A GASOMETER.
A GASOMETER.
The roof of the inner cylinder presses down heavily upon the gas, pushing it into the largemain pipes, which run fromthe gasometer through the principal streets. Smaller mains connect with these and the gas is pushed into theservice pipes, which enter the houses. When a stopcock is opened in any house the pressure of the gasometer pushes the gas through, it may be, miles of pipes, and out through the burner, where it may be lighted.
Many houses have a simple electric-lighting attachment, so that by merely turning a stopcock the gas is turned on and by pulling a chain an electric spark sets the gas on fire, flooding the room with light.
Within a few years illuminating gas has greatly diminished in price. It costs a little more than kerosene, but it is more convenient in many ways. The danger of carrying lamps from room to room is avoided, as well as the disagreeable task of filling them. Still the gas flame is less steady than that of the kerosene lamp, and is therefore less serviceable for reading. For the poor man the kerosene light is a great blessing, while for all who can afford the extra cost the gaslight is a greater convenience.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING.
Theelectric light differs widely from all modes of artificial light previously invented. It is the latest method that man has discovered for the production of light. In its practical form this invention is quite recent. In England the arc light was produced in lecture-room experiments as early as 1802. Prof. Michael Faraday, a learned Englishman and celebrated chemist, experimented many years in electricity and magnetism in the Royal Institution at London. He continued his studies and experiments in developing the science of electricity through his whole life, but he died, an old man, before a single electric arc was seen in the streets of London.
In ancient times an invention was frequently the result of one man's efforts, but at the present time it is often quite otherwise. Many men are now engaged in the development of electric lighting. Charles Francis Brush was a farmer's boy in Ohio. He pushed himself through the Cleveland High School and graduated at the University of Michigan. He established a laboratory in Cleveland and turned his attention to the invention of apparatus for electric lighting. He was one of three or four great American inventors who successfully put into operation the dynamo and furnished electricity for the electrical lamp. This dynamo is a machine which produces electric currents by mechanical power. Brush's dynamo at the outset was so perfect and completethat for many years it has continued in regular use with but very little change.
Elihu Thomson graduated at the Central High School in Philadelphia and taught chemistry in that school. He studied with great care the subject of electricity, giving special attention to lighting. He organized the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and has patented nearly two hundred inventions relating to electric lighting and other applications of electricity. He was also the inventor of the system of electric welding.
Among the great American inventors in electrical science is Thomas Alva Edison. He was an Ohio boy whose Scotch mother taught him to read. When he was twelve years old he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. Here he acquired the habit of reading. He studied chemistry and conducted chemical experiments on the train. He learned to set type, and edited and printed a newspaper in the baggage car. He was constantly noticing the telegraph stations along the road, and he soon began to study electricity.
EDISON'S HEROIC ACT.
EDISON'S HEROIC ACT.
One day the little child of a station master was playing on the track just as a freight car was moving down toward him. Almost as swift as lightning itself young Edison dashed out, stepped in front of the coming car, and at the risk of his own life snatched the child from danger. Ingratitude the station master, knowing the boy's interest in the telegraph, taught him how to use a machine. After that he acquired great skill in this art and operated in many sections of the country, perfecting himself in the subject.
For over twenty years he has had a large establishment, with an immense workshop and many mechanics, at Menlo Park, N. J., where he has devoted his whole attention to inventing. He has perfected his system of duplex telegraphy and invented the carbon telephone-transmitter, the phonograph, the platinum burner, and the carbon burner for the incandescent light. He has patented very many inventions, and his system of electric lighting for houses is now in general use. Edison's whole life is an interesting study for young people.
At the present time the two methods of lighting by electricity are the arc light and the incandescent light. The arc light is used for lighting large buildings like churches, halls, and railway stations, and for lighting the streets of a city. The incandescent light, or the glow-lamp as it is called in England, is in general use for lighting dwelling houses. This lamp consists of a glass bulb from which air has been excluded so that it is almost a perfect vacuum and in which is inserted a looped filament of carbon. The electricity is made to pass through this carbon wire, which is thereby heated to a white heat and thus furnishes the light. Being in a vacuum, the carbon is but slightly burned. It therefore can be subjected to this heat for a long time without breaking or wearing out.
At first Edison used a platinum wire in the little electric lamp. He wanted something better. He needed some form of bamboo or other vegetable fibre. He sent a man to explore China and Japan for bamboo. He sent another, whotraveled twenty-three hundred miles up the Amazon River and finally reached the Pacific coast, searching for bamboo. He sent a third to Ceylon to spend years in a similar search. Eighty varieties of bamboo and three thousand specimens of other vegetable fibre were brought him. He tested them all; three or four were found suitable.
