The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 11, 1900, Page 17

pr— regions on this earth lure men - that few who once feel 3 n break—the Polar solitudes, with their eternal ice and silence; the al forests of the Amaszon, with everlasting twilight and their mys- and the Alps, the place of the white =e three, Pole and Amason com- not garnered as many victims ry as the Alps have taken in & And In the season which 1s & scason which has been rec- € for the number of foreign accidents have been appali- veyard at the foot of s er—the mountain of the e e Eastern Tyrol, where © is that of a victim of new mounds with the le cross that t simple words. In ct the authorities al guides to 1 the peak of the pecause of the successive ging dge of a peak wing to the breaking of & p Ext - ax Schaerer of Bernm and his guide, & it e Hofer of Wals. The two corpses . fee »‘f 4 the guide't pot o100 where his to save his 0 : e ‘doctor had lost 2 s . Lad slowly dragged S Goakh ite A N tw g & week a r doctor left . As the near Innsbruck, for a short ekar Mountain But, short as P w ney, for he was = His 1y to rags, on_of the body, . ? the frightfulne: sox fall. He had stepped fifo what he = was a cozy place to rest. But it ed to be only a bush that grew e very edge of Bleody e rock urge of the had fought protuberances in the nt showed how hard I graspir at ev up ravine and the dlong down the finger marks on de- for thing as he went TER IN edth birthday. I al- < ance of my life £ r Wes I'm a-goin lect 4 ealth he doesn’t feel a bit h id a haif-century im to have been sick a e, and never to h ny medicine I ever used he, thoughtfully, as drunk a drc e that time John Cverton of Long Beach, California, 103 Years Old. ave tobacco in he ends of his thin, dis- of whis- ive one. he THE SUNDAY CALL. fiying downward. But all his effort had been In vain. A little more than a month ago a Mlss Thompson, an English tourist, was found de wedged in the rocky bed of a tor- rent in the Engelberg—Angel Mountain— in Unterwald, Switzerland. She had been missing for two months. When she left her hotel it had been with the intention of taking a stroll up a road which was considered perfectly safe. But she must haye wandered from the path and slipped down the rocks. Two days after the ing; of her body Erich Schandibauer, tne 14-year-old son of the hotel keeper at Zell, fell over the edge in the High Way er the Moserboden and was picked up find- oo iosiorefooeefor o o e senforfonfosfoiosfoertots . THE WEST has been in every American war save the lagt one—"the spat with Spain.” Yet he draws only a pension. To engage in the war of 1812 he ran away from his birthplace in Pennsylvania | to enlist at Buffalo, N. Y. Then came a lot of Indian wars as he could. notably the Black Hawk war. In the Mexican war he became per- £onally acquainted with General Winfleld Seott. and was knewn to other prominent soldiers of the time. When he enlisted in the eivil war the rébellion was in its tHird year. Overton was 66 years old. “You were an old man at weren't you?" “Sixty-six? T'll bet I w young man,” he was asked. I wasn't old then. are, No, s stronger than was his emphatic reply. Unlike many old men, Overton sir; you little in the past. His conver ways drifts Kly back to present day affairs. He answers your bistorical ques- tions readily erough, but keeps taking a turn at queries himself by asking about to-day’s political situation in all sorts of tes and sections, He s especially interested in politics His political faith is Republican, “Why,” sald he, disgustedly, ‘there ain’t no Democratic party any more one we ‘have to-da sor v is a sh was Presllent now he'd have’Bryan for ‘treason. Yes, he would! Jackson was the first President I cast a ! vote for, when he run the first time. I've been for protection ever since, and now I'm an expansionist. There ain’t no such thing as Imperfalism—no. siree! It's jus growth—or expansion. See the difference Well, sir, I'd like to live to see our Gov ernment go over the whole world.” arrested Certalnly to eloquenc he talked. his hundred years are no bar for he was all animation as | “How much good it would do me to set | my eyes on President McKinley! He's a grand man!"’ “You've seen a great many Presidents, haven't you?” “Well, do yeu know, there's something | curlous about that. I never saw but one President, and that was Lincoln. He | wasn't President then. He was a ,\'oung‘ man, and when court came to our town | in Illinois he was a lawyer and used to | stop at the same hotel where I stayed. No, we didn't know he was goin’ such a great man then.” The old man feels that he has many years yet to live, for his health seems as good as ever. He comes of stock blassed with healthy longevity. His fathers and | grandfathers have all been centenarians, | although his mother died when he was a | mere infant. He has been married twice and both wives are now dead. The date of his first marriage he cannot recall. He has seven children, the eidest of whom is over 6 | ta be | he fought in as many | that time, | | climb the famgus Hole T: years of age and lives in Minneapolis, | | | i | { with injuries that it is thought will proy fatal. On the same day a young womaa fell in the Schneeberg and broke her righg foot. In the same week a carpenter named Wessak, from Berlin, <limbed 6000 feet (c the peak of the Hoefaet Mo . near Oberstdorf, in the Tyrol. Having accom- plished the feat succe he wished (o take a souvenir of the achieve him. He climbed out o the edg wall, where it descends sheer for 2000 feet, and leaned over to pick a sprig of edel- welss. the beautiful and rare piant that grows only In the most fnaccessible places of the higkest Alps. Tle earth on which he had .braced his knees crumbled away and he dropped like a plummet. Days passed before his body could be re- covered. A Hungarian Dembska and her woman Lrother Tatra—which rises iuore th above the sea