In place of letters which must be 8. la carte and laboriously one at a time I propose to try something table dlhote, to be sent in the large hope that ir spite of wanderings (of body and mind) I'll still contrive to keep in touch with a few simpatfcos. Arguments could be made for a type of comnrunication that would not suf- fer from the impersonality, discretion, formality, and general paralgsis of the public prints, not yet be limited in range of subjects and in number of friends reached, and by the tedium of the mere long-hand writing - 8s is the usual letter. But no arments can define the opportunity as well as trying to seize it, nor can any prdspectus pretend to be as satisfactory as experiment - so here goes* At times you'll suffer from Burton Holmesickaess for there'll be too much travel - and often you'll see old stuff long since unloaded in conversation - but I shall try to describe experiences, report observations, and propose theories just as each happens to interest me - and in the honest hope that if any of it interest yau you'll feel to compare notes and write me - or at least intend to - €or after all even that is something. Emerience Nothing recently - unless it be renting a suburban house and hunting and hiring a cook for the first time in my life and getting used to the rough mannish talk of the average commuter in the seat behind - has been as mch fun a$ a trip I made last November to Bogot6, Colombia. United Fruit S.S. Carillo via Kingston, Panama, Cartagena to Ihrranquilla, and thence by a Scadta hydroplane to Girardot 600 miles up the Rio EBagdslens to Girardot and thence by train up 7,000 feet to the sabana of EogotA. From Barranqyilla at the mouth of the MagdaleaaRiver inland to Giralrdot It is a huge warm tropical river mezmdering in its lower two thirds is 600 miles long. 7 to 21 days, through forests that proved almost impassable to t'ne first Syaniards and their horsesa the whole distance is 8 hours! River steemers of the old Mississippi type make the trip in ate trip took them 5 montb. And now you can fly in a German hydroplane The most exciting trip I ever made. We left the hangar at 6 A.M. as the dawn caiie over the snow covered I certainly got a kick out of the di&ant 14,000 foot peaks near Sta. Marta. first rush over the water, tbe roaring slapping struggle to get off the mater, and the delicious smoothness and ease of flight once you are off the earth. the second time we rose after a wait for the fog to clear found time for some notes: But Just taking canvas covering off propeller again. Gosh this is fun! We'll go like the devil along this broad steaming river soon - yes propellers going N9W faster auci faster. blazing dov- on us. Itls monderfE1 - bouncing slow at ihe beginniag, and leaving the grand - so suave axd yet so swift. I get a kick oEt of flying all right - it's enough like my dreams of flying to be fascinating. write at just abut the right hei&t for the most appreciation, and just the height I like in my 9reams. Really amazing hori similar the feeling is! new things are the his and the noise and the speed - the essential feeling is the same. L?iver's ever eo sxooth ad tlie sun of 8:20 is 1 had to stop. water is -- Xud huts frorn up topside - - - moray! We're plunging along as I The only The Rio Magdalena is tremendous, smooth, warm, covered with dislodged green floating plants and mottled with muddy eddies. rise of md and then underbrush and the dark green forest stretching off to far distant mountains. On either bank a sheer Xow we're climbing rapidly - to cut across the curves of this vinding: river we must fly over long stretches of forest and you must have height to coast back to mater. Our shadow is small and races over lakes and mods. NOW its quite bumpy. like pincushions look like thumbtacks now, Trees that looked first like heads of dark lettuce and then Gosh this is ilOM)EE3TJL! \Yetre above clouds now - the machine. registers 400 meters. Enomus valley - blue at the edges and be- neath us bri&t green az muddy brom in vast blotches. muntains 19-14,000 feet high in northeast - glorious fagged thirgs apparently 70 ailes .?.way. Lord this is a trip! Blue, snow capped Just flev over 2 pair of bright blue birOs with scarlet heads (macaws?) They were distressed and disappeared in the deep green below and behind US. Belre down lor DOV: fron the 600 meters of a little while ago. Oh slick! Just flew over a strip of md bar - sand beach and looked right down on 6 big alligators playing 3ossum. The car - or rather space we're in - two of us - is about the size of a Ford back seat and I look out of a 7i;;lndon just 2s though I mere in a train - an open mindow, mscles. If rqy elbow is outside the vind is so strong it billows the And to my fece it does a wild and steady massage - muy fuerte Nom we've stopTed once to pick up a& leave mail, at a little thatched- roof-and-adobe tom. of the dw did look like a stresk of blue md - and then from batting the water great broadside spats we suddenly felt releasee a+nd happy and the motor from a frantic roar settled down to a steady hum as though it had finally joined the leisure class or gotten a living wage or something. And then, racing over the water which in the brightness Yie're quite well up nov - the little disc which is in front of our vrindow to the front seat nhere sit the pilot and his mechanic, and is marked I'H6he in En.'' marks 800 meters now. and a little inhuman. And the norld begins to look large and frizzy 3 Yes here come %ire mowtai3s! P_nd behind this huge alluvial plain all so filled with meandering strzarx, lakes, poois, slews, bayous, lagoons, that I can't tell where the Ha&leca real12 is. %odak as you go!" E! we've just gooe up and over that mountain! Vhy that mas a wuntain, all covered with >alms - and the only way I can tell its a hill is that the trees in the center looked ar somehow. lie* re going to leave them to the right. Lakes and ponds look from here like irregular saucers of treacle with brilliant green mould growing around the edges. Kodak again. I mst say that when the engine missed a minute ago something aht the size of my fist took three twists inside me. Lends to the