The Elbe's Captain In a Fog

1895

"I have crossed the ocean 40 times," said Mr. Gustav Bowman, proprietor of the Holland House, to a friend recently, "and during all of my voyages I have never been really anxious about the safety of the ship excepting twice. One of these occasions was during a voyage I once made on the Elbe. We had been running along in the fog for two days and were approaching the Needles at the time. The captain had been unable to take an observation during the two days, and of course could not tell exactly where we were.

"The doubt and uncertainty concerning our whereabouts greatly disturbed my peace of mind. I knew we must be near the dangerous coast, and that we might be run down at any moment by a steamer or ship. I stood chatting with some of my friends about our helpless condition, when the captain came along and said:

" 'Why don't you gentlemen go down to dinner?'

" 'We have been so busy discussing our voyage in the fog and wondering at what moment we shall be sent to the bottom that we have forgotten all about dinner,' I replied.

" Will it relieve your minds, gentlemen,' continued the captain, 'if I tell you that between a quarter to 9 and 9 o'clock tonight we will sight land?'

" 'Of course it will,' we replied in chorus. We did not take very much stock in what he said, but we knew that he was one of the best captains on the Atlantic.'

" ' You can now go down to dinner with contented minds,' laughed the captain as he left us.

"We took the captain's advice, and, sure enough, at the very time he predicted the fog cleared away, and land was sighted. To my mind it was the best illustration of a captain's sense of location I have ever known." — New York Herald.


Trivia

Fast days, whenever appointed by the president of the United States, are legal holidays in all the states.

Admiral Christopher Newport gave a name to the Rhode Island city.

The British museum has coins or medals of every Roman emperor.

De Lesseps and His Inland Sea

1895

The Great Promoter's Scheme to Restore Fertility to Northern Africa.

The late Count de Lesseps was at one time engaged in a daring and attractive engineering scheme with which the public is not generally familiar. Its object was to create a new sea and thereby restore to fertility and civilization a large part of northern Africa.

Mr. Max de Forrest, now of Nutley, N. J., a former officer in the French army, met his famous countryman at this time.

"I met Count de Lesseps," he said, "in 1881, at Cabes, in southern Tunis, where I had been ordered with a squadron of cavalry. Shortly after my arrival he came with a surveying party to make soundings for the proposed interior sea. I had orders to place at his disposal both men and horses, and the discharge of this duty brought me into almost daily communication with him until his departure.

"The interior sea at that time aroused all his enthusiasm. He brought to bear the same persuasive powers that he used when promoting the Suez and the Panama canals and enterprises. To skeptics he always replied, 'It can be done, and it will be done, if the government will give me the money to do it with.'

"Its proposed area embraced the entire plain lying to the southward of the boundary line drawn from Cabes via Gafsa to Tamerza. The practicability of the scheme was supported by many facts. It was proved that an inland sea had covered in ancient times the area which it was intended to flood. The level of the land was generally below that of the gulf of Cabes. Innumerable underground streams of fresh and salt water are found in the southern part of Algeria and Tunis.

"The water was to be supplied to the inland sea from the gulf of Cabes. The tides would have a minimum depth sufficient to allow of the passage in all directions of light boats. But the most valuable result of the scheme, it was held, would be to restore the ancient fertility of the country and to oppose a barrier to the sirocco, the deadly burning wind which piles up the desert sand about the oases and finally buries them.

"M. de Lesseps dwelt on these benefits with boundless enthusiasm and imagination. Buried cities would be unearthed and the Coliseum of El Jemm, now a crumbling ruin, but once approaching that of Rome in size, would be accessible to admiring tourists.

"M. de Lesseps left the work in the hands of the general staff of the French army, by whom it is now supposed to be carried on. Whether any progress is being made I do not know." — New York World.

The Flowers of the Sea

1910

Like the land, the sea has its flowers, but the most brilliant of the marine flowers bloom not upon plants, but upon animals. The living corals of tropical seas present a display of floral beauty that in richness and vividness of color and variety and grace of form rivals the splendor of a garden of flowers. The resemblance to vegetal blossoms is so complete that some persons find it difficult to believe that the brilliant display contains no element of plant life, but is wholly animal in its organization. Among the sea animals that bloom as if they were plants are included, besides corals, the sea-anemone and the sea-cucumber. It has been remarked that among the coral gardens the birds and butterflies of the upper world are replaced by fishes of curious forms and flashing colors which dart about among the animal flowers.

