discharge of two thousand tons a day was considered an immense performance at this port; on the day before I write this article, early in September, that same port discharged exactly 10,341 tons. We had not only built those warehouses but in this port and in the great base supply depot, four miles away, we had constructed fifty great warehouses that comprise a city of supply. We have linked those docks and warehouses with more than a hundred miles of tracks and spurs some of them on concrete roadbed. Before the project is completed it will have a trackage equal to that of Altoona, which is a nerve center of the Pennsylvania system, with two hundred and fifty miles of rails. We have increased the basin facilities until to-day there are berths for twenty-one ships of big tonnage. Fourteen vessels can discharge at the same time. The A. E. F. in France, with the Pershing foresight that made our whole achievement possible, always looks ahead, and there is now in the course of construction an American pier nearly four thousand feet long, built on American piles, that eventually will accommodate sixteen vessels. The wav I saw this pier driven far out into the river day after day with amazing rapidity made the French sit up. Accustomed to putting down massive concrete foundations they were speechless at the spectacle of American piles pounded in at the rate of two hundred a day. Not content with working these wonders on quay and roadbed our engineers have installed a complete water supply for the town, which meant the construction of complete water works and a pumping station with a capacity of six million gallons a day. A five-hundred-thousand-gallon reservoir was simply one feature of the project. You are not surprised when I tell you that two men largely responsible for the consummation of this work are Lieut. Col. William G. Atwood, who in civil life drove the Alaska Central through the snows and rigors of the frozen north, and Maj. C. S. Coe, the man who built the famous viaduct of the Florida East Coast Railway out across the sea-sprayed reefs where experts had said no man could build. The commanding officer of this engineer regiment, I might add, was Col. John S. Sewell, who is now in command of the whole base section upon which his men have left such an enduring mark. All this was not done without labor. The four hundred colored stevedores, yanked from sunny cotton plantation to the bitter winter coast of France, were the nucleus of the labor battalions now operating in this base section, which number 7,600. With the willing, cheerful and uncomplaining toil of these men in khaki many of our wonders have been achieved. No less remarkable are the engineering results achieved in Base Section Number Two, where in many respects a really stupendous construction effort has been recorded. This port serves one of the largest cities in France and is on a famous river. Here, so far as docks are concerned, we have registered two distinct achievements. When we entered the war there were berths for seven ships at the so-called French docks. If two ships could be discharged a week it was considered a big job. Again, we faced a well-nigh overwhelming problem of inadequate facilities. On the quays were a few sheds and switchmen's shanties; the trackage was slight. Yet at those French docks to-day, thanks to our dredging and construction, seven ships can discharge at the same time into warehouses big as city blocks or to cars that bustle up and down many miles of newly laid rails. But this performance was as child's play alongside the really amazing feat that has been performed with the building of what will always be known as the American docks. Those first seven berths were hopelessly insufficient for our needs, so the American engineers set in to construct a whole new system of piers and berths along the river and extending north. It involved more than four thousand lineal feet of wharfage. The land was swampy and low, filled in with silt, mud, garbage and the decomposed refuse of a camp of Annamites, the Indo-Chinese coolies who are employed as laborers by the French, British and American Armies in thousands. Hip deep in this filth our men toiled all through the bitter winter of 1917-18. The French said that it would take three years at least, possibly five, to build these wharves. It took less than eight months, and this meant the rearing of nearly a mile of docks washed by the highest tide in France, the erection of concrete platforms with four lines of tracks, eight immense warehouses, the installation of ten electric five and ten-ton cranes which straddle these tracks and lift huge parcels, ranging from bundles of cases of canned goods to whole motor trucks, direct from ship to car. Nearly seven million feet of lumber, most of it brought from the United States, was used in this enterprise. That former sea of swamp and garbage is now a whirlpool of action-a miniature Duluth-that rings with