North Carolina Newspapers

Queer Birds Are Worth Millions TForWsi Most Valued Feathered Tribe Fly in Vast Clouds That Hide The Sun. (By Homer Cory, in Popular Mechanics Magazine.) It’s a queer, strange story about the most valuable bird in the world. The bird is never sold, never skinn ed nof dressed, its feathers have no use. its eggs serve no useful pur pose except to raise more birds, no human being ever ate it, and it is rarely seen by the ordinary person. 'It is the guano bird, and it lives off the coast oi Peru. Its sole purpose in the world is to fly around and catch fish, have a good time, raise its young —and pro duce guano. Guano is used as a fer tilizer, and is thirty-three times as strong as barnyard manure. It has supplied a billion dollars’ w'orth ot fertilizer for the farmers of Peru, South America, England, and the United States. The number of birds is amazing. Recently, traveling along the coast of Peru, I wfts astonished at the un believable flocks. One sees them in great black rivers flowing through the air—Gulf Streams of the sky. There are millions and millions of them, turning this way, flowing that way, bending in great curves, then thinning out until they look like a long black rope whipped through the sky by some gigantic hand. In the late afternoon, just before sunset, the birds are thickest, for they are flying home to their bird islands off the coast of Peru. They obscure the sun like a eclipse. In deed, they are so numerous that on Central Chincha Island alone they eat one thousand tons of fish a day! Why are these birds more numer ous there than any other place in the world? The answer is the Hum boldt cutrent that flows along the west C6ast of South America, keep ing that section cool, while the east coast is hot and sultry. The cool water is the breeding place of my riads of small fish. .The birds eat the fish, live on the uninhabited GEO. B. POWELL Osteopathic Physician Cleveland Springs Hotel TUESDAYS & FRIDAYS, 1:30-5:3(1 Call Hotel for Appointment - DR. H. D. WILSON Optometrist. Eyes Glasses Examined Fitted Dependable Eye Examina tion and Quality Glasses. Office Over Paul Webb’s. M islands, and produce guano. Very simple, very useful. Men come and take the. guano away. The birds are merely a cog in a machine of turning fish of the j Humbolt current into food for the I table and clothes for the back They might be called ’ converters—fish converters. I made a visit to some of these guano islands and here arc some of the queer and unusual things that impressed me: The tameness of the birds, that was one. As you walk along you can hardly keep them out of your way. It's like going into a chicken ; yard with a howl uV your hand. If you stand still they will v.alk on your feet and look up at you. turn ing. their heads Trom side to side as j if saying, ‘'Why, what a queer look- i ing creature this os I don't believe it can fly at all." | Their sense of hearing doesn't ! seem to be well developed, and I can understand that it may not,, be.1 for the noise of these flocks is deaf ening; They keep up an incessant’! chatter and squawking; if they are frightened or start to fly. it sounds like the roaring of a train in a tunnel. If you fire a gun into the air it doesn't frighten them, but if you make a sudden. unexpected j movement there will be a beating of J wings, a...squawking, and away they | will fly. j Such a bedlam! Millions on one island, all crowded together, so thick ! that they cannot all rise at the same'1: time, A few start here, there is a \ roaring, humming, tearing sound.1 and another black cloud rises When ! they are all at home at one time they cannot walk about, but are like fowls packed in a railroad chicken car. A queer thing was that these birds seem to have ••goats'—ttiat is, birds which they pick on and play jokes on. Whether it is al ways the same bird I don t know. The flock will be sitting still when all of a sudden one of its members will start a bird running, and the ‘‘goaf will make a bee-line through the others with its head held high, screaming at the top of its voice, while all the other birds peck at it. The “goaf bird keeps on go ing, never ceasing in its wild clamor, until it reaches a cleared space. Then it stands, sympathizing with itself, and after a time it creeps back, looking very foolish. They seem to have laws all their i own. One concerns the stealing of | feathers. Feathers are their money, for nothing grows on these rocky barren islands; not a living twig, not a mouthful of food. The birds prize feathers to soften their nests, so now and then an outlaw bird goes on a feather stealing expedi tion. The bird who is robbed sets j up a squawking, and then the other birds rush out and, making a terri ble noise, set upon the thief. j The birds become encrusted with guano and when it becomes uncom fortable they fly out to the ocean 1 for a bath. They poise above the