Project Gutenberg's Travel Stories Retold from St. Nicholas, by Various
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Title: Travel Stories Retold from St. Nicholas
Author: Various
Release Date: June 26, 2015 [EBook #49287]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVEL STORIES RETOLD ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Joke Van Dorst and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
TRAVEL STORIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Victoria Falls, Zambesi]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRAVEL STORIES
RETOLD FROM ST. NICHOLAS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1920, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE GRAND CAÑON OF ARIZONA _William Haskell Simpson_ 3
IN RAINBOW-LAND _Amy Sutherland_ 16
TRAVELING IN INDIA _Mabel Albert Spicer_ 25
WHERE THE SUNSETS OF ALL
THE YESTERDAYS ARE FOUND _Olin D. Wheeler_ 38
FIRECRACKERS _Erick Pomeroy_ 51
CURIOUS CLOCKS _Charles A. Brassler_ 64
MOTORING THROUGH THE
GOLDEN AGE--PART I _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 74
MOTORING THROUGH THE
GOLDEN AGE--PART II _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 97
LETTER-BOXES IN FOREIGN LANDS _A. R. Roy_ 119
LOST RHEIMS _Louise Eugénie Prickett_ 124
WHERE DOROTHY VERNON DWELT _Minna B. Noyes_ 135
GLIMPSES OF FOREIGN FIRE-BRIGADES _Charles T. Hill_ 142
DUTCH CHEESES _H. M. Smith_ 162
A GEOGRAPHY CITY "COME ALIVE" _Lindamira Harbeson_ 167
THE GIANT AND THE GENIE _George Frederic Stratton_ 180
OUT IN THE BIG-GAME COUNTRY _Clarence H. Rowe_ 195
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Victoria Falls, Zambesi _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Camel Carriages of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab 32
Strings of Firecrackers 60
Hexagonal Bundles of Firecrackers Drying in the Sun 60
View of Constantinople from the Galata Side 170
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRAVEL STORIES
THE GRAND CAÑON OF ARIZONA
BY WILLIAM HASKELL SIMPSON
Many of those who seek and love earth's greatest scenery have declared
that they found it at the Grand Cañon of Arizona. Travelers flock to it
from the ends of the earth, though the majority of the visitors,
numbering every year about a hundred thousand, are Americans.
The Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, in northern Arizona, is indeed a
world wonder, and there is no other chasm in the world worthy to be
compared with it. It is more than two hundred miles long, including
Marble Cañon, is from ten to thirteen miles wide in the granite gorge
section, and is more than a mile deep. It was created ages and ages ago
by the erosive action of water, wind, and frost, and it is still being
deepened and widened imperceptibly year by year.
The Colorado River, which drains a region of three hundred thousand
square miles and is two thousand miles long from the rise of its
principal source, is formed in southern Utah by the junction of the
Grand and the Green Rivers, and, flowing through Utah and Arizona to
tide-water at the Gulf of California, it dashes in headlong torrent
through this titanic gorge--this dream of color, tinted like a rainbow
or a sunset.
The cañon is reached by a railroad running to the rim, and may be
visited any day in the year. It is unlike most other scenery, because
when standing on its rim you look down instead of up. Imagine a
gigantic trough, filled with bare mountains on each side and sloping to
a narrow channel, which in turn is carved deeply and steeply out of
solid granite. You come upon it unawares from the level, timbered,
plateau country. The experience is an absolutely unique one. Only when
you go down one of the trails to the bottom and look up is the view
more nearly like other grand mountain vistas. The first glimpse always
is from the upper edge, and, having no previous standard of
measurement, you find it difficult to adjust yourself to this strange
condition. The distant rim swims in a bluish haze. The nearer red rocks
forming the inner cañon buttes--crowned with massive table-lands that
look like temples, minarets, and battlements--reflect the sunlight in
myriad hues. It seems a vast illusion rather than reality. No wonder
that the first look often awes the spectator into silence and tears!
But, before you have been here long, you will wish to know how it all
happened. You will ask how the cañon was made.
That question was asked by a little girl of Captain John Hance, one of
the pioneer guides. Hance contests with a few other early comers the
distinction of being the biggest "romancer" in Arizona. He told her
that he dug it all himself.
"Why, Captain Hance!" she said, in astonishment, "what did you do with
all the dirt?"
He quickly replied, "I built the San Francisco Peaks off there with it!"
Just between ourselves, no one absolutely can tell just how the miracle
occurred, for no human being was there at the time. But the geologist
has put together, bit by bit, thousands of facts, dug from the rocks
which here lie exposed like a mammoth layer-cake and his explanation is
so convincing that it must stand as at least the probable truth.
Here may be seen rocks of the four geological periods which are among
the very oldest of our earth. The rocks of later periods were here
once, too, making a layer more than two miles high resting on what is
to-day the top, but in some remote age they were shaved off by some
great natural force, perhaps a glacier.
The eating away of the rocks which formed the cañon itself is modern.
Scientists say it was done, as it were, last Monday or Tuesday, for it
was when the top two thirds had been "shaved off," as we have said,
that the Colorado River began to cut the Grand Cañon through the rocks
that formed the lower third.
While the cracking of the crust, caused by internal fires, may have
helped the process of cañon-making, the result of erosion is seen
everywhere. Every passing shower, every desert wind, every snowfall,
changes the contour of the region imperceptibly but surely. The cañon
is Nature's open book in which we may read how the earth was built.
With the coming of the railroad, when this century was yet a baby,
tourists began to flock in, hotels were built, highways constructed,
trails bettered, and other improvements made. To-day the traveler finds
here every comfort.
Although first glimpsed by white men in 1540, when the Spanish
conquistadors appeared,--one expedition journeying from the Hopi
pueblos in Tusayan across the Painted Desert,--the big cañon remained
unvisited, except for Indians and trappers, until 1858, when Lieutenant
Ives, of the army engineer corps, made a brief exploration of the lower
reaches of the Colorado, coming out at Cataract Creek. It was not
thoroughly explored until the year 1869, when Major John W. Powell made
his memorable voyage from the entrance to the mouth of the great gorge,
passing down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Though he lost two boats
and four men, he pushed on to the end. It is fitting that the United
States Government has erected to his memory a massive monument of
native rock with bronze tablets on one of the points near El Tovar
Hotel.
Powell's outfit consisted of nine men and four rowboats. The distance
traveled exceeded one thousand miles, from what is now Greenriver,
Utah, through the series of cañons to the mouth of the Rio Virgin. In
the spring of 1871 he again started with three boats and descended the
river to the Crossing of the Fathers. The following summer Lee's Ferry
was his point of departure and he went as far as the mouth of Kanab
Wash.
Beginning with the Russell and Monett party, in 1907, several others
have essayed to duplicate Powell's achievement, and successfully, too,
though without adding to our scientific knowledge of the cañon. The
trips are exceedingly dangerous, for the rapids conceal rocks that
would wreck any boat, and the currents are treacherous. It is safer, by
far, to sit at home and read Powell's story.
The average traveler spends too short a time at the cañon. He arrives
in the morning and leaves in the evening. Those wise ones, who go about
things in more leisurely fashion, stay from three days to a week.
There are certain things that everybody does. Simply by looking through
the big telescope at the "lookout," an intimate view may be had of the
far-off north rim and of the river gorge five miles below in an air
line. It is easier than actually going to those places, though both are
accessible. The north rim, or Kaibab Plateau, is about a quarter of a
mile higher than the south rim, where you are standing, and is thickly
forested with giant pines. Clear streams are found here, and wild game
in abundance. Mountain-lions hide in the rocks, and bobcats haunt the
trees. It is the home of the bear, too; you may see two "sassy" young
sample specimens outside the house where the Indians stay, opposite El
Tovar Hotel. The way across the cañon to the north side is not an easy
one, as the Colorado must be crossed in a steel cage suspended from a
cable, which stretches dizzily from bank to bank. Then follows the
stiff climb up Bright Angel Creek, along a trail seldom used.
The Hopi House, where the Indians give their dances every evening for
free entertainment of guests, is another attraction. It is occupied by
representatives of the Snake Dance Hopis, whose home is many miles
northeast across the Painted Desert. You won't see the Snake Dance, of
course, but you will witness ceremonies just as interesting,
participated in by men, women and children of the Hopi and Navajo
tribes. The little tots, especially, are very "cute." They execute
difficult steps in perfect time and with the utmost solemnity, while
the drummer beats the tom-tom, and the singer chants his weird songs.
Here you may see Navajo silversmiths at work, fashioning curious
ornaments from Mexican coins and turquoise, also deft weavers of
blankets and baskets.
The Havasupai Reservation, in Cataract Cañon, is about sixty miles
away, and Indians from that hidden place of the blue waterfalls are
frequent visitors around the railway station.
All of these Indians understand the language of Uncle Sam. Many of them
are Carlisle or Riverside graduates, and one young Hopi is writing a
history of his tribe in university English.
Have you ever ridden a mule? If not, you will learn how at the cañon,
for only on muleback can travelers easily make the trip down and up the
trail. Walking is all right going down, but the climb coming back will
tire out the strongest hiker: hence the mule, or burro, long as to
ears, long as to memory, and "sad as to his songs."
Of the visitors, fat and lean, tall and short, old and young, to each
is assigned a mule of the right size and disposition, together with a
khaki riding-suit, which fits more or less, all surmounted by hats that
are useful rather than ornamental. It is a motley crowd that starts off
in the morning, in charge of careful guides, from the roof of the
world--a motley crowd, but gay and suspiciously cheerful. It is
likewise a motley crowd that slowly climbs up out of the earth toward
evening--but subdued and inclined still to cling to the patient mule.
"What did you see?" asked curious friends.
Quite likely they saw more mule than cañon, being concerned with the
immediate views along the trail rather than the thrilling vistas
unfolding at each turn. Nine out of ten of them could tell you their
mule's name, yet would hesitate to say much about Zoroaster or Angel's
Gate. They could identify the steep descent of the Devil's Corkscrew,
for they were a part of it; the mystery of the deep gulf, stretching
overhead and all around, probably did not reach them. That is the
penalty one pays for being too much occupied with things close at hand.
Yet only by crawling down into the awe-full depths can the cañon be
fully comprehended afterward from the upper rim.
All trail parties take lunch on the river's bank. The Colorado is about
two hundred feet wide here, and lashed into foam by the rapids. Its
roar is like that of a thousand express-trains. The place seems
uncanny. At night, under the stars, you appear to be in another world.
No water is to be found on the south rim for one hundred miles east and
west of El Tovar, except what falls in the passing summer showers, and
that is quickly soaked up by the dry soil. All the water used for the
small army of horses and mules maintained by the transportation
department, likewise for the big hotel and annex and other facilities,
is hauled by rail in tank-cars from a point one hundred and twenty-five
miles distant. The vast volume of water in the Colorado River, only
seven miles away, is not available. No way has yet been found to pump
economically the precious fluid from a river that to-day is thirty feet
deep, and to-morrow is seventy feet deep, flowing below you at the
depth of over a mile.
Another curious fact is this: the drainage on the south side is away
from the cañon, not into it. The ground at the edge of the abyss is
higher than it is a few miles back.
During the winter of 1917 there was an unusual fall of snow, which
covered the sides and bottom of the cañon down to the river. Nothing
like it had been seen for a quarter of a century. Generally, what
little snow falls is confined to the rim and the upper slopes. At times
the immense gulf was completely filled with clouds, and then the cañon
looked like an inland lake. As a rule, this part of Arizona is a land
of sunshine; the high altitude means cool summers; the southerly
latitude means pleasant winters.
Naturally, a place like the Grand Cañon has attracted many great
artists and other distinguished visitors. Moving-picture companies have
staged thrilling photo-plays in these picturesque surroundings.
Photographers by the score have trained their finest batteries of
lenses on rim, trail, and river, some of them getting remarkable
results in natural colors.
Unmoved by this galaxy of talent, however, the Grand Cañon refuses
wholly to give up its secrets. Always there will be something new for
the seeker and interpreter of to-morrow.
The Grand Cañon is a forest reserve and a national monument. A bill has
been introduced in Congress to make it a national park. Meanwhile, the
United States Forest Service and the railway company are doing all they
can to increase the facilities for visitors. A forest ranger is located
near by. His force looks out for fires, and polices the Tusayan Forest
district. Covering such a large area with only a few men, a system has
been worked out for locating fires quickly. Fifteen minutes saved,
often means victory snatched from defeat. Water is not available, for
this is a waterless region except during the short rainy season, so
recourse must be had to other devices, such as back-firing and
smothering with dirt.
Official government names for prominent objects in the region have been
substituted for most of the old-time local names. For example, your
attention is invited to Yavapai Point, so called after a tribe of
Indians, instead of O'Neill's Point. These American Indian words are
musical and belong to the country, and the names of Spanish explorers
and Aztec rulers also seem suited to the place. Thus the great cañon
has been saved the fate of bearing the hackneyed or prosaic names that
have been given to many places of wonderful natural beauty throughout
our country. Think of a "Lover's Leap" down an abyss of several
thousand feet! That atrocity, happily, has been spared us in this
favored region.
This great furrow on the brow of Arizona never can be made common by
the hand of man. It is too big for ordinary desecration. Always it will
be the ideal Place of Silence. Let us continue to hope that the incline
railway will not be established here, suitable though it may be
elsewhere, nor the merry-go-round. The useful automobile is barred on
the highway along the edge of the chasm, though it is permitted in
other sections.
It has been my good fortune to meet at the cañon many noted artists,
writers, lecturers, "movie" celebrities, singers, and preachers. The
impression made upon each one of them by this titanic chasm is almost
always the same. At first, outward indifference--on guard not to be
overwhelmed, for they have seen much, the wide world over. Then a
restrained enthusiasm, but with emotions well in check. After longer
acquaintance, more enthusiasm and less restraint. At the end, full
surrender to the magic spell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN RAINBOW-LAND
BY AMY SUTHERLAND
Until only a few years ago, the Greatest Wonder of the World lay hidden
away in one of the most savage parts of Africa. The natives of that
region, terrified by its mysterious columns of vapor and its
subterranean thunder, did not venture within many miles of it. The
white men who had looked upon it could be counted on the fingers of one
hand.
And yet, more than fifty years have passed since the explorer
Livingstone, journeying eastward along the Zambesi, first beheld that
rainbow mist rise above the forest. Of its cause he could learn nothing
from the savages; and so, except for his own conjectures, he came quite
unprepared upon his splendid discovery. He approached it by the river,
which above the Falls is a mile wide, and below them runs for fifty
miles at the bottom of a gorge between four and five hundred feet deep,
whose twin walls of black, precipitous rock show for all that distance
scarcely a ledge or slope where the smallest plant may cling. So, after
a peep downward at the Falls, from the island on their brink which now
bears his name, he left his new-found marvel less than half seen, and
departed whence he came.
And the loneliness of those vast solitudes brooded once more over
forest and river, to be broken only at rare intervals by some wandering
hunter, or perhaps by a party of men adventuring through endless toil
and danger to behold a wonder whose fame, even then, spread as far as
that tiny portion of South Africa where white men dwelt and
civilization held sway. So things remained until the day of Cecil
Rhodes, under whose auspices went forth the _voortrekkers_, or
pioneers, to colonize the vast land now called Rhodesia, in the heart
of which the Victoria Falls lie. Many of these voortrekkers, and their
wives and children, died at the hands of the savage Amatabele tribe of
natives; but the survivors in the end were victorious, and the country
became their own.
Cecil Rhodes died, and was laid in his lonely grave among the Matopo
Hills, on a rocky summit which looks far out over the land he loved.
But his wishes were remembered, the greatest and the least of them; and
still, year by year, the Central African Railway grows, every year a
little, northward through the forests. And now it has reached the
Zambesi, and over that hitherto unconquerable gorge has been thrown one
of the most wonderful railway bridges ever built; and close by has
sprung up a great hotel, so that the Victoria Falls and their
surroundings are attainable at last by all the world.
For many days the approaching traveler has been flying through a mighty
tropical forest, in which a path has been cut for the railway line, but
which is otherwise so undisturbed, so vast and silent and lonely, that
it is hard to believe white men can ever make a home in it. Here the
lion prowls at his own sweet will, and legions of antelopes, great and
small, graze on the sweet veldt. And here elephants wander in troops of
fifty or more, and in the swamps the hippopotamus plows his way through
the papyrus reed and the ten-foot Rhodesian grass. The little iron
shanties of the railway men are the only signs of civilized life. The
natives of the country are few and far between; their kraals, with the
conical huts peculiar to this race of Africans, look down from the
rare, slight eminences.
There is no change in the scenery, little to give warning of the wonder
that one approaches. Only, above the noise of the train, a far-off
murmur of sound grows upon the ear; and a little while later, floating
upward from out the forest, there comes in sight a long line of snowy
vapor, which, as the low sun touches it, glows with soft, many-colored
lights. This mist-cloud is caused by the sudden narrowing of the great
Zambesi River in the Chasm, not two hundred yards wide, which receives
the Falls at the end of their leap. The cloud rises at times as much as
five hundred feet into the air, and there condenses into rain, which
falls in eternal showers glorious in this thirsty land, and makes in
the country close about the Falls one perpetual spring.
This tract of land is known as the Rain Forest, and in its tropical
magnificence, its soft and delicate beauty, can surely be surpassed by
nothing on earth. All about the path laboriously cut through its
jungles, rise the trunks of splendid trees, which seem to tower into
the very sky; their stems, and the earth about them, are hidden in
masses of giant ferns, whose long sprays sway and quiver continually
under the weight of the falling drops. Strange plants of many kinds
grow here; orchids droop from the trees, and palms raise their graceful
heads from out the tangle. Through it all drift the rainbow vapors, and
from between the trees the sun strikes in long, slanting rays, and
lights up the wet vegetation, the rising mist, the falling raindrops,
with an effect so tenderly and unutterably lovely that it often brings
tears to the eyes.
In places the forest is more open, and here the giant Rhodesian grass
grows, twelve feet high, its flower-heads heavy with wet; and palms,
free from the jungle and able to grow as they will, rise thirty feet
into the air, their every fringed leaf hung with gems.
At any time a few steps will take the traveler from out this Forest of
Rainbows, to where he may stand on the very verge of the terrific
Chasm. Here he is directly opposite the Falls, which come rushing over
the further tip in a mass of foam as white as snow, to fall with a roar
more than four hundred feet into the dreadful abyss. By leaning over,
it is possible at times to see the river at the bottom, a boiling,
turbulent torrent racing furiously to the right along its rock-bound
bed; but more often all is hidden in the mist, which is hurled upward
so densely that in places the Chasm seems choked with it, and it rushes
past the observer with an audible sound and a suggestion of
irresistible force, awe-inspiring to a degree. Opposite the Main Falls,
a spot known to the natives as Shongwe, the Caldron, it is so heavy as
to blot out sky, forest, and even the Falls themselves, and we are in a
strange twilight, half smothered in vapors and wholly deafened with the
thunderous roar of the Falls so close at hand.
Everywhere are double rainbows of surpassing brightness, sometimes
arches, sometimes complete, glowing circles. They are so close, one may
watch their melting colors as in a soapbubble; and they move and change
continually with the sun or the movements of the spectator. They gleam
softly in the cloud, brilliantly against the stern black cliffs; and
tiny rainbows by hundreds dance in the falling sheets of water and
among the palms and ferns of the forest.
A strange circumstance cannot fail to strike the observer, and awe him,
as perhaps nothing else could, with a sense of the vast depth of the
fissure into which he fearfully gazes. The spray and rain bring into
being hundreds of streams, which flash over the edge of the cliff
opposite the Falls in an eternal effort to rejoin their parent river.
But they never reach the bottom. Long before they are half-way down,
they vanish, dissipated once more into spray, and borne upward in the
form of lighted mist.
Of the radiant beauty of the whole scene, one writer, a traveler of
renown, says:
"I believe that on that day I was gazing at the most perfectly
beautiful spectacle of all this beautiful world.
"As the sun's rays fell on that kaleidoscopic, ever-moving, changing
scene, made up of rock, water, mist, and shivering foliage, the
coloring of it all was gorgeous, yet of sweetly tender tints under that
luminous, pearly atmosphere formed by the spray-mist. Below, where one
caught glimpses of the rushing water, it was turned brown and golden,
blue and rich dark green. The cliff, sparkling with dripping water, was
of shining black and glowing bronze. The foliage of the Rain Forest was
of the green of an eternal spring, and a myriad jewels of twinkling
light were made by the water-drops on the trembling leaves. A glorious
rainbow spanned the Chasm, and other rainbows flitted in the haze. As
for the tender, pale beauty of the Cataract and of the luminous, pearly
mist, no words could convey it to the imagination."
Another writer says: "The beauty of the pearl-tinted atmosphere, and
the glory of the dazzling rainbows, are the first and the last
impressions that the Victoria Falls give to the mind."
The eastern extremity of the cliff opposite the Falls is known as
Danger Point; and here the Chasm turns abruptly at right angles, and
becomes the famous Gorge which for fifty miles zigzags across country,
with the Zambesi like a silver cord at the bottom of it. Just at the
turning-point, a mass of rock has fallen from the cliff and lies below
in the river--a mass which, it is interesting to note, Livingstone
describes as just _ready to fall_, and which in his drawing of the
scene is represented as almost parted from the rest. Along the Gorge a
strong, cold wind blows always, and bears the mist as far as the
railway bridge and the exquisite palm groves near it.
Above the Falls, the scene is scarcely less fair. Here lies the broad
Zambesi, placid and calm under its sunny skies, with its fifty islands,
palm-crowned, wonderful, kept ever green and spring-like by the soft
spray-showers. On the banks grows the burly baobab, whose trunk is as
large as a house; lovely forest fringes either shore, and gay-plumaged
birds flit among the flowering trees and feast on the plentiful wild
fruits. From here the mists of Victoria take the form of five towering
pillars, bending with the wind, white below, but dark farther up, where
they condense into rain. Livingstone says of the river at this point:
"No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed
elsewhere. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes
so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."
