The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 15, 1899, Page 23

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 1899. Special to The Sunday Call. nds in the West In- 1 one opportunity for veculative genius that -uriously overlooked. in the dangerous nd Porto ions of and ral men have by the findings ters. years of the early World hundr from Mexico and the America fi n, rts of Cuba and pass- ic through the than a rivalry be- d the hurri- sink the ure fleets. ion of - the nown, while cords at Madrid the location only st Indian w bors are S n's of gal- more exceedingly pe ghteen or sible it easy for divers explogation. In- ome of the recently in- vented marine , such a boat, for instance, as 1on Lake's Argo- which crawls on the bottom of it would be a comparatively ask to prowl around on the bot- of the and discover these old wr and loot them of their gold. Lost $1,000,000 Every Year. A little research into the musty re- cords Madrid show that during the seve a nth century worth of to Spair part of the t llion could be l!\v 0900009 .90000.0.0.0.0.00.0 {1 Lot D@ & * ® & Tallest Modern ® Office Building Height, 390 feet; number of 4 depth of foundations, & ght from bottom of ns to top of flagpole, number of offices, 95 3 ted of occupant & @ number of windows, 2095; @ ® weight, 20,000 to . o " $2,400,000 @ 0065600660 LTHOUGH New construction of s until- they had be a familiar feature in the arch some Western it has run them up in such num- s and to such unprecedented heights the last ten years that they have ndw’ become the most characteristic and ature of its architecture. c ing Jhigh above the tallest of these great structures is the vast bulk the Park Row building, which lifts towérs' 390 feet into midair and its twa flags over the city at ome ecture of cities, a height of 447 feet above the sidewalk. As regards the engineening and archi- tectural problems »sented, it must be confessed that rst hav= been easier of soluti.n than the second. It is a slmple matter to pile story upon story and so proportion columns and that the structure shall nal bility, but it is an together different problem for the chitect to cluthe the “skeleton” with & mdntle of stone and glass that shall appear diversified, yet dignified and ap- propriate. “"The Park Row bullding is consider- ably the tallest commercial building in ‘the worlds The sketch, which is drawn strictly fo scale, shows the relative height above ground level of several notable structures in this country compared with that fav rite reference scale for height aad bulk—the great Pyramid of Egypt. It will be seen that, while the Park Row building greatly exceeds the World bullding, the dome of the Capi- tol at Washington and the spire of Trinity Church, New York, it reguires ‘.y the top of the pyramid. | Py | American My researches have been limited to such ancient Spanis be found in America, alone—and their number compares with the immense libraries of such works in Madri a drop to a stream—I have unearthed the stories of more than a 14 s, the wrecks which now lie in American waters. Fleet of Treasure Wrecks. of the Isle of Pines are the or famous Jardine rocks, a whole fleet of good ship was here that the daring buccane captain, arthelome Portugues, I the richest prize he ever took in adventurous career, to-day, awaiting the luc explorer. The account in the old books is most circumstantial. Barthelome Portugues had fitted out a small three-pounder vessel at Golfo Triste, on the Gulf of Campeachy, and with a crew of thirty men he had cap- tured a treasure galleon bound from Carthagena to Havana. It was a lucky adventure. The inventory of the ship's goods showed over a hundred thousand dolla; worth of gold and silver bul- lion, with as much more in coin. Por- tugues set his sails for Tortuga, but as they were passing Cape Corrientos e swift sailing guard vessels from Snain swept down upon the ship and captured him and the entire crew, and took them in irons to San Fran- cisco in Campeach The old account tells how Portugues escaped that night, and after an almost incredible journey through the swamps, secured a canoe from a friend, enlisted thirty men and actually recovered the ship that had been taken from him. Then he sailed away again for Tortuga, that island of blood and spoil. Off the Isle of Pines a hurricane brought down venszeance upon him and carried him irresistibly on the Jardine and it lies ther rocks, and the galleon with all its treasure went down. Some of the hardy buccaneers escaped in a small boat to tell the story, but the gold and silver bullion for which they risked so much