NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 
GEOGRAPHIC ADMINISTRATION BUILDINGS 
SIXTEENTH AND M STREETS NORTHWEST, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
GILBERT GROSVENOR, President JOHN OLIVER LA GORCE, Vice-President 
ROBERT V. FLEMING, Treasurer GEORGE W. HUTCHISON, Secretary 
HERBERT A. POOLE, Assistant Treasurer THOMAS W. McKNEW, Assistant Secretary 
LYMAN J. BRIGGS, Chairman; ALEXANDER WETMORE, Vice-Chairman, Committee on Research 
EXECUTIVE STAFF OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
GILBERT GROSVENOR, editor 
JOHN OLIVER LA GORCE, Associate Editor 
J. R. HILDEBRAND 
Assistant Editor 
MELVILLE BELL GROSVENOR 
Assistant Editor 
McFALL KERBEY 
Chief of School Service 
LEO A. BORAH 
Editorial Staff 
CHARLES MARTIN 
Chief Photographic Laboratory 
FREDERICK SIMPICH 
Assistant Editor 
ALBERT H. BUMSTEAD 
Chief Cartographer 
JAMES M. DARLEY 
Research Cartographer 
E. JOHN LONG 
Editorial Staff 
FREDERICK G. VOSBURGH 
Editorial Staff 
•W 
^ FRANKLIN L. FISHER 
Chief Illustrations Division 
MAYNARD OWEN WILLIAMS 
Chief Foreign Editorial Staff 
W. ROBERT MOORE 
Foreign Editorial Staff 
LEONARD C. ROY 
Editorial Staff 
INEZ B, RYAN 
Research Assistant 
ROBERT V. FLEMING 
President and Chairman of the 
Board, Riggs National Bank 
WALTER S. GIFFORD 
President American Telephone and 
Telegraph Co. 
C. HART MERRIAM 
Member National Academy of 
Sciences 
BOARD OF TRUSTEES 
CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 
Chief Justice of the United States 
LEROY A. LINCOLN 
President, Metropolitan Life 
Insurance Company 
WILLIAM V. PRATT 
Rear Admiral U. S. Navy, Retired 
LYMAN J. BRIGGS 
Director National Bureau of 
Standards 
GEORGE R. PUTNAM 
Commissioner of Lighthouses, 
Retired 
THEODORE W. NOYES 
Editor of The Evening Star 
GEORGE W. HUTCHISON 
Secretary National Geographic 
Society 
L. O. COLBERT 
Rear Admiral, Director, U.S. Coast 
and Geodetic Survey 
DAVID FAIRCHILD 
Special Agricultural Explorer, U. S. 
Department of Agriculture 
ALEXANDER WETMORE 
Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian 
Institution 
. 
m? 
H. H. ARNOLD 
Major General, Chief, U. S. Army 
Air Corps 
^ GILBERT GROSVENOR 
Editor of National Geographic 
Magazine 
J. HOWARD GORE 
Prof. Emeritus Mathematics, The 
George Washington University 
JOHN J. PERSHING 
General of the Armies of the 
United States 
CHARLES G. DAWES 
Formerly Vice-President of the 
United States 
CHARLES F. KETTERING 
President, General Motors Research 
Corporation 
GEORGE OTIS SMITH 
Formerly Director U. S. Geological 
Survey 
ELISHA HANSON 
Lawyer and Naturalist 
JOHN OLIVER LA GORCE 
Associate Editor of the National 
Geographic Magazine 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3d 
Formerly Member U. S. Con¬ 
gress, Faunal Naturalist and 
Wild-Game Photographer 
F. K. RICHTMYER 
Dean, Graduate School, Cornell 
University 
ORGANIZED FOR “THE INCREASE AND 
To carry out fhe purposes for which it was founded 
fifty-two years ago, the National Geographic Society 
publishes this Magazine monthly. All receipts are in¬ 
vested in The Magazine itself or expended directly to 
promote geographic knowledge. 
Articles and photographs are desired. For material 
which The Magazine can use, generous remuneration 
is made. 
In addition to the editorial and photographic surveys 
constantly being made, The Society has sponsored more 
than 100 scientific expeditions, some of which required 
years of field work to achieve their objectives. 
The Society’s notable expeditions have pushed back 
the historic horizons of the southwestern United States 
to a period nearly eight centuries before Columbus 
crossed the Atlantic. By dating the ruins of the vast 
communal dwellings in that region, The Society’s re¬ 
searches have solved secrets that have puzzled historians 
for three hundred years. 
In Mexico, The Society and the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion, January 16, 1939, discovered the oldest work of man 
in the Americas for which we have a date. This slab of 
stone is engraved in Mayan characters with a date which 
means November 4, 291 B. C. It antedates by 200 years 
anything heretofore dated in America, and reveals a great 
center of early American culture, previously unknown. 
DIFFUSION OF GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE” 
On November 11, 1935, in a flight sponsored jointly 
by the National Geographic Society and the U, S. Army 
Air Corps, the world’s largest balloon. Explorer 11, as¬ 
cended to the world altitude record of 72,395 feet. 
Capt. Albert W. Stevens and Capt. Orvil A. Anderson 
took aloft in the gondola nearly a ton of scientific instru¬ 
ments, and obtained results of extraordinary value. 
The National Geographic Society-U. S. Navy Expe¬ 
dition camped on desert Canton Island in mid-Pacific and 
successfully photpgraphed and observed the solar eclipse 
of 1937. The Society has taken part in many projects 
to increase knowledge of the sun. 
The Society cooperated with Dr. William Beebe in 
deep-sea explorations off Bermuda, during which a world 
record depth of 3,028 feet was attained. 
The Society granted $25,000, and in addition $75,000 
was given by individual members, to the Government 
when the congressional appropriation for the purpose 
was insufficient, and the finest of the giant sequoia trees 
in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park of California 
were thereby saved for the American people. 
The world’s largest ice field and glacial system outside 
the Polar regions was discovered in Alaska by Bradford 
Washburn while making explorations for The Society 
and the Harvard Institute of Exploration, 1937-8, 
