V25486 The Choir Of Westminster Abbey

The Choir Of Westminster Abbey

     For more than thirteen hundred years have prayers ascended from this consecrated site, for a church has said to have been erected here as early as 616. Parts f the present building date from 1065. Writers without number have recorded their impressions of this place, and years ago Washington Irving wrote: “The spaciousness and gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe…. We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of the past times who have filled history with their deeds and the earth with their renown.” The latest shrine of England’s history to which ate Abbey has given shelter is the Tomb of England’s Unknown Soldier.

     From where we stand in the choir we are looking west; through and above the screen we can see along the remaining length of the nave. The altar is, of course, behind us, with the chapels of Edward the confessor and Henry VII still farther beyond at the east. The principal entrance is off at our right, at the end of the north transept. Over our heads the gothic roof is more than one hundred feet above the pavement. Those pointed arches beyond the organ pipes open into side aisles along the nave filled with monuments of Sir John Herschel and Sir Isaac Newton, for example, are only a few rods from where we stand now, in the north (right) aisle nearly opposite this screen. The Poet’s corner is behind us at our left, over in the south transept. The famous old coronation chair is kept in Henry VII chapel, one of the most beautiful parts of the Abbey.

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V27402 Elephants Piling Teak Logs in great Riverside Lumber Yard, Rangoon, Burma

V27402 Elephants Piling Teak Logs in Great Riverside Lumber Yard, Rangoon, Burma

We see here at work, piling teak logs, four of a herd of elephants on the payroll of a Burma lumber company. The beasts seem almost human in their action. They work quietly, silently and deftly, sorting and piling the great logs. The rider, perched aloft on a seat like a sawbuck, seems almost superfluous. The foremost elephant was captured full-grown in the forests and trained to his task in a year’s time. The pair at the farther end of the yard work together. One inserts his tusks beneath the log, wraps his trunk about it and lifts it high enough for the other to slip his tusks beneath one end. Then together they lift the log and walk softly to the pile with it. And no man could arrange a neater, more symmetrical pile. Do you wonder that a healthy elephant is worth 4,500 rupes, more than $1400 in our money?

In Burma, the elephant takes the place that the horse has in the United States and Europe; that the reindeer has in the Arctic; that the camel has on the desert; and that the ox has in central Asia. He can draw more than any other land animal, and he can also be used as a lifting machine when the load is dragged to the end of its journey. He is a patient beast, good natured, and very intelligent.

There are two kinds of elephants. One is called the Indian and the other the African elephant. The Indian elephant is found in the woods of Ceylon, Southern India, the Himalaya Mountains, Burma, Siam, and the East Indies. The African elephant is not used for working, but the Indian elephant has long been used for that purpose, especially in Burma and Siam. The Indian elephant is now closely protected in order that there may always be a supply of these staunch beasts of burden.

33997 OLD AND NEW GREECE_THE PARTHENON AND VIEW OF ATHENAI

OLD AND NEW GREECE_THE PARTHENON AND VIEW OF ATHENAI

            Greece is a small county, not larger than the state of New York. It lies in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula between the Ionian and the Aegean Seas. The population of the entire country is not more than 6,480,000, less than that of the city of New York. Athenai, its capital, has a population of about 453,000.

            The part of Athenai we see in the distance is new. The high conical hill in the far distance is Mount Lycabettus. The white building on its summit is a chapel of St. George. It is a common custom in Greece to erect churches and monasteries on hilltops and St. George is one of the principal saints in the Greeks church.

            The ancient city centered about the Acropolis, a limestone plateau that rises sharply above the surrounding plain to a height of 500 feet above sea level. It was once a fort and later the residence of the kings of Athenai. Finally it became the seat of religious worship and the great museum of Athenian art.

            The most noted building on the Acropolis was the Parthenon, the magnificent ruins of which still stand. The columns before us are of the northeastern part. Within the Parthenon was a statue of Athena. The statue was made of wood covered with plaster. Over this was laid plates of ivory and gold. The gold used was worth $750,000. This statue was the work of Phidias. The Parthenon was begun in 447 B.C. and was completed ten years later.

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RAFTS OF LOGS, COLUMBIA RIVER, WASHINGTON #215_20031

RAFTS OF LOGS, COLUMBIA RIVER, WASHINGTON

            One of the greatest lumbering district in the United States is in extreme northwestern part. There are great forests of redwood, fir, cedar, larch, spruce, and hemlock. Some of these trees are easily 300 feet high and 30 feet in circumference. These forest giants are often free from limbs up to a height of 100 feet from the ground. The state of Washington leads all other states in the production of lumber and shingles. The amount of lumber annually cut from its woods is more than 4,500,000,000 feet.