is still heaped in some hollow of that rock-bound bed of the sea. This asure would pay richly for the re- covery. Fifteen Tons of Silver Bars. Another account of sunken treasure is told as a musty joke in a musty tome. In 1650 three canoes, manned by fifteen buccaneers, each crept around the western end of Cuba and came sud- denly upon one of his Ma, ure ships. bound from C: vana. v the gre: el llkn so many rats, and threw every Spaniard overboard. The uncouth victors ransacked the vessel for booty, but to their disgust, found only a small quantitv of wine in the officer quarters, and in the hold a L2111 all of its fifty-seven feet of flagstaff to | bring its highest point within three feet Omitting the | it is conspicuously inhabited building in the while the cornice of the Surety building is 313 feet above the level of the street, the floor | of the restaurant at the top of the Park | Row building will be 308 feet above the | street, while the floor of the topmost | offices in the towers (fine, well- lighted | rooms twenty-four feet in diameter) will be 340 feet above the same level. The main part of the building will have | twenty-five stories, while the Park row f even stories high, | the space between the two towers being | occupied by a kitchen for use in ('01’\-‘ nection with a restaurant below ramid, howeve; lhr tallest world, for, building. The cornice of this front isl 2090020000000600000000000060060202000020600E0I0580500 THE CALL'S HOME COMPARED WITH THE TALLEST STRUCTURES IN THE WORLD. t, | Park Row York city did not | Which will occupy the full width of the‘ » CAPTURING A SPANISH G‘ALL—EON =] house and left his d. the wealthiest in sharing the sec lot of grayish metal, which some wise- acre on hoard decided to be tin ore, and not wishing their newly acquired ves- cendants among w England by of a smuggler, who estimated to contain many millions of dollars. Millions in Bullion, brought to the surface by divers, were stored in a little fort on the mainland to await the Guardacosta, which was carrying the treasure in installments to Havana. Vane learned of this and made a sudden descent upon the fort, cap- tured the treasure, rowed out to the vessel where the divers were at work, captured the ship and sailed aw leaving the destitute crew and dl\Pr‘Z marooned on the barren key. The plate fleet of five galleons, on which these divers were working, was carrying $4,- 000,000 in bullion when it was wrecked, and less than a fourth was recovered and captured by Vane. The old rec- ords estimate that $3,000,000 still re- mains in the sea at this point. Treasure Galleons. Another circumstantial but incom- plete report tells of the wreck of sev- eral treasure galleons in the Gulf of Florida in 1 Of this treasure eight million dollars in pieces of eight were recovered and carried to Havana. Fifty thousand more after being stored on the shore were captured by the famous Captain Jennings, who had hastily equipped three sloops in Jamaica. After this assault the Spaniards abandoned all further work on the sunken gal- leons and lost all knowledge of their exact location. There is no question that a little exploration here will re- veal this sunken fleet, which still con- tains, according to the old records, sev- eral million dollars in gold and silver. Another Rich Wreck. Somewhere a few miles southwest of the Isle of Pines there is a princely fortune in diamonds and gold await- ing the hunter who will travel the bot- tom of the Caribbean Sea and cast a searchlight carefully over the hulls of sunken treasure ships It is the re- mains of a Spanish ship in the royal service, whose commander, Don Sebas- tian Jeminez, touched at Santiago de Cuba in 1560, on his way to Spain. He was carrying the “king's fifth” from the silver mines of Guanacaboa, amounting to nearly twelve tons of good silver bars and unknown but im- mense quantities of personal treasure shipped by homegoing merchants. Upon saillng from Santiago he was caught in a terrific tempest which tore the ship fréom its anchor and drove it upon the rocks within sight of the ob- servers on the bluffs at Santiago. No vestige of ship or crew was ever seen The galleon probably lies not sel to be laden with such trash, the saw a plate flet g0 down in & Storm, Another treasure wreck is the center ooo From tho. recent naval battle- I(‘ der ordered it to be thrown over- about half way between ‘n,w_ nearest of 5 most romantic and thrilling story ground between the Spanish and oard, and there it lies to this day, not points of Cuba and Hayti. “Phipps’ for- o~ SRS SO0 Ha iR BEe S ean fleets, and it offers a princely