magazines gear top
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY Click here to get 50% off your next American Airlines flight.
National Geographic Magazine May 1997
May issue:
India: Fifty Years of Independence  | Iceland’s Trial by Fire
La Salle’s Last Voyage | The Dawn of Humans: Expanding Worlds
Hunting the Mighty Python | Biking Across the Alaska Range
Coming Next Month

INDIA
Fifty Years of Independence

Nearly a billion people—a sixth of the planet’s population—live in India. Packed into a space one–third the size of the United States, they speak a thousand languages and dialects and practice several major religions.

Giving direction to this mammoth population has been the great challenge of 50 years of democracy. Some 20 political parties vie for India’s helm. Among their constituents are 270 million members of an expanding middle class—determined to see life improve.

India is a second home for writer Geoffrey C. Ward, who lived there as a boy in the 1950s and returns regularly. The nation is also the favorite subject of photographer Steve McCurry: “It’s so beautiful, so culturally diverse. There’s always something you’ve never seen before. That’s the greatest thing for a photographer.”

India

Return to top

Iceland Volcano ICELAND’S TRIAL BY FIRE

Fire battled ice for two hellish weeks as Iceland weathered one of its worst volcanic eruptions in this century. Yet this fall 1996 nightmare was only the herald of a greater cataclysm.

That was the jökulhaup, or titanic flood, of November 5—the country’s most powerful deluge in almost 60 years. For a few hours the water volume rivaled that of the Congo. Mammoth blocks of ice—weighing about a thousand tons (907,000 kilograms)—rode the currents, wiping out bridges and turning the nation’s main highway into a boulder field.

Photographer Steve Winter captures this geological drama, and writer Glenn Oeland interprets the breathtaking images.


Return to top


LA SALLE’S LAST VOYAGE

The mission: Reach the Mississippi by sea. The goal: Link France’s Canadian holdings with the Gulf of Mexico. The ultimate agenda: Make the French the “masters of this whole continent.”

The man: Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Backed by Louis XIV, he set sail in the late 17th century with four ships and 300 men and women. Poor navigation, disease, and low morale plagued the ill–fated mission. La Salle reached Texas, attempted a colony, lost his small fleet, and aroused “an implacable hatred” among his crew—who killed him.

The Belle, La Salle’s last ship and last hope for success, sank in 1686 and lay below Matagorda Bay till 1995. The ship’s “second crew”—a team of archaeologists—has excavated bronze cannon, lice combs, a woman’s ring, and even human bones.

Geographic writer Lisa Moore LaRoe and photographer Robert Clark document the legacy of La Salle and his tragedy.

LaSalle

Return to top

 
Homo Erectus
EXPANDING WORLDS
The Dawn of Humans

Smarter and faster than its predecessors, Homo erectus was the first hominid to leave Africa and spread throughout the Old World—two million years ago.

Rick Gore and Kenneth Garrett follow the path of the species out of Africa. This article is the latest in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’s continuing series on early humans. Art by John Sibbick.


Return to top


HUNTING THE MIGHTY PYTHON

Sambo was 15, a boy in Cameroon. His father forced him into a burrow inhabited by a gbagok—“great snake”—and told him not to come out without it. The boy obeyed.

Today Sambo and some other members of the Gbaya ethnic group continue the tradition of stalking pythons for meat, skin, and honor. Capturing a provoked 20–foot (6–meter) constrictor with bare hands takes craft—and courage.

French photographer Gilles Nicolet goes into the burrows for an intimate encounter. Text by Karen Lange.

Python

Return to top

 
Wild Ride A WILD RIDE
Biking Across the Alaska Range

Three cyclists set themselves an incredible obstacle course: a 775–mile (1,247–kilometer) trek across stunning yet often inhospitable terrain. Hardship called forth ingenuity: Paul Adkins used his bike as an ice ax to make it down a steep drop.

Only days before the seven–week trek ended, the trail finally flattened out. But by then, says Carl Tobin, “I was so tired that only a bear could have speeded me up.”

Photographer Bill Hatcher nearly disappeared into a crevasse in a field of ice during one of his stints with the team. Author and cyclist Roman Dial, an environmental science instructor, provides a vivid account of mountains, glaciers, and the grit to cross them.


Return to top
 

In Next Month’s Issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:
French Polynesia: Charting a New Course; Black Pearls of French Polynesia; In Focus: Central Africa’s Cycle of Violence; Old Ironsides; Special Places: Hemingways’s Many Hearted Fox River; Cats: Nature’s Masterwork; The Family Line: The Human–Cat Connection; Okinawa, Claiming Its Birthright.

 
Passport | Magazine Menu | Highlights| Match Wits | Membership | E-mail | Archives

© 1997 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.