This system of incandescent lights has been rapidly extended within a few years. There are millions of these lights now in use in this country. They are used not only for lighting the rooms of hotels and private houses, but also for lighting steamships, railway trains, and street cars, and for nearly all indoor illumination. This light is not as cheap as kerosene or gaslight, but it is so convenient and so simple, requiring no daily care, that it is rapidly coming into use in all towns and cities.
Among its advantages may be named the four following points. Matches are not needed in making a light. Thus the danger from accidental fires, which have so frequently occurred from the careless use of matches, is avoided. Very little heat results from an electric light, while from kerosene lamps and gaslight much heat is produced. In warm weather this freedom from heat is agreeable. The burning lamp and the gas jet make the air of the room impure and unfit for breathing. This is not true of the electric light. In the use of kerosene and of illuminating gas there is frequently danger of explosion. Not so with the electric light.
It will be seen that we are thus using to-day for lighting purposes occasionally the candle, quite largely the kerosene lamp, and to a great extent in towns and cities the gaslight, and best of all—the cleanest, the neatest, giving the brightest light, requiring the least attention from the consumer, and manifesting the highest development of man's inventivegenius thus far—the electric light. Here at present man's invention in this direction has stopped. What the next step will be, no one can tell.
Slowly through the ages man has been developing. Gradually he has grown in mental power and advanced morally and spiritually. It is very clear that although he is an animal and has the nature and desires of an animal, he has high mental capacity and is endowed with a spiritual nature, a soul. At the very beginning of creation we are told, "God said, Let there be light: and there was light." How and whence it came we cannot tell. It would almost seem that man in his effort to create light has kept step with his own development. The first light was produced from the simplest substances, solids: wood on the hearth, the pitch-pine knot, and the candle. Then followed light produced from liquids: olive oil, whale oil, refined petroleum. Afterward the inventive genius of man extracted from coal an invisible gas which would burn and give a bright, clear light. Rising higher and higher, man soars above all solids, liquids, and gases, and with a sudden bound leaps almost out of the realm of matter and produces the electric light, which is merely a form of motion. How clearly the progress of man, his elevation, his civilization, his increased conveniences and luxuries of life are made to appear in this study of his methods of obtaining artificial light!
LIGHTHOUSES.
Wehave seen that artificial light is needed at night not only in houses, churches, and public halls, but also in the streets of large towns and cities for the benefit of those who have occasion to travel after dark. Still further, it has been found necessary to light the shores of the great sea, so that vessels may not run upon the rocks in the darkness and be stove to pieces.
The building of lighthouses has chiefly developed during the present century, although a few lighthouses were known to the ancients. The full history of lighthouses, if we could trace it, would be very interesting. If you were asked where the first lighthouse was built you would be quite likely to guess right the first time, because you know that the first ships and the first sailors were around the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. You would certainly say somewhere along the eastern coast of that sea. Now as a matter of fact there was a lighthouse on the island of Pharos, just in front of the city of Alexandria, which was built over three hundred years before Christ. This was one of the most celebrated towers of antiquity; in fact, it is classed among the Seven Wonders of the World. It is quite likely, however, that this was not the first lighthouse. Probably there were towers on the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus which may have preceded the Pharos of Alexandria.
The Romans built lighthouses at Ostia, Ravenna, Puteoli, and other ports. All these ancient lighthouses were towers on the top of which wood was burned at night, and the blaze of the burning wood furnished the light which was to guide the mariner.
Two or three centuries ago many lighthouses were built along the shores of France and England. The first lighthouse on the coast of our country was Boston Light, at the entrance to Boston harbor, which was erected in the year 1716. Ever since the United States government has been established, much attention has been paid to our system of lighthouses. In 1852 a lighthouse board was established within the department of the United States Treasury.
Great skill and engineering ability are needed in the construction of lighthouses. Our country has long Atlantic, Pacific, and lake coasts to be protected, besides numerous rivers extending over thousands of miles. All along these coasts and rivers our government has established and maintains lighthouses. We have nearly a thousand lights on the Atlantic coast, nearly two hundred upon the Pacific, and several hundred along the shores of the Northern Lakes. The United States has also many fog signals and almost innumerable buoys. Great sums of money are necessary to build these lighthouses, many of which are now of iron. Twelve of our most famous lighthouses have cost a total sum of upward of $3,000,000 for their construction. Each year witnesses a steady improvement in the method of construction and of lighting this multitude of lighthouses.
At first, fires burning at the tops of lighthouses were the only signals and guides at night. Then came the use of oil in lamps, with reflectors constructed for the purpose. At first in this country fish oil was used, and after that spermoil. Within the last ten years refined petroleum has been almost universally adopted for lighthouses in the United States. At present about a million gallons are used in a year. We have only a few electric lights, though two are now in use on the Atlantic coast and two or three upon the lakes.
In late years commerce has been rapidly extended. The merchant marine of the nations has grown to gigantic proportions. The amount of travel not only coastwise but across the ocean for pleasure and profit has become enormous. The nations are coming closer together and becoming better acquainted with each other. All this promotes civilization, and will ere long, it is to be hoped, operate to prevent international wars.
