FED FROM THE AIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 286, 4 December 1933, Page 2

FED FROM THE AIR

FOOD BY PARACHUTE GOLD-SEEKING IN CANADA OLD AND NEW METHODS. An English prospector and his wife were snowbound in their wilderness camp with only a little flour left. A pilot of the Canadian Airways, learning of their predicament, supplied them with food for the remainder of the winter, dropping it by parachute. This is one of many incidents that show how new gold-mining camps are sustained almost solely from the air, says the Vancouver correspondent of the Herald. Such an example is furnished at the camp at Swayzc City. A big freight seaplane arrives daily with fresh meat, gie ”i vegetables, mail and dynamite. Ono would hoar thrilling adventures if Gne could get these sub-Arctic airmen to talk. They are as uncommunicative as the traditional silent service, the navy. What one actually sees is an index to what they will not reveal. A French-Canadian pilot of the Eclipse Airways, who carried the money for the mining camp stores and payrolls, took off from Chapleau with a load of dynamite. . A strut loosened and one of his skis fell off. Spectators on the ground watched to see the machine crash and be blown to pieces. The airman, unperturbed, held an aileron at the tilt and made a three-point landing on one ski. There is a woman barber at Swayzc City. Her husband works at tho mine. Her mother runs a laundry, carrying the water a quarter of a mile from the lake. Their boarder runs a steam bath. A barrel-type stove is covered with concrete and stones. Tho stove is fired up and water is thrown on the- stones. Naked bathers sit on benches in the steam. Times have changed in the generation since the Klondyke stirred the world. The present-day rush for gold throughout Canada is largely by air, summer and winter. One of the first to stake claims at Swayzc City, a Yukoner, lands at the log boom jetty less than a day after leaving Toronto, crosses to the store after dinner, twirls the radio dial and picks up tho SharkoyCarncra. fight from Madison Square Garden. “Yes, times aro different,” says this sourdough turned capitalist, as he recalls the ordeals that awaited the hordes of treasure seekers who stormed the Yukon over the .1898 trail. Over the Chilkoot Pass by thousands, a steady black line against the snow for miles. In one snowslide 70 persons perished. There arc no dancing girls in Swayzc City or any of these new camps. The women who brave the northern wilderness nowadays go to nurse, to teach, to cook, to share what their men go through. Their men aro different. They are the same rugged, hardy type as their Yukon forerunners, but they have a bettor knowledge of geology and minerals.