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National Geographic : 1947 Sep
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Eclipse Hunting in Brazil's Ranchland Eclipse Camp "Pioneers" Needed a Roof over Their Fire to Keep Off the Rain Three soldier members of the expedition's advance party cook a meal outdoors under difficulties. Construction of the landing strip and main camp was begun during the rainy season under supervision of military personnel who arrived many weeks before the scientific group. thence across the Atlantic to the African, Indian, and Chinese fronts. While we were gazing down from above scattered clouds at the vast, swampy, jungle clad delta of the mighty muddy Amazon far below, our navigator came aft to remind us that we would cross the Equator in a few minutes. The Polliwogs aboard, who never had crossed the Line before, began to fidget uneasily in their seats, while knowing grins appeared on the faces of the initiated old timers. Suddenly the pilot waggled his wings as a signal that we had crossed from the Northern Hemisphere into the Southern. In the excite ment nobody happened to see Jupiter Rex come aboard, but there he was, complete with rope-yarn beard, crown, and flying jacket. (Jupiter initiates those who cross the Equator in the air, just as Neptune handles it on board ship.) One by one the sheepish Polliwogs were herded back to the rear of the cabin, where they knelt before the Ruler of Winds and Weather to receive initiation into Jupiter's Empyrean Realm. Rising, they received a smart wallop on an appropriate portion of their anatomy, for flyers do not follow the shipboard ritual of ducking in a tank. Over Rio's Famed Harbor Late the next day we were circling for a landing over Rio de Janeiro's incomparably beautiful mountain-rimmed harbor. Brazilian Army bugles from a fort on a near-by point, sounding shrilly through the pounding of the surf on world-renowned Copacabana Beach, woke us in our ocean front hotel early next morning. Soon we were flying again, this time in an AAF C-47 two-engined plane, over the lofty, rocky crags of the 7,000-foot mountain range that lies between Rio and Bocaiuva, 400 miles to the north. 289
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