England has many famous lighthouses. Great Britain is an island and her coast shows a continuous series of indentations. Perhaps the most famous of her lighthouses is the Eddystone Light, a few miles off from Plymouth.
If you will look on your map of Great Britain you will find that the county of Northumberland is the extreme northern end of England, bordering on the North Sea and adjoining the southeast corner of Scotland. Off that coast you will see a little group of islands called the Farne Islands. At low tide there are twenty-five of them. On one of these little islands, early in the present century, stood the Longstone Lighthouse. It was a solitary place, and sometimes weeks would pass without any communication with the mainland. The keeper of this light was William Darling, a man of intelligence, who gave a fair education to each of his large family of children. One of these was a daughter whose name was Grace. Think what the youth of an intelligent girl would be on one of the Farne Islands. They are extremely desolate,are covered with rocks, and have very little vegetation and very little animal life except sea fowl.
Through the channels between these islands the sea rushes with great force, and many a brave ship has gone down, dashed to pieces upon the rocks. In 1838 a large steamer named theForfarshirestruck these rocks and was broken in two within sight of Longstone Lighthouse. This steamer had on board more than forty passengers and twenty officers and crew. Three persons only were in the lighthouse—Mr. Darling, his wife, and Grace. The storm was furious, the sea was running high, and through the mist, with the aid of his glass, Mr. Darling could make out the figures of the sufferers who were still clinging to the broken vessel. The lighthouse-keeper shrank from attempting their rescue, but Grace insisted that they must make the effort to save them from certain death. Even the launching of the boat was extremely hazardous. The old lighthouse-keeper thought it impossible, but he could not resist the pleadings of his daughter. The mother helped to launch the boat; the father and daughter entered it and each took an oar. It was a terrible undertaking to row the frail boat, and it required not only great muscular power but the most determined courage.
The rescuers succeeded in reaching the rocks, but found great difficulty in steadying the boat to prevent it from being destroyed on the sharp ridges. There were nine persons clinging to the broken vessel. These nine were all rescued. By tremendous energy, great skill, and almost superhuman efforts they were rowed back to the lighthouse in safety.
This heroic deed of a young woman scarcely twenty-three years of age was heralded abroad until she became well known all over Europe, and the lonely lighthouse was soon the centre of attraction to thousands of curious and sympathizingpersons. The Humane Society sent her a most flattering vote of thanks, and a public subscription was raised amounting to about thirty-five hundred dollars. Testimonials of all kinds were showered upon her, which produced in her mind only a sense of wonder and grateful pleasure.
GRACE DARLING.
GRACE DARLING.
This brief outline of Grace Darling is here given because her heroism served to call the attention of the world to the importance of lighthouses and the isolated life of the keepers and their families. You will find a picturesque account of the life of Grace Darling in the first volume of Chambers's "Miscellany." This story does not stand alone in lighthouse annals, but again and again has it been matched in later times and in our own country.
One of the most famous lighthouse heroines in America was Miss Ida Lewis, whose father kept the Limestone Lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor of Newport, R. I. This lighthouse-keeper's daughter very early in life became skilled in rowing and swimming. One day, when she was eighteen years of age, four young men were upset in a boat in the harbor. Ida quickly launched her own skiff, pushed off, rescued them, and brought them safely to shore.
At another time three drunken soldiers had stove a holein their boat not far from the lighthouse. Two swam ashore and Ida reached their boat in season to save the third. Two years afterward a sheep was being driven down the wharf when the animal plunged into the water. Three men running along the shore in pursuit found a boat and pushed out after the sheep. A heavy "sou'wester" was blowing and the boat was carried away into deep water. Ida Lewis, in spite of the high wind, rowed out in her little skiff and brought them safely ashore.
One winter a young scapegrace stole a sailboat from the wharf and put out to sea. About midnight the gale drove the boat upon the Limestone rocks a mile from the light, but the boy clung to the mast all night. In the morning Ida Lewis found him, as she said, "shaking and God-blessing me and praying to be set on shore." By these and other instances in which Miss Lewis rescued those in danger she became famous, and her praises were heralded in the newspapers and spoken at many firesides. The citizens of Newport presented her with a boat as a token of their admiration of her bravery.
These famous instances and many more that could be added to them would seem to indicate that life in a lighthouse, with the mind constantly running out to the sea, becoming familiar with the storms that rise, and observing the dash of the waves and the roar of the wind—life inured to hardship, but shut up within the safe keeping of the solid walls of the little tower high above the raging waves—it would seem that such a life is calculated to give courage, strength, and fortitude, and to endue the heart with a heroic forgetfulness of self.
