When in the year 1854, all Christendom was thrilled by the news of the opening of Japan to intercourse with the world, the name of Commodore Matthew Perry was on the lips of nations. In Europe it was acknowledged that the triumph had been achieved by no ordinary naval officer. Consummate mastery of details combined with marked diplomatic talents stamped Matthew Calbraith Perry as a man whose previous history was worth knowing. That history we propose to outline. The life of our subject is interesting for the following among many excellent reasons:— 1. While yet a lad, he was active as a naval officer in the war of 1812. 2. He chose the location of the first free black settlement in Liberia. 3. He was, to the end of his life, one of the leading educators of the United States Navy. 4. He was the father of our steam...
Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence has been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spaniards and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great Antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to...
BY BOYD CABLE AUTHOR OF “BETWEEN THE LINES,” “ACTION FRONT,” “GRAPES OF WRATH” NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright , 1918, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY —— All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America THESE LINES, WRITTEN AT AND TELLING ABOUT THE FRONT, ARE DEDICATED—WITH THE FERVENT WISH THAT THOSE THERE MAY SOON SEE THE LAST OF IT—TO THE FRONT, BY THE AUTHOR These tales have been written over a period running from the later stages of the Somme to the present time. For the book I have two ambitions—the first, that to my Service readers it may bring a few hours of interest and entertainment, may prove some sort of a picture and a record of what they themselves have been through; the second, that it may strike and impress and stir those people at home who even now clearly...
Once upon a time there wasn't any war. In those days it was my custom to drive over to Château-Thierry every Friday afternoon. The horses, needing no guidance, would always pull up at the same spot in front of the station from which point of vantage, between a lilac bush and the switch house, I would watch for the approaching express that was to bring down our week-end guests. A halt at the bridge head would permit our friends to obtain a bird's-eye view of the city, while I purchased a measure of fresh-caught, shiny-scaled river fish, only to be had of the old boatman after the arrival of the Paris train. Invariably there were packages to be called for at Berjot's grocery store, or Dudrumet's dry goods counter, and then H. having discovered the exact corner from which Corot painted his delightful panorama of the city, a pilgrimage to...
The Second Bombardment Of Termonde September 15th was our day with Henry Verhagen, the tall gray alderman of the town that was once Termonde. During all the time I was with him Verhagen did not speak a bitter word. On the contrary, he was calm—particularly calm as he stood beside the mound where the Belgian soldiers were buried in the center of the ruined town, pointed to the pile of bricks where he had lived, and told us how in two nights he had lost 340,000 francs, his son, his factory, and his home. It was from him, from the burgomaster's wife, and from a priest that we learned the story of the city that had ceased to be. It was the night before that I had wandered into Ghent alone, without even the excitement of getting arrested. Luther, who became restive early the next morning while I was jotting...
BY CHARLES P. BOWDITCH (From the American Anthropologist ( N. S. ), Vol. 3, January-March, 1901) NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1901 MEMORANDA ON THE MAYA CALENDARS USED IN THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM By CHARLES P. BOWDITCH Dr Brinton, in his Maya Chronicles , has translated the following passages from the Book of Chilan Balam of Mani: ... in the thirteenth Ahau Ahpula died; for six years the count of the thirteenth Ahau will not be ended; the count of the year was toward the East, the month Pop began with (the day) fourth Kan; the eighteenth day of the month Zip (that is) 9 Ymix, was the day on which Ahpula died; and that the count may be known in numbers and years, it was the year 1536. And again from the Book of Chilan Balam of Tizimin: The thirteenth Ahau; the death of Ahpulha took...
Containing an account of his life, from his birth to the time of his leaving his native country. I was born at Dukandarra, in Guinea, about the year 1729. My father's name was Saungm Furro, Prince of the Tribe of Dukandarra. My father had three wives. Polygamy was not uncommon in that country, especially among the rich, as every man was allowed to keep as many wives as he could maintain. By his first wife he had three children. The eldest of them was myself, named by my father Broteer. The other two were named Cundazo and Soozaduka. My father had two children by his second wife, and one by his third. I descended from a very large, tall and stout race of beings, much larger than the generality of people in other parts of the globe, being commonly considerably above six feet in height, and in every way well...
"As true as possible. Mother told me her very own self," was the emphatic reply. Two children, brother and sister, the boy aged ten, the girl three years older, were carrying on this conversation in the garden of a country rectory. "But really and truly, on your word of honour," repeated Leonard, as though he could not believe what his sister had just related to him. "I hope my word is always a word of honour; I thought everybody's word ought to be that," Sybil Graham replied a little proudly, for when she had run quickly to bring such important news to her brother, she could not help feeling hurt that he should refuse to believe what she said. "And we are really going there, and shall actually see the 'pig-tails' in their own country, and the splendid kites they fly, and all the wonderful things that father used to...