Whistling Buoys

1900

Valuable Aids to Navigation and Repairers Keep Them In Tune

One of the most interesting aids to navigation is the whistling buoys. There are several of them off the cape, and their dull, hoarse groaning may often be heard for miles.

They are clumsy affairs of steel, ranging in length from 30 to 35 feet, with an air tank shaped like a pear about 10 feet high and 9 feet in diameter from which an 18 inch pipe 20 feet long protrudes.

These buoys may be seen at the lighthouse department storehouses on Diamond island, where buoys of all kinds and shape are kept ready to be placed over some rock dangerous to navigation or to replace any which may be damaged or adrift.

This long pipe which runs down into the water is what furnishes the power for the whistle.

When the buoy is in the water, the rolling of the waves up through pipe and the pressure on the air in the tank forces it out through the whistle, and the well-known dismal sound is the result.

Whistle buoys in different ports of the coast are given a different pitch in order that the mariner may, on a thick night be able to know his locality by the difference in the sound.

It is the duty of the officers to adjust the pitch of these whistles when they get out of tune, And they have become so expert at it that they can detect and remedy the slightest variation from the correct pitch.

The adjustment of these whistles must be made while they are in place, and sometimes the great necessity of the marks on dangerous rocks obliges the men on the buoy boats to make these repairs in very rough weather.

The repairing crew usually includes the mate and one man, who are rowed up to the buoy until they are able to grasp the rings on the side and clamber up over the side to the cage which protects the whistle.

Perhaps the most dangerous duty which falls to the lot of the buoy tenders is that of replacing the heavy buoys during a storm or while a heavy sea is running.

With the steamer rolling her rails under the greatest care must be taken to avoid accident, and many are the stories of narrow escapes related by strong, rugged men who perform this dangerous work. — Augusta (Maine) Journal.

Prince Discovers New Fish 20,000 Feet Down

1920

PARIS, France — The Prince of Monaco has discovered a new fish which lives at a depth of 20,000 feet under a pressure of 600 atmospheres. Although at such a depth there is practically no light, the Grimaldichthys profundissimus, christened after the Prince's family name, has rudimentary eyes.

The fish was brought up during one of the Prince's oceanographical cruises off the Cape Verde Islands. Two other species not hitherto known were caught at a depth of over 16,000 feet.


Invents Music Sheets for Piano

A Frenchman has invented piano music printed on long sheets, so mounted on motor driven rolls that they are advanced as rapidly as a user wishes saving the work of turning pages.

Recent Sea Rescues Thrill the Country

Feb 1920

Unsung Heroes Save Many Lives in Atlantic Storm

NEW YORK, N. Y., — The terrific storms of the last few weeks along the Atlantic seacoast have brought to light the fact that heroism is far more common than it used to be prior to the recent war. The scores of thrilling rescues made from wrecked ships show that men of the present day will risk their lives for a good cause with much less hesitation than before they became used to the experience while combating the enemy on sea and land.

Took a Desperate Chance

One little boat took a desperate chance in its successful attempt to rescue the passengers of a stranded schooner. With the ocean whipped by a gale which made mountainous waves, a little boat, manned by men who had seen service with the U. S. Navy submarine chasers, put out from a New Jersey port with almost certain odds again them weathering the heavy seas.

Their frail craft tossed about on the stormy waters like an eggshell, they finally made it to within grappling distance of the beleaguered boat. Then their real troubles began. When they approached close to the ship the rescuing boat was likely to be dashed against it by the waves and crushed to oblivion.

"It may or may not have been a miracle," declares Jack Fromme, one of the heroes who helped save the forty passengers, "but we were not crushed. We took the people off the boat and, though we had a hard time, made it to shore with them."

Many Acts of Bravery

The terrible devastation done along the Atlantic Coast also brought forth many acts of extreme heroism. In one case the wife of a fisherman found that her husband was several miles out at sea, having been suddenly caught in the terrific storm. She put out in a small rowboat, without the least idea of the direction taken by her mate, and by a miracle of intuition went directly to the spot where he was laying in the bottom of his boat exhausted, after having been tossed about for hours by the angry waters. She pulled up alongside, pulled him into her boat and made the terrible trip back. When she got to the threshold of their humble cottage she fainted.

At Seabright, N. J., a couple were swept out to sea in tile bungalow, which had been suddenly carried away by the storm. Hundreds volunteered to make the rescue. Only a few were selected, and they dared the waves and saved the man and wife just as the waters were tearing the flimsy bungalow to pieces.

