The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 25, 1897, Page 18

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 25, 1897. than are the intelligent. In fact, thereis pot a man in San Francisco at this min- ute, with the sure exception oi Mr. McAdie, who is so inclined to pursue a vagrant Jommis | breeze through the corridors of the sky as A\ | this same quiet and unassuminz Mr. N | Hammon. What antics does the wind A\ | play in the season of storms? Mr. Ham- aeh \ | Taom, with true scientific ardor, has deter- [ | mined to isolate himself up the top of :ab\ | Mount Tamalpais to ascertain. T I R R | The New Meteorological Station on Mount Tamalpais. Some months ago Mr. Hammon asked IProlessnr Moore, tne chief of the Unitea In the near future San Francisco will bave the luxury of two kinds of weather forecasts daily. Probably no city in the United States cther than this has ever en- joyed this, so to speak, ciimatic ambidex- terity. Of course the weather of Ean Francisco bas, time out of mind, been | suppoeed to be entitled to be typified by the simultaneous display, on the street, of a sealskin sacque and a parasol carried by one and the same person, and every old resident has been secretly pleased at this evidence of our versatile City. But few versons really have believed | that more than one set of meteorological conditions has existed here at any one hour of the day. The remainder, our brave verbal si:ow, Las been set down as entitled to be classed with the somewhat racy humor of the State, which, in early days, said of a certain street that it was “impassable, not even jackassable.”’ But | now forward comes Forecast Official Ham- | mon to seriously assert that we often have | two sets of phenomena running at once over the Golden Gate. Just as undubitably as there are High Dutch and Low Dutch, su says Mr. Ham- | mon, tbere are high weather and low | weather. These have so intimate rela- tions, one to the otner, that he has agked and procured permission to observe tbem simultaneously. “For instance,”’ says Mr. Hammon, “‘wben the west wind of sum- mer is blowing on the level of the bay and through the streets of the City thereis very often a cyclonic wind blowing from the south at the summit of Mount Tamal- pais.”’ George Davidson, Mateorology may be a 1t is a long ago exploded error that the | little out of his line, but his snggestion ignorant are more eager to inquire things | shows What ideas will occur 1o a thor- i Btates Weather Bureau, to provide an equipment of instruments similar to those in use at the forecast station in this City, to be placed on the highest point of lofly old Tamalpais, the warder of the hills of Marin County. At the same time Mr. Hammon, for the sake of giving San Fran- | cisco the best weather service possible, volanteered patriotically to give up his | vacation of one month, putting in his | time on the mountain for the public good. He would not state the case this way if he were to tell the story, but that is one of the interesting facts in the case, and the story could not be justly told without mentioning it. Perhaps this evidence of | earnestness has influenced Professor Moore to give his approval of the early establishment of a station of the Weather Burean over ths Golden Gate. His consent has just been officially re- ceived by Mr. Hammon, and lirtle time will be lost in getting the station into | actual operation. *I have been notified,” said Mr. Ham- mon yesterday, ‘“that the last of the in- struments will be shipped from Washing- ton not later than August 13, and, there- fore, Ithink thatthestation on the moun- tain ought to be in operation not later than the first of September. 1 am notthe first to advocate thefounding of this sec- ond station, but since I have thougbt of the matter I have urged the provision of added facilities as strongly as vossible. The idea was first advanced by Professor | are drawn bere. | elass. | is between 6000 and 7000 feet high. oughly broad - gauge man, Professor Davidson was up on Mount Tamalpais some years ago engaged in the work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and passed several days there. When he came down from the mountain he made the recom- mendation for the making of weather ob- servations up there. At that time there was no forecast station in San Francisco. Nor was there any easy way to get