How important is the position of a lighthouse-keeper! Many lives are in his hands, and on his fidelity depends the safety of millions of dollars of property. Boats and ships of all kinds, steamers great and small, sail away from one shoreof the vast sea to the opposite shore, or along the coast, all in comparative safety because of the various beacon lights.
Indeed, is not the lighthouse itself a great lesson in morals? Every one of us—every one of the seventy million people of the United States has a part in the lighthouse. It is we, the people, who are furnishing the government with its resources, and it is the great government of our country that builds the lighthouses to warn mariners of danger. The modern lighthouse is the symbol of benevolence. It carries with it the lesson of "loving thy neighbor as thyself." This is the lesson of the lighthouse to the people of the land, though its service is performed for the people of the sea.
CYRUS H. McCORMICK.
CYRUS H. McCORMICK.
CUTTING SUGAR CANE IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
CUTTING SUGAR CANE IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
UNCULTIVATED FOODS.
Heatand light—each is necessary for our bodily comfort and well-being. We have seen that much time and thought have been spent during the past three hundred years in providing the most satisfactory methods for heating and lighting our houses. We have found that wood and coal in our fireplaces, stoves, and furnaces have given us the best heat. We have learned that kerosene and gas made from coal are the most common sources of light. Even electricity, the latest means for producing light and heat, usually needs the power of steam for its development; and heat is necessary to produce steam. We have a common name for the wood, the coal, the gas, and the oil, from the burning of which heat and light result; this name is fuel.
Another form of fuel is even more necessary than coal and wood. In the winter we warm our rooms so that we may not suffer from the cold; but the stove does not warm us when out of doors. Then we put on our heavy winter wraps, but these give us no warmth: they merely keep in the heat of the body or keep out the cold blasts of the wind. We all know that the body is warm of itself; that there is something within us that produces heat, like a fire. When our fingers become chilled by the frosty air we may warm them with our breath. Thetemperature of a room may be seventy degrees or less, but if we place the bulb of a thermometer beneath the tongue we shall find that the mercury rises to ninety-eight degrees.
The fire in the body and the fire in the stove act very much alike. If the draughts of the stove are closed tight and no air is admitted, the fire dies down and goes out. If the air which enters the body is foul, the fire feels the effect and our health is injured. If the lungs are filled with water or anything else which keeps out the air, the fire goes out and life is lost.
The fuel which we call food is just as necessary for the fire in our body as is wood or coal for the fire in the stove. Three times a day or oftener we take this food-fuel into our bodies; thus we keep the fire steadily burning which makes us warm and keeps us alive.
On the other hand, fuel for the body must be very different from fuel for a stove. In the stove heat alone is wanted; therefore one form of fuel is enough. In the body bones must be enlarged and strengthened, muscles must be developed, fat must be provided in sufficient quantities, and brain-matter must be produced. Therefore the food-fuel must provide not only heat but also the different materials of which the body is made. One kind of food is necessary for the bones, another for the blood, another for the flesh, and another for the nerves. Thus while in studying common fuel we have only to learn about wood, either in the form of trees or pressed into the form of coal, in studying food-fuel we find that the kinds are almost numberless. Meat and vegetables, fish and fruit, roots and nuts, in their infinite varieties, are all included in the word food.
We are told that all matter belongs to one of three kingdoms—the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms. From two of these three divisions we obtain most of our food.Food may be divided into two classes then—animal food and vegetable food. In animal food we have the meat of wild animals and of domestic animals. In early days, when the number of people was small, the supply of wild animals was large. A great part of the food in those days was obtained by hunting and fishing. To-day most of the meat comes from domestic animals, so that the keeping of herds and flocks is one of the great industries of the time. Fish are still important in our lists of foods, but the flesh of wild animals is less and less used for meat.
Three hundred years ago the Indians had this country to themselves. They were few in number and were scattered over a vast territory. The forests abounded in wild game and the lakes and rivers were filled with fish. Love of hunting and fishing held the first place in the pleasures of the red man. The hunting grounds extended far and wide in every direction. Each tribe had its own hunting and fishing grounds, and it was considered an act of war for any tribe of Indians to encroach upon the territory of other tribes.
"Such places as they chose for their abode," says Hubbard's History, "were usually at the falls of great rivers, or near the seaside, where was any convenience for catching such fish as every summer and winter used to come up the coast. At such times they used, like good fellows, to make all common, and then those who had entertained their neighbors at the seaside expected the like kindness from them again up higher in the country."
The kinds of wild animals that the Indians hunted were very numerous. One man describes the appearance of an Indian's "room of skins." He says: "There they showed me many hides and horns, both beasts of chase of the stinking foot—such as roes, foxes, jackals, wolves, wildcats,raccoons, porcupines, skunks, muskrats, squirrels, and sables—and beasts of chase of the sweet foot—buck, red deer, reindeer, moose, bear, beaver, otter, hare, and martin." Captain John Smith tells of the fowl that the red men hunted. He mentions eagles, hawks, cranes, geese, ducks, sheldrakes, teal, gulls, and turkeys.
