Under the Totem-Pole Chiefs and Braves

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 267, 1 February 1928, Page 6

Under the Totem-Pole Chiefs and Braves

Letters to Redfeather are answered as under: Dew of June: As you desire, I have erased the pen-name, “Dew of June,” from the Totem Pole and substituted “Dew of Dawn.” I agree that your first choice is rather difficult to pronounce. You and your friend will now have a joint interest in the Wigwam page each week. Sunlit Glade: It was a great pleasure to come face to face with this little Grey Lynn Guide-Brave and I hope you will call on me again. It will be splendid when Guiding meetings are being held again and you will enjoy the work all the better for this long holiday. Greetings from the Wigwam to your Company. Breeze of Morning: This Brave has come safely down the trail and is now a member of our ever growing tribes. I hope I shall often hear from you and that you will send me some samples of your work, of which I have heard so much. Little Swift Canoe: Your arrow has reached me safely, faithful one, but I am sorry to find that you are sick in bed. This will not do at all, especially after that wonderful holiday. I hope I shall soon have good news of you. Flying Cloud was delighted to have your letter and I hope she willsoon find an opportunity to visit you. Juittle Red Star, who was unable to write this week, will find your greetings, and Silent Warrior, if he is scanning the Totem Pole, will know that you enjoyed reading his striking list of pennames. I, too, have a great affection for those poems you mention. And wouldn’t you like to tread “Tewkesbury Road” “when the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night” ? Singing Arrow: Greetings to this faithful Chief who knows every footprint on the Wigwam trail. You will be glad when troop meetings are again held. I shall be looking forward to hearing the St. Barnabas plans Cor the year. Little Buffalo: It was good to hear again from the wanderer of the far trails and to know that you are having such a splendid time. When do you return to your tepee? Eagle Feather: That was a happy time you had last week-end and I am glad that you have been having plenty of swimming. The last picture you saw must have been most amusing, though all my sympathies are with the hero. Blue Fire: I was glad to have another letter from this little Judean Guide and to hear that the Company meetings are soon to be held again. I can imagine your excitement and feel sure that you will be the very first to arrive on the opening night. It is splendid that other girls are going to join. You will soon have a full Company.

Little Grey Dove: Congratulations on your success at swimming, Little Grey Dove. I am sure you will make good use of that free pass into the baths. No, I have not been to Luna Park this season, though last year I solved the mysteries of the scenic railway. I hope you will soon write to me again. Silver Wing: Many thanks for your beautifully long letter. I can just picture those seagulls coming to be fed. It must be a remarkable sight. Little Red Star was delighted to hear from Silver Wing and will find that you have again been thinking of her. Captain must be having a busy time just now. Please give her a package of good wishes from the Wigwam. Sentinel Pine: Greetings and welcome to this new Scout-Chief who has found his way to the Wigwam. I shall always be glad to hear from you. With which troop are you associated, Sentinel Pine? I hope you like your penname. It is one chosen from Flying Cloud’s list.

Red Star: The wind whispers that our little faithful one is not so well again and that she is unable to speed her weekly arrow to the Wigwam. But her message has reached me, for never yet has she failed to send a word to her Chief. Greetings and love from all the- cihldren of Redfeather and a hope that the good days will soon return. Flying Cloud: Congratulations, fair one. I saw your name among the matriculation passes before vour letter arrived, but then, I happened to be looking for it. It is splendid to think that your studies have been crowned with success. Little Swift Canoe was sick in bed when last she wrote, so I am sure she would be delighted if one of your arrows fell at the door of her tepee. I should very much like to read that essay. Yes, I know the quotation very well. Greet-

ings to my maid of the Great OutDoors. Grey Dawn: Very many thanks for your letter. You are having a worrying time just now, but I hope the sun will soon break through the clouds. Greetings and best wishes from the Wigwam to all the faithful ones in your tepee. Silver Ripple: You will find the report of your camp in another column. It must have been a happy one and I can imagine your regret when the time came to “pack up those little white homes under the trees.” Please give my best wishes to Smoke Plume. Black Wolf: Greetings, Avondale. I do not for a moment believe that Scout badges are easily won, do you? If you are by any chance in doubt about it, please ask the King’s Scouts in your troop for an opinion. I am sure they will agree with Redfeather that honours are won only by careful study and inch by inch. Every good wish from the "Wigwam.

A MINIATURE WORLD A naturalist recently made a study of a yard of jungle—a yard about a wild cinnamon tree. With high-power glasses the naturalist studied the life of the tree for a week—the birds and insects, the creepers and the perched plants. He identified 76 kinds of birds visiting that one tree, and when he had to say good-bye to the cinnamon tree he took an <*mpty bag and swept into it four square feet of leaves, sticks, moss, earth and other fragments. A week later he studied his bag on bqard ship v When he had studied the life of the great tree, he said he was in the land of Brobdingnag; on the ship with his bag he was verily a Gulliver in Lilliput. The bag teemed with mystery as deep and inviting as any in the jungle itself. He secured over five hundred little creatures, and was sure that he had left as many undetected. There were mites and spiders, tiny beetles, miniature worms, and the smallest snails in the world, a thousand creatures in four square feet of rubbish, so that a square mile of jungle floor, with its thin layer of fallen leaves, sheltered more than six thousand million creatures. What a glimpse of worlds within worlds! Perhaps we should remember, too, that the smallness of most of the creatures does not make the puzzle of Life’s intricate abundance any less puzzling.