upon the mountain such as has been provided since by the creation of the railroad to near the summit. \ “One of Uncle 8am’s weather observers, to whom the station was meationed, op- posed the idea. I suppose that life would not have been as pleasant on the mountain then as it might prove to be now. Nothing was really accomplished for several years, in fact not ufiil quite recently. Since I have' made a recom- mendation the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco has worked for the station. Professor Davidson wrote a very fine let- ter to the Chamber of Commerce on the subject, which went on to Washington with the communication from the cham- ber. The people of Marin County have always been alive to the importance of the station to them. When the idea was first mooted—and it looked to them some years since that the project would be car- ried out—theX raised the money needed to build a wazon road up to an eievation near the top of Tamalpais. They also purchased and presented to the Govern- ment a tract of land of considerable size at the summit. “At the very highest point of the moun- tain there will be erected the apparatus for measuring the wind velocity. This will be held by & spindle sixteen féet high. The wind instruments will be securely fastened into vlace, the standard being leaded to the solid rock. There will be, asa matter of course, the necessury rain gauges to measure the precipitation o the mountain. The most of the instru- ments at the station will be located at the hotel. All of the outfit and equipment will be of the best. In all respects the ob- server on the mountain top will have me- chanical facilities on all fours with those supplied to the station in this City. Mr. McAdie will, I think, be willing to give up his vacation also to help to ascer- tain what lessons may be learned on Tamalpais. The wind apparatus will be connected with the hotel by a telegraphic cable. Ihave bought 1000 feet of cable for this use. To help establish the service the telephone company has offered to per- mit us to use the telephone fr:e for one month. The wind apparatus will be about 800 feet from the hotel and at an elevation about 200 feet above it. When the station is ready to operate we will soon begin to learn its real value. I am confident that it will be an excellent place to make observations. “All the dispatches, data, daily reports, etc., will be at once telephoned from the station in the Milis buflding to the Mount Tamalpais station. A system of maps will be drawn or: Tamalpais just as they Nothing, in short, will be omitted to make the Tamalpais service absolutely complete. The othec moun- tain stations in the United States have been discontinued. This is because they have served their purpose and are no longer needed. “The Tamalpais station is in a different Pikes Peak is 15,000 feet high. Mount Washington, in New Hampsaire, The advantage of taking observations at such altitudes largely consisted in getting in- formation concerning air currents, atmos- pheric pressure and changes of tempera- ture at great heights. The mass of data accumulated is sufficient for generaliz: ticns. Mount Tamalpais, with an eleva- tion of 2600 feet and with its location near San Francisco, is a favorable outpost for practical work. I expect much will be learred through the station and that much benefit may accrue to San Fran- cisco.” Mr. McAdie is just as enthusiastic as Mr. Hammon. The First TJelegraph Line. The “Campus wire,” as the students called it, was the thing which excited the most wonderful speculation when Henry was at Princeton. Dr. Edward Chippen of rhiladelphia, of the class of '65, states | that it ran along from Philosophical Hall, by the front of North College, among the outer branches of some of the fine trees, and then round the western end to Pro- fessor Henry's house, which was west of North College and sowh of the Old Li- brary and Recitation Hall. This wire was the first in which the current was com- pleted through the earth, It went into the well at the professor's house, the other end being in the earth at Philosophi- cal Hall. Professor Henry often used the ‘‘Cam- pus wire” in the presence of the students, although he was not given to superfluous experiments. He had an arbitrary code. 1i he wanted Lis luncheon sent over he worked his armature a few times accord- ing to the coge. Mrs. Henry received the message. The students waited, and pres- ently *“Sam” would appear bringing the precise articles ordered on a tray covered with a napkin. This simple exhibition of what is now an everyday transaction was then a source of wonder. Thisoccurred again and again before Morse telegraphed between Baltimoreand Washington,which was in the month of May, 1844.