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In addition to reports published last week (TIME, May 25), the progress of other expeditions, coming & going, include the following:
Arctica. Greenland expeditions may go hang, growled young Augustine Courtauld, the Britisher rescued last fortnight on the eastern side of the island. He was at Angmagsalik fretting for a ship to take him to England and sanitary plumbing. Trying vainly to josh him out of his ill humor was Captain Albin Ahrenberg, Danish flyer who had flown to the rescue. So Captain Ahrenberg, as soon as the sea fog lifted, flew to Reykjavik, Iceland, whence he took ship to Copenhagen and a hot massage.
British and German enterprise in Greenland since last summer has renewed Danish activities in regard to the island. Denmark claims ownership. Great Britain would like ownership. And Norway has pre-empted some territorial rights. In an attempt to clinch her suzerainty, Denmark this summer is sending two ships to reconnoitre the east coast from Scoresby Sound to Danmark Harbor. Fishing rights are one prize. Landing fields for intercontinental commercial flyers are another.
Another north-going party is the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Last week the museum despatched J. B. Semple and two companions to James Bay and Hudson Bay. They will catch birds.
Asia. Tibetan politics are keeping ambitious mountaineers from climbing Mount Everest (29,141 ft.), man's loftiest goal. So a party of Englishmen are now trying to scale Mount Kamet, a 25,447 ft. Everest neighbor from the Indian side. Leader is Frank S. Smythe, who upon failing to top Mount Kanchenjunga (28,225 ft.) last year climbed Jonsong Peak (24,344 ft.). Bavarians under Dr. Paul Bauer left Munich last week for a try at Kanchenjunga.
Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History is again in China, trying to blarney and bulldoze provincial bandits to let him make another expedition into the Gobi desert.
Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt killed a panda (bearlike raccoon) for the Field Museum of Natural History two years ago. The Field Museum wants more pandas. It sent Floyd T. Smith into south central China to get them. Last week he had no panda. But he did have a takin (goatlike antelope).
South America— The difficult Orinoco country rivals the Matto Grosso region for difficulties and novelties. Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey and his wife last week were toiling up the Orinoco on their fifth excursion. They were loaded with trinkets for the natives and aspirin for themselves. Dr. Dickey hopes to locate the source of the Orinoco, and expects to bring out new knowledge of tropical peoples and relics.
Mrs. Dickey is seeking new birds, small animals. They will map unknown districts. Mrs. Dickey is "the-woman-who-wears-breeches" to Orinoco Indians. As the Dickey party approached the region this spring they encountered another "woman-who-wears-breeches" just emerging, Lady Dorothy Mills. Her excursion was to compare Indian customs and religion with those of Africa. A baby alligator bit her on the knee. An escaped Devil's Island convict, "a tall and handsome brute" whom she had fed, tried to assault her. She said she shot him in the leg, bandaged the wound, hastened out of the Orinoco.