Last Flight by Amelia Earhart

Author:Amelia Earhart [Earhart, Amelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-71593-7
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 1988-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Fortaleza and Natal

The weather at Paramaribo was perfect except for a morning mist from the Surinam River, when we took off to skim the tree-tops and then pull up.

Speaking of trees, we had plenty of them on this jump to Fortaleza in Brazil—trees and water. During the day we flew over 960 miles of jungle, added to hops of 370 miles by compass course over open sea, a total of 1,330 miles, or a trifle more than half the transcontinental distance between New York and Los Angeles.

There was only one possible stop between Paramaribo and Fortaleza, a jungle-surrounded and none-too-large field at Para, which, as all went well, we passed by. The infrequency of ports of call made land-plane flying somewhat uncertain as I’ve pointed out. Then, again, we left too early to receive weather reports so what lay in store for us was largely a matter of conjecture. Under such conditions in a strange country one must be prepared to turn back if and when it looks like bad visibility at the destination—assuming the way back can be found and a landing made wherever “back” may be.

Yesterday I had my introduction to a continent new to me. Today I crossed the equator for the first time. Fred had plotted an appropriate ceremony, himself officiating as an aerial King Neptune. But at the time the Electra’s shadow passed over the mythical Line we were both so occupied he quite forgot to duck me with the thermos bottle of cold water which he later confessed had been provided for the occasion.

I remember once crossing the United States by night, when I had been flying very high, glimpsing through suddenly opening clouds the broad Mississippi gleaming in the moonlight. Today we crossed the Mississippi’s southern brother, the huge Amazon. We did not actually span the river itself, short-cutting the 180 mile stretch between the capes at its ultimate mouth. To our right stretched the lower delta, seen from aloft a crazy-quilt of variously colored currents each flowing its chosen course, each retaining its own particular hue of yellow or brown muddiness, and all bearing seaward, like matches, countless thousands of giant trees wrenched up at the roots. How far beyond our view those tentacles of muddy water soiled the sea I do not know.

After about ten hours’ flying I was glad to see Fortaleza sitting just where it should be, according to the maps, between the mountains and the sea, on a brown, sandy plain, in the arc of a crescent-shaped indentation just west of Cape Mucuripe. The adjacent coast line differed vastly from that encountered northward. Instead of dank jungles surging down to the surf there were wide stretches of semi-desert, and off-shore tidal flats of mud and sandy reefs. Here the climate was almost arid. Drought, not excessive rainfall, was customary.

Fortaleza is a town of 100,000 people, a potent metropolis whose name few of us in North America have even heard. In my own ignorance I had thought of Natal as a more important place.

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