—Scrib- ner’s, -—— There are more muscles in she tail ofa rat than ic a human hand. Tbhe sloop-of-war Benicia was hurrying homeward under the impulse of all plain canvas and with weather topmast stud- aing sails concaving out from their booms, their taut guys vibrating in a high-ten- sioned treble to the puil of a ripping quar- ter breeze. For five slow-moving years she had been wandering around the Asiatic ports, blistering in Singapore, bucking harbor | ice in Chemulpo, digging up voleanic mud wiih her anchor in Nagasaki and gather- ing all manner of vile deposits from the oozy waters of the Yang-tse. Now she was plunging eastward across the Pacific, with a bhalf-gale harmony humming through her tophamper and the tull spring of life in the lift and sweep of her body. Even the sea seemed glad of her com- ing, and the merry foam-flecked billows lipped like lovers to the line of her weather forecastle rail as she leaned to the deep windward roll. To Ler crew it had been five years of purposeless passing from place to place— a needless raising of the anchor to let it go agein in another harbor—and by the time the long-looked-for orders had a:- rived for the vessel to leave the station all hands had made up their minds to die there and he buried in a despized “foreign devil” cemetery on the weedy outskirts of some malodorous Chinese city. The fore and main topmen’s gangways, led by the to’gallant forecastle, had pro- tested vehemently even to the verge of profanity against thisinterminable linger- | ing beyond the usual three years. But| neither the small marine sprite, who is oiten reported to be “‘sitting up aloit,” nox the Secretary of the Navy sitting in his oftice at W ashington, had seen fit to take the Benicia off the wretched blow-hot- blew-cold coast, and the gangways, still led by the to’gallant forecastle, had settled down to the apathy of quiet growling at each other. Finally the ‘‘homeward-bound pen- nant” went up to the royal masthead and | when the stops were broker, letting the | great new streamer float for the first time | on the breeze, the natty old craft waich | bore Senora Vallejo’s baptismal name was poising on wide canvas wings for flight to- ward the sunrise. Cook Lind of the afterguard mess, who claimed in the face of much adverse com- ment that he was a kinsman of the sweet- throated Jennie of Sweden, had composed | a song to be sung in grand chorus when | the vessel turned her golden figurehead | toward the purpie Occident. Its titie was | “The Benicia’s Homeward Bound,” and Boatswain’s Mate Saxie Fisher, the arch- | critique of the navy, said the composition | was “fair to miadiing.” | In the same breath, however, he handed ; down a modification of this judgment, which was that the tuneful cook was only | a Bkowegian hobo who had drifted out of | St. Paul, Minn., and was without right to | the name he bore. This aspersion on his | social status and estate in nowise raitled | the bard nor ruffled the even flow of his numbers, and as it was known that Fisher bimself aspired poetically sometimes the | beiief obiained that he was moved to criticism by literary rivalry, and this took the edge off his verdict. Consequently the cook maintained caste in the after- guard mess, The song ran on inacon- trast between the fierce joy a sailor feeis when his ship begins to reach out for native land and the very ordinary sort of satisfaction that comes, if at all, to the torpid soul of the {armer, even in seasons of the most prodigal harvest. The plower | of the sea seems to find his antithesisin | the plower of thelea. In his oddly put| together mind the sailor somehow feels that his own virtues have no kindred in | the make-up of the agriculturist, and also that the granger has mansged to become | possessed of frailties which he himseif so | far has successfully eludea. Fisher was a full believer in the theory of the quiet antagonism between the two noble professions and rather leaned to that view in an epic, which be rigged out bimself, he