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National Geographic : 1925 Mar
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LOOKI~G DO\V J ON EUROPE 271 talking into his radio phone, the mouthpiece of which was attached to a jointed metal slee\'e strapped to his chest. I could see his lips moving, but no sound ofW0rds reached me above the enveloping roar of the engines mounted so closely on either side. He switched the p ho ne to receiving and in aminute leaned over, grinning, to shout in my ear that Le Bourget re- ported the sky clear as far as Beauvais, and that he would fly above the clouds the intervening distance. \Visps of cloud were already drifting by, filmy gossamer out- posts of the massed battalions ahead. Very different and harmless they appeared when seen close by, tossed by the slip- tream from our propellers, but rather frightening where the cross-wind currents crowded them into great pres- sure ridges towering hundreds of feet above our line of flight, or left dark, foreboding crevasses in the cloud floor. Photograph by Aerofilll1S, Ltd. ASHFORD, ENGLAND, ON THE LONDON-PARIS ROUTE, IDENTI- FIES ITSELF FOR THE AIRMAN Tote the sign on the roof of the railway station. There are now a number of cities in Europe and also in America \yhich have painted markers on roof tops and prominent buildings to help the flyer identify his position. The Army Air Service in America has been active in promoting this sen'ice along the model airways which the \Var Department is establishing. PLANE'S SHADOW SCAMPERS OVER CLOUD BANKS \Vith a sudden rush. the green fields far below were blotted out of sight. and a damp, gray mist enveloped us, a sen e of floating in some dimly lit, enormous ocean cavern-then abruptly into brilliant sunshine again, while just beneath our wings, looking for all the world like a fresh-fallen field of snow. stretched the great mesa land of clouds. Among the many vonders of flight, there is a special and peculiar enjoyment evoked by flying in clouds-a feeling both of arrogance and humbleness in thus pry- ing into the infinite wonders of Nature's overhead workshop, a quickening of the sense of "the incommunicable and elusive excellence that haunts all beautiful things." Our shadow, now faintly fringed with rainbow colors against the brilliant white surface just below, and prodigiously in- creased in size, scampered over the tum-
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