CALLER PIT Caller Pit is a watery hollow lying near Southwood, in Norfolk, and there was an old saying that an iron chest filled with gold lay aC the bottom of it_ So one hot summer, when the water had been dried up. two Southwood men dug deep down in the pit, and there, sure enough, they found the chest. It was very heavy, but they managed to raise it up, and one of the men joyfully cried, as he clutched the iron ring at the top of the chest: “We’ve got it now, and the Spirit of the Pit can’t take it away.” A thick, black smoke at once arose from Caller Pit, and out of the black smoke came a great black hand, which seized the chest. The two men clung with all their strength to the iron ring, but in vain. The black hand wrenched the chest away, and all that was left them was the iron ring. The ring is now fixed to the door of Southwood Church, but, though Caller Pit is often dry, nobody has ever again found the chest of gold there. Growled the old polar bear at the zoo, “Colder weather will shortly be due. Who requires all this sun?” He demanded. “For one,” Snapped the tropical lizard, “I do’.”

ATOMS AND MOLECULES It was Camille Flammarlcn, tlie most famous French astronomer of our time, who believed that only our thoughts are ourselves, and that the fading and changing- of the matter of which our bodies are made leave the mind and soul of man immortal still. The laws of Nature regulate the movements of the atoms in living creatures as well as in inorganic matter. The same molecule passes successively from a mineral body into a vegetable body or an animal, and incorporates itself. The molecule of carbon dioxide breathed out from the gasping bosom of a dying man on his bed of pain incorporates itself in the flower in the garden, the blades of grass In the meadow, the tree in the forest. The molecule of oxygen that escapes from the last living twig of the old oak tree incorporates itself in the fair head of the child in the cradle. We change not a. whit in the composition of natural bodies. Nothing is born, nothing dies. Only the form is perishable; the substance is immortal. We are made up of the dust of our ancestors, of the same atoms and of the same molecules. Nothing is created: nothing is lost. The atoms travel from one being to another, guided by natural forces.

AVALANCHES Among the silent snow peaks of the lofty mountains there lurks a great peril. In the home of the unending winter, so far above the level of the sea that the warmth of the air is never sufficient to rise above the freezing point, it is easy to understand that the heavy mass of snow is being constantly increased, till the time must come when pressure alone will drive the lower portions down the mountain side. But pressure alone is not the only power which occasionally releases great masses of frozen material, poised on some lofty summit. When springtime visits the valley, the warmer air will steal upwards, and, approaching the line at which perpetual snow is found, will loosen the lower edge of the vast white field. Then the pressure behind exerts i tself. The dwellers in the villages below hear a faint mutter as of distant thunder. The sound rapidly increases till the narrow mountain gorge is filled with a deafening roar, accompanied by a wild gust of wind, sufficiently strong sometimes to tear the roofs from the houses; and down the mountain side is seen to come a whirling chaotic mass of snow and ice and loose stones. It occasionally happens that this avalanche of debris will STS?* 1 lnt ° the bed of some mountain com ? lete ly blocking the flow of t 7' A 5 a consequence a lake is quickly formed and terrible floods work unofthT 8 , the . vUIa Ses that stand upon the banks of the stream. If the waVe a r n S n consists ooly Of snow, the t w 11 soon me lt an outlet through way l llavi?,~ rtlon and Proceed upon its those j rch of snow above bridge Wh ° dare ma >- use as a Plfee e in r t d h2 ary - S:QOW avalanches take Prin f^ and this season is ineretore the most dangerous in which to travel among the mountain? Vast o verhan aS fh Partially melteh snow mem i h V a “ cys . ready at any mostorm. t 0 |°S? ht in a bewildering ]Tu b Al S y on their d?iviL thEm fh* E and soats before which may be b?se? paSS lanche*; L„*i. Deset by Possible avail* gun at th? Precaution is to fire aMh? „ m/" r^ Ce of tbe pass, and villageUm 1 b 8 /' a cer tain Swiss Parent Security ButtteT" 1 ln ap ' next day was so hL ? daWn of the them that they awokS at las'?? 1111 ® f ° r sciousnesc thaf r . nrr , Qt i - last to a conhappened. Snow had boyhood. away lnt ° an ° ther neisb *

ROCKING STONES In Cornwall and other parte at land are large detached rocks as logan-stones. The word T*** rocking, and these great thus named because they are is cately poised that a touch wffi rocking. For an explanation -T®** go back to a time when KarlHa®’I’®' 1 ’®' as cold as the Arctic regioojt c??* its surface moved great riadm. as they slid slowly between moiL^? 4 and precipices great rocks becoTr 1 tached from the crags ahcmi crashed down upon the from w? 4 We will follow the Journey n#*such boulder. Slowly but sinJ, ** glacier makes Its way to a —7 ™* climate, where at last it melts- „? n, *' r haps detached masses of ice sea as icebergs and float xmtn i J"* melt. The boulder faUs throat. water, the firm, fty supportheJr gone, and, partly buoved bv the ic-?' It alights by chance on a'rock curious position in which we 2-“* to-day. Ages have passed, haps the land has risen from the sr~ tom of the sea, but through an » changes and the ages the logan has remained poised in thtfTiJS 8 * that the melting glacier left*n 011 thousands of years ago. a

THE RAINBOW The rainbow is no more orleMthaM semi-circle according to the hdffctA the sun above the horizon and height of the observer. If we were a peak of a high mountain l# the rain were falling at a coiialdwrip distance we might see a circular mfc* bow, which would thus Jiave no tfli There are seven colouis of the trum, the colours of which sunshine jP made up, and they appear in tM* order: Violet, indigo, blue, gTeen, low, orange, red.