water, then fly at. it at terrific speed. When they strike the water it sounds like the dull report of pis tols. They rise again and repeat it time after time, threshing the water with their wings. When a flock is bathing it sounds like dis tant musketry. Their nests surprised me. Feath WE SELL THE — NATION’S BEST COAL— We recommend this coal unreservedly, and our patrons have found that our judgment of a good coal has been borne out. D. A. BEAM COAL COMPANY NORTH WASHINGTON ST. TELEPHONE 130. If color in your bath room appeals to your taste, we have it We are MODERN Plumbers, Rut —whether you select the new color shades for your fixtures or not, MOD ERN FIXTURES will appeal to you. It is said, your home is as modern as your bath room. ISLER & VICKERY Ideal Plumbers. Telephone 561. On the Observation Platform ^sss. First of her sex to fly the Atlantic as a passenger—if one ex cepts Boston’s Lady Lindv, Amelia Larhart—Lady Drummond Hav is here shown conversing with Dr. Hugo Eckener as the Graf Zeppelin bucked headwinds en route to the L nited States. The photo is exclusive and was taken by Robert Hartmann, stafi cameraman for MGM News and International Newsreel. (Copyright. 192*. MG14 New. and la-erna.;locgi KtwarMl)_ __ ers are used to soften them but the j nests are of the guano itself beaten into place by the birds’ wings Great huge nests they are. Often they weigh twelve pounds, and here the birds lay their eggs and raise their young. But it is not all a life of Pilev for the guano birds. One of their wor ries is the birds of prey that swoop down and eat their eggs. The South American condor is one: he comes from the high Andes. One condor which w-as killed Was found to have sucked twenty eggs into its gullet. But the guano bird has a friend who helps hint fight his enemies. It is the sharpshooter employed by the government of Peru to kill the enemy birds. Condors offer an easy target but the gulls and vultures are small and they are cunning. However, the sharpshooters know how to deal with them. They take a wounded gull or vulture, tie a bag of sand to its leg. and then leave it. Its cries drawr other birds of its kind, and the sharpshooter disposes of them. So far I have told only about the birds. Now I’ll tell something about the guano and how it is handled. It’s not a very pleasant job. min ing guano, and only the lowest class of labor goes in for it, When the men are first taken to the islands they are not required to work for a week, for the government knows that it will take them that long to get used to the odor. But after a short time they no longer seem to mind it, » The workmen, with picks and shovels, break up the guano deposits and put it into bags. After they have gathered all they can with shovels, they take stiff brooms and sweep it up. even the dust. The bags are sewed up, put on dummy railroads, and taken to the edge of the island. The rocky shore of the Islands is usually high, and below are the ships to be loaded. Some times the bags are sent down through chutes and canvas tunnels, or put on wire trolleys and swung down. After a ship is loaded it sails away with its powerful fertilizer. Alter a island nas Deen ciearca n takes about thirty months tor it to be ready again. So the guano work men go from island to island, year in and year out, harvesting their ; strange crop. Guano is no recent discovery, and itsuse.as a fertilizer is nothing new It- was used by the Incas, in the days before Pizarro came and fastened his bloody yoke upon them. The Incas sailed out in their crude boats, j loaded them with guano, and sail - ! ed back again. Reaching ahore the 1 guano was , put into woven baskets | and carried by man power high in ! to the mountains and then scatter ed on the amazing little tr traced farms. And it. is still being handled that way, m the back regions of Peru. It goes part way by railroad, then the farmers come with their bags and, chewing their coco leaves, start for the high altitudes. When modern methods were first applied to the gathering of guano it was found, m some places, to be one hundred and fifty feet deep. But today it is allowed to get only a few inches deep be lore it is gath ered. We stopped at a small house where the workmen lived It was meal time and the men were sitting at rough tables, eating their food and drinking their wine. On a shelf I noticed two bottles which seemed to be beautifully painted. On one was a beautiful sunset; the other showed a series of mountains, with white caps of snow. ■ What do you think those are?” the manager asked. I did not know . And then he told me. One of the workmen, with artistic bent, had taken different colored guano, put it into empty wine bottles, and had worked it in so cleverly that it j looked. like painting. And suddenly, in those bottles, 1 saw how heavily time must hang on the men's hands and the tragedy of having to live always on a