Report Real Sea-Serpent

1905

Rudyard Kipling has seen his second sea serpent, according to a story which comes with some seriousness from Cape Town. People who read Kipling's first sea-serpent story thought it was merely a brilliant piece of fiction. This second sea serpent story is not told by Kipling, but by the skipper of the steamship Armadale Castle. The sea serpent was seen — in fact, it was struck by the ship and probably killed — while the Armadale Castle was on her last voyage to Cape Town, in latitude 3 degrees south. Mr. Kipling was aboard the ship.

Commander Robinson is not sure whether the creature struck was a real sea serpent, a queer whale or a greatly overgrown shark. Whatever it was, the thing was hit by the bow or the ship where, in all properly regulated fishes, the pectoral fin exists. The head was doubled across the port bow and the tail trailed away along the starboard side. The violent struggles of the creature to free itself from its painful and embarrassing position led to its striking the soft brown paint of the "boot-topping" on the ship's side with the powerful fluke of its tail.

This was observed by the boatswain and some of the men who were watching the affair through the side ports immediately over the tail of the fish. The marks enabled the commander afterward to make fairly accurate measurements. From mark to stem it was forty-five feet. In girth it was apparently about the volume of one of the ship's lifeboats at the broadest part, say eight feet in diameter, very gracefully tapering away toward the tail. The body appeared to be of a greenish-brown color with large dark spots all over the back and sides, the lower parts being of a dull white.

It was first observed by one of the seamen, who heard a knocking against the ship's side. When the news was passed along the decks all the passengers, young and old. performed a mad stampede into the forecastle to look at the unhappy prisoner. The engines were stopped as soon as possible and reversed, but fully a quarter of an hour elapsed between the first discovery and the final clearance, by which time the creature was either dead or completely exhausted, for it sank slowly, tail first.

Fastnet Lighthouse — First Glimpse of Great Britain

1896

A Welcome Gleam to the East-Bound Atlantic Voyager

The first glimpse of Great Britain that the American tourist gets on his European tour is that of the Fastnet lighthouse.

It stands on a rugged and solitary rock, situated nine miles south of Crookhaven, at the extreme southwest corner of Ireland, and is, perhaps, more storm-beaten than any other around our coast. The rock is eighty feet in height, and the lighthouse towers another seventy feet above, yet, in winter gales, the Atlantic billows literally bombard the massive structure and have even smashed in a portion, of the lantern at the summit of the erection, the seas frequently sweeping over the rock with tremendous force.

Some two or three years ago the stormy weather then prevailing prevented all communication with the rock for many weeks, so that the store of food was consumed, with the exception of some flour. At last a schooner managed to approach sufficiently near to enable a small quantity of food to be dragged through the sea by the hungry men, and, fortunately, the next day the sea moderated, and the stores were once more fully replenished.

Except in very calm weather, the Fastnet is surrounded by a fringe of foam, and the only means of landing is by the aid of a "jib" fifty-eight feet in length, so placed on the rock that, in moderate weather, its end reaches outside the surf. When a visitor wishes to land (an unusual occurrence) he is rowed in a small boat as near as the waves permit, and the light-keepers throw out a small buoy, attached to a rope, which is secured by the man in the boat. The jib is then swung out, and the visitor, placing one foot in the loop and catching tight hold of the rope, is hoisted about forty feet vertically, and then the jib, being pivoted at its foot, swings him horizontally about 100 feet on to a safe landing. — London Sketch.

The Great Sargasso Sea

1896

Sailors have always been superstitious fellows. No wonder, then, that the ignorant sailors of Columbus, anxious for some excuse to turn back to Spain, believed the "sargasso sea" — that tangled mass of seaweeds in mid-Atlantic — was a trap set by Providence to catch them. Science to-day analyzes and explains all such natural phenomena once deemed supernatural. What is it that causes that mysterious sargasso sea?

Simple enough. The rotation of the earth, the rush of the tides, the steady winds unite to cause a vast surface current in tropical waters, moving at about ten miles an hour from east to west, known as the equatorial current. This, in the Atlantic Ocean, feeds the Gulf Stream, which then is shifted by the contour of the North American continent out across the Atlantic to warm the outlying shores of Northern Europe and only spend itself away on the frozen borders of Franz Josef Land. What results? An eddy. Put a few bits of wood in a basin of water and stir the water till it acquires a circular motion. The bits of wood will all collect in the center of the whirling mass.

