Part 14

My cousin, who took the Scripture lesson of the rock and its rendings, spent his last days in Southern California, where springs are rare, and orange groves and vineyards depend greatly upon irrigating for water. He was located at Duarte, about twenty miles east of the city of Los Angeles, in one of the finest orange and lemon groves in the State. While they had provisions for irrigating, the lack of drinking water was seriously felt.

Visiting at my house some twenty years ago, where he chiefly made his Eastern home, he listened to my cranky ideas as set forth in this work. At first he scoffed, but being a good reasoner, he afterward thought the idea worth trying, and promised on his return to experiment and report, as I had convinced him of several successes here. In less than a month I got word from him that “he had struck it.” The grove lay at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountain, not one-quarter of a mile away. I advised him to select some place in the side of the mountain where the tree growth was greenest, which he did, and got all the pure water needed.

A Mr. Fitzgerald, owning a large grove about a mile west, similarly located, took the hint and obtained quite a favorable result. When visiting these groves in 1894, almost the first thing Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to show me was his bountiful supply of spring water, tapped from the side of the mountain. These hints and cases are related as suggestions to any reader who may wish to better his water supply. Don’t go into the low ground for it, but tap the hills and high lands, where all the fountains of the earth are in abundance.

In Southern California three seasons out of four the plains and valley lands become too dry for pasturage of cattle and horses and bands of sheep, and a general hegira is made toward the mountains. While the Winter rains swell the streams running to the coast, filling their banks with rushing waters, by May and June a buggy can be hauled through every stream from San Francisco to San Diego without wetting the hubs of the wheels. The small streams are all dried up, and water for stock rare to find. As you go toward the mountains you meet the series of foothills like inverted bowls, the tops of which show growth of bulrushes and fleur de lis. At the foot of the hills will be found some of the drippings from the streams starting farther back. As these hills rise in groups, higher and higher toward the mountains, the green tops show more and more, and the streams increase in volume, affording good fishing for trout. Standing on the tops of these sugar loaf formations in the grazing season, one is reminded of Abraham’s herds of cattle on a thousand hills, to be seen as far as the eye can reach. In southern Minnesota is a long range of highlands thrown up, which they term a mountain chain, but scarcely anywhere is there an upheaval of rocks or any ledges. Over this range every Spring and Fall season will be seen thousands of flocks of ducks, brant, wild geese and sand hill cranes. The springs do not gush out in streams as from rocky formations, but ooze up into great mounds, frequently involving an acre or more, like a great conical sponge, up the side of which you can walk, the water gushing out under every footstep, giving an impression that you may sink in all the way to the top, where you will find an open spring several feet across, the water from which seems to be absorbed by this spongy mound of earth and vegetation, so that a stream rarely runs away. This ridge being the highest land in sight, where does this water come from? In a country surrounding which, it is necessary to carry water in kegs for the dogs to drink when hunting over it.

The conclusion of this work will be made up of a variety of clippings from newspapers for several years past, of which these are a small part. These clippings are published as seeming mysteries, but which, by the adoption of the theory promulgated of a hollow earth holding an ocean of fresh waters, seem easy of solution. If any other method can be suggested to answer these puzzling questions, it is to be hoped some genius will reveal it. If the assertions made in this book are true, polar expeditions are and will continue to be as futile as an attempt to signal the inhabitants of Mars, or to get up a correspondence with the man in the moon. Not presuming to exhaust this subject in so brief a treatise, the field is left open, and large enough for the thoughts and observations of men of greater ability to discuss than yours truly.

IMMENSE FIELDS OF ICE.

A STEAMER SURROUNDED AND COMPELLED TO WORK HER WAY OUT.

MONTREAL, May 22.--The steamer Fremona, from New Castle, which arrived here yesterday, had a very startling experience with the ice about 150 miles on the other side of Cape Ray. The vessel was steaming slowly through a dense fog on Wednesday last, when she got right in the midst of a pack of ice, which was drifting southward with the Arctic current. After the steamer had been pounding about in the ice for some hours the fog lifted and showed the vessel to be in a dangerous position. All around her were heavy hummocks of ice, ten feet deep in the water and showing about a foot above the surface. Gradually nearing the steamer and crushing the smaller pieces of ice in their way were a number of huge icebergs. The captain and chief officer climbed to the masthead and found that the ice extended on all sides as far as the eye could see. There were hundreds of seals on the ice, some of them being close to the vessel. Two hours were spent in turning the steamer, and she was then headed southward and was worked out of the ice. Owing to the movement of such a large mass of ice southward it is feared that navigation will be seriously interfered with.

