Caught Him Red Handed

New York, 1895

A Burglar Who Was Operating at Richmond Hill.

Between 2 and 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, Randolph Smith, private watchman at Richmond Hill, saw a light in one of the new buildings in course of erection by Haugaard Brothers, on Maple street.

Going closer he saw a man cross the road with an arm full of carpenter's tools. Upon seeing Smith the man dropped the tools and ran. Smith blew his whistle for help and Clarence Badger joined him. A lantern being procured, search was made for the man, who was found under the extension of one of the new buildings. He was locked up in the Town Hall.

It was found that a house, in which was kept the tools of twenty carpenters, had been broken open and tools to the value of over $200 placed on the stoop ready for removal. About the same hour carpenter's tools to the value of $100 were stolen from a house in course of erection on Myrtle avenue. The officers believe that the man they arrested had accomplices, and that they had a horse and wagon.

The prisoner was arraigned before Justice Hendrickson on Saturday. He pleaded not guilty to the charges of burglary and grand larceny. He gave his name as Frank Wilson, age 21 years, residence, New York. The prisoner was well dressed. He claimed that he was on a spree and went under the stoop to sleep. When he was searched a three foot rule, with Mr. Haugaard's name stamped upon it, was found upon him. He was held without bail to await the action of the grand jury.

Officer Smith says the prisoner is the man he shot at one night in December last, on Lefferts' avenue, as he was running away with a bag of silver ware that he had stolen from the residence of Mr. Willetts.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 22, 1895, p. 1.

Student Designs Gold Ore Machines

1915

Big Saving in Ore Refinement May Be the Result

New equipment for use of the seniors of the University of Washington, which was designed and is being built under the direction of Fred Porter, a senior will soon be installed, and with it the men will perform a series of experiments of great practical and economic value.

Two complete sets of machinery have been designed by Porter for use in fine grinding and concentration of gold ore, some of the equipment being of the same style as has been used in the Alaska, Idaho and Montana gold fields in the last few years for the purpose of experimentation. The experiments to be performed may, besides being the work necessary to constitute the thesis required to gain a degree, result in a large saving in the refinement of ore.

One of the processes to be performed will be that of flotation concentration. the process discovered by Mrs. Everson, described in these columns last week.


Plan to Interest Mechanics

Use Inventor's Tools and Gain Equity in His Patents

William L. Bessola, an experienced mechanic known to practically every one connected with mechanical departments of mines in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and who holds patents for many mechanical devices, is endeavoring to interest capitalists and others in a proposition the success of which is assured.

As a forerunner to the manufacture and of the perfected tools on a large scale it is the plan of Mr. Bessola and his associates to secure the cooperation of every user of tools that they seek to replace with the new inventions, and to this end they have permitted a number of the leading plumbers, master mechanics and men generally connected with things mechanical, to purchase equities in the exploitation company, which not only entitles them to substantial interest in that direction, but also secures for each a proportionate right in the patents which Mr. Bessola has taken out.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 9.

River in Paraguay Leads Only To Mystery

1903

A GREAT MYSTERY

A Land From Which No Traveler Has Returned

One of the great mysteries of the world that is left for explorers to solve is the course of a river in South America and the land through which it runs.

The river is the Pilcomayo, and the land is the territory known as the Chaco in Paraguay. Explorer after explorer has entered this unknown country and none has returned. Last year the famous explorer, Erland Nordenskiold, one of the great Nordenskiold family of explorers and naturalists, tried to follow the Pilcomayo to its source, but, although he penetrated further than any other man ever managed to go and return, he did not succeed.

Enemies who could not be seen surrounded him day and night, and at last the mysterious terrors of the region forced even him to return. He has announced that Chaco still waits for the traveler who can conquer its secrets. So constant and unchangeable has been the doom of the explorers who tried it that the natives have named the Pilcomayo the River of Death and they speak of the Chaco as the Unknown Land.

Geographers know where the Pilcomayo river begins. It is in the high plateau of Bolivia. Near Asuncion in Paraguay, a broad and beautiful river empties into the Paraguay river. It is called the Pilcomayo, and it is supposed that it is that river. But no man knows for no man has followed the great stream from its source to its mouth.

Men have tried to follow the Pilcomayo in canoes that were hung with hides to serve as protection against Indians who occupy the Chaco. But after days of fighting they were beaten back and accounted themselves lucky to escape alive. Some of the best men of South America have lost their lives there, and of their parties not one man escaped to tell what fate had befallen them.

Fiercest of the several tribes of Indians who hold Chaco against exploration are the Tobias and Chorotes Indians. They are utterly uncivilized, subsisting entirely on game, fish, wild honey and roots. Their few garments and shelters are made from jaguar skins. They rub pieces of wood together to make fire.

Most of them are gorgeously painted and tattooed and they ornament themselves still further with feathers and flowers.

They do not know anything about metal working and do not even use flints for their weapons, but make them entirely out of hard wood, even their arrows being made simply out of pointed wood.

They bore holes through their lips and ears and thrust a piece of polished wood through them. They are splendidly formed, immensely strong and agile, but hideous in countenance; and they will not have anything to do with strangers, but seek to kill them as soon as they find them. They fight fiercely among themselves, also, and it is believed that they are cannibals — at least part of them.

This is the county that has lured explorer after explorer in the last twenty years without letting one return. It appears probably that it will continue to defy the world for many years to come. — Ex.

On the Antiquity of the Saw

1916

The saw is the earliest tool that has been traced in Egyptian history. It was found first in the form of a notched bronze knife in the third dynasty, or about 5,000 years before the Christian era, and was followed in the fourth and fifth dynasties by larger toothed saws, which were used by carpenters, but there are no dated specimens until the seventh century before the Christian era, when the Assyrians used iron saws.

The first knives on record were made out of flint and were in fact saws with minute teeth. They probably were used for cutting up animals, as the teeth would break away even on soft wood. Rasps, which are but a form of saw, were first made of sheets of bronze, punched and coiled round, but the Assyrians in the seventh century used the straight rasp made of iron similar to the modern type.

In the present day the saw is probably used more than any other tool. It has taken three distinct forms for the working of both wood and metal — the straight saw, the band saw, and the circular saw.