guano island. It was late afternoon when we boarded the boat which had taken us to the guano island, and started to steam toward home. The sun was I shining brightly, but suddenly it | grew dark and a strange, eerie feel- : ing came over me. All about I could hear a deep humming as if a million swarms of bees had set out to sea. Imagine all the airplanes in Amer ica hopping off from a single field in one mighty squadron, and you will have some conception of the unearthly din of that flock of beat ing wings. The mate on the boat smiled at my mystification. "They’re going home,’’ he said. THINKS SMITH IS HOLDING ft THUMP Observers Looking For Norris To Come Over With Endorsement Last Minute. News and Observer Bureau. Washington, — That Governor Smith's statement recently to the effect that the election would be won in the last week of the cam paign was more significant than generally believed is indicated by de velopments during the past few days. Democratic leaders who generally know whereof they speak say that Governor Smith intends to play his winning card during the last week of the campaign and this will come in the form of a complete endorse ment of the Democratic president ial candidate by Senator Norris, of Nebraska, by which the Democrats hope to gain some 60 electoral votes in the Northwestern states. In the meantime Senator Norris is campaigning for Progressive sen ators of three parties. These are: Republicans—Hawell. of Nebraska; LaFollette, of Wisconsin; Frazier, of North Dakota. Farmer-Labor—Ship stead, of Minnesota. Democrats— Wheeler, of Montana, and Dill of Washington, It is said that the campaign be ing waged by the Nebraska senator for his Progressive friends fits in with the plan of Governor Smith, ■the idea being that Senator Norris will make no reference to the presi dential candidates until the last week before the election, then an nounce himself for Governor Smith. To bear out their argument, Dem ocratic leaders point to Senator Norris* formal statement in which he said: “It must be perfectly plain that <from my statement) you would draw the conclusion in this presi dential campaign that Smith on farm relief, foreign policy and wa ter power, which T regard as the most important things, comes a great deal nearer meeting the Pro gressive idea than Hoover, dees. •'But I am not going to take up the presidential candidates in this campaign for these Progressive sen ators. "I have not said what attitude (toward presidential candidates) I am going to take later." The happiest Republican is the one that merely looks at the totals in The Literary Digest poll, and doesn’t do any analyzing.—Ohio State Journal. CONTEST BETWEEN ■111 CITY VOTES SEEMS SURE fcspeciallv Is That True In Last, North And ’West, South Democratic. Washington - Probably no Other campaign has ever seen such a clear lv defined contest between the ru ral vote and the city vote as in IMS. Across the country, again and again, the question of greatest im portance is found to be whether Smith's heavy urban vote will be offset by the heavy Hoover vote out in the state. This is a question of enormous importance because it figures es pecially in the largest states: that is. those with the biggest electoral votes - In New York, it’s a question whether the large majority of which Smith is certain in New York city will be beaten down by the probable large majority which Hoover will have in the rest of the governor's own state. Smith cannot win, it is generally agreed, ' without New Y’ork's 45 electoral ! votes. In New Jersey again, Smith is expected to have a large City ma jority, but the Republicans are con fident that the rest of New Jersey will-turn him down. Smith is again likely to carry Boston and most of the manufac turing cities of Massachusetts, but again Massachusetts is a very doubt ful state because of the outside vote. Cleveland and Chicago are like ly to go for Smith, but it may be a different story as regards Ohio and Illinois. This same parallel can be folr lowed out as far as San Francisco, which may go for Smith in the face of an enormous Hoover ma jority in California. It applies to Milwaukee in Wisconsin, St. Louis in Missouri, Baltimore in Mary land, Wilmington in Delaware and so on. It is quite conceivable that Smith may carry six of the largest cities in the country. His chances are at least fair in New York. Chicago. Cleveland. St. Louts, Baltimore and j Boston. Among the next ten cities he ( is likely to capture Buffalo, San , Francisco, Newark, Milwaukee, j New Orleans and Minneapolis. But; not so likely, according to such in formation as percolates to ycur cor respondent, to carry Seattle. Kansas City, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. The larger cities are wet. In them, also, are found the strong est Democratic machines. Fur thermore, religious prejudice against Smith is more likely to be offset by large Catholic populations. Rural sections, on the other hand, are traditionally dry and, except in the south, generally Republi can. In certain rural sections, of course, the anti-Catholic propa gandists have made their greatest headway. Unaccustomed to urban political machines, the anti- Tam many argument also often appeals to them. ADMINISTRATOR’S NOTICE Having this day qualified as ad ministrator of the estate of Miss Hattie Durham, deceased, this is to notify all persons having claims against the said estate to present them to me properly proven on or before the 25th day of September. 