So the Atlantic Ocean is one great eddy, and the sargasso sea is only the center of it. A "marine meadow," the Spaniards first called this stagnant water. Later it came to be called the sargasso or sargassoa sea, from the Spanish word sargazo, meaning seaweed. Here the seaweed detached from the bottom of the ocean collects, buoyed up by peculiar little air-cells.

Woe to the ship that wanders into the meshes of this great net, six times as big as all France. The same conditions that produce the great sargasso sea of the Atlantic make similar eddy-spots in various regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, though much smaller. The Chinese, always ready to utilize whatever is at hand, use the sargasum weed as a food, and as such it is both palatable and nutritious. — Pathfinder.

Not Their Time To Drown

1914

Men Swept From Deck of Vessel Thrown Back by Remarkable Action of Waves

Swept overboard by one giant wave, four seamen on the British steamship Ribston seemed to be lost, when another big billow took them on its crest and flung them back aboard the ship. Their mishap occurred while the vessel was on her way from Philadelphia to Cuba, and the story was told upon the Ribston's arrival in Havana.

The men were working near the forward hatch during a wild storm off Cape Hatteras. When the wave flung them into the sea their companions gave them up, because no boat could survive in such waters. To the great surprise of the other sailors, however, they soon saw the four men, drenched to the skin, making their way forward from the after part of the ship. The wave had carried them the full length of the craft and had flung them aboard again near the stern.

The voyage of the Ribston was full of harrowing experiences. The same storm which swept the men overboard carried away several hatches and deluged part of the hold. The ship's entire supply of food was either carried away or ruined. For more than a week the men were forced to live on salty hardtack and they were half starved when they reached Havana.

Several times during the voyage the engines broke down. The trip ordinarily completed in a week took two weeks. The vessel began to have trouble while she was still in Delaware Bay, being forced to anchor several times on account of ice clogging the propeller, and the difficulties continued until she ran into Havana harbor.

Professor Explains New Theory About the Moon's Origin

Nebraska, 1910

Prof. Swezey Gives Explanation of Idea Advanced by Scientists on Moon

Professor G. D. Swezey at convocation at the university summer school this morning delivered an illustrated lecture on the moon. He took up the theory recently advanced by some scientists that the substance of the moon was broken loose from the earth in the region of what is now the Pacific ocean and that the departure from there of this amount of matter is what has left the Pacific basin. He told the students that he would give the theory for what it was worth as he was not ready to take up the theory nor to flatly reject it.

By means of his stereopticon views he pointed out the facts that help to make the theory plausible. He mentioned the fact that the moon has a mass about one-eightieth of the earth. To obtain this amount of material would require the skimming off the crust of the earth to a depth of some thirty-five miles. It is of course known that the Pacific is not that deep, but if the earth were in a semi-plastic condition at the time the material was taken from the crust it would readily run back partially at least into the spherical shape.

The professor had a diagram showing the possibility that the continents of the western hemisphere may have torn asunder from those of the eastern hemisphere as the land moved toward the great gap left in the Pacific basin by the departure of the moon. It is found that in bringing the two hemispheres together the outline of the coast lines of South America and Africa fit each other as though they had been torn apart with a few allowances for possible readjustment and rearrangement of the continental fragments. The same is true in a less marked degree in North America and Europe.

—Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, Aug. 10, 1910, p. 7.

Animals Board Ship, Seasick

1903

They Get Seasick, Though Not Just the Way Human Beings Do

"Speaking of animals getting sick at sea," said a man who has had some experience with the dumb brutes on the briny deep, "I can tell you that they do get sick, and sometimes they get very sick too. Of course, they do not manifest the sickness in the way that human beings show it and for reasons which will suggest themselves on a moment's reflection. But they nevertheless get quite as sick as members of the human family. Seasickness in human beings will manifest itself in violent vomiting. A seasick person cannot retain anything in the stomach. The old rule that whatever goes up must come down is in the case of pronounced seasickness reversed. Whatever goes down must come up. But when we come to reckon with horses and cows we find a different condition to deal with. Horses and cows never vomit. They cannot. So here right at the beginning of the matter we find a reason for difference in the way this peculiar sickness shows itself in man and beast.

"I have had more experience with horses than with any other kind of dumb animal and consequently know more about the way the horse suffers during seasickness. It is a rather curious and rather interesting fact that the horse is more violently attacked in the feet than in any other portion of the body. I have seen the feet of horses at sea swell until they could scarcely stand on them. Of course, the stomach of the animal is affected to some extent, but this is not so serious a matter as the attack in the feet. The effect of these attacks is sometimes of a lasting kind, and the usefulness of horses is seriously impaired.