said. The first verse, as fol- lo ws, moved grandly along the line of its author’s faith: Sez th’ Bo'sun to th* Ad-mur-al His trowsers up a-hitchin’, We mus’ out er-pon th’ briny Be a-rollin’ an’ a pitchin’; ’F we hang arcund much longer This ’ere navy-yara adornin’ Th’ farmers in (her’ pariors Will our bloomiu’ selves be scornin’s The next stanza was devoted to the ad- miral’s withering contempt for the scorn- ers, couched in diction lurid as the flash | of a ten-tonner, but Fisher considered that the poem culminated in grandeur with Th 'farmers in' ther’ parlors, And, moreover, was a pretty bit of play to put the hereditary traducer of the sailor in such a feminine locality as a parlor, from which enfeebling vantage ground he could hur! his bucolic animadversions at the noble mariner. So while the Benicia was cutting the seas into foam with her sharp forefoot and burying her lee cathead low in the white smother, they sang Cook Lind’s stirring *‘homeward-bound” song to the sound of drums and harpstrings heard afar up in the deep bends of the wind-swollen canvas; and to that song the waves broken at the bow bubbled and swirled into the silver wake running bakc across the water till it blended with the blues an« greens of the distant sea “'F Old Gill can only hold togsther,’” said Walker, captain of the maintop star- board, to the big hemp-sheet that held down the after corner of the mainsail, filled with the breeze and bending to the rigidity of a curved plate of steel. T hen he let'his goze mount to the far snowy royal, billow ing out like a fold of cloud in the biue. Braced to a hair, in the flush of the steady trade, not a shiver, not the ghost of a wrinkle was traveling over the marble-hard surfaces of cloth. He looked at the balloon-like studding canvas, and saw that the wind was almost too much for these light addenda of sails; but the commander had vewed that he would take the stiffness of the Asiatic winters out of the booms, and he evidently was doing so. “'Fold J ack Gill can only hold toge- ther,”” he repeated, and though satisfied with his inspection on the main and of the specd the ship was making, muttered: “but I'm damned if I think he will.” Dunn, captain of the foretop, noting Walker’s close inspection of wmatters on the main, began havior of his own canvas on the fore. There is always a fierce rivalry between the different parts-of-the-ship aboard a man-of-war in drill or in the ordinary work of the vessel. But on this occasion adifferent feeling impelled Dunn to send | his keen eye aloft among the hard hollows of his sails, that like the others further aft were vocal with the resounding thun- der of the peat-up winds. Then heechoed Walker’s words—*‘'F old Gill can only hold together, but I doubt it.”” Dave Clark, the ship's armorer, stood in the door of his little arsenal, where the line of burnished musket-barrels showed in their rack like the steel pipesof a war- organ. FHe looked up at the burdened yards tugging bravely in their braces and muttered in his Neptune-like beard: *'F Olid Jack can only bol’ together.” Quar- ter-Gunner Johnson paused 1n his work of oiling the compressor of a murderous rapid-fire rifie and gave voice to the same thought; and usually silent Mastman George Romer, sitting among his ropes tailoring into respectability a much-worn | flannel shirt, gave utterance to the same idea. When Bond, the quartermaster of the watch, came forward after heaving the log and reported the ship throwing twelve good, horest knots out into Her white rib- bon of wake all the watch along the decks thought of O!d Gill and his ability to hold together. Then they looked over the blue knolls of surge thatarose and receded on the great liguid plain, cccasionally pitch- | ing a foam cap across the hammock net- ting as the Benicia bowed in her weatber roll to the oncoming sea, ana doubted. Down in the sick-bay one of the crew law dying with his cot swaying to the swing of the plunging ship—himself a pendulum marking off the nours of bis own life, flying. It was Old Gill home- ward-bouna. He had been a carpenter’s mate in tbe service some remote day near the dawn of the century, and Saxie Fisher, who was more positiye in matters pertaining to the lapses of time than the investigating the be- | chronometer, said Gill had been chief naval construcior in the yard where the keel of the Ark was