ASTONISHING ADVENTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 2 June 1934, Page 22 (Supplement)

ASTONISHING ADVENTURE

BABY SAVED FROM ICE-FLOE. LITTLE ONES WITH CASTAWAYS. . Karina Vassilieva is a very remarkable little girl. Not only was she bom nearer the North Pole than anyone else in the world, but as a six-months-old baby she has had an adventure which no other child of her age has experienced, for she has travelled, by ship' or by plane, the whole sweep of the north Siberian coast. Karina was bom six months ago on board the Chelyuskin in the Kara Sea, after which she was named. She has spent her first winter in Arctic darkness, and has been, we are sure, a source of joy to Valentina Buiko, the only other child on board. With their mothers and the eight other women in the party these babes were the first to be rescued from the ice-floe on which over 100 people have been spending anxious weeks.

MAKING A LANDING GROUND. The story of the rescue is one of the most thrilling chapters in flying (says the Children’s Newspaper). When the Chelyuskin sank 102 castaways made a camp on the ice-floe, their leader, Professor Schmidt, keeping in tdiich by wireless with Wellen Camp at East Cape, Siberia. At East Cape was an aeroplane awaiting a favourable moment when the snow blizzards ceased to rage. The castaways set to work to prepare a landingground, but as the ice near their camp was rugged they had to row to a comparatively smooth floe, there to level the ice hummocks in readiness. The storm ceased, and a pilot named Levadiefsky, with his observer Petroff, made the journey, although there were 72 degrees of frost. It was a terrible risk, for the machine was a heavy one with a high landing speed. Immediately the aeroplane landed all was haste in the camp, for by this time two miles of sea separated it from the aerodrome. CARRIED TO SAFETY. Karina and Valentina, with the, ten women, were hurried into the ship s noat and rowed across the two miles; then, packed in the aeroplane, they were carried to safety to Wellen Camp. ■'. Valentina is the daughter of the Commandant of Wrangel Island, Karina is the daughter of a scientist, and their mothers were on their way to stay at Wrangel Island, where a colony has been living for many years and where their husbands are engaged in scientific work for the Russian Government. We may be surprised to hear that aerodromes and wireless stations exist in Northern Siberia, but wonderful developments have been taking place in the course of the last few years in that vast area. Russia has thousands of miles of, coast-line bordering on the dreary Arctic seas, and romantic writers have often pictured this cold territory covered with flourishing cities and factories brought into being by vast rich deposits of minerals. Now part of this dream has come true, and there seems no reason why Arctic Russia of the future should not be thickly peopled. Archangel has now a population of a quarter of a million, and North Russia is becoming one of the biggest industrial areas in the Soviet Union. It is, generally speaking, a cold and infertile region, but ways out of these difficulties have been found. A coalfield has been discovered containing, it. is said, a billion tons, to say nothing of oil. Copper, lead, and tin have been fotmd on Severnaya Zemlya,' an island which was not mapped till 1929, and gold has been found on the River Kolyma. BITS FROM THE WAR. A NEW WAY WITH OLD MINES. Nearly twenty years ago the seas were strewn' with explosive mines, and when peace was declared there were piles of them still unused at many depots in the world. At Queenscliff in Australia there has been such a pile lying all these years, but now a firm has bought the lot. Still covered with their camouflage of red and green paint, but with the explosive removed, these deadly weapons of war are to be used for decorations during the visit of Prince George at the Centenary Celebrations in Victoria. They will form containers for paliris and plants. A more fitting end for munitions of war we cannot conceive.

‘ Q BOATS. SUBMARINE' CATCHERS. the war the name Q Boat was given to the disguised merchant ships which . carried guns and>- torpedoes to attack submarines. A German submarine would approach an innocent merchantman only to find her suddenly throw off disguise' and open .fire. Many submarines were caught in this way, ciinning matching with cunning. The idea is now being applied to fishery patrol boats. The official police boats are got up like ordinary trawlers and are thus able to move unsuspected in fishing-grounds to catch illegal fishermen. f • , 1 , GOOD WORK BEGINNING. WIRELESS CATCHES SMALLPOX. - Broadcasting by. wireless, newly started in India, is already proving a great success. In a village, in the Lahore district or North India a case of smallpox was reported. The Lahore Y.M.C.A., which holds the only broadcasting licence in that part, invited the doctors to come to the microphone and give a series of talks on the steps to be taken to prevent its- spread. ' ’ : ' The talks were given in English and two Indian languages spoken in the area, and the result was that very few people fell victims to this disease, wireless having caught it in time. ; PATIENTS WHO REFUSE TO GO. RATELI PORCUPINE. The patients in Albert Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambarene, in French Equatorial Africa, are not all . content with two feet, and some have wings. His Swiss nurse, Mlle Jeannette Siefert, has been writing home saying that when a native finds any animal or bird in the forest and brings it to the hospital the' doctor gives him a little present for not having left it to die. In this way quite a menagerie has been got together. For instance, there is Theodore, a little antelope picked up. eight months ago and now perfectly tame. All day long Theodore stops in a large paddock and. wears a bell round his neck to tell where he is. His gambols are an endless source of amusement. At nightfall Theodore seeks out the doctor, who gives him a banana or a mandarin; then he disappears and the bell is silent till dawn. Here, too, are three pelicans. One of them, Parsifal, likes a fly about over the buildings, but every evening he comes for his-banana and his fish. There is no satisfying his appetite. Fritz, the big owl, sleeps all day in the dense foliage of one of the trees, but he also likes fish, and takes care that Parsifal does not get more than his share. ' Then, there is Rateli, a little porcupine which a native found new-born and abandoned in the forest At first he had to be fed with a bottle; but now he says that he can hunt for himself, and off he goes at nightfall. But he always comes to the dinner-table for dessert, because he loves peanuts. At the time of writing Rateli had vanished for some days, probably in search of a mate, but experience leads the doctor to hope that in time he will return. All these animals f are the doctor’s guests, and are perfectly free to go away whenever they wish to, though at times, as we explained the other day, the hospital receives an unwanted guest such as a hippo. The doctor is shortly coming to Europe, but Mlle Siefert will dispense hospitality to the guests while he is away.