the riot of a mighty tonnage handled without delay. Where once two ships were unloaded in a week fourteen American vessels are now discharged at the same time. DUMB ALLIES IN THE WAR HE exploits and sacrifices of the horse. TH flict are the chief subjects of an article by Poor, brave horses of France! Where, he asks, have they not borne the brunt of the suffering? When hunger gnawed at their vitals; when no one came to give them drink: when they were ready to collapse from wounds, fatigue, or lack of sleep,-still they trundled on, saying nothing, asking for nothing. Heroic, mute, faithful unto death, they had to "carry on," their riders astride their backs or heavy cannon drag ging behind. . . enormous wastage There has been an among the French horses engaged in the struggle, says M. Sée. "These anonymous, unglorified combatants, . . . without whom the famous 75's would have been useless," have suffered deplorable neglect. There has been great lack of horse-ambulances and horse-hospitals in France. Often valuable horses fully recoverable if treated promptly, were at least in the earlier stages of the war left to die from starvation and loss of blood. "The Horse League of France" and its offspring, "The National Committee for the Relief of War Horses," have done much to give larger official scope and more adequate financial means to the veterinary department of the French army; but the writer speaks (doubtless not without some disparagement of his countrymen's efforts in this direction) in rather envious terms of the British Blue Cross and Violet Cross: The horse hospitals created by our British allies... are models of management. While everything military with us appears poor and gloomy, among the Britons conditions are almost luxurious, or at least prodigiously comfortable. ... After reviewing the services of other tribes of the great horse family, and of other draft animals employed in France and elsewhere in battle regions, the writer comes to the dog. The dogs were subjected to two periods of training, together occupying as much as eighteen months. The first took three weeks only; it taught the dog general alertness and obedience and insensibility to the various noises of battle. At the end of the period the dog was appointed to this or that special training. The dogs of the sanitary department proved especially useful in the night-time, when the eyes of stretcher-bearers would fail to notice many of the wounded hidden in shell-potted, overgrown, or otherwise difficult country. The trench dogs were trained to barkless signalling of the approach of possible danger; the "intelligence carriers" (the most highly trained of all) were depended upon to exchange message upon message to continually shifting headquarters, communication posts, and groups of fighters in the front line. How many of these humble, faithful auxiliaries have fallen in the accomplishment of their tasks!... Their acts of heroism, of devotion, of intelligence cover a vast field of story. Ask the soldiers! Few are they who have not some touching anecdote to tell. THE HAVASUPAI INDIANS OF THE GRAND CANYON AN expedition sent by the American Mu seum of Natural History, of New York, into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado under the direction of Mr. Leslie Spier, of the museum staff, has recently returned with a most interesting collection that illustrates the life and habits of the Havasupai Indians who inhabit a part of the floor of a tributary canyon. Several articles have appeared in newspapers and periodicals which would seem to convey the impression that the Havasupai Indians have not been in contact with the whites of that region, and that their civilization has remained throughout the development of the West essentially the same as it was hundreds of years ago. Mr. Spier states that it was not his intention to convey this impression; that he had said that these Indians had been little known-which is true NATIVE HOUSEKEEPER STANDING IN FRONT OF THE and that they had not been scientifically studied in a systematic manner, nor their peculiar tribal habits and methods of life preserved for future study and observation. The history of the Havasupai Indians is a bit hazy. They have a legend, in regard to their origin, that they are descended from a daughter of the god Ta-cho-pa. When the bad god Hokomata was about to drown the world Ta-cho-pa fastened his daughter up in a hollowed-out log and set her adrift upon the waters. The log finally drifted to the spot where the Little Colorado unites with the main river. Here she emerged and bore a son to the great planet who sent his rays down upon the earth for the first time, the Sun. Later, a daughter was born who was the child of the waterfall (the Mooney Fall, Havasu Canyon). She sent the son out to hunt and taught the daughter to make baskets. From these children-so the legends run-are the Havasupai descended. George Wharton James wrote about 1903 