1929 or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery thereof. All per sons owing the said estate will please make immediate settlement to the undersigned. This Septem ber 25. H. E. TAUB. Administrator of Miss Hattie Durham, deceased. NOTICE OF SALE OF LAND. Under and by virtue of the au thority conferred by deed of trust by Roscoe E. Lutz and wife, Mary Austell Lutz to the 1st National hank of Durham, North Carolina, trus tee, dated the 15th day of Febru ary, 1928, and recorded in book 150, page 129, Cleveland county regis try, the First National bank of Durham, North Carolina, trustee, will on October 16, 1928, at 12 o'rlock, M. at the court house door in Cleve-! land county, sell at public auction j for cash to the highest bidder the following described property: Beginning at a stake on the east edge of Morgan street, and runu ng thence east with the north edge of a twenty foot alley 220 feet to a stake on the west edge of a thirty foot alley: thence north with said alley 110 feet to a stake, Lutz’ southeast corner: thence with the south line of Lutz’ lot 220 feet to a stake on the east edge of Morgan street, Lutz' corner: thence so'itn with the east edge of Morgan street 110 feet to a stake, the point of beginning, containing 24.200 square feet more or less, and being that lot conveyed to Roscoe E. Lu z by Chas. P. Roberts and wife by deed recorded in book of deeds 3-R at page 521 in the office of the reg ister of deeds of Cleveland county, North Carolina, reference to which deed and the record of same is hereby made for further descrip tion and ldentiiication of said lot. This sale is made on account oi default in the payment of the in debtedness secured by the said deed of trust. This the 6th day of September, 1928. FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DURHAM, North Carolina, Trustee. W. S. Lockhart, Attorney ARMINIMR XTIUX’S notice Notice is hereby «imi that I ii ivt tins day qualified as administratrix of the estate of J A. Beam, deceas ed late of Cleveland county N. c. and all persons having claims against said estate will present them to me properly proven tor payment on or before August 22. 1929. or this notice will b? pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to sud estate will make immediate payment to the undersigned. This August 22. 1928. MRS. EVA GOLD. Adminis tratrix of J. A. Beam, deed Ryburn it lloey, Attys. administrator s notice. Having this da> qualified as ad ministrator of the estate ot Miss Emma V. Frick, late of Cleveland county, all persons holding claims against the said estate are hereby notified to present them properly proven to me on or before the 13tn day of September. 1929 or this no tice will be pleaded in bar of any right to recover thereon. All per sons indebted to said estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This the 13th. day of September, 1928. C. E. FRICK. Administrator of Miss Emma V. Frick deceasect. DAN FRAZIER Civil Engineer And Surveyor Farm Surveys, Sub-riivi ions. Plats and General Engineering Practice. - Phone 417 - j T. W. Ebeltoft Grocer and Book Seller Phone — 82 \ .. —* DR. H. C. DIXON DENTIST Office Over Woolworth’s. TELEPHONE 195 QUEEN CITY COACH LINES FOR ASHEVILLE, CHARLOTTE, WILMINGTON. FAYETTEVILLE FOR ASHEVILLE AM) INTERMEDIATE POINTS LEAVE SHELBY:—9M0 a. m.; 11:40 a. m.; 1:40 p. m.; 3:40 p. m.; 5:40 p. m.; 7:40 p. m. FOR CHARLOTTE AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS LEAVE SHELBY:—10:50 a. m.; 12:50 p. m.; 2:50 p. m.; 4:50 p. m. ; 6:50 p. m.; 8:50 p. m. FOR WILMINGTON AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS LEAVE SHELBY:—10:50 a in.: 2:50 p. m. FOR FAYETTEVILLE AND INTERMEDIATE _ _ POINTS LEAVE SHELBY:—7:50 a. m.; 10:50 a. m.; 2:50 p. m. FOR FLRTHER INFORMATION — PHONE 450 QUEEN CITY COACH COMPANY Notice to T elephone Subscribers After December 1st there will be • change in the date of rendering telephone bills in this city. A pamphlet containing full explana tion of the new billing plan will be en closed with your November 1st telephone bill. Please read it carefully. After reading the explanatory notice enclosed with your bill, there may still be some point on which you would wish further information. If so, we will wel come an opportunity to help you. 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