Walter Mittelholzer loved to fly in airplanes in the 1920s & 1930s. He writes, "To me, flying has always been a means of which, without the assistance of photography, the mountains and the secrets of the vast world can be shown from a point of view hitherto unknown," Flights From Arctic to Equator: Conquering the Alps, the Ice Peaks of Spitsbergen, of Persia, and Africa's Mountains of the Moon, National Geographic Magazine, April, 1932, p. 445.
By his own count, this adventurer crossed the European Alps a hundred times. This was not without risk: once he crashed on a snowy peak and broke a few bones. He particularly enjoyed employment from the Shah of Persia, hired "to demonstrate the great value of air travel to his country . . . The culminating achievement of my Persian flight was to cross the premier mountain in Persia, the ice-crowned Demavend, which towers to a height of 18,600 feet" (p. 448). He was the first to fly over it. At other times, his plane developed engine trouble. Always challenging was making preparations for fuel, not to mention lack of unreliable maps.
FYI: The Matterhorn is a towering Swiss mountain, "too steep for any great depth of snow to cling to" (photo caption, p. 450).
The stories told by all adventurers are so interesting. On the shores of a Swiss lake, at Morgarten in the 1800s, the French were attacking. "The Swiss ran low on ammunition, and one soldier is reputed to have extracted a French bullet from his own wound and, loading it into his gun, to have fired it back at the enemy" (photo caption, p. 464). The Swiss were victorious that time.
Who could not be enchanted with travel over tall mountains in a small plane? "Now and again, through gaps in the clouds, I could see, far down in the narrow ravines, mountain villages hanging like birds' nests to the green slopes traversed by foaming watercourses" (p. 463).
What a beautiful sight it must have been to view the volcano of Mount Etna in Sicily when it was smoking! "The 10,758 foot volcano dominates the Sicilian landscape and is visible far at sea" (photo caption, p. 468). Captain Mittelholzer also flew near and photographed the smoking volcano of Mount Vesuvius. "The last three centuries have seen a continuous state of subdued activity, with occasional serious flare-ups, the most recent of which was in 1929" (photo caption, p. 470).
FYI: The word, 'assassin,' comes from a "notorious band of murderous hashish eaters" who attacked caravans in the Middle Eastern desert roads between Tehran to Kazvin (photo caption, p. 472).
Once the Captain was "flying in complete darkness" over a jungle. "Sinister violet gas flames shot out from both the red-glowing exhaust pipes. Inside, in the pilot's seat, I could no longer read any instrument. Long ago I had been obliged to lay the map aside. I must land, go down, cost what it would" (p. 474). At last he found a sixty-foot wide sand bank on a river and landed.
Particularly interesting when flying over and photographing Africa were the many herds of elephants, zebras, giraffes, gazelles by the hundreds, and buffalo. Can you imagine the joy of flying over a group of elephants swimming across the Nile River!
My own conclusion is that in addition to being a skilled aviator and photographer, Walter Mittelholzer is an engaging writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment