The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 24, 1898, Page 20

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL SUNDAY, JULY 24, 1898. CRASHED > three + DR Rt o SR S ONDON, June 30.—The vision of a new heaven and a ne is still u new nfulfilled, but the America. The n Revolution has tho as waited till the ¢ putting my impress paper, for it i easy to be mistaken about popu- lar ent in this country. The American people are as sensitive to smotional or ectual stimulus as a photographic film is to light, but they are also, to a remarkable degree, a peo- ple of second thougt Their nerves are quick, but their conv are slow. The apparent change S S0 great and so unexpected that at first I could not bring n i self to believe in its ceality or its endurance. Unless all signs fail, however, or I fail to interpret them, the old Am the America sbedient to the traditions of the found- ers of the republic, is passing away, and a new America, an America stand- Ing armed, alert and exigent in the arena of the world-struggle, is taking its place. The change is threefold: 1. The United States is about to take Its place among the great armed pow- ers of the world. 2. By the seizure and retention of territory not only not contiguous to the borders of the republic, but remote from them, the United States becomes 1 colonizing nation, and enters the field of International rivairies. 3. The growth of good will and mu- tual understanding between Great Britain and the United States and the settlement of all pending disputes be- tween Canada and America, now vir- tually assured, constitute a working union of the English speaking people against the rest of the world for com- mon ends, whcther any moral agree- ment is reached or not. Viewed in the light of the events it may conceivably bring forth, this trio of changes may be described without fon a:® the event of the cen- tury. There is little to say about it that has not already been said, but as a subject for comment it has this ad- vantage, that there is little mystery about it. One great element of uncer- tainty of co e remains—the final di- rection taken by American public opin- jon, but with that exception one may speak as a witness and not as a prophet. First, then, with regard to the fu- ture army and navy of the United Stat The war has taught this coun- try a severe lesson. A few weeks be- fore the outbreak of hostilities I read in a leading New York paper a care- fully detailed estimate, based upon re- turns from every State in the Union, showing that an army of 10,000,000 men could be promptly raised. This ludi- crous notion undoubtedly corresponded to the popular view of the country’s capabilities. Anybody who remembers certain statements made during the Venezuelan dispute will not think this remark extravagant. It was known that the patriotism of the people was equal tc the supply of any number of voluntecrs, the resources of the coun- try were known to be limitless—the of h nothin I~ On the flour t morning a floatin nd a package of smoking to : but their underclothes. Tt disgust. They had been tw By Henry Norman, combination of innumerable men with s is all that is required Such was the reason- But nobody is misled by it to-day. President has called out 200,000 men, and they have responded with ex- traordinary promptitude. But in a few ¥s twe months will have elapsed and whole force is yet far from ready to take the field. Fifteen thousand men—nearly all regulars—have gone with General Shafter to Santiago; a few thousand are to be sent to rein- force him as quickly as possible; about 7000 have gone to Manila; 20,000 are wanted for Porto Rico and are not available, while the main army of Cu- ban invasion will hardly be ready, I should suppose, for another month yet. A month ago it was commonly said that 75,000 men were .going at once to Cuba. The United States could not dis- patch half that number of equipped sol- diers then, although she had over 100,- 000 men with the - colors. The state- ment remains true a month later. Remember one thing always The war took everybody by surprise. It was not desired, it was not ex- pected; it was, therefore, not prepared for. If the Maine had not been blown up there would be peace to-day. Forty- eight hours before the rupture a lead- ing New York capitalist, who had gone to Washington to discover the exact situation, returned and reported that he had absolutely certain knowledge, from official sources, that there would bé no war. Thus the Government was called upon to create and equip an army from foundation to coping. The regular army was small in number, scattered all over the country; it had never been collected since ,the rebel- lion; officers