INDIANS HUNTING GAME.
INDIANS HUNTING GAME.
The variety of fish caught by the Indians was also very large. "Higher up at the falls of the great rivers they used to take salmon, shad, and alewives, that used in great quantities, more than cartloads, in the spring, to pass up into the fresh-water ponds and lakes." "In March, April, May, and half June," says John Smith, "here is cod in abundance; in May, June, July, and August, mullet and sturgeon; herring, if any desire them; I have taken many." Again he writes of whales, grampuses, hake, haddock, mackerel, sharks, cunners, bass, perch, eels, crabs, lobsters, mussels, and oysters.
We may also divide vegetable food into two classes—that which nature provides without the aid of man, or wild vegetables, and that which requires cultivation, or cultivatedvegetables. Many forms of nuts, berries and fruits, and some forms of common ground vegetables grow wild. The red men found these in great abundance.
John Smith found in New England currants, mulberries, gooseberries, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, and strawberries, besides other fruits of which he did not know the names. He made a journey up the Potomac River, and reported that the hills yielded no less plenty and variety of fruit than the river furnished abundance of fish.
Smith also described acorns whose bark was white and sweetish; he added that these acorns, when boiled, afforded a sweet oil that the red men kept in gourds to anoint their heads and joints. The Indians also ate the fruit of this acorn, made into bread. There were plums of three kinds and cherries. Smith discovered also a great abundance of vines "that climb the tops of the highest trees in some places. Where they are not overshadowed from the sun, they are covered with fruit, though never pruned nor manured."
Hunting and fishing are carried on in much the same way to-day as they were centuries ago. The gun has taken the place of the bow and arrow, and fishing implements have been somewhat improved. But to capture and kill is now, as formerly, all that is needed to obtain this form of food, if the wild animals themselves can be found. Wild vegetables may be gathered to-day in just the way that our ancestors gathered them, though they are not found in so great quantities because of the increase of cultivation. In studying the changes in the modes of living that have occurred in this country during the last three hundred years, we find that almost all the improvements in the production of food have been in the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of food, and the bringing it to market.
CULTIVATED FOODS.
Huntingand fishing did not furnish either sufficient or satisfactory food for the Indians. A portion of their time was spent in cultivating certain products of the soil. Black Hawk, a famous Indian chief, writes: "When we returned to our village in the spring from our hunting grounds we would open the caches and take out corn and other provisions which had been put up in the fall, and then commence repairing our lodges. As soon as this is accomplished we repair the fences around our fields and clean them off ready for planting corn. This work is done by our women. The men, during this time, are feasting on dried venison, bear's meat, wild fowl and corn.
THE CORN DANCE.
THE CORN DANCE.
"Our women plant the corn, and as soon as they get done we make a feast and dance the corn dance. At this feast our young braves select the young woman they wish to have for a wife. When this is over we feast again and have our national dance.
"When our national dance is over, our corn-fields hoed, and every weed dug up, and our corn about knee high, all our young men would start in a direction toward sundown to hunt deer and buffalo, and the remainder of our people start to fish. Every one leaves the village and remains away about forty days. They then return, the hunting party bringing in dried buffalo and deer meat, the others dried fish.
"This is a happy season of the year; having plenty of provision, such as beans, squashes, and other produce, with our dried meat and fish, we continue to make feasts and visit each other until our corn is ripe.
"When the corn is fit for use another great ceremony takes place, with feasting and returning thanks to the Great Spirit for giving us corn. We continue our sport and feasting until the corn is all secured. We then prepare to leave our village for our hunting grounds."
Thus we see that the most important crop among the Indians was maize or Indian corn. This grain is specially suited to the climate and soil of a large portion of the country; it was wholly unknown to the Europeans who first came to America.
John Smith in Virginia and Roger Williams in New England were much interested in the Indian corn. It is from their writings that we learn how the red men cultivated and used this strange product of the New World.
As corn was the Indians' main dependence, they ate it at all times and in various ways. They roasted the green ears in the ashes; sometimes they cut the kernels from the cob and boiled them with beans, making a kind of succotash. Meal was made by pounding the kernels in a wooden mortar; if the corn was old it was soaked over night and pounded in the morning.
This meal also was cooked in different ways. Sometimes it was wrapped in corn husks and boiled; at other times it was mixed with water and made into cakes, which were baked in the ashes of the fire. Often a pudding was made from the meal, in which blackberries were placed. When the Indians travelled, they were accustomed to carry enough of this meal to last several days, either in a small basket or a hollow leathern girdle.
