twelve days the littlo expedition fought its way over the burning waste. They knew they were leaving good tracks behind them, with well borings which might guide wanderers over the desert again. When they emerged on tho outer edge of the Kalahari and found a few scattered white people they were able to tell them that their wheels had conquered tho waste. The desert was not the only enemy to the expedition Thero were swamps, malaria, and the tsetse fly menace to face. Strangely enough it was the natives who suffered most. They collapsed with fever and had to be nursed by the men they had set out to guide. Tho white men were all severely bitten by the tsetse fly, but they had with them all that medicine can offer to make for safety on such a journey, and they recovered. Once in the course of the three-weeks journey from Mafeking to Livingstone the expedition was very near disaster. They ran into the region of a bush fire which was raging and advancing swiftly, roaring and filling the sky with blinding smoke There was nothing for them to do but to rajo tho flames to a point where they could diverge from the track. The firo covered a front of 12 miles. Scorched, blackened, scarcely able to breathe, the drivers held on to their tvheels, not daring to think of the petrol inks in the storage trucks. They won tho race, and then, as it is just as well in • desert not to remember that you

m looked dcatli m tho face, they went an and said nothing about it. in due nir.se they wort in the wonderful region of the sounding waters of tho Victoria Falls, resting after their hrrd journey.