in his book, "In and Around the Grand Canyon," that in that year there were about 200 men of the Havasupai tribe inhabiting with their families a side canyon tributary on the south to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona. Above the village of the tribe, springs unite to form a beautiful stream whose waters are blue, hence the name "Ha-Ha-va-su" (water-blue). They were known to the Spanish as the Coconino (Kohonino). The Spanish doubtless obtained the name from the Zunis, who speak of the Havasupai as the Kuhni Kwe, and the region they inhabit as Kuhni. The common name for them in Arizona was Supaias, which is simply a dividing of their word for blue, va-su, with the addition of pai, people. These Indians still live in primitive, temporary shelters thatched with reeds, boughs, and earth in summer and often in caves or crevices in the canyon in the winter. They are natural agriculturists and raise quantities of peaches, pumpkins, corn, melons and other vegetables on their fertile lands at the bottom of the canyon. These they store in rock store-houses above the reach of floods. At the head of Mystic Spring Trail are the ruins of a prehistoric house, of which the Havasupais know nothing. It was there long before their immediate ancestors were born, and how old it is they have no tradition. They state, however, that it was used as a watch-tower where guards were stationed when the members of the tribe were at work at the mescal pits on Le Conte Plateau. This building (a so called Cliff Dwelling) is nothing more than a corn store-house where they could place their corn, dried peaches, dried pumpkin and other eatables. Although for many years the men of this tribe were supposed to be of a ferocious nature and were generally shunned, they are kindły, peaceable, and interested in the outside world. They have their medicine men, and chiefs, but they seem to be almost entirely governed by the force of public opinion. Crime is practically unknown, according to Mr. Spier. Although they build insecure brush houses for their homes, they are skilled basket-weavers. Their particular type of basket is that woven of willow, often with striking and brilliant designs. They still use baskets for cooking, made watertight by yucca fibre, omole, and pinion gum lining. A beautiful herring-bone border often finishes the Havasupai baskets. This pattern is also common to the Paiutes and the Navahoes. They are fond of jewelry and buy trinkets for personal adornment of the traders and of the neighboring tribes. William Wallace Bass, perhaps the most famous of the guides to the Grand Canyon, a man who came there for his health from Shelbyville, Ky., worked for several years to benefit these little-known Indians, and finally succeeded in having a school established for them in their canyon and in getting an instructor-farmer for them. Of their natural surroundings, Mr. James writes with enthusiasm. No other tribe dwells in such an Arabian Nights land. Above them tower the great walls with their colored strata. The light is constantly changing over the towers and peaks of the rim from early dawn until darkness. Along the blue waters of their creek grow willows, mesquite, cottonwood, and other green trees. Their gar dens prosper. Indeed, one reason why they are so contented is that they are able to have an abundance to eat. They give a primitive Russo-Turkish bath which is a kind of ceremonial ablution. Over a willow frame they place layers of blankets. A basket of water is put under the blankets. After the men have entered the frame, hot stones are continuously thrown into the basket of water. The reaction is obtained by a plunge into the icy waters of the creek immediately after the men leave the bath tent. While the bath is being taken it was the custom of the Indians to render a chant which is rendered by Mr. James thus: My children, my children, listen to me, while to you I speak earnestly: I love you, or why should I have brought you into being. I am To-cho-pa, the god of your fathers, who came up out of the earth from the lowest recess; 'Twas I who gave my daughter to be wooed by the Sun and the water, That you, my children, might be born and live upon the earth. To-hol-woh is good, my children, for I, To-cho pas, give it to you. Make it of willows, green willows, that grow on the banks of the Bavasu; Cover it with willows and mud that its heat may not be lost. In the fire place rocks, large and many, and make them fiery-hot. Then, as brothers, each help the other, as you sit in To-hol-woh. Those without shall bring the rocks made hot with fierce and burning fire; And those within shall sing and tell the words I have taught. Oh, To-hol-woh, thou art a gift from To-cho-pa. Let the heat come, and enter within us, reach head, face, and lungs. Go deep down in stomach, through arms, body, thighs. Thus shall we be purified, made well from all ill. Thus shall we be strengthened to keep back all