Such was life among the Indians. Usually food was plenty and feasting was common, but at times food was scarce and fasting was necessary. If the Indian had sufficient for to-day, he cared little for to-morrow. If the corn crop failed or if the hunting expedition turned out badly, the red man accepted it as a necessary evil and made no complaint.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.(From the history of Virginia, by Captain John Smith.)
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.(From the history of Virginia, by Captain John Smith.)
The first Englishmen to learn of the foods that could be obtained in the New World were two captains sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh to explore the Atlantic coast of America. They returned full of enthusiasm for the fertile soil and the delightful climate of Virginia. They praised also the kindness of the Indians, who provided them with the best of food—deer, hares, fish, walnuts, melons, cucumbers, peas, and corn.
Apparently there was an abundance of food in the NewWorld—flesh, fish, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grain. The sailors were not farmers, however; nor were the colonists who came over the next year. They had no knowledge of the labor necessary to till the soil and raise the food, and after a year on Roanoke Island they returned to England.
Twenty years later the colonists at Jamestown were no more ready to labor at farming than those at Roanoke had been. Numbers died from hunger during the first summer, but the leader, John Smith, was able, from his own strength of character, to hold survivors to the work until a fair abundance of corn had been obtained. Meanwhile Smith managed to buy or borrow provisions from the Indians.
The settlers at Plymouth arrived in early winter and found a climate much colder than that of England or Holland. They could not hope to harvest a crop before the next autumn, and they also were dependent upon the red men for many months.
Soon after theMayflowerarrived in Provincetown harbor an expedition was sent out to search for the best spot to build a village. They followed the tracks of Indians, but could not find them nor their dwellings. The first sign of human life was a piece of clear ground which had been planted some years before. Going a little farther they found a field in which the stubble was new, showing that the ground had been recently cultivated. Finally they came upon "heaps of sand newly paddled with their hands." Led by curiosity the Pilgrims digged in these places and found several baskets filled with corn. This grain seemed to the Pilgrims a "very goodly sight," though they had never seen corn before. They carried the grain back to the ship, and when the Indians who owned the corn were found, the Pilgrims gladly paid them its full value.
When spring came the colonists at Plymouth began makingpreparations for planting. An Indian, named Squanto, who had previously been carried to England and had learned to speak some English, showed himself very friendly. He taught them how to prepare the fish which must be put in every hill for a fertilizer. He directed the planting and cultivating of the fields. As a result they had "a good increase." They were not so successful in other ways, for their barley crop was very light and their peas dried up with the sun.
A curious story is found in some old records. The dogs in a Plymouth colony town caused the farmers great trouble by digging up the alewives which they were accustomed to place in the hills. Therefore a law was passed that required the owner of every dog either to keep him securely tied for forty days after the fields were prepared, or to tie a forepaw to his head so that it would be impossible for the dog to dig in the newly prepared hill.
Two years later the Pilgrims are said to have had nearly sixty acres of ground well planted with corn, and many gardens filled with fruits and vegetables. However, the crop was light, mainly because the colonists had been too weak, from lack of food, properly to attend to it. A famine would have followed for the third time had not a vessel arrived from England, in August, bringing provisions sufficient for the winter.
For several years the Pilgrims were compelled to live partly upon wild game and fish. One summer their main support was obtained by the use of the only boat that remained, with which they caught large quantities of bass. They also obtained clams when they could not get fish, used ground-nuts in place of bread, and caught many wild fowl in the creeks and marshes.
The colonists had no milk, butter, nor cheese for the first three years in Plymouth. There were no domestic animals in New England until, in the spring of 1623, a vessel arrived bringing the first cows. In time beef and veal were added to the list of foods, and soon other domestic animals were brought over. By the middle of the fourth summer the village of New Plymouth was reported to have nearly two hundred inhabitants, with some cattle and goats, and many swine and poultry.
AN ANCIENT PLOW.
AN ANCIENT PLOW.
The tools used by the early colonists were, like their houses and furniture, of the rudest manufacture. Agriculture, such as exists in the United States to-day, was entirely unknown two centuries ago. The plow was little used and the few plows among the colonists were inconvenient, heavy tools. The important planting and cultivating implement used by the farmers was the hoe.
The village or plantation blacksmith made the tools for the farmers, and they were rudely formed and shaped. In harvest time the hoe was again called into use, as well as the roughly constructed scythes and pruninghooks. The muscle-developing flail separated the grain from the straw, and the miller ground it into meal, or flour, taking "toll" for his pay—that is, a fixed fraction of the product.
How the system of agriculture has changed during these two centuries, or rather during the last century, for few of the improvements are yet a hundred years old! As in the methods of producing heat and light, inventions have donewonders in providing us with a greater amount and a larger variety of food at a reduced cost. Formerly all farm-work was done by the use of great muscular power. Only a strong man can wield the hoe for hours at a time. To walk behind a plow, guiding the horse and holding the plow in place, is no light task. To swing a scythe from early morning until late in the day severely taxes the strength. To thresh grain upon the barn floor with a flail day after day needs much physical endurance. The labor of many men was required to manage even a comparatively small farm. To-day all these conditions are changed.
