DEFIES DESERT BANDITS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16317, 18 April 1927, Page 12

DEFIES DESERT BANDITS

HUNT FOR MANKIND’S CRADLE. ANDREWS STARTS FOR GOBI DESERT. .SEATTLE, March 16. The cradle of mankind eventually will reveal its first fossil secrets or another .fossil may bo added to Ihe age-old sands of the silent Gubi. Roy Chapman Andrews, scientist-explorer, who has brought back from Mongolia materia: evidence of the existence of human beings in a misty age of a new-formed world, sailed from Seattle on Tuesday. Once more the grim, bandit-infested desert calls and the scientist turns his eager eyes to the East. Standing on tile deck of the President Jackson yesterday, a few moments before sailing time, Dr. Andrews briefly summed up his plans: “I intend to keep up the quest for the cradle of man till I find it, or my own fossilised remains are added to the sands of the Gobi.” TRAVELLING ALONE.

Andrews is travelling alone, and will bo joined _at Pekin by two other members of his last year’s expedition, who have been wintering in Tibet. The state of civil war existing in China may materially affect this year’s plans. If the conditions are such that the explorer cannot get. out into the desert, ho intends to remain in the Orient, until opportunity does offer. It is not a brief, spectacular dash for the scientist, hut a life’s iob. What is the brief span of twelve months compared with the millions of years that have slipped l>y since the first hairy biped crawled out or (he ooze of the vaporous cenozoic period into the light, of the mesozoie age? Andrews, with his dogged deter I'ninafion, answers—nothing !

If political conditions do not inter fere, Andrews will go at once to the railhead at Galgan, at a point where the great wall of China infs farthest into the desolate -Mongolia. From there by earno] caravan and motor ear •>the expedition hopes to penetrate the Gobi for a distance of from 1500 to 2000 miles. The expedition route will be in the form of a giant eclipse. “It will require four months for (he camels to reach a point 1000 miles out,” said Andrews, ‘‘The most economical and satisfactory way is to send the camels on ahead, but we will bo unable to do that this year. The camels will set down our first base of supplies of food, gasoline and oil.”