excitement. Yoho! here we go down. Lord! Not till rou go dovn do you believe the dial that says 135 kilometers per hour. feels like the magnified essence of a roller coaster. Never saw that before! k lake so inroaded by some plant that only an irregular patch in the center fails to be the yellow green of the inside of a lettuce head. & yellow green,. And here's another kind up ahead - and mw under us. wavy bands. that s why. It looked like polished malachite - one green shade inside another in, There's a little biddy alligator - gosh we're at 700 meters and My companion, Seaor Barriga has just waked from a nap. As he was ter- rified during the first hours he is amazed to be told he has slept 20 mimtes. Pleased? why I have just written on a giece of paper "Sangfroid!" and showed it to him and he beamed then bowed and asking permission rapidlg tore off the strip of paper, folded it carefully, and put it in his Docketbook - doubtless to convince an admirixg family of his coolness in great Detil. Tartarin! Down at a fearfully hot place for lunch. Two little puppies PhYiw in the hotel courtyard made me think of Binny. possession of a huge passion flower as big as the head of one of them --- two school boys quarreling over Mary Garden. Puppies were raging Over the Well, off again. Lord this is a roaring good trip. 1'11 tell you what it's like. It's as though you hitched the tonneau of a Ford midway on the roof of an eighty foot corrugated iron bath house, got a six cylinder motor attached to a huge electric fan pulling air over you like a gale, and the whole works were softly suspended in space wherein it bumped up and 60m like a restless elevator. And every time you looked out corrugated iron roof, firm ani! sure - and the next was a slipping sliding tropical 3m&? 1,500 feet belom. after another in successively paler shades of blue. of the window the first thing you saw was the And over on the horizon 7 distinct mountain ranges one It's 5:15 now and we're up in mountainous country again at 800 meters and its very bumpy. blue and darkening in the sunset. covered with snow - what I thoat was clouds proves to be a vast saddleback and crest of snow. leys in a deepening haze - green-brown below, smke-blue far away. Over to the west there is a magnificent stretch of mountains The Cordilleras -. 14-17,000 feet hi& and We're at 1,000 meters nom, and the shadows are erasing the Val- 4 9 F.3. - 3otei InFlesa Zirardot At 6:15 we saw the lights of Girardot ad mitk a series of great curv- ing, slanting swoops ve turned an3 settled on the river, skimming, slapping, and finally splashing like a great mild duck. 'As soon as I was out of the machine and with q ears still roaring so I could haraly hear, there was the inevitable comission of medicos who took me to the hotel. Gave them weeski soda and when they showed no signs of ter- minal facilities, I asked 'em to supper. Vorried along in Portuguese - I could understand then but they only pretended to comprehend me. Xy, I am weary. And may there be no huxning at the bar* when I yut out the light. En route to Panama There is a very amusing clown aboard - United States Rubber Company man from New Rochelle.. Youisg:, tall, stoop-shouldered, with no chin, an enormous stung-by-a-bee upper lip, and a strengefacial paralysis - the effect is extra- ordinary. It's enough of a handicap apparently, to have sharpened his wits SO that he escapes depressing or even disgusting people, by his clowning - which he does very well. fie says he met a Dartmouth student from Shelby,Montana whose idea of a vacation is to leave Shelby wit'n ten cents in his pocket and see how far he can go (and return) in tro months. In the summer of 1922 he get to Chicago and back and wa8 forty dollars to the good on the return. ''Bell, I mt in with a guy just outa three years in Joliet. All pale he was - and saY he had a trick! He could make his nose bleed just like hell by kinda bitin' his upper lip! Vell, we had it fixed up so held go into a kinda fit on the street near a good store and bleed an' I'd fan him an' tell the crowd he was gassed in France and pass the hat. God! lewd ha' cleared a million dollars if his nose had only ha How had he managed it? held out !'I Note to Investors: Mr. Di Georgio, an Italian bancaa king of N.Y. said that a stalk of bananas which costs $4.20 in EJew Orleans cannot possibly on the mst liberal estimate cost nore thar, Sl,QO to raise and put there. the United Fruit Company may have some influence in Central American governments- I suggested that "Why it owns those governments body and eou1," $as Di GIs reply. Doubt : In the.Vallery-Radot Life of Pasteur aprJear references to "gentlemen of the old school" wfth the inevitable adjectives "polite, dignified, and gentle." It seems to me that if every ape refers to its elders in these terms then it must be singularly eaay for humans between the ages of 60-70 to be gentle, *mo s quit o 5 dignified, and poiite --- the us-al inferences atout decay of manners are to be greatly discounted. before they go rotten. manners something can indeed be said for his llschoolll, but what is proved 'by a kindly old buzzard of seventy roosting in the carefree gentle satiety of his old age? Holmes o5served that men are like epples - sweetest just It's true thstt if a man of thirty has a trace of fine Theoqy: Thy do old people enjoy harrowing stories? The connection of sorrow and vihite hairs is close - but it's usually the other way, white hairs glorying in horror or ingratitude or irremediable tragedy, and retelling dreadful stories with a strange insistence. I suppose that very deaf people must en,jo,y a boiler factory - "Here" they feel "we can still hear as well as we ever did. alive." So old folks with their emotional fires banked, love to feel the old quickening of horror or of sympathy and like a jaded addict - and they are ad- dicts of the stimulant known as life -r they111 blov themselves to any horror for the dim thrill they still get out of it. After all our senses are If tn the future I cone to be travelizg again, I'll send full notes to the office at 61 Broadmy - and they'll scad you future sheets.of this - but fresher from the field. Good luck