"The fact that seasickness attacks the horse in the feet is mainly due to the peculiar influence a vessel's motion has on the kidneys of the animal. At any rate, this is the generally accepted view of the matter. We cannot say definitely just why horses get knotty feet at sea, but the popular view of horsemen who have studied the matter is as stated. As to cows, I do not know a great deal about them, but I understand the chief trouble with them at sea is that they lose their taste for food and quit eating." — New Orleans Times-Democrat.

Woman May Fly Ocean

1914

Miss Ruth Bancroft Law and her brother, F. Rodman Law, are to try a flight across the Atlantic in a biplane. They expect to make the trip in July.

"The flight will be from Newfoundland to the Irish coast," said Miss Law today, "and I shall take my brother. I do not think there is the slightest doubt that we can do it. We shall carry no pontoons or boats, but under the wings of our machine we will have three floats of hollow tin, so in case of a fall the apparatus will float.

"Boats would be too heavy to carry, and in case we fell they would be of no use in the ocean. Then, again, by not carrying them we get away from just so much weight. We shall have to carry from 90 to 100 gallons of gasoline, and this will be enough for about 30 hours flying. We expect to make 100 miles an hour on our way across. Lord Northcliffe has offered a prize for the successful flight across the Atlantic, and we are after it."

With Heaps of Wool, They Spin It by Hand

They Spin by Hand

1896

The hum of the spinning wheel is still a familiar sound in Block Island, quaint and interesting resort in summer and a miniature world in winter, in which the habits and customs are those of one hundred and fifty years ago. The island is fifteen miles off the Rhode Island shore and almost directly south of stormy Point Judith.

The heads of thirty Block Island families set sail in fishing boats the other day and pushed up the Thames River to Oakdale, where they left heaps of wool to be carded into rolls for hand spinning. The rolls will be spun and knitted into stockings and mittens for the protection of the hardy islanders against the bleak winter winds of the Atlantic.

There are times during the winter when the wind sweeps across the treeless land at a velocity of eighty-four miles an hour, and women take their lives in their hands when they venture out of doors. The isolation of the island is almost complete.

John Schofield established the first woolen mill in Connecticut near Oakdale, where the carding was done by power cards. In 1798 the Block Islanders began to send wool to the mill to be carded into rolls, and generation after generation have kept up the practice. Formerly many bags of grain accompanied the wool, and grist and woolen mills were kept running day and night, while the fishermen and farmers enjoyed themselves in the quiet Connecticut village until the work was done. — New York Herald.

The Instinct of Birds — A Storm Coming

1901

While a British brig was gliding smoothly along before a good breeze in the South Pacific, a flock of small birds about the size, shape and color of paroquets, settled down in the rigging, and passed an hour or more resting.

The second mate was so anxious to find out the species to which the visiting strangers belonged that he tried to entrap a specimen, but the birds were too shy to be thus caught, and too spry to be seized by the quick hands of the sailors. At the end of about an hour the birds took the brig's course, and disappeared, but toward nightfall they came back and passed the night in the maintop.

The next morning the birds flew off again, and when they returned at noon the sailors scattered some food about the decks. By this time the birds had become so tame that they hopped about the decks picking up the crumbs.

That afternoon an astonishing thing happened. The flock came flying swiftly toward the brig. Every bird seemed to be piping as if pursued by some invisible enemy on wings, and they at once huddled down behind a deck house. The superstitious sailors at once called the captain of the brig, who rubbed his eyes and looked at the barometer. A glance showed that something was wrong with the elements, and the brig was put in shape to outride a storm.

The storm came about 20 minutes after the birds had reached the vessel. For a few minutes the sky was like the waterless bottom of a lake — a vast arch of yellowish mud — and torrents of rain fell. Why it did not blow very hard no one knows; but on reaching port, two days later, they learned that a great tornado had swept across that part of the sea. — Our Dumb Animals.

An Enchanted Cavern – The Beauties of the Grotto of Capri

1887

An Enchanted Cavern

Beauties of the Grotto of Capri — An American Bicyclist's Adventure

Tradition has it that this "Grotta Azzura" was known in the earliest Roman times and then lost again in the Middle Ages, although the knowledge of its existence was preserved at Capri, and that in the last century it was rediscovered through chance — a shipwrecked sailor was dashed through the narrow opening in the cliff; recovered consciousness to find himself in heaven, as he thought — in reality upon a little ledge in the grotto — and escaped by swimming.