“How infinitely little is the best that we can do, and how infinitely important it is that we should do it!” To begin a new book with an old quotation is bad; but it must be forgiven because it expresses in a phrase the sentiment upon which the whole of my public life has been built, and it explains in a sentence the object and purpose of those wanderings in many lands of my colleagues and myself about which I have engaged to write. Nothing less than a clear understanding on the part of the critical observer that they held very strongly the belief, old-fashioned it may be, that “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” is strength ordained, can save from the charge of madness or of folly the plunge of twelve members of the British Labour Movement, with a bright hope in their hearts, into the maelstrom...
The bursting of a thunderstorm is preceded by certain definite phenomena in the atmosphere. The electric currents separate, and the storm is the result of atmospheric tension which can no longer be repressed. Whether or no we become aware of these happenings through outward signs, whether the clouds appear to us more or less threatening, nothing can alter the fact that the electric tension is bound to make itself felt before the storm bursts. For years the political barometer of the European Ministries of Foreign Affairs had stood at "storm." It rose periodically, to fall again; it varied—naturally; but for years everything had pointed to the fact that the peace of the world was in danger. The obvious beginnings of this European tension date back several years: to the time of Edward VII. On the one hand England's dread of the gigantic growth of Germany; on the other hand Berlin's...
We left London on the evening of September the 8th with passports viséd for Dijon, and a faint hope that, if we were lucky, we might succeed some day in getting to Belfort, the immediate object of our journey. In ordinary times, and even now, after more than a year of the war, that is not a very difficult undertaking. In the second week of September, 1914, it was in its way quite a little adventure. Everything was obscure, everybody was in the dark. For all that most of us knew the retreat that had begun at Mons three weeks before was still going on. The possibility of the enemy pressing on to Paris was by no means at an end, and even in the eyes of those who had some inside knowledge of what was happening on the different fields of battle the risk was still so great that...
Anti-Jacobin, May, 1804. PYE'S DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY. The author's avowed object, is to arrange the ancient and modern names, in a clear and methodical manner, so as to give a ready reference to each; and in addition to this arrangement of ancient appellations both of people and places, with the modern names, he has given a concise chronological history of the principal places; by which the book also serves in many cases as a gazetteer. We find upon the whole a clear and practical arrangement of articles which are dispersed in more voluminous works. Mr. Pye has condensed within a narrow space the substance of Cellarius, Lempriere, Macbean, etc. In short the work will be found very useful and convenient to all persons reading the classics or studying modern geography, and to all readers of history, sacred or profane. British Critic, June, 1804. This may be recommended as a...
The history of no country is more replete with strange incidents and tragic events than is the history of Persia, and probably none of those romantic episodes are more curious than is that of the pseudo Smerdis. Herodotus is our chief authority for the few circumstances recounted of this impostor's life and deeds, and those few circumstances, like so many other wonderful things told of by the "Father of History," must be taken cum granô salis . It is very difficult to distinguish the facts of so remote a period of the world's history as was the epoch of Smerdis from the fable, and the safer plan is to accept all such records, not strongly corroborated by a conformity of contemporary opinion, as pure fiction, or as merely symbolic. The migrations and conquests of prehistoric peoples, as displayed by their philological and ethnological remains, are far more reliable evidence than...
If you had seen Chin when he was born, you would have thought his skin yellow enough to suit anybody. But his mother wasn't satisfied, for the baby's nurse was told to rub him with a queer sort of paste from top to toe. This paste was made with saffron and oil, and had a pleasant odour. It made Chin's skin yellower and darker than ever. It did not seem to trouble him, however, for he closed his big brown eyes and went to sleep before the nurse had finished her work. After this important thing had been done, the tiny baby was laid in his cradle and covered over. This does not appear very strange until you learn that he was entirely covered. Not even the flat little nose was left so the boy could draw in a breath of fresh air. It is a wonder that he lived,...
IN reading biographies I always skip the genealogical details. To be born obscure and to die famous has been described as the acme of human felicity. However that may be, whether fame has anything to do with happiness or no, it is a man himself, and not his ancestors, whose life deserves, if it does deserve, to be written. Such was Froude's own opinion, and it is the opinion of most sensible people. Few, indeed, are the families which contain more than one remarkable figure, and this is the rock upon which the hereditary principle always in practice breaks. For human lineage is not subject to the scientific tests which alone could give it solid value as positive or negative evidence. There is nothing to show from what source, other than the ultimate source of every good and perfect gift, Froude derived his brilliant and splendid powers. He was a...
The island of Newfoundland, which is the tenth largest in the world, is about 1640 miles distant from Ireland, and of all the American coast is the nearest point to the Old World. Its relative position in the northern hemisphere may well be indicated by saying that the most northern point at Belle Isle Strait is in the same latitude as that of Edinburgh, whilst St. John's, near the southern extremity, lies in the same latitude as that of Paris. Strategically it forms the key to British North America. St. John's lies about half-way between Liverpool and New York, so that it offers a haven of refuge for needy craft plying between England and the American metropolis. The adjacent part of the coast is also the landing-place for most of the Transatlantic cables: it was at St. John's, too, that the first wireless ocean signals were received. From the sentimental...
