Tárogató, 1939-1940 (2. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1939-10-01 / 4. szám
TÁROGATÓ 11 COMMUNICATION BY PIGEON POST By Victor Lauriston Away back among the wooded foothills northwest of Calgary there was, at the end of 1938, an isolated camp where the crews of the Altoba Gas and Exploration Co. were drilling for oil. The camp was located in the midst of the Clearwater forest reserve, and it was difficult to get in or out, or even to send messages. The nearest town, Innisfail, was seventy miles to the east, but the head office of the company was at Calgary. On a straight line Calgary was all of eighty-five miles distant. But the shortest distance for a motor-car was one hundred and sixty miles, and forty miles of that was over the roughest kind of foothill trail, hardly passable even for wagons in the best of weather. And at the Christmas season, when the western blizzards buried the trails deep in drifted snow, passage was next to impossible. It was reckoned that with the roads in the best of condition the journey to Calgary and return by motor-car would require all of two days. And just when the winter—and the roads— were at their worst, the drilling operations reached a crucial stage when it might be necessary to get news to the head office at Calgary in a hurry. “Why not telephone?” one asks. But the nearest telephone was many hours distant. The oil operators, confronted with this difficulty, resorted to a method of communication dating from prehistoric times. The company sent to the drilling camp eight carrier pigeons. It was the first time such messengers had been used in connection with oil drilling operations in Alberta, though such work has often been carried on in remote and isolated localities. Consequently, the operators were keenly interested in the outcome of the experiment. On January 3, 1939, the first pigeon came winging its way from the northwest to its home in Calgary. It brought word that additional equipment was needed at the well; and as a result it was possible to get the equipment on its long journey much earlier than if any other possible means of communication had been adopted. For while it would have taken days—in the state of the winter roads—to reach Calgary, and probably a day or more to struggle through the drifts to the nearest telephone, the winged messenger flew from the drilling camp to Calgary, a distance of eighty-five miles in a direct line, in about five hours. This is by no means a speed record for a homer, and the bird was expected to make better speed on later flights. One bird, in 1896, covered five hundred miles inside twenty-four hours, somewhat better than twenty miles an hour; and in 1886 a bird covered 451 miles in nine hours and eighteen minutes. How do the birds make their way home over such tremendous distances so unerringly? That question is often asked; and the answer illustrates what training and habit ca» do to develop an innate ability. The usual practice is to take a bird about a mile from its loft and set it free. An untrained bird easily makes so short a flight. Whether, rising high in air, it is actually able to see its home, or whether it is guided by a natural sense of direction, is uncertain. After a couple of days it is taken three miles, and set free; next time the distance is extended to six miles. The distances are gradually increased till, in the first season, a maximum of about two hundred miles is reached Carrier pigeons were widely used for swift communication before the telegraph was invented; and during the Franco-Prussian Wax of 1870, birds were sent out of Paris in balloons to be used by outsiders to communicate with the garrison. By means of microscopic photography as many as forty thousand messages could be recorded on thin films and carried by a single bird. The success of the Alberta experiment may lead to a more extensive use of carrier pigeons in connection with isolated drilling and mining operations. New Brunswick has one apple tree, near Fredericton, which bears sixty different kinds of apples and two kinds of pears. This is the result of twelve years’ grafting by the owner. ON THE OPENING OF SCHOOL A Prayer of Youth God of all wisdom, I come unto thee ob this the opening day of school. Grant unto me wisdom to look afar and see the millions of children and students entering these days the schoolrooms of the world. O Lord, wilt thoug grant faith and par tience to the multitude of men and wome* who are to be their teachers. OUR ENGLISH SECTION.