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News from the whalers in the Antarctic Seas on February 17 was that up to that time the whaling had proved a failure, with all the ships that made the venture. There were plenty of whales of the finner and humpback kind, but none of the Greenland kind. Grampuses were too plentiful. Seals were very numerous, and there were also plenty of sea lions. Some icebergs of enormous size were seen; one was fifty miles long and several were from fifteen to twenty.

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In the Antarctic Ocean the icebergs that have been noticed from time to time rose 400, 580, 700 and even 1,000 feet above the water, and were from three to five miles long. Their enormous bulk may be inferred from the fact that the part under water is about seven times as large as that above.

PASSED A GREAT ICEBERG.

LONDON, Dec. 9.--The British steamship Galgate reports ice in the South Atlantic. On September 28, in latitude 49 degrees south, longitude 42 degrees west, the Galgate passed an iceberg two miles long and 250 feet high. Hundreds of other icebergs were also seen.

THREE HUNDRED MILES OF ICE.

ST. JOHN’S, N. F., Feb. 12.--The British steamer Dahome, which left Halifax on the 9th for this port and Liverpool, arrived here to-day. She reports coming through a field of ice three hundred miles long. This is something unprecedented at this season.

THE GREATEST OCEAN DEPTH.

The greatest known depth of the ocean is midway between the Island of Tristan d’Acunha and the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. The bottom was there reached at a depth of 40,236 feet, or eight and three-quarter miles, exceeding by more than 17,000 feet the height of Mount Everest, the loftiest mountain in the world. In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Newfoundland, soundings have been made to a depth of 4,580 fathoms, or 37,480 feet, while depths equaling 34,000 feet, or six and a half miles, are reported south of the Bermuda Islands. The average depth of the Pacific Ocean between Japan and California is a little over 2,000 fathoms; between Chili and the Sandwich Islands, 2,500 fathoms; and between Chili and New Zealand, 1,500 fathoms. The average depth of all the oceans is from 2,000 to 2,500 fathoms.

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Russian reports say that the Sea of Aral has been steadily rising since 1891. The sea level is now four feet above that of 1874. The line of railroad from Orenburg to Tashkend had to be changed in order to avoid being overflowed. Instead of sinking three inches a year, as German geographers had computed, the sea has been rising at the rate of four inches a year for the last ten years.

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In 1812 it was La Souffrière, adjacent to the Morne Garou, which broke loose on the Island of St. Vincent, and it is the same Souffrière which now has devastated the island and is bombarding Kingston with rocks, lava and ashes.

The old crater of Morne Garou has long been extinct, and, like the old crater of Mont Pelee, near St. Pierre, it had far down in its depths, surrounded by sheer cliffs from 500 to 800 feet high, a lake.

Glimpses of the lake of Morne Garou were difficult to get, owing to the thick verdure growing about the dangerous edges of the precipices, but those who have seen it describe it as a beautiful sheet of deep blue water.

THE SUN’S TEMPERATURE.

F. R. (Minneapolis, Minn.): Has the temperature of the sun been established? And, if so, what is it?

The following figures are given by the principal scientists who studied the solar temperature: Newton, 1,669,000 degrees Alsius; Pouillet, 1,461; Zollner, 102,000; Secchi, 5,344,840; Ericson, 2,726,700; Fizeau, 7,500; Walerston, 9,000,000; Abney and Fessing, 12,700; Wilson and Gray, 8,700; Pernter, 30,000; Sporer, 27,000; Sainte-Claire Deville, 2,500; Soret, 5,801,846; Vicair, 1,398; Violle, 1,500; Rosetti, 20,000; Langley, 8,333,000; Ebert, 40,000; Guillaume and Christiansen, 6,000; Paschen, 5,000.

SAW TREMENDOUS ICEBERGS.