Can I not enter swimming when it would be impossible for a boat? The guide says, "No," but will take me out there, and it is worth the attempt; so watch and valuables are left at the hotel and we are off. On the way we meet a party returning, and upon reaching to the cave we find that the entrance, about three feet high and four broad, is filled by every wave and the spray sent dashing up the rocky sea wall I must enter as the wave recedes.

Undressing and leaping into the sea, I was tossed about a little by the waves, my mouth filled with salt water and I almost decided to give it up; but, after holding to the boat for a few moments and hearing the guide expatiate upon the "Grotta Bellissima," decided that I could risk a bit of a knock for the purpose of seeing one of nature's most beautiful creations. The boat was pushed as near as was safe and I made a plunge for the entrance, but just a little too late; I saw that the coming wave would catch me, and fearing a blow on the head — where even the felt hat I wore for that contingency would not have saved me — I dived on the instant, and the wave, coming roaring in, pushed me by its weight into the depths, instead of against the rocks. I think I must have gone down fifteen feet and been under the surface nearly a minute, for I swallowed an immense quantity of the salty fluid before I came up dazed, after a hard struggle, to find myself in smooth water, surrounded by a wonderful, supernatural, blue light, with countless stars gleaming above me. The water is very clear and seems to be fathomless, while my limbs are bright, polished, sparkling silver. Ideas of distance are lost; I can see for miles in every direction, up and down as well, and it is a surprise to me when, after swimming for ten minutes, I find myself at the other end of the grotto.

There was no resting place except a crevice in the rock for the fingers of one hand, and I hung there swinging back and forth and feasting on this wonderful sight — a feast half mingled with - fear as to my safe exit. The entrance appeared hopelessly far away, entirely closed every few seconds by the inrushing water, and then, upon its recession, admitting a ray from the outside world. The impression and experience is, under such circumstances, altogether indescribable and unearthly. After perhaps fifteen minutes I launched out once more, and swam, in fear and trembling, for the entrance; before reaching it two or three big waves came rushing in, tossing the salt spray into my eyes, and accompanied by a cold wind. I approached as near the entrance as I could, waited until a great wave dashed itself with full force into my face, struck out quickly, and, behold, I came out without the slightest trouble and seized the boat before the next wave came! — George P. Fiske, M. D.. in Outing.

Japanese Man "Farming" Oysters for Crop of Pearls

1912

RAISING PEARLS ON "FARM"

Japanese Has Decided He Can Produce Them on Land Laid Out in Ocean's Bed

Mr. Mikinoto's oyster farm in the Bay of Ago, off the coast of Japan. is one of the few successful attempts at the deliberate production of pearls. Mikinoto spent several years in costly experiments before he perfected his scheme.

Then he secured government patents and, according to Popular Mechanics, has succeeded in getting his "farm" on a paying basis. He first makes a bed for his crop in the shallows of the bay, where the larvae of the pearl oyster abound during the months of July and August.

He merely deposits a large number of small stones, to which the oyster spat naturally attach themselves. Then his diving women transplant the young oysters to deeper waters to protect them from the cold.

Here they lie on carefully prepared beds until in their third year they become full grown, and have firmly attached themselves to the stones by means of "necks" which they secrete.

At this time the diving women bring the mollusks to the surface and they undergo an operation. A small seed pearl is introduced into the center of the shell. Then the oysters are replanted in the bed and left alone for four years.

When they are again brought to the surface it is found that the seed pearl nucleus has been covered with many layers of the nacre, a secretion of the mollusk, and the large, brilliant translucent pearl of commerce has been formed.

But the process is not as simple as it appears. During the seven years that the farmer must wait for his crop to mature a large percentage of the oysters die. The oyster beds are raided by such enemies as the octopus and the starfish.

Occasionally the "red current" sweeps over them and in a day destroys the entire crop. At all times the farmer must keep his oyster bed free of "miruno," a seaweed which will smother the crop.

Women divers trained from girlhood to long immersions in the Sea are engaged at 20 cents a day to care for the farm. In this work they wear nothing but a head cloth, a white shirt and diving goggles. At each dive they can gather several oysters and return to the surface.

A dive occupies about one minute, and a day's work is from four to six hours. An expert can readily gather 500 oysters a day in a depth of water ranging from two to six fathoms. To keep at the work for a day they must frequently come up and warm themselves at a fire.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 8.


Love of Books

Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. — Anthony Trollope.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 6.