of different companies in the same regiment were often stran- gers to one another; brigade drill, and even regimental drill, was unheard of. The National Guard, of which so much was expected, had, in many -cases, neither clothing nor arms. A few were “ready, aye ready,” but the response of most of them has been described as a mixture of tragedy and opera bouffe. When I visited Camp Alger I found one regiment of 800 men with 200 rifles, and several had from 30 to 40 per cent of new recruits—men who had never fired a rifle. Then, again, the War Department had not the aid from the States that it had confldently expected. A hundred thousand men, quickly fol- lowed by nearly 75,000 more, were de- livered to it, needing almost every- thing. They have been transported vast distances with one—only one—tri- fling accident; two weeks hence, Gen- eral Alger has assuyed, me every man will be equipped, down to two suits of uniform for the tropics; the ‘hard- ships” they have suffered are not such as a soldier should talk much about; 32,000 tons of rations have been provid- ed for them; fifty transports have been chartered and fitted out; besides all this, the War Department has laid 1500 submarine mines, set up forty search- lights, and armed a large number of forts—often building them first. After admitting every reasonable criticism, it is a triumph of organization. I doubt if so much, from so little, has ever been accomplished so expeditious- ly and so uneventfully before. And look at the display of American patriotism. When the volunteers were INTO THE BOAT AND OVERTURNED spent twelve days IT. hauling and poling their boat loaded with all they possessed log upset the * boat, their eighteen ), were lost and they were captured and righted in climbing the river; the BATTLING WITH HARD LUCK ON AN ALASKAN TORRENT. Thrilling Adventures of Daring Prospectors, Who Tr_ied to Reach the Gold Fields on the Upper Sushetna River. Special Corraspondence of The Sunday Call. SUNRISE CITY, Cooks Inlet, June 21, 1897. HE tide of humanity which has been pouring into Cooks Inlet all summer long has finally reached the flood and alréady the current has turned, and day by day grows broadér and swif- ter. The first to set the tide home- ward bound are those who have come with scant outfits and little or no plans for practical work. The great majority belong to this class. Conditions are so vastly differ- ent from what they were pictured in the newspaper reports that nine cases in ten those who have come here find that they improperly provided them- selves, either for living in the country or for prospecting it. Even the most carefully laid and well regulated plans have fallen through, and company af- ter company have broken up, leaving their dredging and hydraulic machin- ery lying on the beach or selling it for next to nothing. The great majority have come prepared to prospect through the summer and return home in the fall. But when they arrived here and began to learn some facts about the country from'the old timers, they find that there are only three months in the year during which suc- cessful prospecting can be done, and and that is from October 1 until Jan- uary 1. In the early summer they must wait about two months for the snow to melt away. 7Then another two months for that melted snow to run out of the creeks so they can be trav- ekI’él\.‘en if they could get into the inte- rior sooner the water would be too high in the creeks to allow of prospect- ing. Absolutely nothing can be done here, or ever has been done, according to the old-time miners’ report, except from the time the ground freezes until the snow is too deep to work through. But of course no one who is busy hurrying hither and thither to get his outfit ready and his passage —ecured on some boat that is just about to leave, and after which there will be no earthly chance to secure passage on any boat—such a crofvd of busy, hopeful prospectors hate no time to stop and think of a little bit of detail like this. They know that the sum- mers up here are fine and long and that the gold is here waiting to be washed out, and all they want is a chance to get on the ground and they will find means to prospect, etc. But just the same, it is the failure to keep a close account of these little details that has misled so many. And great is the suffering from loss and disappointment. I know personally of many cases of men who have mort- gaged their homes, sold out lucrative businesses or made other great sacri- fices in order to outfit themselves and get here, only to turn back and sell their outfits for enough money to get home on after less than a month’s stay in the inlet. Some have even gone back home without even getting off the boat they came on. Those returning home now are called cowart weak hearted, etc., but are they cowards after all? What else can they do? They have miscalculated and aré utterly unprepared for a stay through the coming winter, and in or- der to stay for the short prospecting season they must remain through the winter. But some are showing less good sense and are staying and trying to get up éhe dangerous rivers at blind haz- zards The Big Sushetna River is the center of excitement now. It is a great whirling torrent, ten miles across in places and narrowing down to rushing rapids at other places. It leads back from the head of Cooks Inlet into the mountains over toward the Copper River country, going through swampy valleys, winding .around rolling hills and mountain peaks, splitting into thousands of small tributaries and larger streams, draining the immense water shed to the north and northeast of Cooks Inlet. Like the Yukon River, the Shushetna is full of islands and shifting sandbars, At this son of the year it is swelled to its utmost and the banks are continually caving in, bringing great spruce. trees crashing into its swift current. ~As this drift goes down and passes through some narrow channel between two islands it jams and shifts the current to another channel. By and by it will breuk loose and go tumbling down the river, carrying everything before it. There seems to be an underground current at places, for at times, where the stream is flowing along compara- tively smooth, there will suddenly burst up from the sandy botgom a rna.r"lng spring that sets the water to boiling and swirling like the Niagara River. These are the odds to be met by those who go up the river now. The method of ascending is for two men to walk along-the beach or scram- ble along the precipitous and m:_ar:hy banks, as the case may be, towing a small boat, while a third sits in the boat and steers. The farthest up any party has been this summer is eighty miles. A party of three with eighteen months’ sup- plies had gained this distance .after twelve days’ work from 8 in the morn- ing until 12 midnight. The hardships and dangers they bore are indescriba- ble. The mosquitoes and moose flies “are simply hell.” At the end of the twelve days a float- ing log swung around and capsized the boat, and their complete outfit, with the exception of a sack of flour and a bag of smoking tobacco, went to the bottom. They had been working in their un- derclothes and were left without cloth- ing to wear. They got in their boat and the swift current toock them back to the mouth of the rive hours. The gen e of progress of outfits up is about two or three miles a day. The steam schooner L. J. Perry, which has been the carry-all” for three years from point to point, in the is prepering for an attempt to ascend the river. Her owner, Mr. La- throp, is one of the pioneers of Cooks Inlet, and thoroughly understands the currents of the stream. By starting up at flood tide he expects to make the first run of twenty mile Then he will anchor or ground his vessel and wait for advantageous winds. In this way he expects to ascend a hundred and inlet, fifty miles. If he succeeds he will convey miners up as far as possible, which will be by far the quickest and cheapest way for them. o No discoveries of any note have been made this s on as yet. In fact, no prospecting has been done. But there will be several hundred who will get up inland and put in the fall seas of prospecting and remain hermited during the winter, and it is expected that many new discoveries will be re- ported from this work early next sum- mer. Only four or five cases of drowning have occurred here this season, which is considered low for the average. J. BURGOYNE ELY. ot HUGE MODEL OF THE EARTH HE celebrated French geographer, Professor Elisee Reclus, is spe- cially coming over from Paris to lay before the Royal Geograph- jeal Society particulars of his project for a gigantic model of the earth. Professor Reclus’ idea is to construct a globe on a scale of eight miles to the inch, this being the smallest sized sphere on which it would be possible to show, correct to scale, the depth of every river and the height of every hill on the earth’s surface. This exact replica of the world would measure roughly eighty-four feet in diameter, or half the size of the dome of St. Paul's. This would mean a dis- tance of thirty feet between New York and London, and Paris and London would be about three feet apart. The scheme. is not exactly a new one, Professor Reclus having had it in mind for some years, and. as a matter of fact, the Communale Council of Paris had promised a large sum