text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/260

 saying is, for he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?

"Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher. "Make me a surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels. Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs' mechanical toys! Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a hot-box is! Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't know what ye carry jack-screws for? You're too innocent to be left alone with your own tender. Oh, you—you flatcar!"

There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and .007 nearly blistered his paint off with pure mortification.

"A hot-box," began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as though they were coal, "a hotbox is the penalty exacted from inexperience by haste. Ahem!"

"Hot-box!" said the Jersey Suburban. "It 's the price you pay for going on the tear. It 's years since I 've had one. It 's a disease that don't attack shorthaulers, as a rule."

"We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania," said the Consolidation. "They get 'em in New York—same as nervous prostration."

"Ah, go home on a ferry-boat," said the Mogul. "You think because you use worse grades than our road 'u'd allow, you 're a kind of Alleghany angel. Now, I 'll tell you what you . . . Here 's my folk. Well, I can't stop. See you later, perhaps."

He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/260


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/261

 swung like a man-of-war in a tideway, till he picked up his track. "But as for you, you pea-green swiveling' coffee-pot (this to .007'), you go out and learn something before you associate with those who've made more mileage in a week than you 'll roll up in a year. Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate-that 's me! S' long."

"Split my tubes if that 's actin' polite to a new member o' the Brotherhood," said Poney. "There wasn't any call to trample on ye like that. But manners was left out when Moguls was made. Keep up your fire, kid, an' burn your own smoke. 'Guess we 'll all be wanted in a minute."

Men were talking rather excitedly in the roundhouse. One man, in a dingy jersey, said that he hadn't any locomotives to waste on the yard. Another man, with a piece of crumpled paper in his hand, said that the yard-master said that he was to say that if the other man said anything, he (the other man) was to shut his head. Then the other man waved his arms, and wanted to know if he was expected to keep locomotives in his hip-pocket. Then a man in a black Prince Albert, without a collar, came up dripping, for it was a hot August night, and said that what he said went; and between the three of them the locomotives began to go, too—first the Compound; then the Consolidation; then .007.

Now, deep down in his fire-box, .007 had cherished a hope that as soon as his trial was done, he would be led forth with songs and shoutings, and attached to a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer, under charge of a bold

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/261


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/60

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/60


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/262

 and noble engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over him, and call him his Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where he was built used to read wonderful stories of railroad life, and .007 expected things to happen as he had heard.) But there did not seem to be many vestibuled fliers in the roaring, rumbling, electric-lighted yards, and his engineer only said:

"Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on to this rig this time?" And he put the lever over with an angry snap, crying: "Am I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?"

The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present state of the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer would switch and keep on switching till the cows came home. .007 pushed out gingerly, his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his own bell almost made him jump the track. Lanterns waved, or danced up and down, before and behind him; and on every side, six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings of couplers and squeals of hand-brakes, were cars—more cars than .007 had dreamed of. There were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the tracks; ventilated fruit- and milk-cars; flat-cars with truck-wagons full of market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high with strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles; flat-cars creaking to the weight

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/262


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/263

 of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons, and rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked. Men—hot and angry—crawled among and between and under the thousand wheels; men took flying jumps through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender as he returned; and regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying curious things.

He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch (yard-switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D, or Merchant's Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and .007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth, and the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust.

"'T is n't so easy switching with a straight-backed tender," said his little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot. "But you 're comin' on pretty fair. 'Ever seen a flyin' switch? No? Then watch me."

Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Suddenly he shot away from them with a sharp "Whutt!"

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/263


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/264

 A switch opened in the shadows ahead; he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long line of twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road-loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.

"My man 's reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick," he said, returning. "Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it, though. That 's where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not you 'd have your tender scraped off if you tried it."

.007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.

"No? Of course this ain't your regular business, but say, don't you think it 's interestin'? Have you seen the yard-master? Well, he 's the greatest man on earth, an' don't you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, it 's always like this, day an' night—Sundays an' week-days. See that thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no, five tracks off? She 's all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That 's why we 're cuttin' out the cars one by one." He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound car as he spoke, and started back with a little snort of surprise, for the car was an old friend—an M. T. K. box-car.

"Jack my drivers, but it 's Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain't there no gettin' you back to your friends? There 's forty chasers out for you from your road, if there's one. Who 's holdin' you now?"

"Wish I knew," whimpered Homeless Kate. "I belong in Topeka, but I 've bin to Cedar Rapids; I 've bin to Winnipeg; I 've bin to Newport News; I 've bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point; an' I 've bin

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/264


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/93

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/93


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/265

 to Buffalo. Maybe I 'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I 've only bin out ten months, but I 'm homesick—I 'm just achin' homesick."

"Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the battered old car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I want to be in Kansas when the sunflowers bloom."

"'Yard 's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," he explained to .007. "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an' one of ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She 's on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next boilerful she 'll be held there to wait consignee's convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in the fall."

Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen cars.

"I 'm goin' home," he said proudly.

"Can't get all them twelve on to the flat. Break 'em in half, Dutchy!" cried Poney. But it was .007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide.

After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.

"That 's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin'

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/265


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/94

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/94


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/266

 trucks," said the small engine, reverently. "But he don't care. He lets 'em cuss. He's the Czar—King—Boss! He says 'Please,' and then they kneel down an' pray. There's three or four strings o' today's freight to be pulled before he can attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things happen."

A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings.

"Ki-yah!" shrieked little Poney. "Ain't it great?"

A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.

"Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three; nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; and the ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut 'em off at the junction. An' that 's all right. Pull that string." The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/266


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/92

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/92


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/267

 007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.

"Curious, ain't it?" said Poney, puffing, on the next track. "You an' me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we 'd work him into red waste an' not know what we 'd done; but—up there—with the steam hummin' in his boiler that awful quiet way ..."

"I know," said .007. "Makes me feel as if I 'd dropped my Fire an' was getting cold. He is the greatest man on earth."

They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower, looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul .007's string to some far-away northern junction over an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six pound rails of the B. & A.

"You 're young; you 're young," she coughed. "You don't realise your responsibilities."

"Yes, he does," said Poney, sharply; "but he don't lie down under 'em." Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting: "There ain't more than fifteen thousand dollars' worth o' freight behind her anyway, and she goes on as if 't were a hundred thousand—same as the Mogul's. Excuse me, madam, but you 've the track. .... She's stuck on a dead-centre again—bein' specially designed not to."

The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared;

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/267


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/268

 switches locked crisply, and every one seemed to be waiting.

"Now I'll show you something worth," said Poney. "When the Purple Emperor ain't on time, it's about time to amend the Constitution. The first stroke of twelve is—"

"Boom!" went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away .007 heard a full, vibrating "Yah! Yah! Yah!" A headlight twinkled on the horizon like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant's song:

The last defiant "yah! yah!" was delivered a mile and a half beyond the passenger-depot; but .007 had caught one glimpse of the superb six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the road—the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires' south-bound express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear platform.

"Ooh!" said .007.

"Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I've heard; barber's shop; ticker; and a library and the

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/268


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/119

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/119


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/269

 rest to match. Yes, sir; seventy-five an hour! But he 'll talk to you in the round-house just as democratic as I would. And I—cuss my wheel-base!—I 'd kick clean off the track at half his gait. He 's the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our house. I 'll introdooce you some day. He 's worth knowin'! There ain't many can sing that song, either."

.007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and called to .007's engineer: "Got any steam?"

"'Nough to run her a hundred mile out o' this, if I could," said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.

"Then get. The Flying Freight 's ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod o' track ploughed up. No; no one's hurt, but both tracks are blocked. Lucky the wreckin'-car an' derrick are this end of the yard. Crew 'll be along in a minute. Hurry! You 've the track."

"Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self," said Poney, as .007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you 're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' sawedged track that 's liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'. You'll know it by a farmhouse an' a windmill an' five maples in the dooryard.

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/269


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/120

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/120


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/270

 Windmill 's west o' the maples. An' there 's an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o' that section with no guard-rails. See you later. Luck!"

Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the windmill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing carelessly from the caboose to the tender—even jesting

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/270


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/271

 with the engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch of a song, something like this:

"Say! Eustis knew what he was doin' when he designed this rig. She 's a hummer. New, too."

"Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain't paint. That 's—"

A burning pain shot through .007's right rear driver—a crippling, stinging pain.

"This," said .007, as he flew, "is a hot-box. Now I know what it means. I shall go to pieces, I guess. My first road-run, too!"

"Het a bit, ain't she?" the fireman ventured to suggest to the engineer.

"She 'll hold for all we want of her. We 're 'most there. Guess you chaps back had better climb into your car," said the engineer, his hand on the brake lever. "I've seen men snapped off—"

But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on to the track. The engineer half turned his wrist, and .007 found his drivers pinned firm.

"Now it 's come!" said .007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a sleigh. For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from off his underpinning.

"That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about," he gasped, as soon as he could think. "

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/271


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/272

 —emergency-stop. They both hurt; but now I can talk back in the round-house."

He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what doctors would call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down among his drivers, but he did not call .007 his "Arab steed," nor cry over him, as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad-worded .007, and pulled yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles, and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody else attended to him, for Evans, the Mogul's engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry, was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue pig.

"T were n't even a decent-sized hog," he said. "'T were a shote."

"Dangerousest beasts they are," said one of the crew. "Get under the pilot an' sort o' twiddle ye off the track, don't they? "

"Don't they?" roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman. "You talk as if I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o' the week. I ain't friends with all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State o' New York. No, indeed! Yes, this is him—an' look what he's done!"

It was not a bad night's work for one stray piglet. The Flying Freight seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had mounted the rails and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right to left, taking with him such cars as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their couplers and lay down, while rear cars frolicked over them. In that game, they had ploughed up and removed and twisted a good deal of the left

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/272


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/167

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/167


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/273

 hand track. The Mogul himself had waddled into a corn-field, and there he knelt—fantastic wreaths of green twisted round his crank-pins; his pilot covered with solid clods of field, on which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire put out with dirt (Evans had done that as soon as he recovered his senses); and his broken headlight half full of half-burnt moths. His tender had thrown coal all over him, and he looked like a disreputable buffalo who had tried to wallow in a general store. For there lay scattered over the landscape, from the burst cars, type-writers, sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a consignment of silver-plated imported harness, French dresses and gloves, a dozen finely moulded hard-wood mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a solid brass bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes and microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some gilt-edged dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a broken box of expensive toys, and a few hundred other luxuries. A camp of tramps hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew. So the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side, and the freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other with their hands in their hip-pockets. A long-bearded man came out of a house beyond the corn-field, and told Evans that if the accident had happened a little later in the year, all his corn would have been burned, and accused Evans of carelessness. Then he ran away, for Evans was at his heels shrieking: "'T was his hog done it—his hog done it! Let me kill him! Let me kill him!" Then the wrecking-crew laughed; and the farmer put

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/273


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/203

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/203


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/274

 his head out of a window and said that Evans was no gentleman.

But .007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck before, and it frightened him. The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same time; and .007 forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled the Mogul freight. They dug round him with spades; they put ties in front of his wheels, and jack-screws under him; they embraced him with the derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while .007 was hitched on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke or the cars rolled clear of the track. By dawn thirty or forty men were at work, replacing and ramming down the ties, gauging the rails and spiking them. By daylight all cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco; the track was freed for traffic; and .007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was gone.

"'T were n't even a hog," he repeated dolefully; "'t were a shote; and you—you of all of 'em—had to help me on."

"But how in the whole long road did it happen?" asked .007, sizzling with curiosity.

"Happen! It did n't happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him around that last curve—thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as little as that. He had n't more 'n squealed once 'fore I felt my bogies lift (he'd rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn't catch the track again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling himself along, all greasy, under

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/274


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/166

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/166


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/275

 my left leadin' driver, and, oh, Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin' along the ties, an' the next I knew I was playin' 'Sally, Sally Waters' in the corn, my tender shuckin' coal through my cab, an' old man Evans lyin' still an' bleedin' in front o' me. Shook? There ain't a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that ain't sprung to glory somewhere,"

"Umm!" said .007. "What d' you reckon you weigh?"

"Without these lumps o' dirt I'm all of a hundred thousand pound."

"And the shote?"

"Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He 's worth about four 'n' a half dollars. Ain't it awful? Ain't it enough to give you nervous prostration? Ain't it paralysin'? Why, I come just around that curve—" and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.

"Well, it 's all in the day's run, I guess," said .007, soothingly; "an'—an' a corn-field 's pretty soft fallin'."

"If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an' I could ha' slid off into deep water an' blown up an' killed both men, same as others have done, I would n't ha' cared; but to be ditched by a shote—an' you to help me out—in a corn-field—an' an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin' me like as if I was a sick truck-horse! ... Oh, it's awful! Don't call me Mogul! I'm a sewin'-machine. they 'll guy my sand-box off in the yard."

And .007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.

"Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain't ye?"

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/275


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/202

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/202


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/168

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/168


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/276

 said the irrepressible Poney, who had just come off duty. "Well, I must say you look it. Costly—perishable—fragile—immediate—that's you! Go to the shops, take them vine-leaves out o' your hair, an' git 'em to play the hose on you."

"Leave him alone, Poney," said .007 severely, as he was swung on the turn-table, "or I'll—"

"'Did n't know the old granger was any special friend o' yours, kid. He wasn't over-civil to you last time I saw him."

"I know it; but I've seen a wreck since then, and it has about scared the paint off me. I'm not going to guy anyone as long as I steam—not when they 're new to the business an' anxious to learn. And I 'm not goin' to guy the old Mogul either, though I did find him wreathed around with roastin'-ears. 'T was a little bit of a shote—not a hog—just a shote, Poney—no bigger 'n a lump of anthracite—I saw it—that made all the mess. Anybody can be ditched, I guess."

"Found that out already, have you? Well, that 's a good beginnin'." It was the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight, plate-glass cab and green velvet cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next day's fly.

"Let me make you two gen'lemen acquainted," said Poney. "This is our Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin' and, I may say, envyin' last night. This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with most of his mileage ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother can, I 'll answer for him.'

"'Happy to meet you," said the Purple Emperor, with a glance round the crowded round-house. "I

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/276


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/204

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/204


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/277

 guess there are enough of us here to form a full meetin'. Ahem! By virtue of the authority vested in me as Head of the Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No. .007 a full and accepted Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as such entitled to all shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house privileges throughout my jurisdiction, in the Degree of Superior Flier, it bein' well known and credibly reported to me that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in thirty-nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted. At a convenient time, I myself will communicate to you the Song and Signal of this Degree whereby you may be recognised in the darkest night. Take your stall, newly entered Brother among Locomotives!"

Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freight-yard, looking down upon the four-track way, at 2:30, neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to each word

That is .007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two hundred and twenty-one minutes.

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/277


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/279

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/279


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/309

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/309


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/280

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/280


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/278

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/278


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/308

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/308


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/310

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/310


text:
Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/159

 at the Diet of Ratisbonne, to establish unity with the Protestants, and who dared to write these strong words:

"The law of Christ is a law of liberty. … One cannot call by the name of government that the rule of which is the will of a man, inclined by nature to evil and impelled by innumerable passions. No! Every sovereignty is a sovereignty of reason. Its object is to lead those who are under its sway to their just goal—happiness—and by paths that are just. The authority of the Pope is also an authority of reason. A Pope should know that he exercises his authority over free men. He ought not to command, or defend, or dispense of his own will, but only in accordance with the rules of reason, the divine Commandments and Love—a rule which leads back everything to God and the common good."

Vittoria was one of the most exalted souls of this little idealistic group, which united the purest consciences of Italy. She corresponded with Renee of Ferrare and Margaret of Navarre; and Pier Paolo Vergerio, later a Protestant, called her "one of the lights of truth." But when the counter-reform movement began, under the direction of the merciless Caraffa," she fell into mortal doubt. Like Michael Angelo, she had


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/347

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/347


text:
Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/160

 a passionate but weak soul: she felt a need to believe; she was incapable of resisting the authority of the Church. "She tortured herself by fasts and hair-shirts until she was nothing more than flesh and bone." Her friend Cardinal Pole restored her peace of mind by forcing her to submit, to humiliate the pride of her intelligence, to forget herself in God. She did so in a wild moment of sacrifice. … Ah! if she had only sacrificed herself! But she sacrificed her friends with her: she disowned Ochino, whose writings she delivered over to the Inquisition of Rome. Like Michael Angelo, her great soul was shattered by fear. She drowned her remorse in despairing mysticism.

"You have witnessed the chaos of ignorance in which I was," she wrote; "the labyrinth of errors in which I wandered, my body perpetually in movement to find repose and my soul ever agitated in its search for peace. God has willed that I should be told Fiat lux! and that I should be shown that I am nothing—that everything is in Christ!"


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/373

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/373


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/395

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/395


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/346

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/346


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/105

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 26.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 26.jpg
 * J A Glenn phot. || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * J A Glenn phot. || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/348

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/348


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/374

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/374


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/372

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/372


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/394

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/394


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/396

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/396


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Manual or Industrial Training


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/445

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/445


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/446

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/446


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/444

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/444


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/447

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/447


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Sketch of Paul Bert


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/443

 to you till dinner. Sure I'll see you at dinner-time? Sure you won't sneak up to your room, darling, and leave me all the evening? Good-bye, dear—good-bye."

"Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don't let Rufus bolt into his stables. Good-bye. Yes, I'll come down to dinner; but—what shall I do when I see you in the light!"

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/443


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/448

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/448


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/109

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 27.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 27.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Correspondence


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Editor's Table


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Literary Notices


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Popular Miscellany


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/July 1888/Notes


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/113

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 28.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 28.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/117

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 29.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 29.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/August 1888/The Octroi at Issoire: A City Made Rich by Taxation


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/121

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 30.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 30.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/125

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 31.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 31.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/129

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 32.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 32.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/133

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 33.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 33.jpg
 * F W C L et G S B del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * F W C L et G S B del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/137

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 34.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 34.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/141

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 35.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 35.jpg
 * J.A.Glenn phot. || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * J.A.Glenn phot. || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/194

 for he was extremely modest." The Florentines accepted the plan without changing it in anything. One of Michael Angelo's friends, Tiberio Calcagni, made, under his superintendence, a wooden model of the church, " which was so rare a work of art that, for beauty, richness and variety such a building had never been seen before. Building was commenced and 5000 crowns were expended. Then money was lacking, work was stopped, and Michael Angelo experienced the most violent sorrow." This church was never built and even the model disappeared.

Such was Michael Angelo's last artistic disappointment. How could he have had the illusion, when dying, that St. Peter's, hardly commenced, would ever be completed, that any of his works would survive him? Perhaps he himself, had he been free, would have shattered them. The story of his last piece of sculpture, "Christ taken down from the Cross," in the Cathedral in Florence, shows to what a state of detachment from art he had attained. If he still continued his work as a sculptor, he was no longer prompted by faith in art, but by faith in Christ, and because "his mind and his strength could not resist the temptation to create." But when he had completed his work he broke it. "He would have destroyed it altogether had not his servant, Antonio, begged him to give it to him."


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/145

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 36.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 36.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/149

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 37.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 37.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/153

 {| width="500px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 38.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 38.jpg
 * }
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 38.jpg
 * }


text: Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/157


text:
Page:The Eurypterida of New York Volume 2.pdf/161

 {| width="700px" align="center"
 * Memoir 14. N. Y. State Museum. || align="right" | Plate 40.
 * colspan="2" | The Eurypterida of New York plate 40.jpg
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * G S Barkentin del || align="right" | J B Lyon Co State Printer
 * }
 * }


text:
Author:William O'Connor Morris

Works

 * Great Commanders of Modern Times
 * Irish History
 * Ireland, 1798-1898

title: Author:William O'Connor Morris


text:
User talk:86.168.44.156

Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:16, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:86.168.44.156


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/14

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/14


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/15

 THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

HE least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the had grown under his charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it, and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there would be speeches.

Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran along one of the main revetments—the huge stone-faced banks that flared away north and south for three miles on either side of the river—and permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters in length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. Each one of those piers [3]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/15


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/16

 was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges’ bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At either end rose towers, of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers’ sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow in the sun’s glare. East and west and north and south the construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/16


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/17

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.

Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers—and only he knew how strong those were—and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks’ work on the girders of the three middle piers—his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but pukka—permanent—to endure when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished. Practically, the thing was done.

Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.

"All but," said he, with a smile.

"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered. Not half a bad job for two men, is it?"

"One—and a half. 'Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I came on the works!" Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.

"You were rather a colt," said Findlayson. "I wonder how you ’ll like going back to office-work when this job’s over." [5]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/17


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/18

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS "I shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye followed Findlayson's, and he muttered, "Is n't it damned good?"

"I think we 'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to himself. "You 're too good a youngster to waste on another man. Cub thou wast; assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!"

Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson and his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness to break to his own needs. There were labour contractors by the half-hundred—fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps, twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen—but none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to be trusted. They had been tried many times in sudden crises—by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river—but no stress had brought to light any man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock would have honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked themselves. Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the months of office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of India, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought to ruin at least half an acre of calculations—and Hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts [6]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/18


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/19

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS in England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young Hitchcock, putting one month’s leave to another month, and borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue asserted and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God into a man so great that he feared only Parliament and said so till Hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner-table, and—he feared the Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name. Then there was the cholera that came in the night to the village by the bridge works; and after the cholera smote the small-pox. The fever they had always with them. Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of the community, and Findlayson watched him wield his powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. It was a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is all in pieces in the gun-case. Behind everything rose the black frame of the Kashi Bridge—plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span—and each pier of it recalled Hitchcock, [7]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/19


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/20

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS the all-round man, who had stood by his chief without failing from the very first to this last.

So the bridge was two men’s work—unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo certainly counted himself. He was a Lascar, a Kharva from Bulsar, familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London, who had risen to the rank of serang on the British India boats, but wearying of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up the service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure of employment. For his knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights, Peroo was worth almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of the overhead-men, and Peroo was not within many silver pieces of his proper value. Neither running water nor extreme heights made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority. No piece of iron was so big or so badly placed that Peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it—a loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who had saved the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when the new wire rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in its slings, threatening to slide out sideways. Then the native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and Hitchcock’s right arm was broken by a falling T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and directed for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported

"All 's well," and the plate swung home. There was no one like Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold, to [8]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/20


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/21

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS control the donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure up-stream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the embankment-facings. He would interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still more wonderful lingua-franca, half Portuguese and half Malay, ran out and he was forced to take string and show the knots that he would recommend. He controlled his own gang of tacklemen—mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month and tried to the uttermost. No consideration of family or kin allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll. “My honour is the honour of this bridge,” he would say to the about-to-be-dismissed. “What do I care for your honour? Go and work on a steamer. That is all you are fit for.” The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest—one who had never set foot on black water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two generations of sea-rovers all unaffected by port missions or those creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames bank. The priest of the Lascars had nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at all. He ate the offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and slept again, “for,” said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand miles inland, “he is a very holy man. He never cares what you eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is [9]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/21


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/22

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS good, because on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani's boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum [the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib says."

Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was casting loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly as ever they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster.

From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver pipe and the creak and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the topmost coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout: "Ham dekhta hai" ("I am looking out"). Findlayson laughed and then sighed. It was years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. As his trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and cried: "It looks well now, Sahib. Our bridge is all but done. What think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail runs over?"

"She has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed us."

"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the stone-boats were sunk without warning—or only a half-day's warning?"

"Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are holding well on the west bank." [10]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/22


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/23

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS "Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib"—he meant Hitchcock—"and he laughs."

"No matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in thine own fashion."

The Lascar grinned. "Then it will not be in this way—with stonework sunk under water, as the Quetta was sunk. I like sus-sus-pen-sheen bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a gang-plank. Then no water can hurt. When does the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?"

"In three months, when the weather is cooler."

"Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!'"

"But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."

"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished. Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at Tuticorin—"

"Bah! Go! I am busy."

"I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. "May I take the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?"

"To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy."

"Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to be blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone sills." [11]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/23


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/24

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS Findlayson smiled at the "we."

"We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can beat against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga—in irons." His voice fell a little.

"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak true talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of Mother Gunga?"

"All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney, and Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and when I come back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake of the God within.… Yes, I will not take the cushions in the dinghy."

Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow that he shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in the last three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and formulæ, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the verandah showed where he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.

"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He 's taken a couple of nephews with him, and he 's lolling in the stern like a commodore," said Hitchcock.

"That 's all right. He 's got something on his mind. [12]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/24


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/25

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS You 'd think that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his religion out of him."

"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling. "I overheard him the other day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old guru of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the guru to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a monsoon."

"All the same, if you carried off his guru he 'd leave us like a shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. Paul's when he was in London."

"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder."

"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He 's propitiating his own Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge being run across her. Who 's there?" A shadow darkened the doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.

"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar. It ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets.… Great Heavens!" Hitchcock jumped to his feet.

"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form. "That 's what Mother Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading. "Keep cool, young 'un. We 've got all our work cut out for us. Let 's see. Muir wired half an hour ago: Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out. Well, that gives us—one, two—nine and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven 's sixteen and a half to Lataoli—say fifteen hours before it comes down to us." [13]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/25


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/26

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS "Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is littered up with stuff still. Two full months before the time!"

"That 's why it comes. I 've only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty years, and I don't pretend to understand. Here comes another tar." Findlayson opened the telegram. "Cockran, this time, from the Ganges Canal: Heavy rains here. Bad. He might have saved the last word. Well, we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed. You 'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get every thing that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got on the east bank that needs looking after?"

"Pontoon—one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T' other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from Twenty to Twenty-three piers—two construction lines, and a turning-spur. The pile-work must take its chance," said Hitchcock.

"All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We 'll give the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."

Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for flood, or fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal. [14]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/26


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/27

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and, from the European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney's bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to “Stables.” Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank. Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still—each man in his place.

Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the flare-lamps broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a night's work, racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of the three centre piers—those that stood on the cribs—were all but in position. They needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them, [15]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/27


text: Author:Henri Eugene Sée

title: Author:Henri Eugene Sée


text:
Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/28

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS for the flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked at the ends. A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary line that fed the unfinished piers. It was heaved up in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the attack of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of Government stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains. The big crane would be the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to the main structure of the bridge. The concrete blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were dropped over-side, where there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and the empty boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream. It was here that Peroo’s pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing speed, and Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for the honour and credit which are better than life.

"I knew she would speak," he cried. "I knew, but the telegraph gives us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting—children of unspeakable shame—are we here for the look of the thing?" It was two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as Peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea.

Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats [16]

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/28


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/113

T was a gala occasion, that bright spring day in early May, when Papa and Mamma Woodchuck took their four toddling babies out of the nest and up the long, dark tunnel to inspect the beautiful green world. The little fellows clung timidly to their mother's brown fur coat.

The journey was so exciting they stopped every few minutes to inspect their surroundings and catch their breath. Their little hearts were beating madly with the excitement of the journey.

When they emerged into the bright spring sunshine, they blinked their brown eyes and opened their small, fur-muffled ears to catch the wonderful sights and sounds of the beautiful fairyland they had just tumbled into.

The singing birds and droning insects made sweet music for the little 'chucks; and I wouldn't 91

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/113


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/114

92 be at all surprised to learn that old Robin Redbreast whistled his prettiest that day, all for the enjoyment of the new babies. It wasn't long, anyway, before the youngsters could whistle back at him; for whistling is one of Fatty Woodchuck's best accomplishments. Eating and sleeping would run the whistle a close second, for I know of no animal (not including a growing boy) that can outstrip this canny old marmot at those two most enjoyable pastimes.

Mother Woodchuck led the babies down to the spring where the new plantain was just peeping out all green and tender. It seemed to them that life just couldn't contain anything else half so delicious. They nibbled the new grass and took a big drink at the old spring.

Father Woodchuck was sitting on his haunches in front of the burrow, keeping a sharp lookout during their little excursion. Had anything happened that would alarm him for their safety, he would have blown a low whistle through his butter-coloured teeth and had his whole family tumbling into the den in a jiffy. However, nothing looked very dangerous, so the little 'chucks

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/114


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/115

Rh played to their hearts' fill in the warm yellow sunlight. Then they crawled back into their snug, under-ground home, so tired they could scarcely drag their fat, brown bodies along. How cosy the nest was, and what a lovely place to sleep in!

During those soft warm days the little fellows grew with amazing rapidity. They increased in size and strength and developed their accomplishments to such an extent that it was truly amazing. They were as playful as kittens. They rolled, wrestled and tumbled about for hours at a time, developing their muscles and strengthening themselves mentally and physically for the battle of life.

It wasn't long before they dug little play houses. The digging developed their powerful claws, and strong legs and paws. Their toes are partially webbed and they make fine shovels for the purpose of shovelling the dust while burrowing. They stop, back out, during their work and kick the dust back vigorously until they have swept all the dirt to the entrance of the hole and have sent it flying outward. Our Woodchucks shut their furry ears so tight that they are dust-proof while

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/115


text: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/252

title: Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/252


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/116

94. This is a great advantage, for no dirt or dust can enter to impair their remarkable hearing. No animal that I know of has a finer sense of hearing than the Woodchuck.

Day by day the babies grew and fattened. Old Farmer Hays had the best lettuce for miles around and, as all farmers know, that is the most tempting morsel to excite a Woodchuck's appetite. After the sun sank low and its red fire had burnt itself out in the west, and the still white moon had crept up over the pines like a wraith and sailed away on a silver trail straight through the blue of the heavens, our waddling Woodchucks crept forth by the light of the white moon's lantern, and scuddled under the ferns straight for that luring lettuce patch. The farmer got mad and swore vengeance, but it didn't do any good. They went back again the next night and ate more.

Father Woodchuck had a presentiment that something was going to happen, so he crawled out one morning at the break of day and sat on his haunches on the highest knoll in the vicinity. He espied the farmer busily engaged in a new occupation. It had to do with chains and stakes and

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/116


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/117

Rh things. After the man had gone, he crawled, with his belly close to the ground, and investigated. An awful thing with yawning jaws met his gaze. Old 'Chuck knew it was a trap. He ran home as fast as his short legs would carry him and told the news. They gave the lettuce patch a wide berth after that.

They had timothy and clover for supper that night. In a few days they ventured into the farmer's garden again, but not for lettuce. They munched the young beets and cabbage and found them delicious. Green peas, celery and other "garden sass" gave variety to their diet and they fattened rapidly. It's a most desirable thing for a 'chuck to put on all the fat he can during the summer, for he hibernates (goes to sleep) during the fall and winter. So he needs the fat to nourish him during his long sleep. The drowsiness overtakes him the first of October, he sleeps through the cold weather and opens his eyes in the early spring. The saying goes that he crawls out on Ground Hog's day, and if he sees his shadow, he slinks back into his hole and sleeps for

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/117


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/210

 such accidents, which are fortunately of very rare occurrence in New South Wales, I do not think, therefore, that I should be assuming too great a quantity in taking four hundred gallons of wine as the average for an- acre of vines planted in that colony, on an appropriate site and suitable soil. The expenses attendant on the cultivation of the grape and production of wine, are, as I have before stated, £5. 5s for St. Emilien, and £4. 10s. for Grève, for each English acre. Near Xeres, in Spain, the expense is about £12. for the acre. In large vineyards, in France, two men are required to cultivate every ten acres of vines. Assuming that in New South Wales, three men are requisite to do the same amount of labour as three Frenchmen, and that the wages of these men are £20. a year for two of them, and £36. a year for the third, (who, we will suppose, has some previously acquired knowledge of the culture of the vine), and that their rations cost £8. each, the expense of cultivating ten acres of vines in that colony would be £100., or £10. for every acre. The wages of extra hands during the vintage, cost of casks, &c. may be taken at £6. the acre, making the total annual expense, attending the production of colonial wine, £16. an acre, according to my estimate.

I will now endeavour to ascertain what would be the probable amount of capital required to establish


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/118

96 another six weeks, but I will not vouch for that story.

Our friend, the Woodchuck, is the most delightful pet that can be imagined. He's gentle and loving and is easily tamed. He certainly isn't much trouble. I know a boy who has one for a pet. When the little chap hibernates, he usually goes into the cellar and seeks a dark corner for his long sleep. The boy would get curious and bring his pet upstairs into the bright light and try to arouse him, but it was no use. He "slept the sleep of the just," and nothing short of an earthquake could have awakened him. I wonder why boys ever want to kill Woodchucks? They are the most harmless and interesting animals I know. It's so much more enjoyable to tame one and have the pleasure of knowing him. Believe me, if you knew a Woodchuck, you would never want to take his life. He certainly is worth-while, and is a delightful companion.

He is reddish-brown in colour, shaded to yellowish, with brownish black feet and tail. He is so cunning when he sits upright, with his little hands drooping in front of him. He sits on his

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/118


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/211

 a vineyard of one hundred acres in New South Wales, and what profit may reasonably be expected to be derived from such an investment.

In purchasing a piece of ground for the plantation of a vineyard, the buyer would of course select a light soil suitable for vines, and consequently easily trenched. The best French authorities recommend that the ground should be trenched to the depth of two feet, and in some parts of Europe the ground has been sometimes trenched to a much greater depth than this. I have, however, occasionally seen light friable soils in New South Wales, preserving an homogeneous character to the subjacent rock, and which seemed sufficiently loose to be adapted for vines without any necessity for trenching; but, in general, this operation is indispensably necessary. I will suppose that the operation of trenching the land to the depth of two feet costs £16. an acre. Land, the trenching of which would cost more than this would be altogether unfit for vines:—


text:
Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/121

Rh haunches when he eats and takes his food in his hands and nibbles it. He belongs to the rodent (gnawers) family. When full-grown, he will weigh from eight to twelve pounds. He is about one-half the size of the porcupine.

He now takes a wife and establishes a home of his own. They choose a sunny hillside for their house. After tunnelling downward to allow for proper drainage, they begin tunnelling upward until they are about three feet below the surface. This tunnel runs about twenty-five feet in length, at the end of which is the living room. The Woodchuck's little bride brings soft grasses to line their little nest, and, presto, they have a home fit for a king. The Woodchuck is a native of New England. He is found in the United States and Canada. He is first cousin to the prairie dog, but does not live in colonies, but in pairs, as a respectable married couple should live.

The Woodchuck's children are four or five in number. They are well-behaved youngsters and develop the art of taking life easy at an early age. Mr. 'Chuck doesn't exert himself too much. He usually saves himself the trouble of making a

title: Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/121


text:
User talk:Popskulluzeet

Beeswaxcandle (talk) 00:02, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Popskulluzeet


text: Index:FelixTheCat-1919-FelineFollies silent.ogv


text: Page:FelixTheCat-1919-FelineFollies silent.ogv/1


text:
Page:FelixTheCat-1919-FelineFollies silent.ogv/2

 Paramount Magazine


text:
Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/218

174 the heroic Leonidas died fighting at the head of his small force, which the Persian host completely annihilated. The death of Leonidas stirred all Greece. With the defeat of the Greek land forces and the advance of the Persian army, the Greek fleet, seriously damaged, was obliged to withdraw to the south. It took up its position in the Bay of Salamis (see map, p. 146, and Fig. 86), while the main army of the Spartans and the allies was drawn up on the Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 76), the only point at which the Greek land forces could hope to make another defensive stand.

As the Persian army moved southward from Thermopylæ, the indomitable Themistocles gathered together the Athenian population and carried them in transports to the little islands of Salamis and Ægina and to the shores of Argolis (see map, p. 146, and Plate II, p. 124). Meantime the Greek fleet had been repaired, and with reinforcements numbered over three hundred battleships. Nevertheless it shook the courage of many as they looked northward, where the far-stretching Persian host darkened the coast road, while in the south they could see the Asiatic fleet drawn up off the old port of Athens at Phalerum (see map, p. 173). High over the Attic hills the flames of the burning Acropolis showed red against the somber masses of smoke that obscured the eastern horizon and told them that the homes of the Athenians lay in ashes. With masterly skill Themistocles held together the irresolute Greek leaders, while he induced Xerxes to attack by the false message that the Greek fleet was about to slip out of the bay.

On the heights overlooking the Bay of Salamis the Persian king, in the midst of his brilliant oriental court, took up his station to watch the battle. The Greek position between the jutting headlands of Salamis and the Attic mainland (see map, p. 146, and Fig. 86) was too cramped for the maneuvers of a large fleet. Crowded and hampered by the narrow sea-room, the huge Asiatic fleet soon fell into confusion before the Greek attack. There was no room for retreat. The combat lasted the entire


text: Page:Ancient history.pdf/5

title: Page:Ancient history.pdf/5


text:
Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/223

 to celebrate such a fête in honour of one who has just been born. You should reserve your gladness for the day on which a man who has lived well dies."

And in the following year he congratulated him on having lost his second son shortly after birth.

Nature, which, through his passionate existence and the peculiar character of his intellectual genius, he had up to then neglected, was a source of consolation to him in his declining years. In September 1556, when fleeing from Rome, which was threatened by the Spanish troops of the Duke of Alba, he passed by Spoleto and there remained five weeks, in the midst of the oak and olive woods, penetrated through and through by the serene splendour of the autumn. It was with regret that he returned to Rome, to which he was recalled at the end of October. "I have left more than half of myself over there," he wrote to Vasari, "for verily peace is to be found only in the woods."

And on returning to Rome the old man of eighty-two composed a beautiful poem to the glory of the fields and


text:
Page:Two Treatises of Government.djvu/46

 things under his feet, all heep and oxen, and the beats of the field, and the fowls of the air, and fih of the ea, and whatover paeth thro' the paths of the ea. In which words, if any one can find out, that there is meant any monarchical power of one man over another, but only the dominion of the whole pecies of mankind, over the inferior pecies of creatures, he may, for aught I know, deerve to be one of Sir Robert's monarchs in habit, for the rarenes of the dicovery. And by this time, I hope it is evident, that he that gave dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, gave Adam no monarchical power over thoe of his own pecies, which will yet appear more fully in the next thing I am to hew.

§. 29. 2. Whatever God gave by the words of this grant, i. Gen. 28. it was not to Adam in particular, excluive of all other men : whatever dominion he had thereby, it was not a private dominion, but a dominion in common with the ret of mankind. That this donation was not made in particular to Adam, appears evidently from the words of the text, it being made to more than one; for it was poken in the plural number, God bleed them, and aid unto them, Have dominion. God ays unto Adam and Eve, Have dominion ; thereby, ays our author, Adam was monarch of the world : but the grant being to them, i. e. poke to Eve alo, as many interpreters


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/212

 The total outlay will therefore be £7,800. The interest on this money, during the first years, would be more than amply covered by the small quantity of wine made during the fourth year. Having assumed four hundred gallons of wine to the acre as the avenge quantity that may be expected from the Australian vineyards, after the fifth year, one hundred acres of vines would yield forty thousand gallons, which, if worth two shillings the gallon, would be of the value of £4000. The expenses attending the cultivation of the vine, and the fabrication of the wine, having been taken by me at £ 16. per acre, the clear yearly income after the fifth year, would be £2400. So that if the data on which I have based this calculation were correct, a person investing £ 8000. in vineyards, would be indemnified for the interest on his capital, during the first four years, by the wine of the fourth year, and ever afterwards realize an annual profit of upwards of thirty per cent, on his capital. If I have erred in the foregoing estimate, I rather think it would be in over-rating the expense, for I see that Mr. Busby estimates the expense of preparing the ground, by trenching it three spits deep, planting the vines, and four years' cultivation of them, at £48. the acre.

The wines already made in New South Wales, are, as I have before said, of very good quality, and present a great contrast to the ordinary wines from the Cape; for those of the former colony have in no


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/213

 instance been impregnated with that disagreeable earthy flavour which is so predominant in the wines of Southern Africa. In feet, there is no other dependency belonging to the British Crown, which is so well adapted to produce superior wines and brandy as Australia, for which articles of consumption, Great Britain is entirely dependent on foreign countries. It will be some years before Australia can produce more wine than her inhabitants can consume. Whenever that time will arrive, India and the mother country, will take all she can supply.

I have observed, in the preceding observations on the MacLeay river, that the geological formation of the country, exercises a most marked influence on the quality of wine produced from vines grown on it. Thus the vineyards Ay and Epemay, which yield the best Champagne wines, have been planted on a poor clayey soil lying on chalk, which is so little below the surface, that it is frequently exposed at one spit deep. The wines of the province of Anjou, although little known in England, are much esteemed in France; the vines which produce them grow on schistose slate, and some of the best vineyards on the Rhine grow also on the same formation. The villages of Côte-Rôtie, l'Hermitage, la Romaneche, Chenard, Banjeu, enjoy the highest reputation for their wines, the basis of the country being granite. Vineyards planted on volcanic soils in France produce wines of very variable quality; thus near the Rhine they are


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/214

 very good on these soils, whilst in Auvergne they are execrable.

The variety of grape used in making wine has also great influence upon its quality; thus some varieties that yield good wine in a cold country might yield indifferent wine in a warmer country; and vice versâ; also some varieties thrive best in one kind of soil, and some in another. In a new country like Australia, it will only be from actual experience, that we can eventually acquire a knowledge of the varieties of wines best suited to its climate and soils, for yielding the best possible wines that can be produced in that colony.

The oldest vines have always been considered in France to yield the best wine; and in some of the best vineyards, at Vongeot near Dijon, Migraine near Auxerre, and Epemay, the vines are at least five hundred years old. It is this consideration that has induced the system of cultivating the vine, generally adopted throughout the provinces of Burgundy and Champagne, which consists in never uprooting the old vines, but in drawing them down to the ground, and covering them with earth every few years. In Italy, also, some of the vines are three hundred years old, but in the south- western part of France, in which I resided some time, I have heard, that the vines are in general replanted about once every forty years. With regard to the distance vines should be planted from each other, no determinate rule can be assigned, for in France not only different


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/215

 districts, but even adjacent villages, differ essentially in their mode of planting. In some parts of that kingdom, the cuttings are placed in the ground scarcely a yard asunder, and in others immense intervals are left between them, which are made use of for the ordinary objects of culture. In those villages to the south of the Loire, where I have occasionally examined the vineyards, the vines were very generally growing from three to four feet from each other, in rows, about six feet apart. At Xeres, in Spain, the vine cuttings are generally planted five feet every way.

The best mode of training the vines in New South Wales would be on trellisses, which are preferable to the low props used in some parts of France; for if the vines were kept as low to the ground in the colony, as they are in the northern parts of France, and on the Rhine, the reflected heat of the sun, would perhaps be detrimental to them. Not having interested myself much in vineyards, during my residence in New South Wales, from being constantly engaged in other avocations, I regret that I am unable to furnish any account of the mode of planting, and system of cultivation, adopted in the extensive vineyards of the Messrs. Macarthur, at


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/216

 their beautiful estate at Camden. In other parts of the colony I have seen small vineyards, where the vines were trained on trellisses, constructed according to the plan recommended by the late Mr. Shepherd, and they looked very well. In Italy vines are often planted at the foot of low-sized forest trees, and allowed to climb up them unrestrained. The trees generally employed for this purpose are elms and sycamores. In some parts of the south of France, in the valleys near the foot of the Alps and Pyrenees, this mode of training the vine is sometimes resorted to; only the French are more careful than the Italians, as they keep the trees well trimmed, and carry the vines in festoons from one tree to another. In New South Wales the lower slopes of fertile ranges are very frequently lightly wooded by the Angophora lanceolata, or colonial apple-tree. As sites near the subsidence of ranges are those which would be best suited for vines in that colony, might not these trees, which are low-sized and gnarled, be available for the same purposes as the elms and sycamores of Italy and France? In France, during the winter, the ground between the vines is generally broken up by the plough, although the hoe or the spade is sometimes used for that purpose. This operation should be performed as soon after the vintage as possible, the branches being first removed so as to offer no impediment. It is not necessary to go deeper than eight or ten inches, and in a dry country like New South Wales,


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/217

 it might be a good plan to draw the earth in the form of a dos d'ane between the rows of vines. After the first pruning in the beginning of summer, the ground is again lightly worked, and the weeds cleared away from the roots of the vines. The best way of doing this, is to skim the ground between the rows, lightly over with the plough, and afterwards hoe the ground round the roots of the vines, where the plough had not reached. When the bunches begin to form, the weeds are again lightly skimmed off the surface, the common scarifier would, in some cases, be very serviceable for this work.

Manure is occasionally used in France for vineyards, as the quantity of wine is invariably increased thereby, but at the same time its quality is much deteriorated. In the more sandy soils of New South Wales, a dressing of stable manure and wood-ashes, applied at the time that the ground is trenched, would materially assist the growth of the cuttings, without being in any way injurious to them; but on the richer soils on the lower slopes of ranges, composed of mountain limestone, clay-slate, or whinstone, no such application would be necessary.

In a country like New South Wales, where wood is so abundant that every tree felled helps to increase the value of the land, wood -ashes would form a cheap and excellent application to vines, which would increase the quantity of the wine without


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/218

 imparting any disagreeable flavour to it. In some of the best continental vineyards, no manure is however used in any form; but when, after a very long course of years, the ground becomes very much exhausted, a dressing of richer mould, (of the same chemical elements as the original soil of the vineyard if it can be procured,) is applied.

I have frequently alluded, in the previous portion of this work, to the soils best adapted for vines in New South Wales. If the land intended for a vineyard in that colony should be of that description, the vine-cuttings may be planted as soon as the land is trenched, but if there should be a predominance of argile in the soil it would be preferable to allow the ground to lie fallow for one year so as to become mellowed by exposure to the sun, and the chemical action of the atmospheric gases.

Vine-cuttings are generally planted with a dibble, but the holes are sometimes made with a spade in very loose ground, and in France in clayey soils a trench is sometimes opened down each row to place the cuttings in, as the compression of the surrounding particles made by & dibble in a tenacious soil, would have an injurious effect on the growth of the cuttings. As each is placed in the ground, a small quantity of light earth moistened with water should be applied around it, and if wood-ashes be mixed with the earth, the


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/219

 of this application in causing the cutting to throw out roots, will be much increased.

In writing this hasty work, the object I had in view, was to endeavour to analyse the degree of profit likely to attend, henceforward, the rural occupations of New South Wales, without entering into any details respecting these occupations themselves. I shall not therefore extend my observations on the cultivation of the vine; especially as an excellent practical treatise on its culture, and the art of making wine has been published in the colony some years ago by Mr. Busby, a gentleman to whose disinterested liberality and public spirit the colonists are indebted for some of their best varieties of grape, which he obtained from the nursery of the Luxembourg at Paris, and from the Botanic Garden of Montpellier.

I have heard that Mr. Busby has been very successful in the production of wine at his farm on the banks of the Upper Hunter, and many of the surrounding settlers have been induced to follow his example in planting vineyards on their farms. Indeed all the colonists are now aware of the advantage of investing capital in vineyards; but as it requires a considerable sum of money to form vineyards of any extent, and as the adverse circumstances of the colony have deprived the colonists of all their available funds, it will only be from the renewed emigration of persons with capital


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/220

 from England, going out expressly to become wine-growers, that New South Wales will ever become the great wine country for which she has been designed by nature.


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/221

Australian field-sports—Kangaroo-hunting—Curious mode of shooting the Pademella, or brush-kangaroo—Dingo hunt— Emu chase—Varieties of Quails in New South Wales; very abundant north of Port Macquarie—Varieties of Australian ducks—Duck-shooting—Geese and moor-fowl—Brush-turkeys—Very good for the table—Their extraordinary mode of constructing their nests—Large size of the eggs, which are hatched by the heat generated by vegetable decomposition—Pigeons—The Wonga-wonga-Its habits—Very difficult to shoot—Peculiar delicacy of its flesh—The flock-pigeon of the brushes—Easily shot—Bronze-wing pigeon—Black pigeon—Fruit pigeon—Its brilliant plumage—Doves—Spur-winged Plovers—Snipes—Curlews—Black Swans—Curious method of chasing them in a boat—Pelicans—Quantity of oil contained in them—Divers, Godwits, and Red-bills—Swamp Pheasants, Lyre-birds, Bustards—Snakes of Australia almost all venomous—Description of the different species in the colony—Peculiar action of the poison of the generality of Australian snakes— Account of the symptoms experienced by the author from the bite of a large snake at the MacLeay in 1841—Treatment under which he recovered—Description of a curious salt-water snake of the genus Hydrophis, killed in Tryal Bay in 30 50' S.—Extreme poison of sea-snakes exemplified by two cases—The Aborigines of the north-eastern part of the territory, vary considerably in some of their habits from those to the southward and westward—The more circumscribed limits roamed over by each tribe—Abundance of indigenous food for the native population in the north-eastern districts—


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/222

 of their ever suffering from famine—Exaggerated statements respecting the miserable condition of the Aborigines of New South Wales—Comparison between them and other savage races, in several respects advantageous to the former—Customs of the natives of the MacLeay river—Their Cawarra ceremonies different from those of the generality of the Aborigines—Description of the Cawarra—Accounts of some fights between different tribes of the MacLeay river—Their cruelty and treachery towards the whites—Their civilization almost hopeless—Their wonderful intelligence.

Australia is singularly deficient in large quadrupeds, and does not possess any of those animals which afford the exciting pleasure of the chase in other countries; yet I think the Australian sport of kangaroo-hunting possesses, at any rate, equal attraction to coursing the hare in England. For instead of being a weak, helpless animal, like the hare, the kangaroo, although quite as timid and inoffensive, is capable of contending vigorously with his pursuers, when driven to desperation, and from the tremendous bounds he makes over all obstacles in his way, he gives, if hunted in a thickly wooded mountainous country, plenty of work both to horses and dogs.

The varieties of kangaroos in New Holland are extremely numerous, those most frequently met with on the north-eastern part of the territory, are, the large Forest-kangaroo, (Macropus major,) the Wallabi, (Halmaturus Ualabatus), the Pademella, or brush-kangaroo, (Halmaturus thetis), the silver Wallabi, (Halmatmiis elegans,) the black Wallaroo,


text:
Social Evolution

 * Social Evolution, a work by Benjamin Kidd

title: Social Evolution


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/223

 and the Kangaroo-rat. The red-backed kangaroo, (Macropus laniger,) is occasionally seen on the open elevated table-land.

The largest kangaroo I ever saw was killed close to my tents at Munga creek at the MacLeay river, it weighed very nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, and disabled one of the dogs which had attacked him. It is scarcely necessary to mention that the kangaroo only uses his fore-feet for grazing or digging He advances by a succession of leaps, in making which, his tail, which he carries at right angles to his body, is of great service; some of them have been known in these leaps to spring over obstacles eight feet high.

The best dogs for hunting this animal, are those which are a cross between the greyhound and some larger and coarser dogs; the lurcher and the large Scotch deer-hound are very well suited for this kind of sport. As soon as a kangaroo is started, he bounds away for some minutes at as fast a rate as the fleetest dogs, but the latter soon gain upon him, especially if he ascends the steep slope of a range, which is peculiarly disadvantageous to his manner of progression. However, if the country is very brushy and rocky, he frequently escapes from his facility of clearing all impediments in his way, by his amazing leaps.

Whilst the chase lasts the horses must keep up a


text:
Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/227

 it, and again halts at a short distance, if not pursued. If the sportsman does not get a shot on starting it, he should wait until the cessation of the sound of the jumps of the retreating animal indicates that it has again stopped. He must then advance cautiously towards the spot, making a low continuous whistle, like the note of the Wonga-wonga pigeon; as long as this sound continues the animal never stirs, and it can be easily approached and despatched.

Great diversity of opinion prevails respecting the flesh of the kangaroo, some persons considering it nearly as good as venison; the colonists of South Australia seem to be of that opinion, since kangaroo flesh sold, a few years ago, at Adelaide market, at the rate of nine-pence a pound. The reason of this high price was, however, probably the great demand for it by the newly arrived emigrants, who were all curious to taste the flesh of this outlandish quadruped. In New South Wales, kangaroo meat is little esteemed, with the exception of the tail, which is made into a soup, superior to ox-tail. During the period I was engaged in the survey of the country to the northward of the MacLeay river, my dogs killed some almost daily; I generally kept the tail and a few steaks for my own table, leaving the rest of the carcase for the blacks, or the wild dogs. As for as my own taste goes, I certainly think that a kangaroo steak is palatable enough if dressed in the same manner as veal cutlets or venison collops; whilst the small pademella, if cooked in the same


text:
Early Days

 * "Early Days," a collection of two stories by Tolstoy, translated by Dole
 * Early Days (journal)

title: Early Days


text:
Joseph Priestley

 * "Priestley," in Biographies of Scientific Men (1912)
 * "Priestley," in Biographies of Scientific Men (1912)
 * "Priestley," in Biographies of Scientific Men (1912)
 * "Priestley," in Biographies of Scientific Men (1912)

Author pages

 * Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), English theologian and philosopher
 * Joseph Priestley (1767–1852), English canal manager

title: Joseph Priestley