            The view here suggests what happens to many of these logs. The timber cut in the upper reaches in Columbia or along its tributaries is hauled to the water’s edge and placed in great rafts. The construction of one of these rafts is here beautifully shown. The logs are built up into piles that resemble a whaleback steamer on the great lakes. They are held together by heavy chains, and usually several such rafts are floated down the river in a group. The method of loading the logs is suggested by the half dozen that you see on the left. Little engines often furnish the power to drag them on a raft. Horses, hitched to a capstan, are sometimes used. Again, if the logs are not too large, and the rafts are not to high, the logs may be handled by the men with pike poles and cantilever hooks.

            For days and days these huge rafts glide down the Columbia River toward the Pacific. When they reach the milling city, they are towed inside a great boom where hundreds of other rafts are moored. Nearby are the large sawing and planning mills. Here gang-saws, a number of saws placed side by side in a steel fame, rip them into boards, sawing as many as 20 boards at a single passage.

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Harvesting Bananas, Costa Rica, Central America #12804

Harvesting Bananas, Costa Rica, Central America

     As we look at this luxuriant plantation, typical of Central America, we get the feeling of actually breathing the hot and humid atmosphere of the tropical jungle. We are about ten degrees north of the Equator, and a few miles inland from the Caribbean Coast, but only a few feet above sea level. Here are raised enormous quantities of bananas on some of the greatest fruit farms in the world.

     The fruit matures in from three to four months after blossoms fall. It must be cut while green. If allowed to ripen on the plant it will lose entirely its delicious flovor and and become insipid. As it ripens, it sucks strength from the great stem around which the banana clusters are attached.

     From the plantation the bunches are transported by pack animals and tram cars to the railway for shipment to the coast. The little “banana railroad” that we see in the distance is owned by the United Fruit Company whose great refrigerator steamers carry vast quantities of this fruit. In these steamers a temperature of about 48 degrees Fahrenheit must be maintained so that the fruit will not ripen too quickly. From its main offices in the United States the Fruit Company sends definite loading orders by radio to its central offices in the tropics in advance of the arrival of the steamship.

     The first importation of bananas into th United States was said to have occurred in 1804nwhen thirty bunches were brought from Cuba to New York. The industry did not develop in a large way until in 1899. Today the people of the United States and Canada alone consume 50,000,000 bunches of bananas in a year.

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Up Among The Spires Of Milan Cathedral # V33422

UP AMONG THE SPIRES OF MILAN CATHEDRAL

      The roof of Milan Cathedral is a marvel in itself. It is like a gigantic flower garden, blossoming with sculptural spires. There are 135 spires adorned with 2,300 marble statues. Visitors in Milan often clime up here to the roof to study the almost unbelievable elaboration of the sculptures. High up here in the air are decorative figures almost beyond count, grotesque gargoyles and the statues of saints and angels. There is a magnificent cupola surmounted by a tall spire. This spire holds a statue of the Virgin 355 feet above the street level. When we study in detail the sculptural work of the roof, how each spire is carved with the same patient perfection as if it were to be part of a little church altar instead of but one in many away up here 150 feet above the heads of passers-by, we do not wonder that it took so long to complete the cathedral. More than five hundred years it was it the building. When Napoleon’s troops took possession of Milan in 1806, the building was still far from completion. He pushed the work along, securing funds by the sale of estates that had belonged to certain rich Italian monasteries.

     Milan Cathedral is a paean of praise, a prayer wrought by workmen’s hands. It was a consecration of labor to worship and every form of beauty which the workers could create has been offered here in the solitude of open sky to the God of heaven and earth. The mystics of the Middle Ages found in such structures an artistic outlet for their vague but potent feelings of infinity. Their yearning toward a deity invisible became localized in these holy things and places.

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The New Age In Copenhagen #27828

THE NEW AGE IN COPENHAGEN - GRUNDTIVIGS CHUCH

            In the northwest part of the city of Copenhagen, between Bispebjerg Cemetery and the Bispebjerg Hospital grounds lies a community of homes from the center of which is rising this modern structure, the New Church, one of the architectural attractions of Europe and of Copenhagen. It is an appealing thing built of tawny colored brick and has helped to prove that the new in architecture can be beautiful. It was designed by the architect P.V. Jensen Klint.

            Save in Germany, Russia and the Scandinavian countries, the New Architecture seems to be making very little progress. Little of it is seen in current America skyscrapers and what has crept into our ecclesiastical architecture generally looks out of place or freakish. Denmark has handled the new in architecture differently. Danish buildings of the past have followed the late classic in form and today this country is producing buildings suited to take their place with those of the past as a witness Klint Grundtvigs Church.

            Called the “Venice of the North,” because the sea is such a big factor in the life of the city, Copenhagen is also known as the “Paris of the North.” This is because of its narrow, crooked lanes that exist side by side with its broad, modern boulevards and richly ornamented buildings. Then, too, the whole city teems with gay life. Most of its nearly half a million people are well dressed and go about with smiling faces. There is an air of prosperity everywhere, for Copenhagen is a metropolis without squalor and confusion.

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