of money toward the construction of such a globe for the Paris exhibition of 1900, but unfor- Commissioner of the London Chronicle. FHIF P74 3 0444443344444 4 4444444444434+ 4 4444444444344 HHF 42444420t summoned by the President they walk- as if they had been They were sub- examination as a life insurance company. A man w: rejected for two or three filled teeth. They came from all ranks of life. Young lawyers, doc- tors, bankers, well-paid clerks -are marching by thousands in the ranks. The first surgeon to be killed at Guan- tanamo left a New York practice of 310,000 a year to volunteer. As I was standing on the steps of the Arlington Hotel one evening a tall, thin man, car- rying a large suit case, walked out and got on the street car for the railway station on his way to Tampa. It was John Jacob Astor, the possessor of a hundred millions of do s. Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders contain a number of the s= -rtect young mecn in New York society. A Harvard class- mate of mine, a rising young lawyer, is working like a Jaborer at the Brook- lyn Navy Yard, not knowing when he may be ordered to Cuba or Manila. He is a Naval Reserve man and sent in his application for any post ‘‘from the stokehole upward.” The same is true of women. When I called to say good- by to Mrs. Jchn Addison Porter, the wife of the secretary to the President, whose charming hospitality I had en- Joyed, she had gone to Tampa to ship as a nurse on the Red Cross steamer for the coast of Cuba. And all this, be it remembered, is for a war in which the country is not in the remotest dan- ger, and when the ultimate summons of patriotism is unspoken. Finally, con- sider the reference to the war igan. A New York syndicate offered to taf half of it at a premium which would have given the Government a clear profit of $1,000,000. But the loan was wisely of- fered to the people, and the small in- Vvestor gets all he can buy befcre the capitalist is even permitted to invest. And from Canada to the Gulf, from Long Island to Seattie, the money of the people is pouring in. As I write, it -is said the loan will be all taken up in small amounts. It is true that soldiers in Florida should not be fed on pork and beans, and that campaigners in Cuba should not wear thick cloth uniforms. But while these truths may be remembered, anather should not be forgotten—that the American people have responded to their country’s call with instant and flawless patriotism. The lesson they have learned is that patriotism alone will not fight battles. How far will that lesson carry them? ‘Will it build up a great army and navy? The question requires a two- fold answer. In the United States there is a curious antipathy to a large standing army. The masses of the people dread such a centralization of power. Nothinr excites more hostility Ahan the employment of Federal troops to settle State difficulties—witness the outery when President Cleveland sent regulars to quell labor disturbances in Chicago. It is/feared that a large standing army might lead to aggressive campaigns abroad, but a hundredfold greater is the fear that it might be- come an instrument of oppression at home. 8o strong is this sentiment that the army will assuredly not be increased to any greet extent. Hitherto its strength has been nominally 25,000 men—actually perhaps: 18,000. Con- gress has recently authorized a total of te arching as that TEI 4T 4300444344044 4324444443344+ 4444444444444 4444444444444+ 44444, THE NEW AMERICA--HER ARMY AND NAVY. +EE 44 60,000—a tiny force for 70,000,000 people, according to European standards. But as a result of the the local regi- ments will gain vastly in popularity, and they will probably be Xept up to full strength with capable men and complete equipment. Moreover, there are signs that the famous Seventh Regiment of New York will not have incurred its terrible unpopularity in n. In future every local regiment will probably be allowed to go to the front as a unit and will not be depend- ent for its separate existence upon the whim of the Governor of its State. Therefore, the American land forces will be largely increased in reality, though not nominally. With the navy, however, the case is different. It cannot be used by the executive for oppression at home; the need of it for defense is universally re- cognized; it has always been the popu- lar arm; it has covered itself with glory during the war. The fear of an aggressive policy, it i true, has influ- enced past naval estimates also. Tt has always been easy to get money. for coast defense shins, and difficult to get it for sea-going battle-ships and cruisers. But this will be less the case now that America has