JOURNEY THROUGH PERSIA, &c. &c. &c. DEPARTURE FROM BOMBAY—LAND OF GUZERAT—COAST OF MEKRAN—BALOUCHES—ENTRANCE OF THE GULPH OF PERSIA—IMAUM OF MUSCAT: HIS FLEET—SOUNDINGS IN THE GULPH—BUSHIRE—VISIT OF THE SHEIK—LANDING IN PERSIA. On the 6th of September 1808, when His Majesty’s Mission to the court of Teheran was still at Bombay , the Envoy extraordinary, Sir Harford Jones , received dispatches from the Governor-general at Calcutta , which determined him to proceed immediately to Persia. The establishment of the mission had been changed since our arrival in India; Major L. F. Smith , who left England as public Secretary, on landing at this settlement proceeded to Bengal ; and the duties of Secretary of the Legation were annexed to those, which, as private secretary to the Envoy, I had originally discharged. The suite was augmented at Bombay by Mr. Thomas Henry Sheridan , and Captain James Sutherland , severally of the civil...
Ancestry—Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks—Rock Spring Farm—Lincoln's Birth—Kentucky Schools—The Journey to Indiana—Pigeon Creek Settlement—Indiana Schools—Sally Bush Lincoln—Gentryville—Work and Books—Satires and Sermons—Flatboat Voyage to New Orleans—The Journey to Illinois Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, was born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky on the 12th day of February 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was sixth in direct line of descent from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638. Following the prevailing drift of American settlement, these descendants had, during a century and a half, successively moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and from Virginia to Kentucky; while collateral branches of the family eventually made homes in other parts of the West. In Pennsylvania and Virginia some of them had acquired considerable property and local prominence. In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, the...
The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea can be savage when it chooses. Everything movable about the decks was carefully lashed down; there were railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and in the saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand, as though they had just been used, and might be needed again at any moment. But, on this Saturday evening in late May, the sea was in a pleasant, even a jovial, mood, with just enough swell to send a thin shower of spray across the deck from time to time, and lend exhilaration to the rush of the fleet little turbine. There were many boats in sight—small ones, for the most part, rolling and pitching apparently much worse than we; and then the gathering darkness obscured them one by one, and presently all that was left of them were the bobbing white lights at...
How I Came to Emigrate. I was one of a family of nine, of which four were sons. My eldest brother was destined for the Church; the second had entered a mercantile house in Liverpool; and I, who was third on the list, it was my father's intention, should be educated for the Royal Engineers, and at the time my story opens I was prosecuting my studies for admission to the Academy at Woolwich, and had attained the age of sixteen, when my health failed, and I was sent home for rest and change. I did not again resume my studies, because it was soon after decided that I should emigrate to New Zealand. The decision was principally, if not entirely, due to my own wishes. I had long entertained a strong bent to seeing the world for myself, and the idea was congenial to my boyish and quixotic notions...
As I grow older my thoughts often revert to the past, and like the old Persian poet, Khosros, when he walked by the churchyard and thought how many of his friends were numbered with the dead, I am often tempted to exclaim: "The friends of my youth! where are they?" but there is only the mocking echo to answer, as if from a far-distant land, "Where are they?" "One generation passeth away; and another generation cometh," and enormous changes have taken place in this country during the past seventy years, which one can only realise by looking back and comparing the past with the present. The railways then were gradually replacing the stage-coaches, of which the people then living had many stories to tell, and the roads which formerly had mostly been paved with cobble or other stones were being macadamised; the brooks which ran across the surface of the...
John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge. After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody....
STIRRING SCENES OF LIFE IN THE CANADIAN NORTH-WEST. BY JOHN McDOUGALL, Author of "Forest, Lake and Prairie," "Saddle, Sled and Snowshoe," etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. E. LAUGHLIN. TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS, WESLEY BUILDINGS. MONTREAL: C. W. COATES. HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS. 1898. Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by WILLIAM BRIGGS, at the Department of Agriculture. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. "Thin leather homes"—Drudgery of the Indian women—Occupations of the men—Hunting parties and scalping forays—Triumphs of endurance CHAPTER II. Camping in the snow—Our costume—Brilliant sunrise effects—Maple and her pups found at last—Striking example of "dog sense"—The Fort Garry packet CHAPTER III. We visit Edmonton—Nature's grand cathedral—Adventure with a buffalo bull—A trip to Pigeon Lake—Racing with dog-teams—An infidel blacksmith—Old Joseph proves an unerring guide—Caching our provisions CHAPTER IV. Epidemic breaks out among the Indians—Snow-blindness—I take to me a wife—Our modest dowry—My...
We always speak of Canada as a new country. In one sense, of course, this is true. The settlement of Europeans on Canadian soil dates back only three hundred years. Civilization in Canada is but a thing of yesterday, and its written history, when placed beside the long millenniums of the recorded annals of European and Eastern peoples, seems but a little span. But there is another sense in which the Dominion of Canada, or at least part of it, is perhaps the oldest country in the world. According to the Nebular Theory the whole of our planet was once a fiery molten mass gradually cooling and hardening itself into the globe we know. On its surface moved and swayed a liquid sea glowing with such a terrific heat that we can form no real idea of its intensity. As the mass cooled, vast layers of vapour, great beds of...