far from’the Colorado banks, not than fifteen tons of fine silver bars. been yamous ever since. And id that he found only one of of the fleet containing tune yet it is the sunken ships Vare, Phipps’ Enormous Fortune. & I . A not less than thirty-two tons of silver, Sir William Phipps, a baronet of New yith jewels enough to make $2,000,000. England, who was once Governor of The remainder of the vessels still lie off Massachusetts, enriched his ancestral West. the eastern point of Cuba, and they are 336 feet abo top of the cupola on the towers is 390 | the feet above the same level. The flag pole | truck is fifty-seven feet above the cupola, while the feet of the piles are y-four feet below the street level; hence the total height of the building om shoe of piling to truck of flag pole is over 500 feet. Although th. building admits of com- parison in respect of height with the pyramid when we come to the question of volume and weight our nineteenth | century effort sinks into positive ‘insig- nificance. The pyramid, in its present | mutilated condition, has a base of about 450 feet. Its present volume is estimated at about 82,000,000 cubic feet, and its weight at 6,316,000 tons. The building -has a volume of 3,906,680 cubic feet and a total dead weight of 20,000 tons, so that the ancient volume and over 300 times weight of the modern building. Evidently. in respect of the weight of our buildings we cannot com- | 400,000, i the ancients, and as the | $1,000,00 no longer a popular form | gre of mausoleum, it is not likely that we shall ever attempt to. It is a curious fact, which will come as a surprise to many of our reader: that, for all its great size and mass, this building is no heavier than the | materi latest ocean liner. the Kaiser Wilhelm Th der Grosse. The building contains about 8000 tons of steel and 12,000 tons of other material, chiefly brick and terra cotta, making a total weight for the building of 20,000 tons. The Kaiser Wilhelm displaces 20,000 tons of water, and therefore equals @ the towering ‘“sky scraper” in weight. The extreme length the | dec of of machinery horsepower country town. separate offices. B R W e | Tinity Church, New York, 288 feeot. “I!;Wflfi s e Sy -—F?- i =" Ly R | base 746 foet. The Great Fyramid of Egypt, Height 450 f Dome of Capitol, Washington, 28734 foet. Grant's Tomb, New York. Park Row Building, New York, 390 feet, highest bullding in the world. e the sidewalk, while the |structure has aliout twenty-one times|of the liner is 649 feet, o that she exceeds the gr | dimensions of the bullding by 148 e bulk and | The total cost of the building was $2, and that of the ship pxnbuhl\ | at any given hour of the day an aver- even $1,500,000 the The Paris Wheel, a notorious pirate of the We Indies, captured about $80,000 in piec of eight that were being taken by div- ers from one of five plate ships that had gone down in a storm just east of Key The silver bars, as they were ship 1000 horsepower in the building. Brick and terra cotta, moreover, are cheaper | Is than $hip frames and plating. extraordinary building, with its modest frontage of 104 feet on Park row and of 20 feet and 48 feet on a side street and an alley, the floating population of a fair-sized That this is no exag- geration the following figures will show. There are in the whole '\ fni m\l. (e L f 305 feot. the | ag due | bt | chiefly to the greater power and weight | which about 27,000 | will accommodate building 950 As most of these are World Building, New York, lure for the bold submariner who wiil conduct a patient search. Richest Treasure Ship. Another, and probably the richest of all treasure ships lost in the West In- dies, was wrecked in 167 A notable measurml (m | of generous proportions, a fair estimate of their capacity would be an average of four:people to each office. Now, it is _ | reasonable to assume that there will be > of one visitor in the building on iness for each person employed. Thls would make a total number of per: in the building at any period of the d.