possessions over sea. Already one significant fact has shown what may be expected. Not only was the last naval vote by far the largest since the rebellion, but Con- gress positively made great additions to the shipbuilding recommended by the Naval Construction Committee—a course without parallel in American history. The official recommendation was for one battle-ship and four tor- pedo-boats; what Congress authorized on May 4 was three battle-ships, of 11,500 tons; four monitors, of 2700 tons, for harbor defense: sixteen torpedo- boat destroyers, of 400 tons; twelve tor- pedo-boats, of 160 tons, and one gun- boat to replace the Michigan upon the lakes, if an arrangement with Great Britain permitting this is reached. The bids for all these ships are to be opened in August and September. I have compiieéd the following table, compris- ing ships afloat, building and author- ized, including those purchased for this war, one of these not yet launched at Armstrong's, to show that a powerful American navy is already an accom- plished fact: Author- To- Afloat. Bldg. ized. tal. 4 5 3 12 First-class battleships.. Second ass battle. ships 1ita o 1 Monitors [ (8 1] Armored cruisers ;a2 o< 2 Protected crulsers u TRt Unprotected cruisers .. 4 .. = Y Torpedo boats i i 3 Torpedo boat d 5 Sh melbi e This list comprises only first-rate modern vesselr; -it does =t include a number of gunboats, the monitors built during he rebellion, the Vesuvius and the Katakcia, ‘With no further increese, therefore, the American navv takes an important comparative place upon iie seas, but its increase is certain. Its admirable record during the war, as regards both material and personnel; the voyage of the Oregon; the Russian summons to her builder and the Russian order to Cramp & Sons. HENRY NORMAN. Copyrighted, 18%. E tunately difficuities arose money was not forthcoming. The primary object of Professor Re- clus’ visit to London is to interest peo- ple over here in the scheme,” with a view to raising the necessary capital to carry it out in this country. But, among other things, he wants to ob- tain the opinions of experts as to the most suitable and least exr 've mode of construction. The globe would either have to be supported on an axis, in a similar man- ner to the ordin saden globes, or— and this seems likely to prove the most convenient arrangement—floated in an and the immense bath, so as to be easily turned round. ‘When Professor Reclus first made his project public an eminent BEnglish scientist suggested that the surface of the th be.molded on the inside in- stead of the outside of the sphere, so that an observer, suspended in the center of the globe, could easily exam- ine any part of it. This idea, however, did not meet with approval, except that it was surgested that if the globe was given a rotary motion a visit to the interior might prove a permanent cure for delirium tremens. People may be inclined to think that such a globe as described would be of small practical util’ But, apart from its nany and important scientific uses, it is computed that the thousand: the working classes who would v such an object ould probably learn more geography in a few minutes’ con- templation of the earth’s surface than in months spent over maps.—London Mail. —— A young lady went to a chemist’s the ay for some castor oil, and while ant was making up the order, innocently inquired how it could without tasting it. stant promised to explain to her, antime offered her, politely, of flavored and scented seltzer d finished it, he said, quite 2 . you have taken your 1 did not know it.” voung lady screamed out: oil, you stupid; it was for PETS.IN THE PHILIPPINES _If the Philippines ultimately become sion of the United States, and ans flock thither to establish new homes, they will have to include snakes and lizards among their fam- ily pets. In an article on “Life in Ma- nila” in the . Youth’s Companion Charles B. Howard says: “Our hous Chine 1ze-color and Ped thon, whi nvas walls hold included three or four ‘chow’ dogs, with thick, orz fur and coal-black tongues the house snake, a small y traveled about inside the c: and kept us free from rats and mice. were Pedro never came out, and we not disturbed at all bv his pre ‘We slept on strips of matting, s over cane-seated cor hes, the which rested in bowls of wa vent visits frem centipedes. . —\u\\ ' it S . River. point in seven hours. Then the boat upset and they lost everything. SHOOTING DOWN THE BIG SUSHETNA RI This party spent twelve days hauling and polin ¥ VER. g their boat loaded with supplies up the Big Sushetna The current bore them back to their starting From g sketch of the “men as they came in sight of the starting camp.