At the present time "the most desirable farm-hand is the man with the cunning brain who can get the most work out of a machine without breaking it. The farm laborer finds himself advanced to the ranks of skilled labor. The man who plows uses his muscle only in guiding the machine. The man who operates the harrow has half a dozen levers to lighten his labor. The sower walks leisurely behind a drill and works brakes. The reaper needs a quick brain and a quick hand—not necessarily a strong arm nor a powerful back. The threshers are merely assistants to a machine. The men who heave the wheat into the bins only press buttons."
IMPLEMENTS FOR PLANTING.
Georgewas determined to be a farmer. He was but twelve years of age, yet he felt sure that he knew his own mind. He said to himself and to his friends that life out of doors, life on a farm, was the best and healthiest kind of life. He declared that to raise the food of the world was the most important service that man could do for his fellow-beings.
The boy lived in a city. He had always lived in a city and had never seen a farm. He had never been away from home. His home was a flat, or apartment, occupying a portion of one floor of a ten-story block. His knowledge of life was limited entirely to city life. He had been to the park; he had seen there trees and shrubbery, grass and flowers. Yet he had never visited the park alone; he had never seen any of the work needed in caring for the trees and flowers. He knew absolutely nothing about gardening or farming; he could not tell the difference between a hoe and a rake; he would not be able to answer the simplest questions about farm life.
Yet George had decided to be a farmer, and he had made up his mind to study the subject of farming at once. He proposed to ask Uncle Ben all sorts of questions every chance he could get. He intended to obtain books from the library that would tell him what he needed to know. Oh, could he only go into the country, try for himself life upon a farm, and see with his own eyes what a farmer had to do!
So George went to work. He did not neglect his school duties, but carefully prepared his daily lessons. When these were done he was ready to study agriculture. He did not know where to begin with books, so he asked questions.
"Uncle Ben," he said one evening as the family was gathered around the library lamp, "how does it happen that a farmer sometimes raises tomatoes and sometimes potatoes? What does he do if he wants one rather than the other?"
"Well, George," was the laughing reply, "I think that you have much to learn before you make a successful farmer. Don't you know that if he wants potatoes he plants potatoes?"
"Why, I suppose so," said George. "Then if he desires apples, does he plant apples?"
"Hardly," said his uncle. "Seeds would be better than entire apples."
George was started and for the rest of the evening he asked no more questions, his whole attention being turned to the large encyclopedia on his knee. When next he plied his uncle with questions it was evident that he had already learned something.
"When a farmer plants a potato, he puts it in a hole and covers it up. I have read that he plows the ground first. What does he do that for?"
"For two reasons, I suppose," replied Uncle Ben. "The roots and sprouts grow better in a soil that has been softened. When the ground is unplowed, it is baked hard. Besides, plowing turns the soil over, brings new dirt to the top, and generally mixes it all together."
"Oh, yes!" said George. "Then I must learn about plowing first."
George obtained as good a knowledge of plows and tillage as was possible from books. In order fully to understand thesubject, it would be necessary to see the plows and use them. But that could not come yet. The books told him that the earliest and simplest way to till the soil was with a spade. From them George learned, what most boys and girls know, what a spade was, and that a spade was all that was absolutely needed to soften the soil and prepare it for planting.
To spade a piece of ground is slow work; it is also hard work. Could not some method be devised so that the spading or tilling could be done by horses or oxen? This led to the invention of the plow. This was made thousands of years ago. The kooloo plow, still in use in India, was one of the earliest and was very rude. It was made entirely of wood, the sharp part of the plow being like a thorn in shape, but very thick and strong.
As the centuries went on, iron began to be used; and early in the history of iron it was applied to plows. They were still made of wood, but iron plates were placed over the wood, where the instrument tore into the ground. Later the plow itself was made of iron, leaving the handles still formed of wood. This iron plow would sometimes become covered with soil and so be almost useless. This was corrected by the use of steel shares instead of iron. This brought George to the modern plow.
George was not content with simply obtaining an idea about plows; he wished to know all that he could about them. He obtained books that gave complete accounts of the varieties of plows, the ways in which they were used, and the work which they should do. He learned that a plow should be fitted to its task. It should be as light as possible, easily drawn, and it should run with even steadiness, at a uniform depth. It should not only turn the soil over, but should thoroughly powder it and bury the weeds.
To his great surprise George also learned that some of the modern plows were as much superior to the ordinary plow as that was to the spade. The sulky plow is easier for the horses than the common plow; it makes furrows of different depths; and it has a seat for the farmer. Sometimes several plowshares are placed side by side and drawn by a large number of horses. This is called a gang plow. Steam and wind and water and even electricity are coming into use to furnish power for plows, in place of the animal power of horses.