«y 8000. If we assume that on an average five persons would call at each office during . the day for each-person em- | ployed we get a total of about 25,000 souls making use of the building in the course of every working day of the year. While the home of The Call is not so high as the new Park Row structure it has many points*about its construc- tion that make it the most unique building in the world. The top of the dome rises to a height of 315 feet and The Call's Home 294 fo". Height 327 feet company of officials, ecclesiastics and citizens of New Spain were on board, bound for Spain, at the invitation of the King. They carried the most costly personal possessions. The record tells of diamond crosses of enormous value and presents that were to win the fa- vor of the great King of Spain, besides many tons of silver bullion, which was actually used as ballast. But many times richer than all these were the bars of gold which most of the officials were carrying with them back to Spain, in the hopes of living the rest of their days in distinguished opulence. One of the ladies, Dona Inez Escobedo, was taking with her an Indian slave as a present for her brother, who was governor of one of the Canary Isiands. The few negro slaves on board were servile enough, but the Indian, whose name the records do not give, was un- manageable and grew mol obstinate at every punishment. One morning, when the ship was a few leagues southeast of the Isle of Pines, the captain was horrified to find that water was pouring into the hold. He was about to descend through the hatchway to discover the cause, when the warring voice of the Indian de- clared that the first man to appear through the opening would be shot. Immediately those who gathered about heard the blows of a hatchet upon the bottom of the vessel. The horrible truth then dawned upon them that the untamable Indian intended to escape slavery by wrecking the ship with all on board. They threw down a negro slave, believing that his body would re- cefve the fire of the Indian, but every- thing above the hatches was plainly visible from the darkness below and the negro lay where he fell, stupefied with fear, while the blows of the hatchet rained faster than ever, and the roar of the water constantly in- creased in volume. At last an old of- ficer, Jose Nunez, sprang suddenly through the opening into the hold, waist-deep in water, and charged upon the Indian, sword in hand. He was followed by half a dozen others. They splashed around and finally found the Indian under a beam, beneath the water, where he had crawled and drowned himself. The most frantic ef- forts were made to stop the leak, but the ship sank, and it was with diffi- culty that even one boatload of the passengers was able to escape. Numerous attempts were made by the Spaniards to recover the treasure from this ship, but divers never could find it. These are only a few of many score of similar wrecks, the records of which can be found in the old Spanish re- ports and histories. They will indicate, in some measure the enormous rich< ness of these hitherto undescribed re- sources of our new possessions. C. M. STEVANS. the base of the building is only 70x feet. The n of the building is the most graceful and-symmetri¢al of any business structure'in. existence—a tall, square tower surmounted by a magnificent dome of carved stone. — e F (7] Mrs.” Blykins Reported Progress., The gentleman who had rung the bell several times before the servant let him in was looking surprised .and. a. trifle apprehensive when Mrs. Blykins came into the room. - “I called,” he explained, “to inquire about your husband’'s health.’ He and I belong to, the same organization, and several, of the members desired me to call and.see how he is getting along. We were very sorry to hear of his illy ness t's very kind .of you,” she ans+ swered. : There was a crash which shook ‘the chandelier. She paid no-attention to it. “I think it will be only a day or two before ' he is able to get out and 80 down town,” she added. The slamming of doors echoed heavfly through the house. “Has he been dangerously sick?” “Not until to-day.” “But I understood you to say that he was convalescent.” “I think I may say that he is so. He- wasn't well enough to be dangerous till this morning. But before noon he had" discharged the trained nurse, quarreled with the cook, smashed a rocking chair: against which he stubbed his toe and thrown the canary bird out of the .win-. dow. Those are always hopeful symp- toms with him, and I feel fairly just fied In saying that he is convalescent. —Washington Star. —_————— Small Johnny had on his best clothes: one Sunday, and his. mama told him'not’ to play in.the dirt with them on. “Don’t they have.any dirt in heawen to play in?” he asked. “No,; of course :not,"” mother. “Then what do little boys do up there?” queried Johnny. “0, they play harps and sing and sit under beautiful trees,” was the reply. “Well,” said the little fellow, “I don't see how they can have trees if there ain’t no dirt."—Houston Daily Post. ———————— Boston father—What Is it? PHilistine nurse—A boy. Boston father—Bah! I mean an ag- nostic or a positivist?—Town Topica. replied hl.s