The monstrous footprints of the hippopotami are thick along the banks,
and crocodiles lie sunning themselves in the open spaces. Tiny gray
monkeys, with wise black faces, swing from the miles of creeper which
festoon the trees. Green parrots shriek, and strange great reptiles
crash a path through the tangle. The savage natives punt or paddle
their dugouts on the placid bosom of the river. So recent is the white
man's advent that the whole is scarcely changed from the day when David
Livingstone first looked upon it and realized, with beating heart, the
Wonder he had found.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRAVELING IN INDIA
BY MABEL ALBERTA SPICER
Here in the Western world, where everything is hustle and bustle, where
express-trains, automobiles, telephones, telegraphs, pneumatic tubes,
and, most recently, aëroplanes save us hours of time, it is difficult
to realize that on the other side of the world things are moving along
at the same slow pace at which they did centuries ago. Also, here in
America, where everybody is saying, "I have no time, I have no time, I
have no time!" it seems strange to think that there are countries where
time has no value whatsoever, where people believe they have to live
thousands and thousands of lives before they reach their heaven, and,
consequently, have no regard for time.
Imagine spending the whole night in the train to go one or two hundred
miles! Imagine, also, everybody's surprise if some traveler should
attempt to take with him into an American sleeping-car a roll of
bedding, a box of ice, sawdust, and bottles of soda-water, a huge
lunch-basket, spirit-lamps, umbrella-cases, hat-boxes, suitcases and
bags without number, a talkative parrot, and a folding chair or two! He
would be thought quite mad, of course, and would not be allowed to
enter the car. Yet this is how people travel in the trains of India.
Sometimes, to be sure, the chairs and noisy parrot are left at home,
but quite as often golf-sticks and a folding cot are substituted.
Native travelers often carry their cooking-utensils and stoves with
them. No one is in a hurry, and the train often waits quite long enough
at stations for them to install their stoves on the platform, and cook
a good dish of rice.
Most trains have first-, second-, and third-class carriages. Europeans
and Americans usually travel first-class, for the best in India is bad
enough when compared with the luxuries of travel in Western countries.
Most of the carriages are about half as long as those in America, and
divided into two compartments without a corridor, each having a
lavatory at one end. Running along each side of the compartment, just
under the windows, is a long, leather-covered bench, which serves as a
seat during the day, and a berth at night. It is equally uncomfortable
in both capacities. Above this, folded up against the side of the car,
is a leather-covered shelf that lets down to form the upper berth.
My first experience in Indian trains was at night. My turbaned servant
arranged my bedding on a bench in a compartment reserved for ladies,
switched on an electric fan, salaamed, and went off to find his place
in a servants' compartment adjoining. Most trains have special
compartments for servants. It is impossible to travel comfortably in
India without native servants.
While I was in the dressing-room, preparing for the night, I heard a
noise outside, and, looking out, saw an old man with a lantern, down on
his knees looking under the berths. He said that he was looking for me,
that he was afraid I had missed the train.
Finally, after a great ringing of bells, tooting of whistles, waving of
lanterns, and chattering of natives, we pulled out into the darkness
and heat. The electric fan burred, mosquitos hummed and bit, the train
rocked wildly from side to side.
I was just dozing off, when lights were flashed in my eyes. More bells,
whistles, and chattering natives! The door burst open, and an
Englishman ordered his man to put his luggage in the compartment. I
called out that it was reserved for ladies, and he disappeared with a
"Sorry!"
Out into the darkness again, only to be aroused at the next station by
the guard, who shouted, "Tickets, please!" The night was one prolonged
nightmare of heat, noise, jolting, and mosquitos. By five, I was
beginning to sleep, when I was startled by a cry of "_Chota Hazree!_" I
sat up in alarm, wondering what those dreadful-sounding words could
mean, when the shutters by my head were suddenly lowered, and a tray of
toast and tea thrust in at me. I accepted it, and gave up all idea of
sleep. The dreadful-sounding words, I found, meant "little breakfast."
Sometimes we had our meals from a tiffin basket which we carried with
us, sometimes from a restaurant car, or again at the station café while
the train waited, and sometimes, when all of these failed us, not at
all. During the winter, traveling was more comfortable. It was so cold
that we needed heavy rugs over us. Some of the express-trains go from
twenty to thirty miles an hour.
Each time that the train stops, there is great confusion. The natives
arrive at the station hours ahead of time. Here they squat patiently
until the train arrives, when they quite lose their heads. In an
attempt to find places in the crowded carriages, they run excitedly up
and down the platform, clinging to one another, clutching at their
clumsy luggage, and screaming at their servants and the trainmen.
Equally agitated groups pour out of the cars and scurry off to find
bullock carts or _ekkas_ to drive them to the town, which is usually
some distance from the station. Boys and women with sweets, fruit,
drinking-water, toys, cheap jewelry, and various articles of native
production cry their wares at the car windows. Others sell newspapers,
which are apt to be weeks old, if the purchaser does not insist upon
seeing the date. The platform presents a riot of strange costumes,
bright colors, quick-moving figures with jingling bangles and ankles,
unholy odors, and clamorous sounds.
At the stations, we were met in different parts of India by the
greatest imaginable variety of conveyances--carriages with footmen and
drivers in state livery, sent by the native princes, hotel and public
carriages after models never dreamed of in America, bullock carts,
elephants, camels, rickshaws, and, in Calcutta and Bombay,
taxi-automobiles.
When your driver starts off down the street at a reckless gait,
clanging a bell in the floor of the carriage with his foot, and a boy
on a step at the back calls out "_Tahvay!_" as you bowl along, you
wonder if you have not taken, by mistake, a police wagon or an
ambulance. But it is all right; you hear the same shouting and clanging
of bells from all the other carriages along the route. This noise is
necessary to make the idlers who stroll along the streets hand in hand
get out of the way of the carriages.
There are so many horses in India that one wonders why any one should
ever walk, and, in fact, very few do. They are of all grades, differing
as much as does the shabbiest beggar from the most gorgeous raja. The
conveyances to which they are harnessed range from the rickety public
ekkas to the royal gold and silver coaches used on state occasions. One
sees these wretched-looking public carriages that can be hired for a
few cents filled with lazy natives and pulled along by a poor little
pony that looks as if it were half-starved. Contrasting with these poor
over-worked creatures are the thoroughbreds which literally die in the
stables of the princes for lack of exercise.
When we were visiting in the native states, the chiefs sometimes
offered us saddle-horses. The first time I rode one of these, I started
off gaily, nothing fearing. From a gentle canter my mount suddenly
broke into a dead run. Supposing that horses in all countries
understood the same language, I said "Whoa," first mildly,
persuasively, then loudly, imploringly; but without the slightest
effect. On he sped faster and faster, until he overtook another horse,
apparently a friend of his, for he slowed down to a walk beside it. I
learned afterward that a sound similar to that used in America to make
a horse go is used in India to make him stop. So the poor dear did not
understand in the least my frantic cries of "Whoa!"
The only other swift-moving animal that it was my misfortune to
encounter in India was a camel. This was in the north, in the desert of
Rajputana. We were going to visit some tombs about five miles from the
city. The others went in carriages, but I preferred to try the
"fleet-footed camel." The creature knelt docilely enough to let me
climb into the saddle back of the driver; then he unfolded his
many-jointed legs and rose, throwing me forward and backward in a most
uncomfortable manner.
He walked haughtily about the grounds of the guest-house a few minutes,
turning up his nose at everybody, then suddenly let his hind legs
collapse, almost throwing me off. The driver succeeded in making him
understand that there was no use making a fuss, that he would have to
take us. Off across the desert he started, at a gait so rough that I
know of nothing with which to compare it. At first, I tried to hold to
the saddle, but it was too slippery, so there was nothing to do but to
throw my arms about the driver, and hang on to him with all my might. I
returned in a carriage!
At Mysore and several other places, we saw camel-carriages. They make a
queer sight, these ungainly, loose-jointed animals shambling along in
the harness. In Bikanir, we watched the camel corps drill. The natives
in this part of India are very finely built men, and they look most
imposing in their gaily colored uniforms and turbans as they sit erect
on the arrogant camels who snub even their masters.
[Illustration: Camel carriages of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab]
There are so many slow, lazy ways of traveling in India that it is
difficult to say which is the slowest.
Perhaps the bullocks, when they walk, are the slowest of all. They do,
however, sometimes trot, and that at a rather brisk pace. They are
beautiful animals, and very different from those in America. Their skin
is wonderfully soft and silky. Between their shoulders is a large
gristly hump. From their chin down between their fore legs hangs a
loose, flabby fold of skin.
Of these, the most beautiful are the huge white bulls sacred to the
Hindu god Shiva. These lead a life of leisure and luxury. They roam
about the streets unmolested, eating from the fruit- and
vegetable-stalls at will. Some are housed in the temples of the god.
Those who are not so lucky as to be held sacred have a rather hard time
of it. They do most of the heavy hauling, and often suffer very cruel
treatment from their drivers. In fact, no other animal is so much the
victim of the cruelty and ignorance of the natives as these poor
bullocks.
We drove in all sorts of curious-looking conveyances behind these
somewhat refractory creatures. Once we drove out into a desolate region
to visit some deserted temples, seated on the floor of a bullock cart
with an arched cover of plaited bamboo over us. The men along the road
walked faster than our bullocks, which went so slowly that, had it not
been for the jolting of the cart, we should scarcely have known that we
were moving.
In the southernmost part of the peninsula, along the Malabar coast,
where there are no trains, we traveled in cabin-boats rowed by natives.
It took them all night to row from Quilan to Travandrum, about fifty
miles along the backwater. They sang from the moment they began to row,
timing the stroke of the oar to the rhythm of their song. In the
morning, they appeared as smiling and fresh as they had the evening
before when we started.
In Madras, we rode in rickshaws like those of China and Japan. In many
parts of India, men take the place of animals, both in carrying people
and in transporting cargo. Several times we were carried up mountains
in _dholies_ by coolies. These dholies consist of a seat swung between
two poles by ropes. They are carried by two or four men, who trot off
up the hill with the poles resting on their shoulders, while the
passenger dangles between them. They used to come down the mountains so
fast that we were quite terrified. The seat would twist and sway, hit
against trees, graze along the side of rocks, while our porters would
dance along, talking and laughing, without paying the slightest
attention to us. Then there are various kinds of push-carts used in
different parts of the country.
Of course, the really Indian way of traveling is on elephants. Very
few, however, except princes and foreign travelers, ever ride on these
lordly animals. In the "zoos" in Calcutta and Bombay there are
elephants for the children to ride. The riders climb steps to a
platform the height of the elephant's back, then jump into the howdah,
where they are tied fast to make sure of their not falling. The old
_huthi_, as the elephant is called there, sways off, waving his trunk,
flopping his ears, and blinking his eyes. He makes a tour of the
gardens, then returns to the platform to get other children.
At Jaipur, Gwalior, and a number of other towns where there is a fort
on a hill, elephants can be hired for the ascension. The huge creatures
knelt down while we clambered into the howdah with the aid of ladders.
When they rose, it seemed like an earthquake to us on their backs. They
climbed the hill so slowly that the others of the party who walked
arrived ahead of us. Our huthi would smell about carefully with his
trunk before taking each step, then he would put a huge foot forward
cautiously, and throw his great weight upon it slowly, as if afraid
that the earth would give way under him. It took him so long to
accommodate his four feet to each step, that I was thankful he had not
as many as a centiped.
To appreciate an elephant in all his glory, one should see him in the
splendor of princely procession. Designs in bright colors are painted
on his forehead and trunk, trappings of silver ornament his tusks,
head, and ankles, a rich cloth of gold and silver embroidery hangs over
his colossal sides, and on his back is perched a rare howdah, often of
gold and silver, with silk hangings. Aloft in the howdah rides the
prince, resplendent with gold, silk, and jewels. In front, on the
elephant's neck, sits the mahout, urging him on with strange-sounding
grunts, and prods from a short pointed spear.
The elephants are reserved for state occasions. Most of the princes now
have automobiles, which they look upon much as a child does its latest
toy. The mass of the people depend upon the bullocks and horses to cart
them about. There are now, also, in most parts of the empire,
telephones and telegraphs; but they are such ancient systems and so
unreliable that they are not to be compared with ours. India is through
and through a lazy country, where nobody is in a hurry.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHERE THE SUNSETS OF ALL THE YESTERDAYS ARE FOUND
BY OLIN D. WHEELER
In Montana, Idaho, and northern Wyoming lies the region where center
the headwaters of the Missouri, Yellowstone, Green, and Snake
rivers--the last named a branch of the Columbia. In the early years of
the last century it was virtually the center of all human activity in
the Rocky Mountain region, being a prolific, but dangerous,
trapping-ground for the fur trade of those days.
Here the cloud-piercing peaks of the American Rockies reach their
greatest altitude, and the scenery is of the wildest and most
impressive character. The Grand Teton, 13,747 feet elevation,
overlooking the magnificent Jackson Lake basin, has been climbed but
twice by white men.
Since the Yellowstone Park was established, in 1872, the wonders of
this region have been more or less familiar. But prior to 1870 they
were believed to exist largely in the fertile imagination of the
trapper.
The Park region, as we will call it, lay between the old-time northern
and southern routes of frontier-day travel across the continent. It is
true there were Indian trails leading across and through it, but the
Indians, superstitious by nature, seem to have avoided the localities
of the geysers and hot springs, and their north and south bound trails
lay to the east or west of these areas that now fascinate and interest
us.
In 1807, along one of these outside trails--one that just skirted the
eastern side of the geyser zone, which here lies along a well-defined
north-and-south axis--came the first white man who visited the region.
He saw the two beautiful lakes, Jackson and Yellowstone, the dazzling
Grand Cañon and its two falls, probably some of the hot springs, and
possibly some of the inferior geysers. His trail is shown--marked
"Colter's Route in 1807"--on the map of the great explorers Lewis and
Clark in 1814. But it was after their return to civilization that they
learned of this "hot springs brimstone" locality.
John Colter was a prince of adventurers. His life as a border hero,
explorer, and trapper rivals that of any character of fiction; his
discovery of the Yellowstone, while on a mission to an Indian tribe,
was purely accidental, but it brought him lasting fame. He, himself,
probably never realized its importance.
Two or three other old-time and adventurous mountaineers, particularly
James, or "Jim," Bridger, afterward visited this locality, but people
in general utterly refused seriously to consider, let alone believe,
what these men told them regarding it.
Bridger was a man of remarkable ability as a guide and mountaineer,
although unable to read, or even to write his own name. He was the
discoverer of Great Salt Lake, and as a guide and natural-born scout
had no superior, if, indeed, an equal, among frontiersmen. In this
capacity he served numerous government and other expeditions and
explored and traversed a large part of what was then the Far West. He
could tell many a good story about his hairbreadth escapes, and lived
to a ripe old age.
To attempt a word-picture of this region and its weird and unusual
features is almost useless, and yet every one who visits it endeavors
to do so. No words can be found adequately to describe the hot springs,
that are numbered by the thousands, and the marvelous hues of their
waters and their basins, rimmed and ornamented by fluted and beaded
parapets of indescribable delicacy and beauty. Nor can the geysers,
leaping suddenly from their deep, nether-world reservoirs, be pictured
by words in such a way as to convey to the mind a real image of their
strange and fascinating reality.
The first printed description of one of them was by another trapper,
Warren A. Ferris, of the old American Fur Company. He visited a geyser
area in 1834, but his account of it was not published until July, 1842.
Numerous waterfalls are found here, from cascades a few feet in height
to cataracts having twice the leap of Niagara; lakes lie deeply
embosomed among the high peaks or the heavy forests, and one of them,
twenty miles in length and a mile and a half above the ocean, is now
being navigated--think of it!--by motor-boats; thousands of miles of
crystal trout-streams, kept supplied with trout by the government
hatcheries, radiate in every direction; a natural glass cliff, an
Indian quarry for arrow-heads in the ancient days, towers above a lake
formed at its base by the wise and cunning beavers. There is, too, a
low mountain of pure sulphur, with beautiful boiling sulphur-pools
splashing at its foot; and, in contrast to these, there is a gruesome
volcano of mud belching from a dark, malodorous cavern, while almost
beside this is a beautiful, clear pool of hot water formed by a stream
flowing from beneath a green Gothic arch.
The wonderful cañons, exhibiting such different phases of nature's
sublime handiwork, awe the beholder. One shows the marvelous way in
which lava, cooling, arranges itself in massive, black, symmetric slabs
and columns; these enclose a beautiful fall that adds a touch of
lightness and beauty. The Grand Cañon is the most startling and
extraordinary example of color harmony and nature sculpture to be found
in the universe. A Japanese, in the poetic imagery of his race, has
said that these brilliant cañon walls have caught and emblazoned upon
their mural precipices the sunsets of all the yesterdays--a beautiful
conception. One stands awed to silence in the presence of "Nature's
immensities" seen here and is almost overwhelmed by the profound
splendors and majestic glories of this cañon.
In another respect this park land stands in a category by itself. By
federal enactment all of the Yellowstone Park proper and some
additional territory bordering it has been made a vast national
game-preserve, something not originally planned.
As settlement has increased and the valleys have become occupied by
farmers and ranchmen, the game has been forced into the higher valleys
and parks of the mountains, or into their remote recesses. Here, within
the park boundaries, deer, elk, antelope, bears, mountain-sheep, moose,
bison, and the smaller game, birds (between 150 and 200 species), and
fur-bearing animals, have a refuge where no hunter or trapper
penetrates and danger rarely intrudes. In the Jackson Lake country,
hunting is allowed for a limited period.
There are thousands of these various animals that know they are
absolutely immune from harm by man when within the bounds of this park.
Most of them have never seen a dog nor heard the sound of a rifle.
Under these conditions their natural timidity is greatly lessened, and
many of them, even bears, become surprisingly tame.
From the supply which Yellowstone Park affords, state and city parks
and various game-preserves are being stocked. Experienced men round up
the yearling elk into corrals near the railway sidings, and there load
them into freight-cars, with plenty of alfalfa hay, and then they are
forwarded to their destination. Many carloads are shipped each winter.
The writer recently visited the park in winter to see the game animals.
Heavy snows covering their pastures drive them down from their high
ranges to the lower hills, cañons, and draws about Gardiner and Mammoth
Hot Springs, and here the Government, during times of storm and stress,
feeds them alfalfa hay and thus saves them from starvation. Elk by
hundreds, or even thousands, dot the hillsides,--there are from 30,000
to 40,000 of them by actual count,--while antelope in goodly numbers
range on the open and lower hill-slopes. In Gardiner Cañon beside the
road the beautiful mule-deer and the white-tailed deer, touchingly
innocent and trustful, and the mountain-sheep--the big-horn
fellows--stand or lie, eating alfalfa, and enjoying the protecting care
of a beneficent, animal-loving government. They become almost as
domesticated as barn-yard animals. Indeed, at Mammoth Hot Springs, the
deer actually haunt the kitchen doors and rear themselves on their hind
legs against the porch railings, or even climb the steps and peer into
the doors and windows, mutely begging for food, which they often take
from one's hand. At night they lie on the snow under the large trees,
or, in some cases, even sleep in the large cavalry-barns, which have
been vacant since the soldiers were removed from the park in the fall
of 1916.
Over at the bison range and corral on Lamar River, in the northeastern
corner of the park, one sees an interesting sight. Here the mountain
scenery of the park reaches its finest development. In summer or winter
the ride to the corral from Mammoth Hot Springs is a treat. In summer
the bison herd of about three hundred--there is a so-called wild herd
of about a hundred some miles farther south--ranges in a beautiful
valley and on the adjoining hills and mountain-slopes near the
Petrified Forest and Death Gulch. It is under the care of a keeper who
lives here with his family, in a comfortable home provided by the
Government. The bison are rounded up at intervals during the summer so
that their condition and whereabouts shall be always known. The herd
originally consisted of only twenty-one animals, purchased by the
Government in 1902 at a cost of $15,000.
In January, 1917, I made a trip by sleigh, drawn by a pair of sturdy
horses, to the bison corral. On the hills at intervals along the entire
route large bands of elk were to be seen. The snow was more than two
feet deep, and it required two days, mostly at a walk, to travel the
thirty-five miles between Gardiner and the corral. The thermometer
registered from ten to fifteen degrees below zero, and for the week
following the mercury ranged, in the morning, from thirty-two to fifty
degrees below.
In winter the bison are kept in a large pasture-corral a square mile in
extent, lying along Rose Creek and Lamar River, and here they remain
very contentedly. Long before daylight each morning the herd
congregates about the corral gate, waiting for feeding-time. Soon after
daylight a sleigh is driven into the inclosure, loaded with alfalfa hay
and drawn by a pair of horses that have become so accustomed to the
buffalo as to pay no attention to them, even though the latter crowd
close about them. The hay is pitch-forked to the ground as the sleigh
is slowly driven along, and the animals line themselves out, following
it until all are supplied. In an hour or two, after they have eaten
their fill, they "mosey" over to the steaming creek that has its
sources in some hot springs in the hills, drink slowly and long, and
then sedately walk back along deep trails in the snow, the mother bison
followed by their calves, to the feeding-ground, where most of them
then lie down and sleep for a good part of the day. Mock fights or
hunting jousts are indulged in by some of the younger animals and
afford variety and amusement, to the participants at least. In the dim
light of a winter morning the animals resemble a herd of young
elephants.
Reference has been made to the fact that this particular locality is
especially interesting from a geographical standpoint. Including the
Jackson Lake country it is in this respect one of the most important
and interesting regions on the continent. It lies on both sides of the
great Continental Divide, which twists and turns in all directions in
its course northward and southward.
Outside of the limits of Yellowstone Park itself, the mountain
structure found here is, perhaps, not greatly different from that of
other parts of the Rockies. The Teton range lies south of the park, and
is one of the most prominent and commanding in the entire Rocky
Mountain chain. The park region itself seems to be a vent for the
pent-up heat of the earth. It is not improbable that these boiling
springs and geysers may serve as escape-valves, and be the means of
preventing very serious volcanic disturbances, such as occurred here in
past ages.
As a watershed the region is equally remarkable. It has been noted that
here four of the largest rivers of our country have their sources,
interlacing with one another. It is, indeed, a network of thousands of
mountain streams forming, ultimately, four great rivers, each flowing
to a different point of the compass. The headwaters of the Snake River,
joining with the Columbia, find their way into the North Pacific Ocean.
The waters of the Green, after a journey through the great cañons of
the Southwest, flow into the Pacific through the Gulf of California. To
the east flows the Yellowstone, which merges its waters with those of
the Missouri, and, after a journey of three thousand miles, flows into
the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico.
This unique region is no longer difficult of access. Railways reach it
from three sides, the north, west, and east, and the Government has
spent between one million and two million dollars in establishing
excellent roads to enable travelers to view the beauties of the
Yellowstone. Here is to be found the finest automobile trip of its
length in the country, supplemented by telephone-lines and large and
costly hotels. The construction of these buildings must be carried on
in winter, and the nails used have to be heated in order to handle them.
With the year 1917 will disappear the last remnant of the old
stage-coaching days, a mode of travel which for years was the only
method of land travel in the West, and which until now has been the
method of transportation in the park. Beginning with this season,
automobiles will displace the horses and coaches and numerous other
changes in the way of increased comfort, convenience, and pleasure have
been planned. The old six-day now becomes one of five days, with
several advantageous changes in route and in the time to be spent at
different points.
The policy of our Government in establishing these national parks has
since been followed by other nations, and it has been praised by such
thoughtful observers as, for example, Lord Bryce, ex-ambassador to this
country from England. That it has accomplished the object of its
originators and is a blessing to mankind is now beyond question.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FIRECRACKERS
BY ERICK POMEROY
TEMPLE OF THE EMPRESS OF HEAVEN, CHINA
This is the thirteenth day of the fifth moon of the thirty-third year
of Kwang-su, very early in the morning--that is, "very early" for me,
because I ordered my "boy" last evening to call me at eight o'clock
this morning and not a minute before. Here, in the rambling old temple
where we live, we have learned to go to bed with the sun on the
fourteenth and on the last day of each Chinese moon, because we know
that the wailing pipes of the early morning celebrations before the
gods on the first and fifteenth of the moon will be certain to wake us
at a truly heathenish hour. But when an extra, unannounced, unexpected
festival day is ushered in with cymbals, pipes, and firecrackers, then
we just have to lose our morning sleep and try not to lose our tempers.
This morning is one of those dawns of misery. Even as I write the
temple bells, the drums, and those peculiar jig-time horns are setting
up a discordant hubbub in the courtyards, while at intervals a big
cracker sends me springing into the air with a start that fearfully
tries my nerves. At first this morning I endeavored to sleep, but I
soon gave that up to don my kimono and sally forth to find out the
cause of this gratuitous Fourth of July. Out on the terrace in front of
the inner gates of the temple, to which the rays of the rising sun had
not yet bent down, there was gathered a small group of men and boys
watching such a display of firecrackers as would have attracted a whole
City Hall Park full of people at home. Yet their interest was
apparently much like their numbers--very small. They just gazed at the
exploding end of the red string of noise without any comments and
without any more evident interest than they took in seeing that the
small boys picked up all of the unexploded crackers that were blown out
of the danger circle by their more powerful brothers. My appearance in
a kimono and straw sandals seemed to furnish them with more excitement
than the rope of crackers which hung from the firecrackers pole hard
by. Such a din! Can you imagine a string of firecrackers, large and
small woven together, of over one hundred thousand?
But I am getting ahead of my story. By way of introduction I meant only
to tell you that I have for some time been planning to write a letter
to your good editor in the hope that he might be willing to pass on to
you of the fast-disappearing American "firecracker age" my story of how
this country, the native land of the "whip-guns," manufactures and uses
these crackers which we think of as belonging only to our Fourth of
July.
The desire and determination to write this letter had their birth one
day in a city of North China when I was walking along the street where
many of the firecracker-makers live--since dubbed "Firecracker Row" on
my private chart of the city--and when I suddenly realized how much I
should have liked as a boy, when I was "shooting off crackers," to see
these places and to know their ways of manufacture. It is difficult not
to be interrupted nor to interrupt these lines. Now there are two
little pigtailed heads stretched up just over my window-sill, peeping
in and asking if I do not wish to buy the tiger-lilies they have
gathered on the hillside. So first I will try to tell you how the
crackers are made and then how they are used out here, in the hope that
you may find as much interest in reading the story as I have found in
gathering the information and pictures for it.
Several times I went into the city to visit Firecracker Row, and on one
occasion took a series of photographs to show more clearly than words
will do the important steps in the process of manufacture. The first
step consists in cutting the rough brown paper into pieces long enough
to make a hollow tube of several layers in thickness, and wide enough
to give the tube a length just twice that of the finished cracker. From
the top of his pile the workman takes a pack of these slips, lays them
out with one end arranged just like steps, and then slides down the
stairs, as it were, with a brush of paste, so as to make the outer ends
of the slips stick fast when rolled against the tube. Then he bends the
other--the dry--end around an iron nail, and places the nail under a
board, which rolls it along the slip until all the paper has curled
around it. Once the cracker skeleton is thus formed, he gives it an
extra roll or two down the bench for good measure, slides it off the
nail into a basket, and has another started before you realize what he
is about. Then one of the small apprentices in the shop arranges the
skeletons together in a six-sided bundle, like those on the drying
board in Cut II, in each of which he puts just five hundred and seven.
Why that particular number, I could not find out.
Once dry, the skeletons receive their covering garment of red paper,
which makes them so truly "little redskins"--this from the hands of one
of the workers without the aid of any machine whatever. He just rolls
one of the narrow slips around the tube with his fingers and hurries
the growing agitator into another basket to await the time for stuffing
in the material that will make him such a lively fellow. Once more,
however, they all have to be packed up into the six-sided bundles, this
time with two stout strings tied around them a third of the way from
the top and bottom, leaving the middle free. The worker takes his big
knife and chops right down through the whole bundle to make the clean
ends for the tops of the shorter tubes.
These shorter tubes next have a thin paper covering pasted over both
tops and bottoms before the bottoms are closed by tapping them with a
nail that is just a little larger than the hole in the tube, so that it
crowds down some of the paper from the sides. With the bundles right
side up, the workman then makes holes in the paper cover over the top,
scatters on this the powder dust, and distributes it fairly evenly
among the five hundred and seven hungry ones by means of a light brush.
When the dust has been tamped a little, the powder finds its way to the
middle of the tube in the same manner, the fuse is inserted by another
workman, the top layer of dust added, and the whole supply of bottled
fun packed in by another tamping with a nail and mallet. Completed and
still crowded together in the bundles, the little redskins, with the
fuses sticking out of their caps, seem to wear a festive, promising
look that clearly says: "You give us a light, and we'll do the rest.
And what a high old time it will be!"
When asked how many of these bundles one man could make in a day, the
good-natured master of the shop said that one man is counted on to make
twenty bundles up to the point where the powder is put in, when the
crackers are passed along to others to finish and weave into strings.
What a "string" means here in this land, where the diminutive "packs"
we used to buy for a nickel would be scored, may be gathered from a
glance at those which the maker is holding up in Cut I and at those on
the drying-boards in the view shown in Cut II.
Once the crackers have been fully prepared for stringing, either they
are put together in such strings as you see in the pictures or they
have bigger fellows--four or five times the size of the little
ones--plaited in at regular intervals. Then they are wrapped neatly
with red or white paper in long packages bearing on the face a red slip
with the shop's name printed on it in gilt characters. Some of these
packets would have seemed monstrous--needlessly extravagant--in those
days when I used to make one or two nickel packs last the better part
of a Fourth of July morning by firing them one by one in a hole in the
tie-post or under a tin can. To give these longer strings sufficient
strength to hang from a pole, as is the usual way of firing them, the
workmen weave in with the fuses a light piece of hemp twine. But even
this is not an adequate protection against a break in those monster
strings that come out on special occasions. The one that started this
letter to you was fifteen feet long when I arrived on the scene to
investigate the disturbance and had already lost one-half its numbers
(I have seen strings from thirty to fifty feet long). To keep such a
string from breaking, the Chinese fasten it at intervals to a rope
which runs through the pulley at the top of the pole, and then draw the
line up until the bottom clears the ground. As the explosions tear away
the lowest crackers, the rope is let down and, at the same time, held
out away from the bottom of the pole to make a graceful curve of the
last few feet of the string. When such long strings have eaten
themselves up, you can imagine the amount of fragments around the base
of the pole. There are literally basketfuls of them to be first wetted
down to guard against fire and then swept up or allowed to blow away
when the winds so will.
Thus far you have heard only of little and big crackers. However, there
are many distinguishing names among the Chinese for the several
varieties and sizes, which I am going to give you before passing on to
the story of the special uses of crackers in the Chinese life. First
come the ordinary _pien p'ao_, or "whip-guns," the small ones which
derive their name from the similarity which their explosion bears to
the snapping of a whip. Sometimes they are called simply "whips," in
the same way that the Chinese speak of many things by shortened or
changed names. To make these names seem more real to you I have had my
Chinese teacher write out for me on separate slips the characters which
represent them. More diminutive than the ordinary crackers are the
"small whips," about an inch long, that are made especially for the
small children to use without danger. For one American cent you could
buy about one hundred of these. Then above the whip-guns the next class
is the "bursting bamboos," which are said to have taken their name from
the fact that in early times bamboo was used as the tubes for these
crackers. If such were the case, a line of them must have "made the
splinters fly." Even still more powerful are the "hemp thunderers," or,
to take a little liberty with the translation, the "hemp sons of
thunder," whose name also indicates their construction and their
magnitude. Bearing a close similarity in power to our cannon crackers,
these have been known at times to break the second-story paper windows
in a small compound. They play an important part in the worshiping, or
propitiating of the gods in our courtyard, inasmuch as it is considered
good form to set them off at intervals while the whip-guns--which my
teacher assures me "do not require any watching"--are keeping up their
unbroken stream of praise and prayer. They may be considered as good
lusty "Amens" throughout the service.
Slightly different in form are the "double noises," which are nothing
more or less than our "boosters" that go off first on the ground and
again up in the air. To intersperse these throughout the explosions of
the whips during any special demonstration is also considered good
form. Then allied to these we find another booster, which when it
explodes on the ground drives ten others up into the air to become the
"flying in heaven ten sounds" with the Chinese. These are only "for
play," and that chiefly in the homes from the thirteenth to the
seventeenth days of the first moon of the year. With the "lamp flower
exploders," that is, our flower-pot, the list of the most common forms
of crackers and fire-works becomes exhausted, although the Chinese have
several other less usual species, together with many alternative names
for both these and the ones I have mentioned.
[Illustration: Strings of firecrackers]
[Illustration: Hexagonal bundles of firecrackers drying in the sun]
The time when the Chinese receive most crackers is at the New Year
season, when, among the well-to-do families of Tientsin and Peking, it
is customary to give a boy the equivalent of our fifty cents for his
purchases. In Peking the shops issue special red notes, like our old
"shinplasters" in value, for this one use at the New Year. In giving
the cracker money to the boys, the parents often make smaller presents
to the girls, who are wont to buy paper flowers with their pennies, in
proof of which the Chinese have a proverb which runs, "Girls like
flowers; boys like crackers."
But this juvenile use of the whip-guns consumes only an infinitesimal
part of the whole supply of the year. At many festivals and on many
occasions the head of the house, the manager of the shop, or the
officers of the gild require great quantities of these propitious
harbingers. Greatest of all occasions is the passing of the year, when
the people keep up the successor to the ancient custom of setting off
the "bamboo guns" in order to drive away the evil spirits of the past
twelvemonth and to usher in all that is good for the coming one. All
night long the crackers have been popping in the town below, and an
early gathering in the temple is held to add the final touch before the
new day shall break.
When morning came, I wandered leisurely to my office through the
business section of the town to watch the fun at the big shops. Never
shall I forget the picture of that street with its dozen or more great
red strings of crackers hanging in front of the bigger hongs and
seemingly waiting for some word to start the fusillade. Fortunately
this came and the storm broke as I waited. For sheer noise, vivacity,
and demonstrative liveliness I never have seen the equal of those
snarling, bursting lines that poured out their wrath with incessant
fervor upon the evil spirits below and shot up their welcome to the
good ones above. Then, although this display on New Year's Day seemed
grand enough to last a long time, there came more explosions as the
shops took down their doors and began their routine business on the
fifth or sixth of the moon. Furthermore, custom demands in certain
parts that throughout the first ten days of the year there shall be
occasional snappings of the whips, to be followed on the fifteenth, at
the Feast of Lanterns, by a still greater demonstration.
When a new shop is opened, it is customary for all the front boards to
be left up until just before the opening ceremony takes place; then one
or two boards are taken down, the manager and his assistants come out
to light a string of crackers, and, as the whips are snapping, the
remaining boards come down to the sound of this propitious music of the
land. Very often there are several strings hung from poles or tripods,
and one is lighted after the other in such a way as to maintain a long,
unbroken stream of noise.
In most parts of the empire it is also customary for an official, when
he receives the seals of office from his predecessor, to have a string
of crackers let off at the proper moment. And I must confess to having
yielded myself to the pressure of my Chinese assistants in having
purchased a few for use at the time we opened our new office at this
place. Likewise, when a military official is leaving a post, he is
usually accorded a send-off with crackers which have been subscribed
for by his men.
And thus, from what has gone before, you may catch some idea of the
persistency with which the little redskins have poked their noses into
almost all the important celebrations of the Chinese life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CURIOUS CLOCKS
BY CHARLES A. BRASSLER
Many of the German cities of the Middle Ages enjoyed great prosperity,
which they liked to exhibit in the form of splendid churches and other
public buildings; and each one tried to excel the others. When,
therefore, in the year 1352, Strassburg was the first to erect a great
cathedral clock, which not only showed the hour to hundreds of
observers, but whose strokes proclaimed it far and near, there was a
rivalry among the rich cities as to which should set up within its
walls the most beautiful specimen of this kind.
The citizens of Nuremberg, who were renowned all over the European
world for their skill, were particularly jealous of Strassburg's
precedence over them.
In 1356, when the Imperial Council, or Reichstag, held in Nuremberg,
issued the Golden Bull, an edict or so-called "imperial constitution"
which promised to be of greatest importance to the welfare of the
kingdom, a locksmith, whose name is unfortunately not recorded, took
this as his idea for the decoration of a clock which was set up in the
Frauenkirche in the year 1361. The emperor, Charles IV, was
represented, seated upon a throne; at the stroke of twelve, the seven
Electors, large moving figures, passed and bowed before him to the
sound of trumpets.
This work of art made a great sensation.
Other European cities, naturally, desired to have similar sights, and
large public clocks were therefore erected in Breslau in 1368, in Rouen
in 1389, in Metz in 1391, in Speyer in 1395, in Augsburg in 1398, in
Lübeck in 1405, in Magdeburg in 1425, in Padua in 1430, in Dantzic in
1470, in Prague in 1490, in Venice in 1495, and in Lyons in 1598.
Not all, of course, were as artistic as that of Nuremberg; but no town
now contented itself with a simple clockwork to tell the hours. Some
had a stroke for the hours, and some had chimes; the one showed single
characteristic moving figures, while others were provided with great
astronomical works, showing the day of the week, month, and year, the
phases of the moon, the course of the planets, and the signs of the
zodiac.
On the town clock of Compiègne, which was built in 1405, three figures
of soldiers, or "jaquemarts," so-called (in England they are called
"Jacks"), struck the hour upon three bells under their feet; and they
are doing it still. The great clock of Dijon has a man and a woman
sitting upon an iron framework which supports the bell upon which they
strike the hours. In 1714 the figure of a child was added, to strike
the quarters. The most popular of the mechanical figures was the cock,
flapping his wings and crowing.
The clock on the Aschersleben Rathaus shows, besides the phases of the
moon, two pugnacious goats, which butt each other at each stroke of the
hour; also the wretched Tantalus, who at each stroke opens his mouth
and tries to seize a golden apple which floats down; but in the same
moment it is carried away again. On the Rathaus clock in Jena is also a
representation of Tantalus, opening his mouth as in Aschersleben; but
here the apple is not present, and the convulsive efforts of the figure
to open the jaws wide become ludicrous.
One of the first clocks with which important astronomical works were
connected is that of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, now restored. Below,
at the height of a man's head, is the plate which shows the day of the
week, month, etc.; these calculations are so reliable that the extra
day of leap-year is pushed in automatically every four years. The plate
is more than three meters in diameter. Above it is the dial, almost as
large. The numbers from 1 to 12 are repeated, so that the hour-hand
goes around the dial only once in twenty-four hours. In the wide space
between the axis which carries the hand and the band where the hours
are marked, the fixed stars and the course of the planets are
represented. The heavens are here shown as they appear to an observer
in Lübeck. In the old works the movement of the planets was given
incorrectly, for they all were shown as completing a revolution around
the sun in 360 days. Of course this is absurd. Mercury, for example,
revolves once around the sun in eighty-eight days, while Saturn
requires twenty-nine years and 166 days for one revolution. When this
astronomical clock was repaired, some years ago, a very complicated
system of wheels had to be devised to reproduce accurately the great
difference in the movement of the planets. The work consumed two years.
There are a great number of moving figures on the Lübeck clock, but
they are not of the most conspicuous interest. In spite of this,
however, they excite more wonder among the crowds of tourists who are
always present when the clock strikes twelve than the really remarkable
and admirable astronomical and calendar works.
The Strassburg clock has, more than all others, an actually world-wide
fame; and no traveler who visits the beautiful old city fails to see
the curious and interesting spectacle which it offers daily at
noontime. To quote from one such visitor: "Long before the clock
strikes twelve, a crowd has assembled in the high-arched portico of the
stately cathedral, to be sure of not missing the right moment. Men and
women of both high and low degree, strangers and townspeople alike,
await in suspense the arrival of the twelfth hour. The moment
approaches, and there is breathless silence. An angel lifts a scepter
and strikes four times upon a bell; another turns over an hour-glass
which he holds in the hand. A story higher, an old man is seen to issue
from a space decorated in Gothic style; he strikes four times with his
crutch upon a bell, and disappears at the other side, while the figure
of Death lets the bone in its hand fall slowly and solemnly, twelve
times, upon the hour-bell. In still another story of the clock, the
Saviour sits enthroned, bearing in the left hand a banner of victory,
the right hand raised in benediction. As soon as the last stroke of the
hour has died away, the apostles appear from an opening at the right
hand of the Master. One by one they turn and bow before Him, departing
at the other side. Christ lifts His hand in blessing to each apostle in
turn, and when the last has disappeared, He blesses the assembled
multitude. A cock on a side tower flaps his wings and crows three
times. A murmur passes through the crowd, and it disperses, filled with
wonder and admiration at the spectacle it has witnessed."
In 1574, the Strassburg astronomical clock replaced the older one. It
was mainly the work of Dasypodius, a famous mathematician, and it ran
until 1789. Later, the celebrated clock-maker, Johann Baptist Schwilgué
(born December 18, 1772), determined to repair it. After endless
negotiations with the church authorities, he obtained the contract, and
on October 2, 1842, the clock, as made over, was solemnly reconsecrated.
In very recent days, the clock of the City Hall in Olmütz, also
renovated, has become a rival to that of the Strassburg Cathedral. In
the year 1560, it was described by a traveler as a true marvel,
together with the Strassburg clock and that of the Marienkirche in
Dantzic. But as the years passed, it was most inconceivably neglected,
and everything movable and portable about it was carried off. Now,
after repairs which have been almost the same as constructing it anew,
it works almost faultlessly. In the lower part of the clock is the
calendar, with the day of the year, month, and week, and the phases of
the moon, together with the astronomical plate; a story higher, a large
number of figures move around a group of angels, and here is also a
good portrait of the Empress Maria Theresa. Still higher is an
arrangement of symbolical figures and decorations, which worthily
crowns the whole. A youth and a man, above at the left, announce the
hours and quarters by blows of a hammer. The other figures go through
their motions at noonday. Scarcely have the blows of the man's hammer
ceased to sound, when a shepherd boy, in another wing of the clock,
begins to play a tune; he has six different pieces, which can be
alternated. As soon as he has finished, the chimes, sixteen bells,
begin, and the figures of St. George, of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with a
priest, and of Adam and Eve, appear in the left center. When they have
disappeared, the chimes ring their second melody, and the figures of
the right center appear,--the three Kings of the East, before the
enthroned Virgin, and the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. When
the bells ring for the third time, all the figures show themselves once
more.
Clocks operated by electricity are, of course, the product of recent
times.
England's largest electric clock was, as our illustration shows,
recently christened in a novel manner. The makers, Messrs. Gent & Co.,
of Leicester, entertained about seventy persons at luncheon on this
occasion, using one of the four mammoth dials as a dining-table, a
"time table," as the guests facetiously styled it.
The clock was installed, 220 feet above the ground, in the tower of the
Royal Liverpool Society's new building, in Liverpool. Each of the four
dials, which weigh fifteen tons together, measure twenty-five feet in
diameter, with a minute-hand fourteen feet long. The hands are actuated
electrically by a master clock connected with the Greenwich
Observatory. After dark, they are illuminated by electricity, and are
visible at a great distance.
Still larger are the dials of the great electric clock, situated 346
feet high, in the tower of the Metropolitan Life Building, on Madison
Square, New York City. They measure twenty-six and one half feet in
diameter. The minute-hand is seventeen feet from end to end, and twelve
feet from center to point, while the hour-hand measures thirteen feet
four inches in all, and eight feet four inches from the center of the
dial outward. These immense hands are of iron framework, sheathed in
copper, and weigh 1000 and 700 pounds respectively.
The big clock and the ninety-nine other clocks in the building are
regulated from a master clock in the Directors' Room, on the second
floor, which sends out minute impulses, and is adjusted to run within
five seconds per month.
At night, the dial, hands, and numerals are beautifully illuminated, of
which we present a picture, the enlarged minute-hand showing the length
of exposure. The time is also flashed all night in a novel manner from
the great gilded "lantern" at the apex of the tower, 696 feet above the
pavement. The quarter-hours are announced from each of the four faces
of the lantern by a single red light, the halves by two red flashes,
the three quarters by three flashes. On the hour, the white arc-lights
are extinguished temporarily, and white flashes show the number of the
hour.
This takes the place of the bells operated in the daytime. They are in
four tones, G (1500 pounds), F (2000 pounds), E flat (3000 pounds), and
B flat (7000 pounds), and each quarter-hour ring out the "Westminster
Chimes," in successive bars. These are the highest chimes in the world,
being situated on the forty-second floor, 615 feet above the street
level; and they attract much attention from visitors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE--PART I
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
It was some time in June when we found ourselves drifting about
Normandy in our motor-car, and one peaceful evening we came to Bayeux
and stopped there for the night. Bayeux, which is about sixty miles
from Cherbourg, was intimately associated with the life of William the
Conqueror, and is to-day the home of the famous Bayeux tapestry, a
piece of linen two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen inches
wide, on which is embroidered in colored wool the story of William's
conquest of England.
William's queen, Matilda, is supposed to have designed this marvelous
pictorial document, and even executed it, though probably with the
assistance of her ladies. Completed in the eleventh century, it would
seem to have been stored in the Bayeux cathedral, where it lay,
scarcely remembered, for a period of more than six hundred years. Then
attention was called to its artistic and historic value, and it became
still more widely known when Napoleon brought it to Paris and exhibited
it at the Louvre. Now it is back in Bayeux, and has a special room in
the museum there and a special glass case so arranged that you can walk
around it and see each of its fifty-eight tableaux.
Matilda was ahead of her time in art. She was a futurist--anybody could
see that who had been to one of the recent exhibitions. But she was
exactly abreast in the matter of history. It is likely that she
embroidered the events as they were reported to her, and her records
are beyond price to-day. I suppose she sat in a beautiful room with her
maids about her, all engaged at the great work, and I hope she looked
as handsome as she looks in the fine painting that hangs above the case
containing her masterpiece.
It was the closing hour when we got to the Bayeux museum, but the
guardian generously gave us plenty of time to walk around and look at
all the marvelous procession of horses and men, whose outlines have
remained firm and whose colors have stayed fresh for more than eight
hundred years. There is something fine and stirring about Matilda's
tapestry. No matter if Harold does seem to be having an attack of
pleurisy, when he is only putting on his armor, or if the horses appear
to have detachable legs. I could see that the Joy, who is a judge of
horses, did not think much of Queen Matilda's drawing, and their riders
were not much better. Still, it was wonderful how they did seem to "go"
in some of the battles, and they made that old story seem very real to
us. Tradition has it that the untimely death of Matilda left the
tapestry unfinished, for which reason William's coronation does not
appear.
Next day, at Caen, we visited Matilda's tomb, in a church which she
herself founded. Her remains have never been disturbed. We also visited
the tomb of the Conqueror, on the other side of the city at the church
of St. Etienne. But the Conqueror's bones are not there now; they were
scattered by the Huguenots in 1562.
We enjoyed Caen. We wandered about among its ancient churches and still
more ancient streets. At one church a wedding was going on, and
Narcissa and I lingered a little, to assist. One does not get invited
to a Normandy wedding every day, especially in the old town where
William I organized his followers to invade England. No doubt this
bride and groom were descendants of some of William's wild Normans, but
they looked very mild and handsome and modern, to us.
Caen became an important city under William the Conqueror. Edward III
of England captured and pillaged it about the middle of the fourteenth
century, at which time it was larger than any city in England, except
London. To-day, Caen has less than fifty thousand inhabitants, and is
mainly interesting for its art treasures and its memories.
Our travel program included Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais, cathedral
cities lying more to the northward. It was at Rouen that we started to
trace backward the sacred footsteps of Joan of Arc, saint and savior of
France. For it is at Rouen that the pathway ends. When we had visited
the great cathedral, whose fairylike façade is one of the most
beautiful in the world, we drove to a corner of the old market-place
and stopped before a bronze tablet which tells that on this spot on a
certain day in May, 1431 (it was the 29th), a young girl who had saved
her country from an invading and conquering enemy was burned at the
stake. That was five hundred years ago, but time has not dulled the
tragedy of the event, its memory of suffering, its humiliation. All
those centuries since, the nation that Joan saved has been trying to
atone for her death. Streets have been named for her and statues have
been set up for her in public squares all over France.
There is little in Rouen to-day that Joan saw. The cathedral was there
in her time, but she was never permitted to enter it. There is a wall
which was a part of the chapel where she had her final hearing before
her judges; there are some houses which she must have passed, and there
is a tower which belonged to the castle in which she was imprisoned,
though it is not certain that it is Joan's tower. There is a small
museum in it, and among its treasures we saw the manuscript article
"St. Joan of Arc," by Mark Twain, who, in the "Personal Recollections,"
has left to the world the loveliest picture of that lovely life.
It was our purpose to leave Rouen by the Amiens road, but when we got
to it and looked up a hill that, about half-way to the zenith, arrived
at the sky, we decided to take a road that led off toward Beauvais. We
could have climbed that hill well enough, and I wished later we had
done so. As it was, we ran along pleasantly during the afternoon, and
attended evening services in an old church at Grandvilliers, a place
that we had never heard of before, but where we found an inn as good as
any in Normandy.
It is curious with what exactness fate times its conclusions. If we had
left Grandvilliers a few seconds earlier or later, it would have made
all the difference, or if I had not pulled up a moment to look at a
lovely bit of brookside planted with poplars, or if I had driven the
least bit slower or the least bit faster during the first five miles;
or--
Oh, never mind--what happened was this: we had just mounted a long
steep hill on high speed and I had been bragging of the car,--always a
dangerous thing to do,--when I saw ahead of us a big two-wheeled cart
going in the same direction as ourselves, and, beyond it, a large car
approaching. I could have speeded up and cut in ahead of the cart, but
I was feeling well, and I thought I should do the courteous thing, the
safe thing. So I fell in behind it. Not far enough behind, however, for
as the big car came opposite, the sleepy driver of the cart awoke,
pulled up his horse short, and we were not far enough behind for me to
get the brakes down hard and suddenly enough to stop before we touched
him. It was not a smash--it was just a push. But it pushed a big hole
in our radiator, smashed up one of our lamps, and crinkled up our left
mud-guard. The radiator was the worst. The water poured out. Our car
looked as if it had burst into tears.
We were really stupefied at the extent of our disaster.
The big car at once pulled up to investigate and console us. The
occupants were Americans, too, from Washington--kindly people who
wanted to shoulder some of the blame. Their chauffeur, a Frenchman,
bargained with the cart driver who had wrecked us to tow us to the next
town, where there were garages. Certainly, pride goes before a fall.
Five minutes earlier we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the
prowess of our vehicle. Now, all in the wink of an eye, our precious
conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its
owners trudging mournfully behind.
The village was Poix; and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, I cannot
think of a lovelier spot for disaster than Poix de la Somme. It is just
across in Picardy, and the river Somme is a little brook that ripples
and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep
groves. In every direction are the loveliest walks, with landscape
pictures at every turn. The village itself is drowsy, kindly,
simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a large, motherly soul
that, during the week of our stay, the Joy learned to love, and I to be
grateful to.
For the others did not linger. Paris was not far away, and had a good
deal to recommend it. The new radiator ordered from London might be
delayed. So, early next morning they were off for Paris by way of
Amiens and Beauvais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employments
and amusements as we could find while waiting for repairs. We got
acquainted with the garage man's family, for one thing. They lived in
the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for
their Picardese and were bosom friends in no time. We spruced up the
car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some
luncheon and our spirit-stove and followed down the Somme to a little
bridge and there made our tea. Then, sometimes, we read; and once, when
I was reading aloud from "Joan of Arc" and had finished the great
battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the
very day on which we were reading, the eighteenth of June.
How little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little
river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any
that Joan ever fought!
One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy, and entertained the village by
pushing her around the public square until she learned to ride alone.
Then I hired one for myself, and we went out on the road together.
About the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and
visited the express-office with considerable regularity. Presently the
village knew us, why we were there, and what we were expecting. They
became as anxious about it as ourselves.
One morning, as we started toward the express-office, a man in a wagon
passed and called out something. We did not catch it; but presently
another met us, and, with a glad look, told us that our goods had
arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We
did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested
in our welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there. It was
soon opened and the new radiator in place. The other repairs had been
made, and once more we were complete. We decided to start next morning
to join the others in Paris.
Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten
our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to
be off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm,
glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember
that golden morning when the Joy, age eleven, and I went gipsying
together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through
pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted
streams of Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no
hurry, and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction,
so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of
flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue
corn-flowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color!
Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to
Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is
perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the
most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it
is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is 158
feet. The average ten-story skyscraper could be set inside of it. There
was once a steeple that towered to the giddy height of five hundred
feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it
fell down from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white
stone,--marble,--and the whole place seems filled with light.
Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm,
and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries
I have ever seen in France, fresh, and dripping with richness; also a
few other delicacies, and by and by, under a cool apple-tree on the
road to Compiègne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and
listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_"
meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the
crumbs.
It was at Compiègne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just
a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans,
she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would
have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a
weak king, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She
had delivered Compiègne the year before, but now again it was in
trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy.
"I will go to my good friends of Compiègne," she said, when the news
came; and taking such force as she could muster, in number about six
hundred cavalry, she went to their relief.
From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise the Joy and I
looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen
on that long ago afternoon of her last battle for France. Somewhere on
that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the
first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and
trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse,
and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge.
We crossed a bridge and entered the city, and stopped in the big public
square facing Laroux's beautiful statue of Joan which the later
"friends of Compiègne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in
semi-armor, holding aloft her banner; and on the base in old French is
inscribed, "_Je yray voir mes bons amys de Compiègne_"--"I will go to
see my good friends of Compiègne."
Many things in Compiègne are beautiful, but not many of them are very
old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented
hôtel de ville, but Joan could not have seen this building, for it
dates a hundred years after her death. There are the handsome churches,
in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped, when she had first
delivered the city, and possibly a few houses of that ancient time
still survive.
Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by
royalty, for Compiègne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of
France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis
Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.
I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There
are long halls and picture-galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly
placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square,
fancily decorated and upholstered boxes strung together, with doors
between. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. Pretty soon we
went back to the car and drove into a big forest for ten miles or more
to an old feudal castle,--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and
turrets and battlements,--the château of Pierrefonds, one of the finest
in France. It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it
does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of
Arc came, and it looks as if it might remain there about as long as the
hill it stands on. It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles
VI, and the storm of battle has often raged about its base. Here and
there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon-balls
stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in
bad repair, had become well nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III at
his own expense engaged Viollet-le-Duc to restore it, in order that
France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original
form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as
it was when Louis of Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years
ago, and it conveys exactly the solid, home surroundings of the
mediæval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court and its
chapel and halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing
inside can be quite as magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers
and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of
a placid lake.
It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at
Crepy-en-Valois or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis. In fact, neither
the Joy nor I hungered even for Paris, which we had once visited. The
others had already seen their fill, so, with only a day's delay, we all
took the road to Versailles.
It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a château
and a vast park; also, an excellent inn--the Croix Blanche--one of
those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. Before
dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the
château, where Frances I died, in 1547.
We were off next morning, following the rich and lovely valley of the
Eure, to Chartres. We had already seen the towers from a long distance,
when we turned at last into the cathedral square, and remembered the
saying that "The choir of Beauvais and the nave of Amiens, the portal
of Rheims and the towers of Chartres would together make the finest
church in the world." To confess the truth, I did not think the towers
of Chartres as handsome as those of Rouen, but then I am not a purist
in cathedral architecture. Certainly, the cathedral itself is glorious.
I shall not attempt to describe it. Any number of men have written
books trying to do that, and most of them have failed. I only know that
the wonder of its architecture, the marvel of its relief carving, "lace
in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows somehow possessed us,
and we did not know when to go. I met a woman once who said she had
spent a month at Chartres and put in most of it sitting in the
cathedral, looking at those windows. When she told me of it I had been
inclined to be scornful. I was not so any more. Those windows, made by
some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of
contemplation.
We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and through a heavenly
June afternoon followed the straight, level way to Châteaudun, an
ancient town perched upon the high cliff above the valley of the Loir,
which is a different river from the Loire--much smaller and more
picturesque.
The château itself hangs on the very verge of the cliffs, with starling
effect, and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in
France. This was the home of Dunois, who left it to fight under Joan of
Arc. He was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted
generals. We spent an hour or more wandering through Dunois's ancient
seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of
it and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than
any of the great châteaux of the Loire, Blois especially, in that it
had been scarcely restored at all. About the latest addition to
Châteaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in
perfect condition to-day. On the other side is another fine façade and
stairway, which Dunois himself added. In a niche there stands a statue
of the famous old soldier, probably made from life. If only some
sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of Joan!
Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we
drifted through a long summer afternoon, and came at evening to a noble
bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the
towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine.
The Touraine was a favorite place for kings, who built their
magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than
fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of Tours.
We did not, by any means, intend to visit all of the châteaux, for
château visiting from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We
had planned especially, however, to see Chinon, where Joan of Arc went
to meet the king to ask for soldiers.
This is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the
Vienne, with the castle crowning the long hill, or ridge, above the
town. Some time during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the
ancient place, and looked up to the ruined battlements and towers where
occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of France.
The château to-day is the ruin of what originally was three châteaux,
built at different times, but closely strung together, so that in ruin
they are scarcely divided.
The oldest, Coudray, was built in the tenth century, and still shows
three towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived during her
stay at Chinon. The middle château was built a hundred years later, on
the site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of
which still remains, that Charles VII received the shepherd-girl from
Domremy. The Château of St. George was built in the twelfth century, by
Henry II of England, who died there in 1189. Though built two hundred
years later than Coudray, nothing remains of it to-day but some
foundations.
Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. Even what
remains must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast
crumbling walls and crenelated towers make it strikingly picturesque.
But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through the entrance
tower, and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the
grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king.
You wander about viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a
place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. Then all at
once you are facing a wall in which, half-way up, where once was the
second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells
you that in this room Charles VII received Joan of Arc. It is not a
room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined
edges.
You cross a stone foot-bridge to the tower where Joan lived, and that
also is open to the sky and bare and desolate. While, beyond it, there
was a little chapel where she prayed, but that is gone. There are other
fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for
those which the intimate presence of Joan made sacred.
The Maid did not go immediately to the castle on her arrival in Chinon.
She put up at an inn down in the town and waited the king's pleasure.
His paltering advisers kept him dallying, and postponing his consent to
see her, but through the favor of his mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of
Sicily, Joan and her suite were presently housed in Coudray.
The king was still unready to see Joan. She was only a stone's throw
away now, but the whisperings of his advisers kept her there. When
there were no further excuses for delay they contrived a trick--a
deception. They persuaded the king to put another on the throne, one
like him and in his royal dress, so that Joan might pay homage to this
make-believe king, thus proving that she had no divine power or
protection which would assist her in identifying the real one.
In the space where now is only green grass and sky and a broken wall,
Charles VII and his court gathered to receive the shepherd-girl who had
come to restore his kingdom. It was evening, and the great hall was
lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its imitation king,
and, I suppose, at the other this fireplace with its blazing logs. Down
the center of the room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing
so that Joan might pass between them to the throne. The occasion was
one of great ceremony--Joan and her suite were welcomed with fine
honors. Banners waved, torches flared, trumpets blown at intervals
marked the stages of her progress down the great hall; every show was
made of paying her great honor--everything that would distract her and
blind her to their trick.
Charles VII, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a little distance from
the throne. Joan, advancing to within a few steps of the pretended
king, raised her eyes. Then for a moment she stood silent, puzzled.
They expected her to kneel and make obeisance; but a moment later she
turned, and, hurrying to the rightful Charles, dropped on her knee and
gave him heartfelt salutation. She had never seen him, and was without
knowledge of his features. The protectors she had known in her visions
had not failed her. It was, perhaps, the greatest moment in French
history.
In the quest for outlying châteaux, one is likely to forget that Tours
itself is very much worth while. Tours has been a city ever since
France had a history, and it fought against Cæsar as far far back as 52
B.C. It took its name from the Gallic tribe of that section, the
Turoni, dwellers in the cliffs, I dare say, along the Loire.
Tours was beloved by French royalty. It was the capital of a province
as rich as it was beautiful. Among French provinces, Touraine was
always the aristocrat. Its language has been kept pure. To this day,
the purest French in the world is spoken at Tours. The mechanic who
made some repairs for me at the garage leaned on the mud-guard, during
a brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told me about the
purity of the French language at Tours; and if there was anything wrong
with his own locution, my ear was not fine enough to detect it. To me
it seemed as limpid as something distilled. Imagine such a thing
happening in--say Bridgeport. Tours is still proud, still the
aristocrat, still royal.
The Germans held Tours during the early months of 1871, but there is
now no trace of their occupation. It was a bad dream which Tours does
not care even to remember.
Tours contains a fine cathedral, and the remains of what must have been
a still finer one--two noble towers, so widely separated by streets and
buildings that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged to one
structure. They are a part of the business of Tours now. Shops are
under them, lodgings in them. One of these old relics is called the
clock-tower, the other, the tower of Charlemagne, because Luitgard, his
third queen, was buried beneath it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE--PART II
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
It was a July morning when we got away from Tours--one of those
sweltering mornings--and I had spent an hour or two at the garage
putting on all our repaired tires and one new one. It was not a good
morning for exercise; and by the time we were ready to start, I was a
rag. Narcissa photographed me, because she said she had never seen me
look so interesting before. She made me stand in the sun bareheaded and
hold a tube in my hand, as if I had not enough to bear, already.
But I was repaid the moment we were off. Oh, but it was cool and
delicious gliding along the smooth, shaded road! One can almost afford
to get as hot and sweltering and cross and gasping as I was for the
sake of sitting back and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue
facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious nectar that bathes
you through and cools and rests and soothes--an anodyne of peace.
By and by, being really cool in mind and body, we drew up abreast of a
meadow which lay a little below the road, a place with a brook and
over-spreading shade, and with some men and women harvesting not far
away. We thought they would not mind if we lunched there, and I think
they must have been as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they
did not offer to disturb us. It was a lovely spot, and did not seem to
belong to the present-day world at all. How could it, with the homes of
the old French kings all about, and with these haymakers, whose
fashions have not minded the centuries, here in plain view to make us
seem a part of an ancient tale?
Chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, is not on the Loire
itself, but on a small tributary, the Cher. I do not remember that I
noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but it is a very
important part of the château, which, indeed, is really a bridge over
it--a supremely beautiful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the
less, entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series of high
foundation arches. Upon these arches rises the rare edifice which
Thomas Bohier, a receiver-general of taxes, began back in 1515. Bohier
did not extend Chenonceaux entirely across the river. The river to him,
merely served as a moat. The son who followed him did not have time to
make additions. Francis I came along, noticed that it was different
from the other châteaux he had confiscated, and added it to his
collection. Our present-day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of
Francis I. Think of getting together assortments of coins and
postage-stamps and ginger-jars when one could go out and pick up
châteaux! It was the famous Catherine de Medici, daughter-in-law of
Francis I, who finished the palace, extending it across the Cher,
making it one of the most beautiful places in the world.
We stopped a little to look at the beautiful façade of Chenonceaux,
then crossed the draw-bridge, or what is now the substitute for it, and
were welcomed at the door by just the proper person--a fine, dignified
woman, of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She showed us through the
beautiful home, for it is still a home, having been bought by Mr.
Meunier, of chocolate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I am that
Mr. Meunier purchased Chenonceaux. He did nothing to the place to spoil
it, and it is not a museum. The lower rooms which we saw have many of
the original furnishings. The ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures,
are the same. There is hardly another place, I think, where one may
come so nearly stepping back through the centuries.
We went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the
river, and looked down on the water flowing below. Our conductor told
us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an
ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have
known much gaiety; much dancing and promenading up and down; many
gallant speeches and some heartache. The Joy wanted to see the
dungeons, but perhaps there never were any real dungeons at
Chenonceaux. Let us try to think so.
Orleans is on the Loire, and we drove to it in the early morning from
Meung, where we had spent the night. I do not know what could be more
lovely than that leisurely hour--the distance was fifteen miles--under
cool, outspreading branches, with glimpses of the bright river and
vistas of happy fields.
We did not even try to imagine, as we approached the outskirts, that
the Orleans of Joan's time presented anything of its appearance to-day.
Orleans is a modern, or modernized city, and, except the river, there
could hardly be anything in the prospect that Joan saw. But it was the
scene of her first military conquest, and added its name to the title
by which she belongs to history. That is enough to make it one of the
holy places of France.
It has been always a military city, a place of battles. Cæsar burned
it, Attila attacked it, Clovis captured it--there was often war of one
sort or another going on there. The English and Burgundians would have
had it in 1429 but for the arrival of Joan's army.
Joan was misled by her generals, whose faith in her was not complete.
Orleans lies on the north bank of the Loire; they brought her down on
the south bank, fearing the prowess of the enemy's forces. Discovering
the deception, the Maid promptly sent the main body of her troops back
some thirty-five miles to a safe crossing, and, taking a thousand men,
passed over the Loire and entered the city by a gate which was still
held by the French. That the city was not completely surrounded made it
possible to attack the enemy from within and without, while her
presence among the Orleanese would inspire them with new hope and
valor. Mark Twain, in his "Recollections," pictures the great moment of
her entry.
It was eight in the evening when she and the troops rode in at
the Burgundy gate.... She was riding a white horse, and she
carried in her hand the sacred sword of Fierbois. You should
have seen Orleans then. What a picture it was! Such black seas
of people, such a starry firmament of torches, such roaring
whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and thundering of
cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end. Everywhere
in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned,
white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked
tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid
masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads
like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along,
gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men
and women who believed they are seeing one who is divine; and
always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as
failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed
their fingers.
This was the twenty-ninth of April. Nine days later, May 8, 1429, after
some fierce fighting, during which Joan was severely wounded, the
besiegers were scattered. Orleans was free. Mark Twain writes:
No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of
glory as Joan of Arc reached that day.... Orleans will never
forget the eighth of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is
Joan of Arc's day--and holy.
Two days, May seventh and eighth, are given each year to the
celebration, and Orleans in other ways has honored the memory of her
deliverer. A wide street bears her name, and there are noble statues,
and a museum, and church offerings. The Boucher home, which sheltered
Joan during her sojourn in Orleans, has been preserved--at least, a
house is still shown as the Boucher house, though how much of the
original structure remains no one of this day seems willing to decide.
We drove there first, for it is the only spot in Orleans that can claim
even a possibility of having known Joan's actual presence. It is a
house of the old half-timbered architecture, and if these are not the
veritable walls that Joan saw, they must, at least, bear a close
resemblance to those of the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the
Duke of Orleans, where Joan was made welcome. A few doors away is a
fine old mansion, now a museum, and fairly overflowing with objects of
every conceivable sort relating to Joan of Arc. Books, statuary,
paintings, armor, banners, offerings, coins, medals, ornaments,
engravings, letters--thousands upon thousands of articles gathered here
in the Maid's memory. I think there is not one of them that her hand
ever touched, or that she ever saw, but in their entirety they convey,
as nothing else could, the reverence that Joan's memory inspired during
the centuries that have gone since her presence made this ground
sacred. Until the revolution, Orleans preserved Joan's banner, some of
her clothing, and other genuine relics; but then the mob burned them,
probably because Joan delivered France to royalty. We were shown an
ancient copy of the banner, still borne, I believe, in the annual
festivities. Baedeker speaks of arms and armor worn at the siege of
Orleans, but the guardian of the place was not willing to guarantee
their genuineness. I think Narcissa, who worships the memory of Joan,
was almost sorry that he thought it necessary to be so honest. He did
show us a photograph of Joan's signature. She wrote it "Jehanne," and
her pen must have been guided by her secretary, for Joan could neither
read nor write.
We drove to the Place Martroi to see the large equestrian statue of
Joan by Foyatier, with reliefs by Vital Dubray. It is very imposing,
and the reliefs, showing the great moments in Joan's career, are really
fine. We did not care to hunt for other memorials. It was enough to
drive about the city, trying to pick out a house here and there that
looked as if it might have been standing five hundred years, but if
there were any of that age--any that had looked upon the wild joy of
Joan's entrance and upon her triumphal departure, they were very few
indeed.
---------------------
It is a grand, straight road from Orleans to Fontainebleau, and it
passes through Pithiviers, which did not look especially interesting,
though we discovered, when it was too late, that it is noted for its
almond-cakes and lark-pies. I wanted to go back, then, but the majority
decided against me, and in the late afternoon we entered the majestic
royal forest, and by and by came to the palace and the little town and
to a pretty hotel on a side street, that was really a village inn for
comfort and welcome. There was still plenty of daylight, mellow, waning
daylight, and the palace was not far away. We would not wait for it
until morning.
I think we most enjoyed seeing palaces about the closing-hour. There
are seldom any other visitors then, and the fading afternoon sunlight
in the vacant rooms softens their garish emptiness and seems, somehow,
to bring nearer the rich pageant of life and love and death that flowed
through them so long, and then one day came to an end, and now it is
not passing any more. It was really closing-time when we arrived at the
palace, but the custodian was lenient, and for an hour we wandered
through gorgeous galleries, and salons, and suites of private
apartments, where kings and queens lived gladly, loved madly, died
sadly for about three hundred years. Francis I built Fontainebleau, on
the site of a mediæval castle. He was a hunter, and the forests of
Fontainebleau were always famous hunting-grounds. Louis XIII, who was
born in Fontainebleau, built the grand entrance staircase, from which,
a hundred years later, Napoleon Bonaparte bade good-by to his generals
before starting for Elba. Other kings have added to the place and
embellished it; the last being Napoleon III, who built for Eugénie the
bijou theater across the court.
It may have been our mood, it may have been the tranquil evening light,
it may have been reality that Fontainebleau was more friendly, more
alive, more a place for living men and women to inhabit than any other
palace we have seen. It was hard to imagine Versailles as having ever
been a home for anybody. At Fontainebleau I felt that we were
intruding--that Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise, or Eugénie might enter
at any moment and find us there.
The apartments of the first Napoleon and Marie Louise tell something,
too, but the story seems less intimate. Yet the table is there on which
Napoleon signed his abdication, while an escort waited to take him to
Elba, and in his study is his writing-table; and there is a bust by
Canova; but that is marble, and does not encourage the thought of life.
For size and magnificence the library is the most impressive room in
Fontainebleau. It is very lofty, very splendid, and it is two hundred
and sixty-four feet long. Napoleon III gave great hunting-banquets
there. Since then it has always been empty, except for visitors.
The light was getting dim by the time we reached the pretty theater
which Louis Napoleon built for Eugénie. It is a very choice place, and
we were allowed to go on the stage and behind the scenes and up in the
galleries, and there was something in the dusky vacancy of that little
play-house, built to amuse the last empress of France, that affected us
almost more than any of the rest of the palace, though it was built not
so long ago and its owner is still alive. It is not used, the custodian
told us--has never been used since Eugénie went away. I believe nothing
at Fontainebleau gave more delight to Narcissa and the Joy than this
dainty theater.
From a terrace back of the palace we looked out on a pretty lake where
Eugénie's son used to sail a miniature, full-rigged ship, large enough,
if one could judge from a picture we saw, to have held the little
prince himself. There was still sunlight on the tree-tops, and these
and the prince's pretty pavilion reflecting in the placid water made
the place beautiful. But the little vessel was not there. I wished, as
we watched, that it might come sailing by. I wished that the prince had
never been exiled, and that he had not grown up and gone to his death
in a South African jungle. I wished that he might be back to sail his
ship again, and that Eugénie might be young and have her theater once
more, and that Louis Napoleon's hunting-parties might still gather in
the painted ball-room and fill the vacant palace with something besides
mere curiosity and vain imaginings.
---------------------
We had meant to go to Barbizon, home of the artist Millet, but we got
lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves, we were a
good way in the direction of Melun and concluded to keep on, consoling
ourselves with the thought that Barbizon is not Barbizon any more, and
would probably be a disappointment, anyway. We kept on from Melun,
also, after buying some luncheon things, and all day traversed that
beautiful rolling district which lies east of Paris and below Rheims,
arriving toward evening at Epernay, center of the champagne district.
We had no need to linger there. We were anxious to get to Rheims.
We were still in the hills when we looked on the valley of the Vesle
and saw a city outspread there, and in its center, mellowed and
glorified by seven kindly centuries, the architectural and
ecclesiastical pride of the world, the Cathedral of Rheims. Large as
the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its
surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when, at the head of her
victorious army, she conducted the king to Rheims for his coronation.
She approached the fulfilment of her mission, the completion of the
great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints. Mark Twain tells
of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the tide of cheers that swept her
ranks at the vision of the distant towers.
It was the sixteenth of July that Joan looked down upon Rheims, and now
four hundred and eighty-five years later it was again July, with the
same summer glory on the wood, the same green and scarlet in the
poppied fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to
the sky. But no one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into
words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the
Domremy shepherd-girl.
Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made
our way to the cathedral square. Then presently we were at the doorway
where Joan and her king had entered--the portal which has been called
the most beautiful this side of paradise. How little we dreamed that
destruction and disfigurement lay only a few weeks ahead!
It is not required any more that one should write descriptively of the
now vanished glories of the church of Rheims, it has been done so
thoroughly and so numerously by those so highly qualified for the
undertaking. Fergusson, who must have been an authority, for the
guide-book quotes him, calls it, "perhaps the most beautiful structure
produced in the Middle Ages."
The cathedral was already two hundred years old when Joan arrived in
1429. But it must have looked quite fresh and new, then, for nearly
five centuries later it seemed to have suffered little. Some of the
five hundred and thirty statues of its wonderful portal were
weatherworn and scarred, to be sure, but the general effect of beauty
and completeness was not disturbed.
Many kings had preceded Joan and her sovereign through the sacred
entrance. Long before the cathedral was built, French sovereigns had
come to Rheims for their coronation. Here Clovis had been baptized
nearly a thousand years before.
It was a mighty assemblage that gathered for the crowning of Joan's
king. France, overrun by an invader, had known no real king for
years--had, indeed, well nigh surrendered her nationality. Now victory,
in the person of a young girl from an obscure village, had crowned
their arms and brought redemption to their throne. No wonder the vast
church was packed, and that crowds were massed outside. From all
directions had come pilgrims to the great event--persons of every rank,
among them two shepherds, Joan's aged father and uncle, who had walked
from Domremy, one hundred and twenty miles, to verify with their own
eyes what their ears could not credit.
We are told that the abbot, attended by the archbishop, his canons, and
a deputation of nobles, entered the crowded church, followed by the
five mounted knights who rode down the great central aisle, clear to
the choir, and then at a signal backed their prancing steeds all the
distance to the great doors.
Very likely the cathedral at Rheims had never known such a throng until
that day, nor heard such a mighty shout as went up when Joan and the
king, side by side and followed by a splendid train, appeared at the
great side entrance and moved slowly to the altar.
I think there must have fallen a deep hush then--a petrified stillness
that lasted through the long ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself
upon the young girl standing there at the king's side, holding her
victorious standard above him--the banner that "had borne the burden
and had earned the victory," as she would one day testify at her trial.
I am sure that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breathing,
until the final word was spoken and the dauphin had accepted the crown
and placed it upon his head. But then we may hear, borne faintly down
the centuries, the roar of renewed shouting that told to those waiting
without that the great ceremony was ended, that Charles VII of France
had been annointed king. As in a picture we seemed to see the
shepherd-girl on her knees saying to the crowned king: "My work which
was given me to do is finished: give me your peace, and let me go back
to my mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me."
But the king raises her up and praises her and confers upon her
nobility and titles, and asks her to name a reward for her service, and
we hear her ask that Domremy, "poor and hard-pressed by reason of the
war," may have its taxes remitted.
Nothing for herself--no more than that; and in the presence of all the
great assemblage Charles VII decreed that by grace of Joan of Arc,
Domremy should be free from taxes forever.
There within those walls it was all reality five hundred years ago. One
did not study the interior to discover special art values or to
distinguish in what manner it differed from others we had seen. For us
the light from its great rose-window and upper arches was glorified
because once it fell upon Joan of Arc in that supreme moment when she
saw her labor finished and asked only that she might return to Domremy
and her flocks. The statues in the niches were sacred because they
looked upon that scene, the altar paving was sanctified because it felt
the pressure of her feet.
Back of the altar stood a statue of Joan unlike any we had seen
elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. It was not Joan with her banner
aloft, her eyes upward. It was Joan with her eyes lowered, looking at
no outward thing, her face passive--the saddest face and the saddest
eyes in the world--Joan the sacrifice of her people and her king.
It may have been two miles out of Rheims that we met the flood. There
had been one heavy shower as we entered the city, but presently the sun
broke out, bright and hot, too bright and too hot for permanence. Now
suddenly all was black again, there was a roar of thunder, and then
such an opening of the water-gates of the sky as would have disturbed
Noah. I turned the car over to the side of the road, but the tall,
high-trimmed trees afforded no protection. Our top was a shelter, but
not a complete one--the wind drove the water in, and in a moment our
umbrellas were sticking out in every direction and we had huddled
together like chickens. The world was blotted out. I had the feeling at
moments that we were being swept down some great submarine current.
I don't know how long the inundation lasted. It may have been five
minutes or thirty. Then suddenly it stopped--it was over--the sun was
out.
There was then no mud in France,--not in the highroads,--and a moment
or two later we had revived, our engine was going, and we were gliding
between fair fields--fresh, shining fields where scarlet poppy-patches
were as pools of blood. How peaceful it all was then, for there is no
lovelier land than the Marne district from Rheims to Châlons and to
Vitry-le-Francois. Yet it has been often a war district--a
battle-ground; it has been fought over time and again since the ancient
allies defeated Attila and his Huns there, checking the purpose of the
"Scourge of God," as he called himself. It could never be a
battle-ground again, we thought--the great nations were too advanced
for war. Ah me! within two months from that day men were lying dead
across that very road, shells were tearing at the lovely fields, and
another stain had mingled with the trampled poppies.
Châlons-sur-Marne, like Rheims and Epernay, is a champagne center and
seemed prosperous. There are some churches there, but they did not seem
of great importance.
It was in July when we were on the Marne. In an earlier chapter I have
told how, only three weeks later, when we had reached Vevey,
Switzerland, the "great upheaval" came, and with what disturbing
consequences. We did not leave Europe with the early rush. For a time
we hesitated about leaving at all. But then uncertainties increased.
With Italy planning war, the possibility of not being able to leave
when we were ready was not comforting. So in October at last we got a
military pass to take the car out of Switzerland, and on one of the
last days of the month set off up the Rhone Valley, down which Cæsar's
armies once had marched, and drove to Brigue, and the next day crossed
the Simplon Pass--up and up more than six thousand feet, where the snow
was flying, and where there are no villages any more, but only a
hospice, and here and there a wayside shelter. Then through a wild,
savage-looking land--down and down, into Italy, arriving in the rain at
Domodossola, glad, oh so glad, for safe shelter and food and beds!
I will not tell here of our month's wanderings in Italy. But one day
our reliable car was loaded on a vessel for home, and a little later we
were aboard the same ship, breasting such storms as made it seem
impossible that only a little while before we had been in a sunny land,
gliding smoothly over a solid surface that did not heave, and toss, and
roar, day and night, without end; then by and by a day came when we
were gliding once more over smooth, solid ground--this time in our own
land, far from the quaint villages, the bright rivers, the ancient
castles, the sunny slopes, and perfect roads of France.
Yet America is not without its glories. And though it has fewer quaint
villages and no ancient castles, it has at least as fair scenery, as
fertile lands, and its roads are growing better and more numerous every
day. Our wayside inns will improve, too, I am sure of it, until
America, like France, may become another paradise. Narcissa and the Joy
were patriotic enough to be gladdened at the sight of New England
shores and hillsides, and, as Narcissa says:
"Well, if we didn't see America first, we'll probably have plenty of
time to see it now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER-BOXES IN FOREIGN LANDS
BY A. R. ROY
The first letter-box ever used was established in Paris in 1560. It is
true that a kind of letter-box was in use in Italy before that time; it
was not used, however, by the postal service, but as a place for
denunciations directed to the police.
The first letter-box in Germany was established in 1766, in Berlin. At
first the boxes were simple; both for depositing letters and for
removing them the cover was lifted. During the last century a great
many different styles of boxes have been introduced, but the so-called
Swedish system is now in universal use.
In Germany the letter-boxes are highly ornamental, and in many cases
made especially to be in harmony with the architecture of the building
to which they are fastened. They are painted blue, and show the coat of
arms of the empire and that of the postal department, a post-horn with
tassels. The mail is removed by fastening a bag to the bottom of the
box; the bag is slipped in and opens and closes automatically. The
postman does not handle or even see the letters, and cannot get at them.
In London large letter-boxes are placed on the sidewalk, at nearly
every street corner. They have different compartments for city and
country mail, and this, as well as the height of the apertures, makes
them rather inconvenient for any but grown people. While they are
painted a brilliant red and therefore very conspicuous, they are by no
means an embellishment to the city. The letters are taken out by
opening a large door and literally shoveling the mail-matter into a bag.
The letter-box in the general post-office in England is a magnificent
construction. The sign-board is made of brass, on which the directions
are engraved in ink. Large slits provide for the country and colonial
mails, and there is also a different compartment for newspapers and
parcels.
The modern French letter-box has the shape of a pillar, profusely
ornamented with the conventional lily. The whole box or stand is
fashioned after a plant, and the top resembles a bud. The body is
surrounded by floral wreaths or festoons, and the base is formed by
large leaves. The boxes are placed against buildings and have a very
pretty effect.
In Brussels the government keeps pace with the needs of the people, and
has attached postal boxes to the rear ends of cars in the city. This
aids and hastens the delivery of letters and telegrams, as most of
these cars pass the post-offices, where the boxes are emptied. This
street-car letter-box, in fact, virtually takes the place of the
"pneumatic tube" postal system, for which London and Berlin have become
famous.
The Russian post-box is an old-fashioned, awkward-looking box. It looks
something like a peasant hut. The roof is lifted up, and the letters
are taken out from the top. The postman handles the letters as freely
as the sorters themselves. In times past the governmental power in
Russia was so strict that it is believed the post-office officials
frequently opened letters suspected of being connected with plots
against the State, and read them.
The Italian post-boxes are prettily constructed and grouped together in
threes and fours. One box is used for the city, another for the
country, and by the side is a big automatic machine for stamps. A
"penny in the slot" supplies the various kinds of stamps required.
The Amsterdam letter-pillar is of very artistic construction, which is
both pleasing to the eye and practical. The royal arms are
conspicuously and prettily embossed on the face of the box, and below
them are two rosettes of conventional style. There are two
letter-slits, one for the country and one for the city. The top is
crowned with ornamental bowers. Right above the pillar is a board on
which the times of delivery and collection are clearly written.
The Rumanian letter-boxes are all numbered in large letters so as to
help the public to keep track of where they post their mail, and also
the postman in his collection. It is a simple square box which is
placed generally on the walls of large buildings in the main streets.
Throughout the Orient, where the national influences are many and
various, each country has its own post-office. For instance, the
British have their own, and the French and the Germans theirs. The
stamps used by each of these post-offices are, of course, their own,
there not being a universal system for all countries.
Right on the city gate in Tangier we find, in this town of an old
civilization, the convenience of most modern time--a letter-box. Before
the natives were used to them they were considered as wonderful
machines into which a missive once being put was mysteriously conveyed
to its destination, and they were generally feared. To-day the smallest
boy uses them. The style of course varies with the power that puts it
up.
Here we can notice with what expression of wonderment the native posts
a letter. He is only certain the letter will go, but how, he does not
know.
The German post-box is painted blue, and has only German directions
written on it. The directions giving time of delivery and collection
are written in many languages.
The final photograph shows a letter-box on a Moorish gateway in
Tangier, Morocco. And here this convenience of modern days looks
strange in its surroundings of Arabic fresco and characters. No attempt
has been made to harmonize with the Moorish architecture. The letters
are collected from an opening on the other side of the wall.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOST RHEIMS
BY LOUISE EUGÉNIE PRICKITT
"Rheims, which has been on fire for a week, is now nothing but a great
pile of smoking ruins," I read in the paper of the man who sat next to
me in the subway. With a sick heart I read on: "There are no traces of
streets and thoroughfares, which have disappeared from view under the
accumulation of debris. Ancient buildings in the Place Royal and the
market-place and the Musicians' House, which dates from the sixteenth
century, have been reduced to dust and ashes." With a doubly sad heart
I read it, for to me it is more than an old French city that lies in
ruins, since with it goes the picturesque and historic background of my
early youth. It is the tragic passing of my city of dreams, for there I
dreamed away eight happy years of girlhood.
It is an enviable thing to live in an ancient city like Rheims till its
history becomes a part of the texture of one's mind, till the
background of that history, hangs like a series of distinct pictures in
one's thought, not to be effaced by anything that shall come afterward.
The streets of Rheims as they then stood are photographed clearly on
the retina of my mind's eye, and, dominating all, as it did at my first
sight of it, is the majestic shape of the cathedral. I enter again, in
imagination, those beautiful portals, and feel myself a tiny figure,
and young in the midst of hoary antiquity. The organ music surges
through the building, the choir-boys' voices soar above it. I see again
the slanting fall of colored light across the wide gray floors, the
soft blue smoke of the rising incense, the towering pillars, the
vaulted roof, the dim vistas ending in the splendor of painted windows.
Years and years of patient labor it took to rear this marvel. It
represented the ideality of an age; it was, in fact, that ideality
incarnate, left standing for all posterity to see and take inspiration
from.
It was at sunset one December day that I first entered Rheims. It was
to be my home for the next eight years, for my father had been
appointed by the American Government to be consul there. How eagerly, I
remember, we looked out of the train window as we approached the city.
Long before the town itself became distinct to our eyes, we could
plainly see the cathedral, a superb silhouette, imposing and not to be
forgotten. It was like one's first view of the ocean or the mountains
or the desert.
That night we slept opposite the cathedral in the eighteenth-century
Hôtel Lion d'Or. I recollect the thrill of excitement my sister and I
felt as the big bus rattled into the courtyard of that quaint hostelry
and agile valets in yellow-and-black striped waistcoats ran to open the
door for us. We felt that we were at last to live a storybook life of
adventure and romance.
The deep-toned bells of the cathedral awakened us at dawn, and in the
pale light we rushed to the windows to look out on the sculptured
façade of the wonderful building in order that we might feel again the
strange charm that had so wrought upon us at our first sight of it. In
the open square before us a valiant figure caught our attention, a
figure of bronze that sat upon a spirited charger and held aloft a
spear--Jeanne d'Arc, before the cathedral that had witnessed her brief
hour of glory. The story we knew well, but shape and color it had never
had before. The centuries before ours had been hardly more to us than
Arabian Nights' tales, yet here was the visible evidence of the mighty
procession of people who had existed before our day. We could not take
the shortest walk in the city without being reminded of the dim
perspective of history stretching far back of our youth, for here it
was written in tangible and enduring stone.
At the rear of the Hôtel Lion d'Or we could see the old hotel of the
sign of the Maison Rouge, where the father and mother of Jeanne d'Arc
were housed at the time of the crowning of the dauphin. We could walk
over the cobblestone of the narrow rue de Tambour, which was once, so
history says, one of the largest and most frequented of the streets of
Rheims. We could look up at the Maison des Musiciens, so old a building
that no one knows for what it was originally built. On its quaint
façade how often we curiously examined the broken figures of the
sculptured musicians, for this was the street down which the royal
processions passed on their way to the coronation at the cathedral. The
soldiers in the vanguard had struck and broken the statues with their
spears to make way for the banners and pennants of the brilliant
cavalcade. How full of color and splendor the street must have appeared
then! But that was all past, and the musicians, in our time, looked
down only upon market-women trundling their wares through to the
market-place beyond. The old building, nevertheless, still served to
re-create, in the fancy of two wondering girls, those stately
yesterdays.
In the rue Carnot how often we paused to glance up at a curious archway
supporting two round towers! Old, very old it looked. And no wonder!
for it dated from the Middle Ages. Under the arch we could catch a
glimpse of the walls of the cathedral, gray as frost, and the prison,
with beggars sitting in its grim shadow.
How the past centuries peered out at us from every corner, showing in
quaint portals such as the one on the school of the Petit Lycée, with
its bas-reliefs of a laughing child on one side and a crying one on the
other, known to the "_bons enfants_" since the beginning of the school
as "_Jean qui rit_" and "_Jean qui pleure_." Or that of the old house
of the La Salle family, in the rue de l'Arbalète, with its life-size
figures of Adam and Eve to guard the entrance.
When we walked down the rue Cérès we passed the house where Louis XIV's
famous minister, Colbert, was born, and often pictured him coming out
of the wide doorway, the courtly, velvet-clad figure that the portrait
of him in the art museum had made familiar to our minds: for many a
trip we made to the Hôtel des Ville to see the paintings and the
wonderful illuminated books in the library and the beautiful old
building itself. We would often stop, I remember, to read the list of
marriages posted in the vestibule, the Maries, the Yvonnes, and the
Marguerites, the Jeans, the Marcels, and Pierres who were to "live
happily ever afterward," or so we confidently believed. Several years
later the elder sister came with her lover to read shyly her own, for
the old and dignified Salle des Marriages was to be the background of
her romance, too.
We had read Dumas, and Anne of Austria, as every one knows, figures
largely in his tales. But that she was more real than d'Artagnan we had
hardly conceived, until one day we stood before the seventeenth century
house in the rue de l'Université which once had the honor of sheltering
her. It belonged to Jean Mailefer, and he has left an account of the
visit in quaintly spelled old French which we were fortunate enough to
have a chance to read. He was very proud of the magnificence of his
dwelling, and spread its luxury before us as a peacock might spread his
gorgeous tail for humbler birds to admire. It was fit for a queen he
felt, and lo! she was coming. He describes exultantly the sound of the
trumpets that signalized the consequential arrival of royalty.
"_Tatera, tatera, tatera! Que d'honeurs qui vont tomber sur mes foibles
espaulles!_" ["What honors to fall upon my poor shoulders!"] The pride
of the seventeenth century--how laughably like it is to that of the
twentieth. The queen as she entered, jestingly said, "The house is my
own!" "Yes, _grande Princess_, you are right," responded its owner,
quickly. At the same time the Marshal Duplessis asked of him,
"Monsieur, are you the master of this house?" "Monsieur," replied the
gallant gentleman of Rheims, bowing with a grand air, I make no doubt,
"Monsieur, I was but a moment ago; but when the sun appears, the stars
are eclipsed."
In the rue de la Grue we searched out the house where was born Tronson
du Coudray, an eloquent lawyer of the Paris Parliament and the
courageous defender of Marie Antoinette. With all our young enthusiasm
we loved him as the champion of the ill-fated queen. The Porte de
Paris, the great iron gateway in Rheims, the guidebooks told us was a
triumph of the smith's art, but it held our imaginations in thrall
because it had been built in honor of the crowning of Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette. Somewhere we had found an account of the coronation,
and read how joyously they had entered the city, and how in the
cathedral, in the midst of the acclamations and applause, so loud and
prolonged that they covered the sound of the bells and the noise of the
cannon, the "_gracieuse Marie Antoinette_" had fainted and thus "_elle
a perdu quelques instants du plus beau jour de sa vie_" ["she had lost
some moments of the most beautiful day of her life"]. We loved to
imagine her against the background of that rich interior of the
cathedral, the light through its glowing windows touching with
iridescence the tall gray pillars; the royal pennants and draperies,
bright tones against the sombre hues of the marvelous tapestries; gold
flashing here and there from tall candlesticks and brilliant uniforms;
wonderful gems catching fire from the great arched windows that seemed,
in the brightness of the sun, to be themselves made of rival jewels. A
splendid setting for "the most beautiful day of her life." "The height,
the space, the gloom, the glory," how they typified that life!
The Porte de Paris, too, was eloquent of the fierce days of the
Revolution. The people of Rheims tell how the mob one day came surging
toward it, when the ringleaders proposed that they destroy the gilded
crown upon its apex as the symbol of hated royalty. Then the mayor, a
man of tactful resource, called to the most furious of the band and
asked if he had a ten-sou piece at his service. The man readily passed
it to him, whereupon the mayor at once gave it to a beggar standing
near. "Take it," said he; "Monsieur will have nothing with a crown upon
it." Every one laughed, and the crown on the gate was saved.
Under the wide arch of the Porte de Paris victorious Napoleon entered
after the Prussian occupation of the city in 1814. It was already
nightfall when the fierce battle was fought, and not until eleven
o'clock was Napoleon able to enter the city. What an ovation he
received from the rejoicing citizens--the Remois! It thrilled us to
read it. All at once the great bells of the cathedral thundered forth a
welcome, while at the same time every window in the town was lighted
and a great cry of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" rang from end to end of the
city. The house in the rue de Vesle, where he slept that night, is an
old acquaintance.
If the Porte de Paris seemed old to us and eloquent of the past, what
was to be said of the gray old arch known as the Porte de Mars, that
dated before Christ and "spoke aloud for future times to hear" of the
triumphs of great Cæsar and of the Gallo-Roman days? and what of the
market-place which was once, we were told, the Roman forum? Even in our
time, though all traces of the forum were gone, the market-place was an
ancient-looking square, edged as it was with quaint old buildings,
among them, notably, an elaborately carved wooden house, one of the
most curious specimens of fifteenth century art.
Near by was the old church of St. Jacques. Often we used to steal in to
rest awhile in its rainbow-colored twilight. Not as imposing as the
cathedral, but very lovely nevertheless, it was one of the relics of
the twelfth century. The cathedral, St. Jacques, and the old abbey
church of St. Remi--they have formed for us the beautiful and
impressive backgrounds of many a wedding and funeral and quaint
religious service.
Many a time we have threaded the queer old streets of Rheims with their
queer old names--the rue de la Clef [Street of the Key], the rue des
Deux Anges [Street of the Two Angels], the rue des Trois Raisinets
[Street of the Three Little Grapes]. _The Maison des Quatres Chats
Gringnants_ [House of the Four Grinning Cats], the _Auberge du Lapin
Gras_ [Tavern of the Fat Rabbit], curious old buildings of the Middle
Ages--we passed them by in our youth, but we shall carry the memory of
them into our old age. How tranquil the city used to seem to us then!
Too quiet, sometimes; a drowsy old town, we said, sitting like
venerable age sleeping in the sun. How little we dreamed what a cruel
awakening was in store for it; that horror and terror were to stalk
through all those peaceful streets and leave their dreadful scars
behind!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHERE DOROTHY VERNON DWELT
BY MINNA B. NOYES
At Rowsley, England, the quaint old Peacock Inn, with its vine-covered
walls, casement windows, and rare old gardens, is the picture of peace
and comfort, and it is also a perfect type of the hostelries of bygone
days.
If the guest can tear himself away from its ease and plenty, its
stately gardens, and its soothing atmosphere, the surrounding country
affords many delightful walks and attractions both historical and
romantic.
Following the pretty little river Wye, one soon comes to Haddon Hall,
one of the best specimens of medieval domestic architecture now in
existence, although it has been added to at various periods from the
eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.
It was given by William the Conqueror to one of his sons, William
Peveril (Scott's "Peveril of the Peak"), and is now the property of the
Duke of Rutland, a descendant of the beautiful Dorothy Vernon, whose
romantic elopement with John Manners has been celebrated in drama,
song, and story, and lends an especial interest to the old castle.
The Vernons lived at Haddon Hall from 1195 to 1567, and, among the many
beautiful women of their line, the most beautiful is said to have been
the self-willed Dorothy. Her youthful love-dream was thwarted by her
equally obstinate father, some say because of family feuds, others say
on account of difference in religion.
Whatever the cause, parental opposition was so strong that one night,
when a grand ball was in progress in the famous ball-room of Haddon
Hall, the heiress stole away through the door of the anteroom and fled,
in all her festive array, along "Dorothy's Walk" (a long terrace lined
with stately yews), down the long flight of steps to the lower terrace,
and over the little bridge to her waiting lover. He carried her away on
his fleet steed to a hasty morning wedding, carefully placing many
miles between the irate father and the lovely bride.
Dorothy's father, Sir George Vernon, "The King of the Peak," allowed
his wrath to cool in time, and the happy couple returned and made their
home at the Hall.
John Manners was a younger son of the Earl of Rutland, and father of
the first Duke of Rutland, whose cradle is now exhibited in the state
bedroom of Haddon Hall.
The great ball-room from which Miss Dorothy fled is over one hundred
feet long, eighteen feet wide, and fifteen feet high. On the south
side, toward the garden, are three very large, recessed windows, and on
the north side is a huge fireplace with ancient fire-dogs. At the east
end of the room is a glass case containing a bust of Grace, Lady
Manners, wife of Sir George Manners. This is said to have been made
from a cast taken after death. Certainly the lady was far from
beautiful if one judges from this representation of her charms!
The interior of the family chapel is in a semi-ruined state. On the
right there is a stoup for holy water, about four hundred years old,
and just beyond it are the servants' seats. In the chancel are two
large, high, family pews, one on either side, the master and his sons
occupying one, and the lady and her daughters the other.
The stained-glass window in the chapel was of great beauty, but, early
in the nineteenth century, the greater part of it was mysteriously
stolen in the night, and its place has been filled with fragments of
colored glass taken from other windows.
In the kitchen may still be seen the immense fireplace, the large,
hollowed-out block, evidently used for a chopping-tray, a
salting-trough, and a few other pieces of culinary apparatus.
In the banqueting-hall is the minstrels' gallery, the front of which is
carved and paneled, and decorated with stags' antlers, and there is
also a gallery along one side, probably of later construction. The lord
and his guests sat at one end of the hall on a raised platform, while
the retainers sat at tables in the body of the hall. The high table is
a remarkable specimen of its kind, and one of the most interesting
relics of feudal times.
At the north end of the hall, just inside the entrance, is a kind of
handcuff, fastened to the wall and so arranged as to hold a man's wrist
up at arm's-length while liquor was poured down his sleeve--the
punishment meted out to every guest who did not drink all that the laws
of hospitality forced upon him!
Over the banqueting-hall is the drawing-room, the walls still hung with
ancient tapestries. There is a great deal of beautiful old tapestry in
Haddon Hall, and it all seems to be woven or worked in small pieces,
even the shades of coloring being done separately and then sewed
together.
Another room shown to visitors is the state bedroom, with old
oil-paintings, and Goblin tapestry designed in panels on the borders of
which are medallions with subjects from Æsop's fables. Queen Elizabeth
is said to have once slept in this room, and in a large window-recess
is a dressing-table with a mirror called "Queen Elizabeth's
looking-glass." The poor queen's vanity must have received a shock when
she saw herself reflected there, or else the glass has become defective
with age! In this room there is also the primitive cradle said to be
that of the first Duke of Rutland.
The state bed is large and imposing, draped with faded green silk
velvet lined with white satin, dating from the reign of Henry VI. The
last person to occupy this bed was George IV, when he was Prince Regent.
There are some smaller and less interesting rooms to which the visitor
may have access, all, by the small windows and the rude workmanship of
doors and fastenings, showing great antiquity.
A winding staircase of uneven stone steps leads to the Peveril Tower,
the highest part of the Hall, and from this tower there is a beautiful
view of the valley of the Wye and the hills and valleys around.
Haddon Hall is not used as a residence by its owner, the Duke of
Rutland, but it is kept in reasonable repair, and is visited yearly by
hundreds of "trippers" from all parts of the British Isles and by
tourists from all countries.
To be appreciated fully it should be inspected leisurely, and not
"done" in the few minutes allowed some of the "personally conducted"
visitors. One lovely summer day we saw two large wagonettes filled with
tourists drive up to the Hall, and the procession, headed by a guide,
walked through the rooms and back to the waiting vehicles in less than
half an hour! We learned that these people were Americans, who had
landed at Liverpool that morning, and after hastily viewing this fine
old mansion, they were to be taken to Chatsworth House, the Duke of
Devonshire's country-seat a few miles away, while later in the day they
were due in London for additional sight-seeing!
It is small wonder if they had little appreciation of the beauties of
venerable pile or modern mansion, and but the vaguest memories of them
after their return home!
Haddon Hall will repay one for frequent and extended visits, as new
points of interest will repeatedly reward the unhurried visitor, and
many a pleasant hour may be spent on the terraces, looking out over the
charming landscape and dreaming of bygone days when the Hall was a
stage for the drama of life, with all its elements of love and hate, of
comedy and tragedy, of peace and war.
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FOREIGN FIRE-BRIGADES
BY CHARLES T. HILL
One summer, while in Switzerland, I asked a prominent merchant of
Lausanne, when his town had had its last serious fire. "Not in three
years," he replied. I was moved to ask this question because I had
found the fire apparatus in padlocked barns, or stations, with the keys
in the hands of the police, who attended to the fire-fighting; and this
seemed, as compared to the remarkably quick methods employed in
America, a somewhat dangerous form of fire protection. Lausanne is a
town of about fifty thousand population, and I wondered how many
American cities of a like size could boast of only one serious fire in
three years. Not many, I imagine.
In Lucerne, a smaller city of Switzerland, of about forty thousand
population, the conditions were practically the same, with the
exception that each stable containing the fire apparatus had a notice
posted on the door stating that the keys could be found in the
neighboring hotels and drug-shops, and the citizens were expected to
take out the engines in the event of a fire, while the firemen
(volunteers) came on "call," the alarm being sounded on all the church
bells. Lucerne is a well-known tourist center, heavily populated during
the summer months, and has many large shops filled with very
inflammable material, and a great many very old buildings; and yet this
place had had only two fires of any size within two years!
While I was attending the morning drill of the Central Fire Station at
Dresden, in Saxony, the captain in command told me that the city had,
on an average, about six alarms of fire a week. I casually remarked
that we had twenty-five _a day_ in New York. He looked at me with
wonderment and doubt, and when I repeated that we actually had between
twenty and thirty alarms of fire a day in the Borough of Manhattan
alone, he threw up his hands and exclaimed, "Thank heaven, it is not as
bad as that here, or our beautiful city would be destroyed!"
And so we find, thanks to superior building construction, less hurry
and rush in business methods, and a wholesome regard on the part of the
citizens for certain rigid laws covering the use of explosives and
materials of all kinds which usually cause fire, the lot of the foreign
firefighter is not as strenuous as that of his brother fireman on this
side of the water. Because of the excellent character of the buildings
abroad fires burn slowly, and rarely extend beyond the room or floor in
which they start. Here, on the other hand, the conditions are entirely
different. Our fires are larger, more destructive, and more frequent,
compelling us to support not only the most effective, but most
expensive, fire-departments in the world; and yet, in spite of all
this, our annual fire losses are from ten to twenty times more than
those of any country in Europe.
Better building laws and the universal adoption of fire-prevention
ordinances, are going to change all this for us, in time, but as yet
our annual fire loss stuns the average European by its enormous total.
In London, the fire-department comes under the supervision of the city
authorities, the London County Council looking after the administration
of the "Metropolitan Fire-Brigade," as it is called; and this brigade,
in management and routine work, is not unlike many large American
fire-departments, though the apparatus used is radically different. A
naval officer has always been chief of the London fire-brigade, and the
firemen are usually recruited from the marine service, a time-honored
custom giving preference to men who have been at least five years at
sea. It is argued that the work of a fireman is of a nature more
readily performed by a sailor, who is not only accustomed to danger and
exposure of all kinds, but is trained to climbing and working in
perilous positions. These new men, after passing a severe physical
examination before a medical board, are put through three months'
careful schooling at fire headquarters, where they are not only taught
how to handle every tool and implement used in the brigade, but become
skilled in life-saving work.
The fire stations in London are much larger than the engine-houses
found in American cities, and some of the newer buildings in appearance
are not unlike some of our better-class apartment-houses. Indeed, this
is practically what they are--a kind of apartment-house or barracks for
the men and their families, as well as a station for the apparatus and
the horses; and here the firemen live, occupying little apartments of
from three to five rooms, according to their rank and position. They
are, therefore, in the houses and on duty at all times, with the
exception of one day's leave of absence in every fifteen. Enough
firemen are found in each London fire station to make up three of our
fire-companies, but only one third of these men are in service or on
"call-duty" at a time, the rest being held in reserve to answer any
other alarms which might come in, or to reinforce the first detachment
leaving the house should their "call" prove to be a bad fire. And the
men of each squad or detachment on "call-duty" are supposed to be fully
dressed when an alarm comes in, and have only to adjust their helmets,
which hang in long rows on the walls of the apparatus floor, before
jumping on the engines; and no exception is made to this rule, even
with the men on the last or "night tour"--from 9 P.M. until 7 A.M. This
accounts for the pictures we sometimes see, showing the English firemen
seated along the sides of their engines, in military fashion, fully
uniformed.
In some of the stations, the London fire-brigade still clings to the
rather old-fashioned custom of keeping the horses standing in harness,
in stables at the rear, to be led out to the apparatus by hand in event
of a "call"; and this makes their "turnout" in answer to an alarm
appear to us to be a peculiarly slow one, accustomed as we are to the
remarkably quick methods employed in our fire-departments. But several
of the newer houses, built within the last few years, are supplied with
many ingenious American time-saving devices--sliding-poles,
swinging-harness, etc.,--while the horses are kept in box-stalls on the
apparatus floor, in convenient running distance of the engines, all of
which has considerably reduced the time consumed in turning out to an
alarm.
The English fire-engine is a small affair, much smaller than our steam
fire-engines, having about one half the pumping capacity of the
American engines; and nearly every one in London is a combined engine
and hose-wagon,--the hose being carried in a box-like compartment on
each side of the machine, just back of the driver's seat. This
"hose-box" serves as a convenient place for the firemen to sit while
riding to the fire. Quite a number of automobile fire-engines are in
service in the London brigade, big, businesslike-looking machines,
about as large as some of our motor-engines, and capable of great speed
while answering an alarm. As a contrast to this up-to-date equipment, a
number of "manuals," or hand-engines, are in use, which ought to have
been sent to the scrap-heap years ago.
In the way of ladder-trucks they are very well supplied in London, for,
in addition to several "horse ladder-escapes," as they are called (a
fairly long extension ladder carried on a horse-drawn truck, and which
can be detached from this truck and pushed close to a building), they
have a great many hand-pushed "ladder-escapes" (a shorter extension
ladder of the same type and pushed by hand) scattered throughout the
city, housed in substations in the principal squares and more important
thoroughfares, and intended for emergency use only until the regular
apparatus arrives. They have also a few "aërial" ladder-trucks carrying
a very long extension ladder which can be raised, by means of an
ingenious little engine using carbonic-acid gas for its motive power,
to a height of eighty feet or more. But aside from use as a kind of
water-tower at large fires, these aërial ladders are rarely extended to
their full length, for the houses are nearly all of a uniform height,
not over five or six floors, and the ordinary extension ladder is
sufficiently long to reach the upper parts of these buildings.
The fire-alarm boxes, or "alarm-points," as they are known, are found
at convenient corners throughout London, and consist of an iron post
about as high as an ordinary hitching-post, with a little round metal
box at the top containing a glass door. You break the glass in this
door, pull the little handle or knob inside, and thus send in a
"fire-call" to four or five of the nearest fire stations. In all
American cities when a fire-alarm box is "pulled" the alarm is
transmitted direct to a central-bureau, usually at fire headquarters,
and is then retransmitted, either automatically or by hand, to the
engine-houses; but in London--and in every other European city--each
fire station has its own alarm-bureau, in charge of an officer and
several operators, these stations receiving only the alarms from the
boxes in the immediate neighborhood. All the stations, however, are
connected with each other, and with a central-bureau or headquarters,
by both telegraph and telephone.
London has something like 4000 fires annually, and spends about
$1,250,000 every year to support her fire-brigade. It is estimated that
the city of New York (comprising the Boroughs of Manhattan, Bronx,
Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond, and with about the same population as
London proper) has 12,500 fires annually, and spends something over
$7,500,000 to support her fire-department.
In Paris, the fire-brigade comes under the jurisdiction of the
Department of War, and it is part of the French army that attends to
the fire-fighting in this famous city. Two battalions of infantry,
known as the "Regiment des Sapeurs Pompiers," look after this important
work, and although this brigade is recruited, drilled, and commanded by
various regimental officers, from a colonel down to a lieutenant, and
belongs to the war department, it comes under the direct control of the
Prefect of Police (Chief of Police), who is the actual head of the
Paris fire-brigade.
These stations, or, as they are well named, _casernes_ (barracks), are
big structures filled with many firemen, on an average about 140 men in
every building; and each station is equipped with numerous pieces of
fire apparatus, and all are provided with a large inner court, or
drill-yard, in which the men go through military evolutions twice
daily, and where the new men, who are coming into the brigade
continually, are taught how to handle all the various appliances used
in fire-fighting. Here also the men are put through a series of
calisthenic exercises two or three times a week, which, if introduced
into the American fire-departments, would drive every man out of the
service, so vigorous are these "stunts." In acrobatic fashion the Paris
firemen are compelled to climb ropes, jump hurdles, balance themselves
in mid-air on frail wooden supports, perform on horizontal bars,
execute a kind of "setting-up" drill en masse, and last, but not least,
climb up one of the walls of the courtyard, holding on by their
finger-tips and the edges of their boots to little crevices in the
wall, and falling, if they should slip, into a pile of sand at the
bottom. In addition to all this they have the regulation hose, ladder,
and life-saving drills of all other fire-departments.
The Paris fire stations are thoroughly up to date in equipment, for we
find them fitted with sliding-poles, swinging-harness, horses kept in
box-stalls within a pole's-length of the harness, automatic
door-openers, and virtually every quick-hitching device for which
American fire-departments are noted. And in addition to steam
fire-engines, aërial ladder-trucks, and hose-wagons--the latter very
much of the same type as those used in this country--there are a great
many automobile fire-engines in service, and quite a few of the
_casernes_, or stations, are equipped entirely with motor-driven
apparatus. There are also several electric fire-engines in use,
practical-looking affairs, carrying a large square tank containing four
hundred gallons of water, which is given the necessary pressure to
reach the top of any of the buildings by means of an ingenious set of
electric pumps placed at the back of the tank. As it only requires a
few men to handle this engine, and the mere throwing over of a lever to
get it under way, it is used at many small fires, and is sometimes the
first and only piece of apparatus to leave a station in answer to an
alarm, for there is no regular "assignment" of engines and
ladder-trucks sent to the alarm-boxes in Paris, as is the case in our
cities, and the operation of their fire-alarm system differs from that
of any other city in the world.
The fire-alarm boxes are large, ornate-looking affairs, placed on the
corners of the principal boulevards and streets and in the public
squares, and directions on the outside of these boxes inform you that,
in addition to breaking the glass door (which automatically transmits
the number of the box to the nearest fire station), you must also use
the telephone inside and give a description of the fire, its character,
size, and location (street number if possible); and it is necessary to
go through all this proceeding before the sending of an alarm is
considered complete. This alarm is received in the alarm- or
"watch-room," of the nearest fire station. There an operator picks up a
telephone receiver and listens for your description of the fire, and he
decides, according to the message received, the number of pieces and
character of the apparatus which is to answer the alarm. For example,
if it is only a small fire--a window-curtain or a chimney--he simply
orders out one piece of apparatus, an electric engine, such as was
described above, or, perhaps, a _fourgon_--a sort of hose-wagon
carrying a squad of men, short ladders, hose, and tools and appliances
of all kinds. If, on the other hand, the call comes from a factory or a
tenement district, where rescue work may be expected, he then sends two
wagon-loads of men and the _grande-echelle_ (aërial ladder-truck), and
if the fire appears dangerous, from the telephoned description, another
ladder-truck and a steam fire-engine, or a motor-engine; but the
engines are rarely used in Paris, as the water-pressure throughout the
city is very fine, sufficient to reach the top of the average building;
and the steamers are only sent out as a precaution, and are seldom put
to work.
The fire-hydrants in Paris, as in every other city in Europe, are of
the "flush" or sunken character, instead of the post-hydrants used in
our cities, and are found in depressed basins in the sidewalk, near the
curb, protected with iron covers; and the location of these hydrants is
carefully indicated by metal signs on the walls of the buildings near
by, which not only point out the exact position of each hydrant, but
tell the amount of water pressure to be found at that outlet--a feature
that our firemen would welcome.
All gas or electricity entering any building in Paris comes partially
under the control of the fire-brigade, and the firemen carry keys on
every piece of apparatus which enables them to open a small metal
plate, always found at a certain spot in the sidewalks, and thus cut
off either the gas or electric service from the building immediately on
their arrival at a fire.
But in addition to this very sensible supervision of the gas and
electric service by the fire-brigade, the Paris firemen have the added
protection in their work of a very effective type of "smoke-helmet," a
device which is also used largely by the fire-brigades of Berlin,
Dresden, Vienna, Milan, and several other cities in Europe. This is a
metal helmet fastening securely around the neck of the fireman wearing
it, and connected by means of an endless hose-pipe, with a portable
air-pump kept out in the street and in charge of a fellow-fireman, who
controls the amount of fresh air reaching the head-piece. It is claimed
that, protected with this device, a fireman can enter a heavily
smoke-charged building and work for quite a while in comparative
comfort. We carry a smoke-helmet on nearly all the fire apparatus in
this country, somewhat similar to the European appliance, but without
the independent air-pump attachment. It is rarely used, however, as our
firemen claim that it is unreliable, and hampers rather than aids them
in their work. But among the foreign firemen the smoke-helmet is
considered a valuable protection, and is used frequently.
Among other interesting appliances which the Paris firemen have found
of great assistance to them in their work there may be mentioned a
portable electric search-light, carried like an ordinary hand-lantern,
fitted with a powerful storage battery, and producing a very intense,
and, of course, a thoroughly safe light. It is used largely for night
work or in dark, smoky cellars. Also a large hand-carried electric fan,
which can be operated by hydraulic power as well as electricity, using
the pressure from the street hydrants for this purpose; and this fan
has been found useful for clearing rooms or hallways of heavy smoke or
poisonous vapors.
Paris, with a population of 2,750,000 souls, has about 1800 fires every
year, and spends, annually, $575,000 to support her fire-brigade, an
organization of some eighteen hundred men which can be turned into the
field as two battalions of infantry at short notice. Therefore this
expenditure might be said to provide two kinds of protection--military
as well as civic. But splendid building laws and equally excellent laws
covering the use and storage of explosives and inflammable materials of
all kinds, have made the work of her firemen a comparatively easy one,
and the large fire is of such rare occurrence in this famous city that
the "French Pompier," using methods which appear very amusing to
American visitors, is enabled to make a most satisfactory yearly
showing to his Minister of War.
In Berlin, and in virtually every other German city, the fire-brigade
is managed upon almost the same general plan as the brigades found in
London and Paris, and the apparatus, in nearly every instance of German
manufacture, is very similar to that used by the English and French
firemen. The men are all husky fellows, well drilled and military in
appearance, and the majority are ex-soldiers, as preference is given to
men who have seen army service in recruiting new members for the
brigade. The fire stations are usually very large, sometimes occupying
as much space as would be covered by an entire block in an American
city, and nearly all of the stations are built in rectangular form,
with a spacious inner court, or drill-yard, in the middle. On one side
of this yard will be found the engines, ladder-trucks, etc., housed in
individual compartments, or barns, and on the other the stables for the
horses; while the upper part of the building on both sides is occupied
as dormitories or lounging-rooms for the men, and quarters for the
officers. Every station has its own fire alarm-bureau, or "watch-room,"
looked after by an officer and two or three operators. The "turnout" in
answer to an alarm in a German fire station is very similar to an
artillery drill, and is performed in the same stiff, almost automatic,
manner, for the brigades are conducted on strict military lines.
The men in these stations are divided into little squads, each
commanded by a petty officer, or _Oberfeuerwehrmann_, as he is called,
and each squad placed in charge of a separate piece of apparatus. When
an alarm strikes in the "watch-room," a bell is started ringing in the
quarters of the men, which sends them clattering down the long flight
of stairs in their heavy leather boots, while they hastily adjust
coats, belts, and helmets. Reaching the yard, each squad breaks up into
two detachments, two men, the driver and his aide, running to the
stable for the horses, the rest for their respective pieces of
apparatus. The doors of the apparatus barns are thrown open, and the
engines, ladder-trucks, and wagons are found standing there with poles
detached, the latter lying on the floor directly under each machine. At
a command given by the petty officer the pole is lifted up, shoved back
in its socket, and the king-pin dropped into place. The men then jump
back to the wheels at each side, and at another command the apparatus
is pushed out into the yard. By this time, the horses, fully harnessed,
have been brought over from the stables by the other two men, and are
backed into position beside the pole, the traces and pole-straps are
locked, and at another command from the petty officer the driver and
the rest of the men jump into their places on top of the apparatus, and
salute the _Brandmeister_, or commanding officer, of the station. This
official, leisurely getting into a six-seated wagon with his associate
officers, then gives the order to "go," and, headed by the wagon
containing the chief and his aides, the procession dashes out through
the arched driveway into the main thoroughfare, thus completing an
exhibition which, when witnessed by Americans, usually provokes a
laugh. And when I add that upon the receipt of an alarm in the
"watch-room" the location of the box is written down on a large yellow
paper blank, bearing the word "Feuer!" at its top; that this blank is
folded carefully and sent down to the apparatus floor by means of a
small hand-lift, or elevator; that it is taken therefrom by the
commanding officer and read deliberately before he steps into his
_feuer-wagon_, it will be seen that the Germans believe in attending to
everything, even a call as urgent as an alarm of fire, in a thoroughly
official and dignified manner. But in Berlin much of this military
detail and pomp has been done away with, and, aided by swinging-harness
and many other quick-hitching devices, the firemen make a more rapid
exit in answer to a call. And once in the streets, they cover the
ground at great speed, for the engines are light and the horses
splendid, and every one, even the Kaiser himself, gives a clear field
to the _Feuerwehr_.
It costs the Berliners, with not quite the population of Paris,
$485,000 a year to maintain their excellent fire-brigade, excellent
because the fire loss in this royal city is hardly more than a fifth of
that in New York. But much of this remarkably low loss in the German
capital is due to the careful work of the brigade in preventing any
damage to property other than that caused by the actual extinguishment
of the fire. As an example of the conscientious way in which the Berlin
firemen attend to their labors, it may be explained that, at fires in
the residential districts, where it is found possible to confine the
fire to some one room, tarpaulins, or waterproof covers, are spread
over the stairs and through the halls before the hose is brought into
the house, and no windows are broken unless absolutely necessary. When
our buildings are all as excellent as theirs, and our citizens are all
working as harmoniously together to prevent fire, we may find it safe
to adopt some of the deliberate and careful methods of the German
firemen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DUTCH CHEESES
BY H. M. SMITH
Among the daintiest and best of the numerous kinds of foreign and
domestic cheeses that may be bought in nearly every American city and
town, are the small round cheeses with red or yellow coats which come
to our markets from Holland. The ancient town of Edam, on the shore of
the Zuyder Zee, has given its name to this product, and almost
everywhere in America we ask for Edam cheese when we want this
particular kind; but while Edam produces Edam cheese, this sleepy
little town long ago ceased to hold a high place in the cheese world,
and neighboring towns now monopolize the trade in this article, which
holds a leading place in the farm products of Holland.
The most extensive and celebrated of the cheese-markets is that of
Alkmaar, which has the commercial advantage of being located on a
railroad as well as on the North Holland Canal. Every visitor to the
Netherlands should arrange to spend at least one day at Alkmaar, easily
reached from Amsterdam or Haarlem.
In Dutch history, Alkmaar is celebrated for its successful defense when
besieged by the Spaniards in 1573, but in modern times it has been
noted for its cheese trade, which is now its principal attraction.
The market is held every Friday; but in order to observe all of its
features, a visitor should go to Alkmaar the day before, and see the
preliminary preparations. The market-place is a large stone-paved space
in the open air, with business houses on three sides, a canal on the
fourth side, and a weigh-house at one end. During Thursday the dairymen
from the surrounding country arrive with their families and their
cheeses, coming in carts, wagons, and canal-boats; and by the afternoon
of that day, there is a great bustle, which continues far into the
evening.
Throughout the night bands of young peasants, both men and women,
parade the streets of Alkmaar, singing and skylarking; and cheese-carts
continue to arrive and clatter along the stony streets, so that little
sleep is possible for the residents and visitors.
An essential part of the cheese-market is the official weigh-house,
which was built more than three centuries ago, out of an already
existing church. Its shapely clock-tower has moving figures of horsemen
in a tourney, and a beautiful set of chimes, one of whose airs is the
well-known wedding march from Wagner's "Lohengrin." In the main room on
the ground floor are four huge balances which, before the opening of
the market, are carefully adjusted with much ceremony by an official in
silk hat and frock-coat.
When the cheeses are on their way to market from the farms, they are
handled with great care, so as to prevent bruising or crushing; and
whether in wagons or boats, they are arranged in layers separated by
light boards. As the wagons and boats arrive at the market-place,
spaces are assigned to them, and the unloading begins, the cheeses
being arranged in regular square or oblong piles on pieces of canvas,
with narrow walks between. The size of the piles depends on the number
of cheeses the individual farmers have to dispose of, but usually the
piles are eight to ten cheeses wide, thirty to fifty long, and always
two layers deep. At the market attended by the writer, the largest pile
contained nine hundred cheeses.
The unloading of the wagons and boats is one of the most interesting
sights of the market. Standing in a wagon or boat, one man takes a
cheese in each hand and throws them to another man, sitting or kneeling
on the ground, who arranges the cheeses in regular piles. Long practice
has made the farmers very skilful in tossing and catching; the cheeses
go through the air in pairs as though tied together, and may be thrown
as far as thirty feet. During very active times, the yellow balls are
flying thickly in all directions.
As soon as a farmer has arranged his stock of cheeses, he covers the
piles with canvas, and often also with rush mats, grass, or straw, in
order to protect them from sun or rain, and to prevent the drying of
the surface. Before the sale, the venders liberally anoint the cheeses
with oil to make them look fresh and inviting.
Shortly before ten o'clock a large number of aged porters meet in a
room of the weigh-house, and soon emerge dressed in scrupulously clean
white trousers and shirts, with black slippers and straw hats. The hats
are of blue, green, yellow, red, or other bright colors, with ribbons
of the same shade hanging down behind; and the men wearing the same
colors work together in pairs.
Promptly as the clock in the weigh-house tower strikes the hour of ten,
the cheese-market formally opens. The covers are removed from the piles
of cheeses, and the whole market-place literally bursts into bloom.
Sales are preceded by much bargaining, and the cheeses are felt,
smelled, and tasted. When a price is agreed upon for a particular lot,
the buyer and the seller clasp hands; and then, the half-hour having
struck, the porters begin their labors, which consist in carrying to
the weigh-house loads of cheeses on sled-like trays suspended from
their shoulders by long straps, receiving a check from the master of
the scales, and returning their certified fares to the owners, who thus
have a basis for determining the aggregate weight and value of each lot
sold.
So rapidly do the selling and weighing proceed that by eleven o'clock
the market is virtually over. Then the cheeses are removed to the
warehouses of the purchasing merchants, the farmers depart in their
boats and wagons, and when the grand noonday burst of the chimes comes
the Alkmaar cheese-market exists only as a memory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A GEOGRAPHY CITY "COME ALIVE"
BY LINDAMIRA HARBESON
During the Great War, when the armies of Europe were trying to beat
their way into Constantinople, this city, which once had been to us
merely a black dot in our geographies, suddenly became very real. We
used to know it as a point somewhere in the lower right-hand corner of
the map, where Europe is separated from Asia by several annoying little
bodies of water that were so hard for us to remember. But when I tell
you that I ate a bag of peanuts while going in a ferry-boat to
Constantinople from Scutari, the little Asiatic village just opposite,
you will understand the width of the Bosporus better, perhaps, than
your geography can tell you.
The photograph presents a good general view of the city as seen from
the Galata side; and shows clearly Santa Sophia and the Golden Horn
which divides in two parts this ancient and famous metropolis of the
Ottoman Empire. From the roof of the American College buildings, which
are on a hill in Scutari, we can look directly across toward the mouth
of the Golden Horn.
Stamboul is the old part of the city, where many different peoples have
dwelt--first Greeks, then Romans, now Turks, and you can still see by a
bit of a house or an old wall how these people lived. Galata is where
English, French, Italians, and Germans carry on their business in
Turkey, and where the big boats unload their cargoes. Between Galata
and Stamboul is one of the most famous and most crowded bridges in the
world. Pera is where most of the Europeans live.
Constantinople is indeed like the fairy city in the Arabian Nights to
which the poor brothers are whisked away on a carpet--a dream city on
the edge of the water--a city of lavender-blue domes, and minarets that
seem to reach to the sky. We are just aware of the little houses
straggling up the hill or dipping their feet in the water. The maze of
houses and the mosques are veiled in a light blue haze, just as if the
city, like the women, had to wear the _yachmak_, or head-covering. Off
beyond is the glistening Sea of Marmora, and near by, the dazzling blue
waters of the Bosporus dotted with little black boats. The city
stretches on farther up the shore, and just beyond are the wooded
hills. At the foot of one of them, on the very edge of the water, is
the long low white marble palace of the sultan--Dolmah Bagtché it is
called, which means "walled-in garden."
Everybody who is young must love Constantinople. It is so full of color
and soft musical sounds that one is sure something unexpected and
wonderful will happen any moment. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, can be
seen so many different types of people as on Galata Bridge. Let us pay
ten paras--a little over one cent--and go on the bridge; we shall see
and hear more than a dollar's worth. There go modern Turkish gentlemen
dressed like our fathers, but wearing fezzes instead of hats. A fez is
made of soft red felt and has no brim; from the top hangs a black silk
tassel. Here come old-fashioned Turkish gentlemen with bent shoulders
and flowing beards. They wear soft padded overcoats of many colors, and
each is sure to have on a ring set with a beautiful stone that he keeps
turned toward the inside of his hand. There are some priests with white
scarfs round their fezzes; here are others with green ones, because
they have been to Mecca, where every pious Turk wants to go before he
dies. There are whirling dervishes in brown overcoats, and tall brown
hats shaped like chicken croquettes. Have you ever heard of dervishes?
They are priests who perform a peculiar ceremony in their religious
houses. They take off their brown overcoats and dance in green or white
costumes that have full pleated skirts. They spin round and round on
their tiptoes, accompanied by strange music, while the chiefs of the
order sit cross-legged on the floor and watch them.
Then there may pass a Tartar pilgrim all in white from the interior of
Asiatic Turkey, or a Persian in gray with a Persian-lamb fez, or a
fierce Kurd. The last is a soldier, and wears a brown hood with a long
end knotted round his head. Since the Balkan War, when many Kurds were
in Constantinople on their way to the army, the little Turkish girls
have worn the same sort of hood of soft colors and fabrics. On the
bridge, too, may be seen the shrouded Turkish ladies, who move silently
along like black ghosts. They wear the _tcharchaf_--the modern Turkish
dress which includes a veil over the face; old-fashioned women of the
poorer class still wear the soft white yachmak that covers the head but
not the face. And then, too, there are the _hamals_--wild peasants from
the interior--who do the fetching and carrying. They wear little caps
and bright sashes, and have on their backs a kind of saddle on which
they put anything from a bag of flour to a piano. They walk faster than
the rest and sing "_Dustur_, _dustur_," which means "Get out of the
road." If we are very lucky, we shall see a string of camels with their
noses in the air, and on their humps lovely faded blue and red
saddle-bags. They are usually led by a donkey, and with them is a
camel-driver of most fetching appearance. The camels are so big and
shaggy and out of place that we pinch ourselves to see if we are really
awake.
[Illustration: View of Constantinople from the Galata side]
Now let us go wandering about the old city. The narrow, silent streets
are paved with cobblestones, and lined with houses that have never been
painted, but have been colored by the sun, the rain, and the wind. Some
of them are overgrown with wistaria vines that cross from one side of
the street to the other and frame the big shut front door.
One fine day I lifted the knocker on one of these doors when calling on
a Turkish family I knew. The door was opened silently, and I found
myself in a tiny garden full of flowers. No matter how small his house,
the Turk always has a bit of a garden. If he is rich, he has it on a
hill from which he can see the Bosporus. The garden I visited opened
from a bricked hall. We went up the stairs and were greeted by the
ladies of the family more courteously and gracefully than I ever have
been greeted anywhere else. I wish I could describe for you the Turkish
salutation. It is as hard to acquire as a foreign accent. As she bows,
a lady makes a downward sweep with her arm, then raises her hand, palm
upward, to her heart and lips. This means, "I am at your service; my
heart is yours; the words that I speak are in your favor."
I was taken into a room all windows. The Turk loves windows as he loves
gardens--windows that look over the water. All around the room were
bright-colored _sedias_,--low hard couches,--which are, however, very
comfortable to sit or lie upon. In the middle of the room on a brass
tray was a big brazier containing live coals, on which the daughter of
the house soon made Turkish coffee. Besides gardens and windows, the
Turk loves coffee--his own peculiar kind that you must taste some day
along with the other goodies. This is the way it was made for me: Into
a brass coffee-maker, which looks like a pitcher with a long handle,
were put one sugar lump and one coffee-cupful of water. When this had
boiled, one teaspoonful of finely powdered Turkish coffee, taken from a
china egg on the tray, was put into the water. This mixture was allowed
to come to a boil three times and then poured, the pitcher being held a
foot from the cup so that there would be foam on the coffee. I tried to
drink it in the really Turkish way, holding the saucer with the cup to
my lips. If you try it, you will see how _hard_ it is to do this
_easily_!
A little sister showed us her drawing-book, in which she had begun at
the back and worked toward the front. The Turkish children recite their
lessons all together in the old-fashioned schools, and if you could
hear them, you would think that you had gone into _Wonderland_ with
_Alice_ where "things wouldn't come straight." The little girls go to
school in groups, and with them is always an old servant who carries
all their books on what looks for all the world like a small
clothes-tree. The boys go and come in two long lines, attended by their
teacher. They carry their own books and wear long trousers and fezzes
exactly like those of their fathers. Some of the tiny girls carry their
own little tables and drawing-boards. In the gipsy village in Scutari
the children learn their lessons by songs in the street. They stand in
a circle with a big girl in the middle, and they grow noisier and
noisier the more interested they become. These little girls wear
_shelvars_, which look like little trousers gathered in at the ankle. I
tried to take a picture of a little girl in an orange-colored pair and
of a boy in a wrapper and fez, but they were frightened and ran away
crying.
Now I must tell you about the Turkish shops--the really Turkish ones.
Most of them are about the size of a spider's parlor and have no front
wall, so you see the wares can be temptingly displayed to the
passer-by. You see in one of our pictures a shop where all kinds of
blankets and scarfs are sold. The scarfs are especially useful: if you
are a man, you can wind one around your fez or your waist; if you are a
lady, you can wear it indoors as a shawl, sash, or scarf; or, if it is
the right kind, a little girl can wear it to school on her head. You
don't know which one to choose when they are tossed down in front of
you--a riotous mingling of reds, browns, oranges, golds, and yellows.
Another fascinating shop is a bead-shop. Most of them are together on
the bead street. There you may see displayed all kinds of strings of
beads--long and short, large and small beads, red, yellow, and blue, of
amber, meerschaum, and olive-wood. The Turkish gentlemen carry the
short strings, and, when they chat, they play with the beads,
unconsciously, but always in the same way. They move them forward with
the thumb and first finger, two at a time, one from each side of the
string. When all have been moved, they turn the string about and move
the beads in the opposite direction.
Then there is the rug-shop. The Turkish rug-merchant offers you tea or
coffee and cigarettes, as he hopes you will spend much money. And while
you drink, he throws down before you rugs, rugs, rugs, soft, rich,
alluring, from Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Persia.
But you, I am sure, would prefer a candy-shop. Even if you have tasted
our Turkish paste, you have only a remote idea of how succulent a goody
the real _loukoumi_ is. Then there is _halva_, full of nuts and all
sorts of other good things which you can never guess. It is sticky,
and, when you bite it, it nearly pulls your teeth out. Then there are
_courabiés_ and _smits_, both of which are cakes which you must buy on
a ferry-boat to get the real flavor. A man comes in, carrying a basket
in one hand and waving a sheet of paper in the other. The _courabiés_
are stuck to this paper and you pull them off yourself. The _smits_ are
on a stick which protrudes from the top of the basket. For you must
know that a _smit_ is shaped like a doughnut. (Only the hole has grown
larger without affecting the size of the eatable part. This part is not
sweet and is covered with aniseed.)
It would make your mouth water if I should tell you of all the
delectable dishes you might have in the cafés all over the city. The
Turk loves to eat, he loves to sit, and he loves to stare at his
garden, at his beloved Bosporus, or at space. They never say in Turkey,
"Where do you live?" but always, "Where do you sit?" In spring and
autumn the hills about Constantinople are dotted with spots of color.
They are the Turkish men and women sitting on the grass. And what a
wonderful view they look at! There they sit for hours and hours,
usually silent, occasionally chatting, sometimes grunting "_Uh, uh, uh,
uh_," in descending tones.
The chief other thing a Turk does in times of peace is to pray. From
the gallery of a minaret the muezzin calls him to prayer five times a
day. Do you know what a minaret is? It is the tower of the Turkish
church, or mosque. Mosques built by royalty may have two minarets,
others only one. These minarets are slender, very tall, with a
gracefully pointed top that draws the eye right up to the sky. There is
a Turkish proverb that says, "Never steal a minaret unless you have a
place to hide it in." Two thirds of the way up, there is a carved
gallery, very light and beautiful, where the priest stands and chants
down through the air the call to prayer, which in English prose is
this: "There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is His Prophet; let us go
and pray; let us go save our souls; God is great; there is no god but
God." A pious Turk either goes to the mosque, or prays wherever he may
happen to be. I once saw a soldier praying on a ferry-boat. Inside the
mosques the cooing of many pigeons adds to the rhythmic murmur of the
prayers. There are pigeons inside and outside of all the mosques; one,
of which a picture is here shown, is called the Pigeon Mosque.
The most famous mosque of all is Santa Sophia, once a Christian church
as you can tell by its name, built by the Byzantine Greeks about 300
A. D. It is yellow, weathered by time, is very big and on top of a hill.
Inside, it is a dark golden-brown, and the pigeons flying around under
the roof seem to be far, far above you. The rugs on the floor are all
on a slant because the church was built originally with the altar
toward the east; later the Moslems made it face toward Mecca, southeast
of Constantinople. No Turk ever walks on those rugs with his shoes
on,--he leaves them at the door or carries them in his hand,--and
before he comes in to pray, he washes his feet and hands at the
fountain outside, no matter how cold the water or the weather.
Fountains are everywhere in Constantinople, made of white marble and
exquisitely carved.
Constantinople has been famous in history ever since the legend that
Leander died in swimming the Hellespont, the old name of the
Dardanelles. Nations have quarreled over it, because it is one of the
most wonderfully situated cities in the world, and Constantine the
Great made it the capital of his huge empire. You will study all that
in Roman history if you have not studied it already, and will read also
of its capture by the Turks, under Mohammed the Conqueror, nearly five
hundred years ago.
The history of the Ottoman Empire makes the most exciting fairy tale
seem colorless. Perhaps you do not know that, when Henry the Eighth
of England and Francis the First of France were forming a
mutual-admiration society of their two kingdoms on the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, there was another king, as great as either of them, in
the southeast of Europe, carving great pieces out of other countries
for his empire. This sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a great
lawgiver. His reign was the height of Turkey's power. Soon after its
close the rest of Europe became interested in Turkey, especially
Russia and England. Recently, German influence has been stronger than
any other at the Turkish court. That is why Turkey fought on the side
of Germany, and why England and France determined to storm the forts
and brave the mines in the water entrances to Constantinople and so
open up a way to the Mediterranean for their great ally, Russia.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GIANT AND THE GENIE
BY GEORGE FREDERIC STRATTON
Far up on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, in Washington, is a waterfall
which, according to the legend, was inhabited by a giant of enormous
strength--Menuhkesen by name. From out of the East there came a genie
possessed of such courage and audacity that when he was warned against
the terrible powers of Menuhkesen he laughed lustily and said that he
would call forth the surly giant and make him do his bidding. Summoning
his afrits, he gave them orders, and they immediately surrounded the
falls, some of them peering through strange instruments and making
mysterious signs with their hands, while others measured distances and
drove stakes, bearing weird symbols, into the river banks.
Then the genie stood on the bank overlooking the falls and shouted:
"Ho, afrits! Dig me here a deep hole!" And immediately they went to
work with great activity. When they had dug down a hundred feet, the
genie commanded them to tunnel under the falls. "We will unearth this
giant and prove his strength!" he cried defiantly.
So they dug a tunnel until they reached a great mass of rock underneath
the brink of the falls; and here they hewed out a huge cavern, and
carried into it strange machines and many wheels, fastening them all
strongly. And they hung wires from those machines, stringing them a
long distance through dense woods and across ghostly ravines to where
many men lived and worked. When all was ready the genie grasped a great
lever and shouted, "Ho, Menuhkesen! Come forth now, and get busy!"
Then he pressed down the lever, and instantly the spirit sprang out of
the falls, and leaping upon a wire, rushed along it with such swiftness
that no one could see him. The next moment he was many miles away,
performing marvelous feats of strength--pushing great street-cars at
incredible speed, turning the wheels in mills and factories, and
lighting stores and dwellings. In fact, he did whatever the genie
ordered him to do, without an instant's delay or any demur.
All over these big, resourceful United States, Menuhkesen is found, but
the modern captains of industry call him "Electricity." The genii also
are with us, graduates of technical colleges or of engineering
departments of great factories, who, donning khaki clothes and
high-laced leather boots, camp out in the wild mountain fastnesses, or
on the weird deserts, or in the dense forests, and invoke the giants
they meet everywhere in this wonderful country.
But it is the western mountain regions which chiefly hold the romance,
the tragedy, and the gigantic power of the mythical old giant. All up
and down the Rockies and the Sierras, and in the network of stupendous
mountains which cross the five or six hundred miles between, are
mountain torrents tearing down from summits perhaps two or three
thousand feet high to the valleys below. Some of them are very small in
appearance, but possessed of tremendous force.
Let us trace one of these and discover the giant. We hike, or ride a
sure-footed horse, six miles up one of the somber gashes in the
mountains, called cañons, arriving at the origin of a stream we have
seen growing smaller as we ascended. We find a little spring gushing
from beneath a huge boulder and trickling down through the ferns and
brush. Soon it is joined by other little streams on the right or left.
Presently, as we stumble along down the rocky trail, we see on one side
a wide, deep gulch, with walls of sandstone or granite rising almost
perpendicularly on either side. And that gulch has snow lying in it,
perhaps forty feet deep--the drifts of last winter or slides from the
slopes above it.
The snow may then have been sixty or a hundred feet deep, but now, in
midsummer, it is dwindling fast, and its water doubles or triples the
size of our little stream. Suddenly we see that the wild, rocky,
torrent bed has been cleaned out, and that the banks are lined up with
rock. The genie has been giving orders.
A few rods farther that torrent bed gives place to a timber flume; and
the next moment that flume, instead of keeping on the sharply sloping
floor of the cañon, rises on trestles, holding an almost level
position. The trestle increases in height as the ground beneath them
slopes downward, and cross a deep gulch, still holding the little
torrent running between the wooden walls of the flume.
From our trail beneath we see the flume now skirting round the waist of
some stupendous mountain, then crossing other gulches, and soon
appearing on the summit of a peak, eight hundred feet above where we
are standing. Below, at the foot of that peak, is a small, plain, stone
building, and, wriggling down from the summit, is, apparently, a huge
black snake, poking its nose into the basement of that house.
The house holds the generators for turning the force of that torrent
into electricity. The snake is the penstock--a great black steel pipe,
twisting and turning to avoid the huge boulders in its path as it
conducts that water from the summit into the turbines in the house.
The turbine is an enclosed water-wheel in which every particle of force
in the rushing water is used to turn a great steel shaft. On the other
end of that shaft is geared the generator--the wonderful machine with
wire-wound arms which makes the electric current. At this particular
power-house the little torrent which reaches the summit in a flume
thirty inches wide and two feet deep turns out 800 horse-power.
It is the force, not the size, of the stream which gives that power,
for water has a pressure of about fifty pounds per square inch for
every hundred feet of the height of its source. So this water has a
pressure at the turbine of four hundred pounds per square inch--a far
greater pressure than that in the cylinders of a great Mogul mountain
locomotive.
The little stream, freed from the turbines, whirls furiously round a
small basin and rollicks off on a wild, headlong dash through an open
sluiceway for a short distance. Then another flume arrests it; and as
we hike along down the trail, that flume rises above us, straddling
gulches on high trestles, and at two points tunneling through a great
mountain.
We get back to the mouth of the cañon, and there see, on the level we
have then reached, another power-house, larger than the first. Behind
it is another huge, bare mountain of rock; and coming down that,
another gigantic black snake, also poking its head into the
power-house. This snake--or penstock--is 1600 feet long, and the same
stream which developed 800 horse-power at the upper house is now--with
the addition of a little water picked up on the way--reeling off 2600
horse-power at this house.
This imprisoned, raging torrent is now released, and flows in a
subdued, gentle stream down a natural stream-bed. It is less than eight
feet wide and not deep enough to wet our horses' knees as we ford
across. But we gaze upon it with the awe and amazement it deserves when
we remember that, but a few moments before, it has sent its great power
over eleven miles of wire to a small town, is operating several
factories, and will, at night, light all the streets and the houses.
And that is only half its work! Before us is a great stretch of
orchards and fields, vividly green, although they have not had one drop
of water from the heavens for three or four months. All their health
and vigor and wonderful productivity is due to that little stream,
which irrigates over three thousand acres of the land.
Within twenty miles of where this is written, at the foot of the great
Wasatch Mountains, in Utah, are five such cañons with power-houses--two
of them with two houses in each cañon. All over this mountain country,
from the middle of Utah to the Canadian line, are hundreds of such
mountain torrents, only a small proportion of which are yet harnessed
for work.
Some of them are very much larger than the one we have visited. Come
with me to one of these larger houses.
It is in a cañon of awful sublimity, so deep and so nearly
unapproachable that the construction teams had to haul over eight miles
of zigzag trail to make the descent of less than half a mile to the
torrent. We scramble down over the rocks and brush; and although the
roar of the water reaches us for ten or fifteen minutes before we see
it, we are by no means prepared for the astounding scene when it at
last comes into view.
Out from the depths of the great ugly building belch forth four
gleaming, horizontal columns of water, big as barrels, with a force,
speed, and roar as though the discharge were from giant cannon.
Straight across the tail-race they gleam and quiver for a hundred feet,
impinging upon a solid ledge of granite, in which they have worn huge
caverns. The spray dashes up the face of the ledge for sixty or seventy
feet. Up and down the stream, swirling and writhing in a thousand
rushing, crowding whirlpools, the water, just freed from its maddening
confinement, is seeking to make good its escape. But it is jammed back
into the upper race, and for fifty yards you will see it hanging, ledge
upon ledge, fighting, snarling, surging, and struggling for its chance
to slip beneath those terrific outlet volleys and gain the lower stream
and liberty and peace.
The mighty Niagara has no such background of wild beauty, nor does it
ever convey such an instant impression of water force. Once I saw a big
two-inch plank dropped into one of those furious water columns. It
seemed scarcely to touch the water, but flew, faster than the eye could
follow, over to the granite ledge and was instantly smashed into ten
thousand splinters, and I knew that even before the plank had reached
the ledge, the mighty power which hurled it, transmuted into
electricity, had already reached, and was operating, street-cars in a
city seventy miles away.
Come into the power-house. Look at the four gigantic generators,
whirling and humming like leviathan June-bugs--see the wicked,
sputtering little blue sparks from the commutators. From the windows at
the back of the building we look up a very sharp slope, 1500 feet high,
and see the penstocks--twenty-four-inch steel tubes, black, ungainly,
and, at twilight, very uncanny. They follow in curves the profile of
the rough ground, bringing the furious rush of water from the summit
down to the turbines in the lower basement, turning out 26,000
horse-power.
The force of the water in these penstocks is terrific. Tests of a
four-inch jet from one of them have been made. A rifle-bullet glances
off as from chilled steel; a jet from it, no bigger than a penholder,
will drill a hole in sheet steel in a few moments. At the reservoir on
the summit a fly-line may be played in the water--at the foot of the
penstock no mortal could thrust a bayonet one inch into it.
A United States trooper once essayed, on a wager, to cut a two-inch jet
with his sword; a shattered weapon and a broken wrist resulted.
In the harnessing and curbing of these mountain streams the utmost
engineering skill and ingenuity has been called into play. Often the
power-house has to be situated miles back in such inaccessible wilds
that the greatest difficulty has been encountered in carrying machinery
and supplies to the spot. At one point in the Sierras men and material
were transported across two yawning chasms by means of wire cables,
under which ran a freight-carrier.
The Feather River in California makes a big horseshoe bend twenty-five
miles above Oroville, coming within three miles of itself again. An
enormous mountain intervenes, but the engineers tunneled that and
diverted the water into that tunnel. In the lower end of that black,
rushing, underground torrent are placed the great turbines and
generators.
The most striking instance of the results of securing a big headway for
a small stream is shown in San Juan County, Colorado. The Animus River
in its course between Silverton and Durango, a distance of twenty
miles, has a gradual fall of about fifteen hundred feet. Although
called a river, it is but a mountain stream, tumbling over little falls
and through rock-strewn gullies, at no point showing more power than
would be sufficient to drive a very small grist-mill. But the genius of
science has so cunningly diverted it and concentrated its energy as to
develop at last 40,000 horse-power.
A dam was built a few miles below Silverton, and the water turned into
a flume which is only six by eight feet in size. It will be seen that
it must be a very small stream whose waters can be run through such a
restricted channel. Across fearful cañons and around great mountains,
through tunnels and cuttings that flume carries the water for sixteen
miles to the edge of a great cliff near Durango. The cliff is over one
thousand feet high, and the pipe runs over the edge and makes a
perpendicular drop into the power-house below.
From the four-foot steel pipe, nozzles five-eighths of an inch in
diameter conduct the water into the turbines, whirling them at a speed
of four thousand revolutions per minute. The speed of the jets of water
shooting from those nozzles is 25,000 feet, or over four miles per
minute.
Note how the wizards of industry further concentrate and control the
giant they have evoked. That forty-thousand horse-power making that
mighty plunge over the cliff is met by magical machines and switched
into a wire but little larger than a lead-pencil. Forty feet of that
unyielding steel flume which held the power is a load for a freight
car; forty feet of the wire which carries the power is but a small load
for a six-year-old boy.
At one moment the power is in that roaring, headlong, terrific
plunge--the next, it is miles away, invisible, noiseless, and
mysterious, illuminating great arc-lamps, running heavy cars, and--to
come from great to small--whirling dainty fans or cooking an egg.
There are other marvelous power-plants situated on rivers where,
although the force is far less than that of the mountain torrents, the
volume of water is far greater. Idaho shows the most remarkable of the
developments of such water-power, and the astounding ingenuity and
determination of the genii are shown as much as in the mountains. The
Bear River, which runs through Idaho and Utah, carries a very large
flow at an exceedingly rapid rate--for a river. At one point in Idaho
no less than six great power-houses have been installed on that river,
producing a total of nearly 200,000 horse-power. In order to secure
good headway, and the force which this gives, two enormous pipe-lines
have been built to take the water from upper reaches of the river, and,
while holding that pipe almost to a level, run it across country to a
lower reach, where a power-house is built, thus increasing the headway
from nothing to two or three hundred feet.
One of these lines is of eleven-foot pipe, nearly five miles long; the
other is a sixteen-foot pipe, half a mile long. Almost all of the
current produced at these plants is transmitted by cable to Salt Lake
City, 135 miles away.
It has been said by expert engineers of electrical development that it
will be but a short time before the intermountain region will use no
coal, that all smoke-stacks and chimneys will be abolished and
electricity furnish all the power, heat, and light not only to cities
and towns, but to farming communities.
We are on the way. There are some districts now where villages, towns,
and farms all use electricity for power and for lighting and cooking.
This is notably so in Rupert, Idaho, the home of the famous electric
high school, described in "St. Nicholas" in September, 1913.
All through that town the lighting and cooking in even the humblest
homes is by electricity. The few small factories use no coal or
steam-power. In the mountain region over one hundred cities, towns, and
rural communities have electric wires in their houses. All are lighted
by them and very many have thrown out coal ranges and cook by
electricity.
The region is one of mines everywhere, some of them the largest in the
world; and nearly all of them have discarded their gigantic steam-,
hoisting-, and pumping-engines for electric motors. There is, it is
asserted, more than enough water-power running to waste to do every
particle of work now done by steam, horses, and men and women in the
region, from impelling the enormous sixteen-wheeled mountain Moguls to
rocking the babies' cradles by motor.
Across the northern part of Idaho and Montana, over a wicked country of
mountains and cañons, the western division of the Chicago, Milwaukee,
and St. Paul Railroad runs all its trains by electricity, as you have
read in your last month's number of "St. Nicholas," while farther
south, across Utah and Colorado, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad
Company completed its plans three years ago for the electrification of
its road to Denver; but the scheme of the kaiser to lick the world in
ninety days failing, material became too costly to warrant the change
from steam to electricity.
But the power is ready or could quickly be made ready. Every year the
two great companies which have been formed by the consolidation of
numerous small owners of power-plants, are building dams and reservoirs
and flumes, getting ready for the not far distant day when
steam-engines will have to be looked for in the Museum of Antiques and
Curiosities in Salt Lake City.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUT IN THE BIG-GAME COUNTRY
BY CLARENCE H. ROWE
In the big-game country! Is there a healthy, red-blooded American boy
who does not feel a thrill of excitement at the thought? In spite of
our civilization, there is, in many, a lingering thrill in the very
thought of the chase, handed down through a long line of ancestry
dating back to the time when the chase meant food rather than sport.
The stage setting for big game is perfect. In the sheep country of
Wyoming or the deer country of Colorado it is at an altitude of from
nine to thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, where the air is clear
and crisp with the tang of winter, the huge stretches of wild open
country lying like a picture at one's feet. Could anything be more
beautiful and invigorating?
A reconnoitering-point will sometimes reveal a view of almost a hundred
miles. Across a gulch of some twenty miles the distant buttresses of
red sandstone rock are painted with slashes of golden copper, the
somber pines straggling almost to the top, interwoven with the delicate
tracery of the quaking asps, now beautifully colored by the frosts. At
our feet nestles a "park" (as the valleys are called), and possibly a
silvery thread of water winds in and out. Nature paints with a full,
rich palette in this glorious Western country! The skies rival those of
Italy in depth, and, while possibly a bit more crude in raw color, are,
for this very reason, more in keeping with the broad, vigorous
landscape.
In the big-game country everything is big--not only the game, but the
mountains, the valleys, and the people. Small statures bred in these
surroundings expand and broaden--it is only natural.
All this seems far removed from the subject of elk, Rocky Mountain
sheep, and bear, but to every true sportsman these constitute fully one
half of the game.
The Rocky Mountain sheep are by far the most majestic and dignified of
the animals of this locality. They are fond of the rock-studded
mountain-sides, and often a huge sentinel ram, silhouetted against the
sky, will reveal the feeding-place of a group of ewes and lambs. The
task now, if one is fortunate enough to be to the windward of him, is,
after tethering your horse, to work slowly and carefully to within
range, usually from two to four hundred yards. Distances out there are
most deceptive, owing to the clear, rarefied air, and an object that
seems to be a few hundred yards distant may prove to be almost a mile.
Elk come next, and the lucky hungry hunter who has bagged his
"six-point" buck would need more space than at my command to tell how
he did it.
Antelope surpass both sheep and elk for timidity. They are extremely
wary and possibly the most difficult of all game to get within range.
They are found in the lower and open country.
Underlying all the hopes and expectations in the hunter's mind is the
thought of _bear_, and of course first of these stands the grizzly.
These are getting scarcer every year, and most of us, if we _must_ get
a bear, will have to be content with a yearling or a two-year-old black
bear. There is no special country for them. As a rule, in the summer
and fall they come down in the low parks to feast on the berries.
Toward winter they are more likely to be found higher up the slopes.
After the first snow an occasional raid on the highest and loneliest
ranches is looked upon by Bruin as "the thing." At one of the ranches
nestling at the foot of Mount Evans in Colorado, miles away from any
other habitation, a rancher put a cow-bell on each of his horses when
turned loose, thinking to frighten the bears. Bruin had a penchant for
the frisky little colts gamboling about the mountain-side and thought
it quite neighborly to chase the whole herd, mares and all,
helter-skelter down to the ranch. It was quite common for the rancher
to be aroused at night by the clanging of bells and the clatter of
hoofs as the horses scampered into the corral.
Sheep, elk, and bear all go above the timber-line. The height of this
line varies in different sections; ten thousand to ten thousand five
hundred feet is an average.
A good wiry horse that isn't gun-shy and will allow packing the game
back to camp is a necessity, for often a bag is made too far from camp
for a regular pack-animal to bring in.
Above all, in the confusion of getting together the regular camp
outfit, don't forget to slip a paper of trout flies and line into the
duffle bag. The little streams winding through the parks will reward an
hour's casting with half a dozen or so delicious mountain trout running
from six to ten inches in length. They are small, but make up in
quality and flavor. When the hunt is over, we take our parting look at
the grim old mountains, so silent and peaceful, and wend our way back
to civilization, happy and humble in the overpowering glory and majesty
of what the natives call "God's own country."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber's Notes
Possible printer errors have been silently changed; proper nouns have
been standardised; other non-standard spelling has been retained.
Italic text in the original is shown with _underscores_.
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