Round the World.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14015, 25 September 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

Round the World.

IX A .MOTOR CAR. The account of his World's tonr l>y Antonio fcjc-arloglio, is thus reviewed by Tighe Hopkins, in the London '•Daily Chronicle": — This was a famous victory! It was the victory of the Italian car Zust in the delirious international race around the world, from Mew York to l'aris. A good deal more than, half the earth passed under the wheels of the Zust. and the journey was ono long conittc-t with nature in her .harshest forms, aim often in her most dread humours. 31ore than once the intrepid charioteers escaped by a nothing from failing into the citops of death. It certainly was a famous victory. Front some points of view the enterprise was pare craziness and the reader of its history has from time to time a sense of vertigo in attempting to realise the corybantic course of the machine, urged frantically by night and day, over continents thousands of miles broad—frozen, torrid, or stormdrenched. Somewhere in the book Scarfoglio himself describes it as "an act of splendid folly." It was this, no donbt; but it was also an act ot splendid daring, exhibiting powers of endurance and resource not always equalled and seldom surpassed in the records of great adventure. For the travellers (three young braves at tho start and two on the iated stages) were eight montlis at it: and during almost every hour ft this time they were getting the very last ounce ont of a machine not framed for thus maniacal chase around the world composed of most peculiar obstacles. We by no means intend to disparage the Zust;. She must have been one of the very very finest pieces of machinery ever turned out of a motor maker's. Bnt is any motor meant to travel whero roads were never laid, to slide down precipices, to negotiate the zig-zags of sheer ami trackless mountains, to crawl a mile or so an hour across half a continent of snows, to sink and rise over leagues of swamp, to flounder through illimitable versts of mnd, to swing in mid-air over bridges ot papier-mai-he - All this, and more, Sir Scarfogiio and Jlme. Zust did. The ono supremely amazing fact about this journey is that it was actually accomplished. Here is a bird's eye view. Ono night, after seven months of toil, when Asia is just vanishing from and Enrooe is just dawning on the sight, Scarfogiio says: " In all that tinw» we have only had one hope, one vision—Fan's, the Effe-1 Tower, raising its giraffe-like skel.-ton to the blue sky, and the city stretchins: at its feet between the verdant hills. . . . r To-night along th's green road, at tho end of which, twenty miles from us, mysterious .ind immense Asia comes to .in end, T recall every incident of the journey—The pnow-storms of the first days (they Had

! made the start from Xpiv York in mill winter;, the aw I'ul mini ol lowa, tin- silent plains <il' Wyoming, the terrible nights ami painful days on the Hooky Mountains, tho sufFocating deserts oi' Xovada, and fragrant- California. Then tho sea. and the poor Japanese, dying far front his paradise; the rickety bridges and harsh Fujiyama, the fearful nights of Tsiiruga. 'l'lien. in .Asia. tho. tortures of (''astern Siberia, the four hundred and fifty miles alone; the Manehnrian railway: the tire at Yemen-Co, ami the Tian.--buikailian Desert: the ceaseless rain in the Steope and the " taiga." and the nights spent in the mud. nights when our teeth chattered with cold under the delude which penetrated our useless waterproofs ; the dreadful marches through cl.niils of misipiiiiu'S and horse Hies, which stung us until tliev drew hlood ; and the last- tragedy Haaga suffering tho agony of lover in a primitive village, and I. alone, ignorant, and compelled to watch his life ebbing away unable to help him." Haaga, it may he said, made n good recoverv, and niloted the Zust to the office of the ".Matin" in Cans, which was the winning post. Fivo-aiul-twentv years ago it- would have seemed a wonderful tiling to accomplish a iournev such as this on horseback. That would have been less than atrifle in comparison with its successful accomplishment by motor. Any separate stage of the stages would he something for a good traveller to boast of: the flight across America, the passage across the Rockies, the ascent of Fujiyama, in Japann. the night journey alone the precipice, the coiiQuest of Siberia. Scarfoglio and Fnatra took them all ns they oame. Youth was well served: and the story of the mereditablc voyage makes a notable nnd most fascinating book, to which Mr. Parker Heve's translation dors the best possible justice.