laid. However, the | old man was now going out of commission to lay up in ordinary in the little billside graveyard at Mare Island with the other buman bulks that had heard their :ast “pipe down.” He had picked out his| | mooring-place, he said, and he would | turn-in to a coffin provided with a lock and key like a diddy-box, instead of a hammock and a round-shot at the foot for ballast. Old Gill’s long sea-service—he had left his allotted {ast milestone many knots be- hind—had been a life of prayer that he might not be buried in the sea when his final enlistment had rounded to a finish. “I'd never be at rest,’”’ he growled, ‘‘but forever swoshin’ aroun’ like an old corked- bottle, pecked at by the gulls an’' nosed about by every loafin’ cod that came that way. I want to sleep stiddy an’ quiet- like on th' shore—stiddy asa farmer— Fisher.” Every day at noon, after the navigator had found the meridian and made eight bells, Fisher would come down from the spardeck and tell Gill how many more knots the ship must reel off thelog ere | she lifted the Calirornia coast, and the | dying man would mark the lying figures on the side of his cot. Often when the wind went down and the rocking motion of the vessel showed little speed, it was beautiful to see Saxie arouse the sinking spirits of Giil by adding a few in.aginary knots to each hour’s rua. *‘She’s a-swimmin’ away like a hungry duck fur a fat mud flat, ol’ man,” said the faithful liar, as the almost stationary ship | rolled ber idle canvas against tie masts | with loud flaps, which the sick man could have heard had not approaching death dulled his ears. “‘Hear ber now,” he would say to the home-yearning invalid. “Isn’t th’ ol hooker just a-rippin’ through it! W’y, th’ water is a-comin’ over th' fo’cas'l head wettin' th’ fores’l clear up to th’ reefband. A minet ago she went into a swell an’ | ’bout four tons uv green gea slapped down into th’ galley, nearly drownded th’ cook, an’ washed th’ plams out uv t’ bloomin’ | Guff a-bilin’ in th’ coppers. Ab, me boy you will soon see th’ roof uv th’ ol’ Guardo | | loom up, an’th’red walis of th’ Marine | 'Hu\niul dead ahead. I wus squintin’ over Micky McGreevy’s shoulders as he | wus a-workin’ out th’ sights as th’ rav'ga- | | ter gave ’im—you know Micky is goin’ to be a capt’in in th’ Fenian navy when O! | | Ireland is free—an’ he said to me he had figrered out a bloomin’ parallax that sez | we'll raise th’ Farallones enny mornin’ | now. Dave Clark is gettin’ his bag uv Japanese curios ready to slide ashore be- fore th’ Custom-Louse officers nab ’em. George Homer just went to th’ paymas- ters to settle accounts, as he is goin’ to leave the’ service when we get in and ship on a hen farm an’ grow poultry fur ih’ marine mess at th’ barracks on th’ island. You're a feelin’ able-boaied to- | day, aint you? That’s right, my son, hol’ together a little longer. Reminds me uv ashipmate I had in th’ Savannah up | th’ Mediterranean in 18—.” | Then the increasing weakness of the | sick man wou!d hasten the doctor’s stew- ard to order Kisher out of the bay, and Saxie would go on deck to give as his opinion that Old Gill would go to pieces | before the morning watch was called. Frequently Walker, who alternated his ! enlistments with cruises among the Cali- fornia wheatfields, would cheer with de- lightful farm legends the ancient mariner drifting away to the uncharted sea. In the calm evenings Lind and his fellow- songsters would gatber on deck near the | open sick-bay hatch, and the stirring melody of *The Benicia’'s Homeward Bound” would float down to the dying man like a benediction, infinitely sweet to the ocean-weary soul, longing for rest and quiet under the grasses on the hill- side. There were days when the gentle decep- tion of tender-hearted shipmates could hardly hide the knowledge that the Be- nicia lagged in her sailing, and that the spell of a great golden calm had fallen over the sapphirine sea. Then the cot swung soltly, mercifully, rocking the fail- ing senses into the verge of a siumber that had no dreaming as the vessel reeled across the unwrinkled slopes of the low undulations of swell. Other days there | were when the white summer clouds of cloth went out of the sky and little patches of close-reefed sail gathered the | drifting into the cloud loom. Bounp gale in their folds, and iron taut gear clanged like maddened