FROM KAWA TO GERYON

When the last outline of history is written, the chapter on exploration will owe much of its material to the deeds of men inspired by Jack London and by the famous Traprock, skipper of the good ship, "Kawa." Only a few weeks ago a Frenchman sailed across the Atlantic in a thirty-foot sloop, inspired, as he said, by London's "Cruise of the Shark," and unconsciously perhaps by the romantic voyage of the Kawa into the South Seas. And now three more intrepid spirits, two of them graduates of the University, are planning a trip to the fever-haunted regions of the upper Amazon.

Although these young Balboas do not insist that there is a short-cut to the Pacific through Brazil, they believe themselves to be on the trail of a strange tribe of Indians ruled over by a squad of two hundred white women. Here is, indeed, a case of snarled complexes--Kawaian, Amazonian, perhaps even a "Green Mansion" complex. The details of the story were given to the party by a sea-faring man in a waterfront saloon of Marseilles. He had once travelled near the land of the multitudinous queens and had been told of their ex-stance by down-river Indians who knew of it from hearsay. With the facts thus established beyond a shadow of a doubt, the success of the expedition is almost certain.

For years Ponce de Leon sought the elusive fountain of youth, and Ponce de Leon achieved lasting fame. Messrs. Rice, Rehm, and Buffam, however, are after nothing so ridiculous. What they hope to discover is a new and dazzling type of feminine beauty. They may fail: it would seem scarcely credible that any cranny of the earth remained still hid from Mr. Zeigfield's keen-eyed scouts. And failing, they will be ridiculously ridiculous where Ponce de Leon was sublimely so. But the world will hope for their success, if only to see what a shock Mr. Zeigfield would receive to find the "Geryon" loaded with beauties actually discovered by somebody else.