"Well, Uncle Ben," said George one evening, "now I understand something about plowing and tillage. The next thing a farmer does in the spring is to plant his potatoes and corn, is it not?"
"Yes," was the reply.
"Well, then," said George, "that will not take me long to learn. All there is to do is to dig a hole, put in the potato, and cover it with earth."
"I am afraid that you will find that the job is not quite so simple as that. Has the farmer nothing to plant but potatoes?" asked the uncle.
"Yes," said the boy. "Corn and turnips and oats and wheat and pumpkins and lots of other things."
"Would you plant a kernel of corn in just the same way that you would a potato?"
"No, I suppose not," was the reply.
"And do you think that every farmer does all his planting by hand? Does he not have tools to help him?"
Thus George was started on a new line of thought. He read of the sower, as he slowly walks the length of the field, throwing the grain right and left. Even this work is better and more quickly done by machinery. The hand sower is a little machine which the farmer straps to his shoulders. Thehopper of the sower is filled with grain and, as the handle is turned, the grain is scattered broadcast to as great a distance as possible. More saving of labor still is the horse sower, which is simply the hand sower on a larger scale. Sometimes the seed is inserted in the ground by means of grain drills, which deposit the grain more evenly and at the same time cover it with earth.
After learning how to sow seed, George began to inquire into the subject of planting. Many machines have been invented for this purpose which save much labor. The most important are the corn planter and the potato planter. Machines for planting other vegetables are much like these. The hand corn planter, which is used on small farms, is carried in the hand of the farmer. At each place where he wishes a hill of corn he strikes into the ground the planter, which leaves the kernels at the proper depth and covers them with soil. The horse corn planter is a form of grain drill, which does the same work as the hand planter.
The potato planter is a simple machine, though it does a variety of work. It cuts the potatoes into slices and drops them through a tube into a furrow which the plow-like part of the planter makes. The slices are dropped at regular spaces and are covered with dirt by the machine itself. In other words, the farmer puts potatoes in the hopper and drives the machine the length of the field. The planter does the rest of the work, saving the farmer the labor of slicing the potatoes, digging the hole, dropping the vegetable and covering it with earth.
All this and much more George learned during the next two weeks. Then he showed that he was ready for a new subject by asking his uncle what the farmer did between seedtime and harvest.
"I suppose," said the boy, "that most farmers get their planting done almost before summer begins. Then it must be some time before they begin to harvest the grain and dig the potatoes. What do they do all summer?"
"I think," replied his uncle, "that you will have to go into the country and see some things for yourself. As the school term is nearly finished, I believe that you must visit a good farmer and spend the summer and autumn with him. Then you will know something of a real farmer's life and work. But to answer your question by asking another, Did you ever hear of weeds?"
After that George asked few questions. He began to think that he was showing too much ignorance. From that evening until the end of June he had no thoughts but of the farm. He read but little and waited to study his subject at close hand. But he did discover that a farmer's life is not too easy in the summer. He learned that the ground must be kept free from weeds and continually loosened. He found that the farmer uses his hoe in deadly hostility to the weeds; that he makes his horse do a part of the work of hoeing; that the harrow and the cultivator keep the soil loose between the rows.
When the summer came, George felt that he had some knowledge of tillage, of sowing and planting, and of weeding; this was book knowledge. Now he hoped to get into the inside and learn something of the farmer's methods of harvesting. "Then," he thought, "I can be a farmer."
IMPLEMENTS FOR HARVESTING.
Georgeawoke the first morning at the farm to hear the roosters crowing, the cows mooing, the sheep bleating, and the men cheerily whistling as they hurried about the chores. No thought of turning over for another nap entered his head, but in quick time he was dressed and ready for the morning meal. Breakfast over, George hastened out of doors and was soon eagerly watching Tom, who had been directed to cut the grass around the edges of one of the fields which had been previously mowed. Here for the first time he saw a scythe and learned its use.
For a while George watched Tom's steady swing of the scythe as he slowly cut a swath the length of the field. Then he hastened to another field where the mowing machine was steadily moving across the lot. What an improvement! What a saving of labor! How easily those knives moved through the grass, laying every spire low as soon as it was touched! How much more even the cut, though Tom was skilled with the scythe! The horses drew the machine with ease and the driver had a comfortable seat. However, it was plain that he must keep his head clear and his eyes open, to properly attend to every part of the instrument.
When noon came George was tired and heated, and he gladly remained in the house after dinner. Here he found his favorite encyclopedia and was soon hunting up the history of the invention of the mower. He was surprised to learnhow short a time it had been in use. From the beginning of history the crooked sickle and the straighter scythe had been almost the only tools used for cutting grass and grain. Not until about the middle of the present century had practical mowing machines come into use. But now, except on very small or rocky farms, the horse mower is an absolute necessity.