Writing in the "Film Bulletin" of December of his adventures of picture making in odd spots around the world Burlingham says:
The world, today, is supposed to be a small prosaic globe, so civilized and matter of fact that romance and adventure are things of the past.
As an explorer, constantly looking for strange nooks and crannies, I find it just the contrary, for the world today is pregnant with strange romance and, for one with imagination. the most extraordinary adventures may be had for the seeking. To one with the wanderlust surging and a courageous spirit of adventure calling, the strangest sights in the world are just around the corner. For a modest sum of money one may voyage in comfort and land on islands where cannibals still eat inexperienced explorers, or ascend rivers where tribes of women catch men, mate with them, and then kill them. Happily, there are some thrills to be had without paying such a price. Civilization, however, scarcely has scratched the world.
My own first great adventure with a motion picture camera was in the heart of civilization. This was the ascent of the Matterhorn, one of the most difficult and famous mountain peaks in the world. It was the beginning of the Zermatt season and the Matterhorn rocks were covered with verglas, which made climbing intensely hazardous. I left the Hornli alpine but with four famous Swiss guides shortly after midnight, carrying alpine lanterns with which to find fingerholds and footholds in the precipitous crags. and reached the famous "shoulder" of the Matterhorn, breakfasting on the ice at an altitude of 12,526 feet. The dawn and rising sun was glorious beyond description. While breakfasting I moved my dangling feet, toying with cakes of ice which, loosened, fell over the precipice beneath into the dark void a mile below. After nineteen hours of incessant fighting, menaced by high winds, our party succeeded in reaching the top and returning; thus getting the only existing record of the ascent to this giant obelisque. I told some American motion picture men about this adventure. One of them, to show off his cultural background, interjected with:
"Matterworn, Matta- I know that place. Why that was where Harry Thaw was interned!"
Before I left Europe for wilder adventures I had another amazing thrill, so sensational that the telegraphic wires and cables broadcasted the news throughout Europe and America. With two Italian crystal hunters I descended over 1,200 feet down inside the active crater of Vesuvius where all three of us were nearly killed. Professor Mercalli, then director of the Vesuvius Royal Observatory, said there was only an even chance of our coming back. We descended the precipitous crater wall among a battery of sulphur fumaroles, constantly menaced by avalanches, and were enveloped for twenty minutes in a dense, deadly column of corrosive hydrochloric acid gas; at the extreme bottom of the crater we narrowly escaped death by explosions of molten lava.
Searching for unusual places I visited Wales and found the lovely Faerie Glen, near Bettws-y-Coed, where once upon a time the centurians of Julius Caesar flirted with dark-eyed Cymric maidens. In Switzerland I discovered a hidden valley where strange, medieval peasants live as they did before Columbus discovered America. They speak a patois not understood by the Swiss, make all their own wearing apparel, pray in the village lanes when the church bells chime the angelus, eat dried meat many years old and cheese that is often inherited.
But after all, the great lure lies in the Orient. Whether it be in Japan where women coal by hand the great trans-pacific liners, in Indo-China where death stalks in the unexplored jungles, among Malay pirates, or in Java which is called the "Garden of the East," one is enthralled by weird beauty and fascinated by the unknown.
My great adventure in the Far East was a visit to the Dayaks, or wild men of Borneo. My expedition went nearly five hundred miles inland from the Java Sea where almost naked people (some of whom still live in nests in trees!) fish and hunt, and dance to the music of gamelongs. Our cook we got from the Dutch prison authorities at Poeroektjahoe. When I asked why he had been imprisoned I was told he had just assassinated three men.
Borneo is large enough to house the entire population of North America. It is the land of orangutans, flying lemurs, ghost dogs, fruit-eating fish, gorgeous butterflies and brilliant sunshine. The forests are filled with myraids of strange orchids which form a background for brilliantly colored parrots. The Dayaks neither steal nor lie and are friendly if taboos are respected and they are given a square deal. Civilized man may learn much from contact with these savages.
And in America adventure still hovers just around the corner. When I returned some time ago motion picture men told me America had been completely filmed and that I could get nothing new. But they had overlooked the loveliest spot of of all- Way Down upon the Suwanne River. Until I filmed this dream river not one American in a thousand knew where it was. I went to White Springs on the Suwanne, built a flat-bottomed boat, and on account of sunken logs installed an air drive engine on it and decended two hundred miles down stream. The Suwanne country is among the wildest in America. It is infested with game, bear, deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, wild razorback hogs and myraids of quail. A friend of mine shot thirty, one afternoon. While the north then was in the throes of a blizzard we camped out under live oak trees festooned with Spanish moss and swam every evening in the moonlight. During the day we were serenaded by mocking birds and at night by cicadas, owls and whipporwills. The Suwanee is an unsullied, mystic temple garden in the American wilderness. Before it gets spoiled, I hope the American government will protect it by turning it into a National Park.
In my present film library I have thirty-eight different adventures. Most of these have been shown all over the world. I feet sure that, given the opportunity, Americans would be deeply interested to see them. I hope soon to have plans perfected which will permit this. Some of these films already are in the libraries of the American Museum of Natural History and in the Field Museum, Chicago.
Then I shall be off again, around the world- to the Nile, up the Ganges, among the elephants of Ceylon, in Cambodia, among the matriarchal tribes of Sumatra, in the Celebes, Philippines, China and Japan, returning by way of Hawaii.
Frederick Burlingham, "Frederick Burlingham's Adventures," Film Yearbook 1924, pages 27, 29.
© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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