bells to the wind- flend’s furious smitine. Then death stood Watch on deck as well as in the sick-bay. “I’s all right, Jack,” Fisher would say, leaning over tne old white face on the Pillow; “she’s dead on her coarse, bowlin® straight into 'Frisco, with fores’l a-pullin’ like a team of bulls an’ a bit of maintops’l a-haulin’ 1ts mast over th’ bow. Four seamen at th' wheel an’ th’ officer uv th’ deck on th’ bridge with so many lifelines around ’im he looks like a lashed ham- mick. Th’ ol’ boat is a-runnin away so fast that th’ uncoupled perpeiler rolied three blades off las’ nighi. Fore-storm- stays’l went in th’ midwatch, but we bent & new one, an’ that’ll stand till hell freezes over, thank th’' Lord. Hol' to- getber, Jack, an’ we'll have ye at the na_vy-ynrd an’ buried under th’ weeas, with th’ dickybirds a-chirpin’ th’ ‘retreat’ over your grave before next bean day.” “‘Hol’ together, mate; she's a-stepping off the meridians uv longitude likea tramp countin’ ties,” said Baxie, and through the open port came the seething.and pour- ing song of ocean as the ship leaned down to her work—grand, intense, immeasura- ble in the eazerness of ber flight, *Lord, how she is flyin’! After five years a-picking up barnacles, tereeders and other sea vegetables in Chiny she travels like her bottom was blackleaded for a regatter.. How th’ farmers—th’ bloomin’ farmers in ther parlors—will stare when we drive up th’ bay. Itll be: ¢ 'Ten-shun — present pitchforks’ — hey, Juck?"’ Then the faithful fellow went up the - 'tz | ladder singing inan inharmonious extem« porized air: Sez th’ to'sun to th’ Ad-mural, His trousers up a-hitchin’, “We mus’ ou t erpon the briny, Be a-roliin’ an’ a-plichin’.” One evening ke came down with a bre iness that was painfully affected, and in a loud pitch of voice—doubtless to silsnce the tongue of his own conscience—saying: “Gettin’ th’ anchors cff th’ fo’c’s'l-head, Jack, an’ shacklin’ th’ cable. I hear—" But he suid no more. The silver cord was growing mute, the old wreck was Gill had lost all sense of the swing of the ship and the sobbing sound of water as it broks un- der the bows and swept bubbling astern. No more need of the surgeon’s weak eva- sion and Fisher’s gentle deception. His anchors were off the forecastle-head and the clank of the cable was in his cars. “We're almost in, Sax,’’ he whispered, “fur I can smell th’ land just off—there— behind that smudge of mist. I’ve served my country boy an’ man fur years—an’ years, an’ now I—go out uv commission— an’ rot with—other ol’ hulks in th’ navy- vard. Tn’ farmersin ther'—will ses tha ol’ sailor come ashore—come ashore. “Fisher!” once he called, “iet th’ car- penter’s gang break out them plank in to forepeak—fur th’ coffin. I hear th' per- peiler goin’—unbend sail and unreeve runnin’ gear, th’ engines 'l pull her th’ anchor. Hear th’' guns!— salutin’ th’ admirat? Who is he? Winss low? Wuz with him that day ou Cherebourg when we put th’ Alabam’ to sleep in th’ sea. I'd like to look at th’ ol’ man—an’ at th’ flag at th’ peak again, Sax, an’ th’—an’ th’ graveyard.” It was in the last dogwatch with a light new wind brushing into ripples of silver the starlit sea when old Giil’s ensign came down forever. “Sax,” he said, “I see th' Pensacola— an’ th’ Mohican, an’ th’—th’—th’ Inde« pendence. An’ there’s th’ Hartford, with th’ signboard ‘go ahead’ on th’ break uv th’ poop—'Damn th’ torpedoes, go ahead,’ sez Farragut. Sax, I'll go ashore when th’ anchor goes down. Guess I'll turn in fur a bit uv sleep till th’ cutter is manned, Pipe down!” a5k On the main the yards shivered aback and the waves eddied and sparkled around the stationary ship as the bugle sounded the retreat from the burial, and out in the sea the toam belis rang their soft har- monies above the spot where the dead had passed to the deep. Then the mighty mid-Pacific surzes swept over the place of septiiture, majestic, obliterating, trium- phaat. Presentiy the yards were swung around, the head-sheets hauled ait, the wheel put up and the vessel paying-off found her course, and the Benicia gath- ered steeringway homeward bound. This is only an incident, an episode in the life of those who go down to the sea in ships. Dust unto dust, and the wind and the wave go on and that is all. RN R R i ol iU’s all right, Jack,” Fisher would say, leaning over the old white face on the pillow. U1 / RN S W =< —