that can harm. For heat alone gives life and force. C WHAT ARE MUSEUMS FOR? ERTAINLY there was never a time in the history of the world when the institutions, customs, and opinions inherited from earlier generations were subjected to such critical scrutiny as they are to-day. Things whose merit we have hitherto taken for granted are now required to justify their existence from the standpoint of contemporary needs, or, if they cannot, to make way for others that can. We are reshaping the paraphernalia of existence; whether wisely or not, the future alone can tell. Public museums, whether of science, art, industry or what not, have been inspired by various ideals and have performed various functions. Dr. F. H. Sterns, writing in the Scientific Monthly, gives us an illuminating analysis of their motives and activities, leading up to an attempt to fix the proper place of the museum in the scheme of current affairs. The motives that inspire the private collector also underlie to a certain extent the assembling of material in museums: Objects accumulated because of curiosity or the wish for exclusive possession are of one sort, while those gathered because of intellectual interest are of another sort. The one consists of the unique, the unusual, or the spectacular, while the other is made up from the normal, the typical, or the historically or scientifically valuable. The one is measured by the number or the rarity of its specimens, while the other is judged by their representativeness. If general tendencies may be regarded as evidence, the museums have repudiated the satisfaction of curiosity as their end. Undoubtedly it is still a motive for the visitor, and so appeal must still be made to it; but no well-organized modern institution will cater to it. They no longer find a place for freaks and monstrosities. One will search in vain for three-legged chickens or twoheaded calves. Fakes, such as Barnum's mermaid, which once excited so much attention, are rigidly barred. Museum curators devote much energy to the elimination of everything of doubtful authenticity, no matter how interesting it may be. Some places still cling to the old ways, but those of the better class tell us by their actions that they no longer consider it to be their function to satisfy idle curiosity. rarity, but of real value, are freely shared with less fortunate institutions, either by the making of copies or by actual loan exhibits. No museum now would reserve for its own members the use and enjoyment of its collections. Self-glorification is no longer an approved motive. The satisfaction of intellectual interest, on the other hand, as the aim of a museum has now received the sanction both of these institutions themselves and of the public which supports them. More and more are Government agencies in city, State, and nation contributing to aquariums, zoological gardens, art galleries, and natural history museums, because they regard them to be essentially a part of the public school system. Universities and learned societies maintain many such institutions for research. There is an increased desire to interest the public, and to make the collections as useful as possible to investigators, to craftsmen, to the schools, and to the casual visitor. The ideal now is have every one who enters the museum building go out with a broader outlook on life, a deeper conception of the universe in which he dwells, or a keener appreciation of the true and the beautiful. Admitting that the legitimate function of the museum is to satisfy a thirst for knowledge, we have still the problem of weighing the claims of the research worker and the general public, together with those of posterity, in whose behalf we now preserve in museums objects with otherwise might perish, so that future generations would be robbed of the privilege of inspecting and studying them. We all recognize the necessity for the careful preservation of those objects which are desirable as records. Time is a great destroyer. Moths and rust corrupt, and thieves are apt to steal. Deterioration, such as is always taking place, progresses much faster when specimens are neglected. It is so easy to misplace things that it seldom happens that they can be found when they are wanted unless they have been cared for. Even if such an object is found, its parts may be so displaced that they can not be restored to their original arrangement, or its record may be lost, so that its exact value or even its authenticity may be open to question. Some person or some institution must make it a business to preserve anything of artistic, historic, or scientific value. But if museums generally made this their chief business, they would become mere warehouses. To avoid deterioration due to exposure to light, handling, etc., both public exhibition and use by investigators would need to be abridged. As to the use of museums as places for research Dr. Sterns expresses rather extreme views: |