Adventure Magazine Cover — page 196: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

182 NE of you suggested the old Indian sign as a kind of greeting or sign for members of Camp-Fire when they meet or when one of them wants to know whether some other fellow is a member. (I sup- pose there is still need to explain that any one is a member who wishes to be.) I wrote to ‘Uncle Frank”? Huston to be sure of just how the sign is made. He says: Hand up, palm forward, thumb and fingers joined. You’ve made the sign often and never knew what it was. Of course, made casually and quickly, the fingers are not always stuck and glued together. Sometimes the hand is not raised above ae a again, level with ear; again, top of ea So there is the sign if any of you ever care to use it. If you do, you'd better say so, so that we can mention it at Camp- Fire now and then to be sure that all mem- bers, new and old, understand what it signifies in our case. eats, barrel and giant. Some more about it from one of our Southwestern comrades: Prescott, Ariz. Just move along a bit, will you, and make room for me to sit next you at the Camp-Fire circle? N THE Camp-Fire of your Sept. 3rd issue is a letter which I found interesting and also somewhat a bit in error. The barrel cactus, which is a source of water for the desert wanderer, is quite accurately described by him; the thorns are hooked slightly and are rather more elliptical in cross section than flat, as he describes. These Adventure thorns are about 3 in. in length. The cactus grows from 3 to 4 ft. in height. The best way to procure the water it contains is to cut off the top as one cuts the top of a soft-boiled egg when set in an egg-cup, dig out a bowl-shaped hollow, take a long-bladed knife or a clean, sharp stick and jab it up and down in the pulp, thus freeing the water which will accumulate in the bowl prepared. Quite a quantity of refreshing liquor will thus be secured and it is a God-send to the man on the desert whose water supply has been exhausted. The other cactus he refers to is the giant cactus, properly called saguaro (pronounced in this part of the country and in Mexico ‘“‘sah-hwar-ro” and generally incorrectly spelled by the story writers). I have seen this cactus attain a height of 40 to 50 ft. in many localities of the Southwest. I am enclosing a photo of a comparatively small one beside which I had my driver stand for a com- parison. Being a bit nearer the camera than the cactus, he is a little larger in perspective than his true relative height would be. The other small photo is of a group of young saguaros, which was so unusual an occurrence for the number grouped that I thought the photo worth taking. The large photo is of a young saguaro and behind it is an ocotillo (pronounced ‘‘o-ko-teel-yo’’). Now a bit of criticism. If the comrade whose letter I read walked from “Meyer” (Mayer) to Phoenix, he probably took the Black Cajion road, which passes east of the Black Cafion proper and between it and the Agua Fria River, crossing the latter at Canon, where it takes a short turn to the west just below the mouth of the Black Cajfion, before continuing its southerly course. I hardly think he would have walked through the Black Cafion unless prospecting for mineral. And em route to Phoenix from Mayer he does not get any- where near Cave Creek,-which is quite some miles to the east of the Agua Fria, but he will cross Cave Creek Wash after he has got down on to the desert which is a continuation of the Salt River Valley, to the west.—CHAS. EDWARD Major. PWN tr te4- PEAY uM, fr ut be aad ny / Ze Ve uy (APH Z = Vall ™X i ain er FOR DEMOCRACY S Summer, at the National Classical Confer- ence at the National Education Association’s convention in Milwaukee, the dean of Princeton University voiced the aim of the Conference—the study of the classics must be maintained “because they are vitally important to our own language.”’ *‘And,’’ said the dean, “‘to insist that there is no edu- cation worth the name unless it involves training Gomichooks. Go