level. Despite the warn- ings of all they deciined to hire guides. When they climbed about half way up the mountaln a heavy fog ralled down on them from the top. Within a few mo- ments they were hopelessly lost. Instead of sitting down at once and waiting for the fog to lift they tricd to retrace their way. Suddenly the brother heard a shriek from the woman. who had preced- ed him. He stepped forward quickly to ald her. But his foot touched only empli- ness and he followed ner down one of the worst chasms in the mountain. Both lay for hours where they had fallen. At last the man recovered consciousness. Fail- ing to elicit any sign of life from the woman he made up his mind that shn was dead and thereupon he began to crawl In the direction in which he hoped to find help. After many hours of agony he managed to reach one of the many houses of refuge. A party set out at once to get tile woman's body. They found her terribly hurt, but alive, and carried her to the village. The surgeons hardly expect that she can recover, however. The man will escape with his life, Late last month an official Alpine guids escorted a party up the Dent Blanche, the lrrut mountaln in the southern part of Valals. Tt is 14318 feet high, and hun- dreds.of Alpine cranks feel that they can- not be happy until they climb it. In this case the party had an accident in the worst stage of the journey. Two of the men slipped and, once started, slid ltke lightning toward the brink of a deep fis- sure in the glacier. The guide rushed down to them and threw himself in frout of them, This checked thelr descent, bu: he went over and was killed. Near Bozen, in the Tyrol, a tallor from Grles lost his way in the mountains, and, making a misstep In the darkness, feli into the dry bed of a mountain stream, where ‘his body was found many days afterward. Judge Reming of Berlin, who had been reported as missing. was found dead last week in a mountain gorge, near Oberstdorf, Tyrol. He had left one of the refuge stations to ‘ascénd the mountala and had fallen almost within sight of the caretaker. At about the sime time the Guest for edelweiss demanded another vie- tim in the person of a young saiesmas in the Hochlantsch. He had climbed out on a bowlder to pluck the plant, and his weight loosened the rock. It went into the abyss with him. He fell severa) hun- dred yards and was dgad at once, / The lagt victim ot RESCUE VICTIMS OF the Gross Giockners I s. was a Berlin ¢ in view of pis The Gloss Glockner I 't victims for its ow year man tried r and the fon assert tants of the Salzburg r it Is the hig t mountain in the Alps. This, however, is not true has the respectable ,neight of 1150 In the little graveyard at its base— a graveyard almost as famous as s the mountain—there lle many strange bedt low: mes with imposing titles, names f men who were fan in their da re carved -on wooden crosses, side by sids >us with the names of humble guides. The majority of the wooden crosses are paint- ed blue or red. A great cross of biack marble, which towers commandingly over the rest, marks the grave of the famous 17 ; ARCHING FOR AR TY SE = B AVALANCHE . the Margrave Al ed to his death a mountain climber Pallavicini, who was the Glock: near from who two guides time. An ther the Margrave Pallaviein! and his compan- fons was ca for ‘whieh bot 0 st peaks of the torious. It overwhelme and tossed them like deep into the Glockner- between the two The mov Bell to a wond mountat wes pxac finally start for P and sat down te mountain. Whil " morning. As er, frowning and nn Mountain, mute. asc which Is forbidden now, so far glacier wall |s concerned, 1s in Berchtes- gaden, Switzerlan is maniac of a mc : 1 climbers—whd would dr ¢ z the task, -anyway. From the ak direct to the Koenigsee—the King's Lake—a wall descends as straight as the wall of a house, for almost 6000 feet te siip In crawling along this (e is fatal. There are spots along the to hold on against the stone face of Just why any man should enough to wish to climb this place 18 puzzling. But not men alone have done it. A few years ago a Vieana woman did ft without even a guide a good thing that the authoritles have forbidden any more attempts. i e @ r%cafi.Bufl’: Qriisgr That Is Fasi¢r Than the Lingrs. ITH the boats craft, exception of torpedo- 1 a few small pleasure @ et oot the American-built Rus- sian cruiser Variag Is to-day the fastest vesse! afloat, having recently gone through a seven and a balf hours’ triar run at a speed of from 2.6 to 23.7 knots, or 21.14 to 21.25 miles an hour. We need go back only a few years to find a time when the large Atlantic racers, in points of regularly attainable speed, were far beyond anything that had ever been done in any navy, and their per- formances were considered ' practically beyond reach under the severe conditions of eramped space, light machinery weight and others similarly restrictive to the de- signer. The United States triple screw cruiser Minneapolis about six years ago developed slightly more than 23 knots during her contract trials. As in the cases of most naval vesséls, it was not expected that this would be demanded hour after hour in a run of several days, and In 18% practical demonstration was given for the first time that a- maval vessel could ac- tually hold her own with one of the crack Atlantic liners. This was afforded by the United States cruiser Columbia in her phe- nomenal run from the Needles, near . Bouthampton, to Saudy Hook lightship, off the American shore, In a few minutes less than seven days, or, to be exact, in six days, twenty-three hours and forty- nine minutes, the average speed for the whole trip being 18.54 knots, or 213 miles an hour. The Columbia at the time was practically racing against the steamer Augusta Vietorfa of the Hamburg-Amert- can line. Making proper allowances for the difference in the length of the two routes, the Augusta Victoria baving safled from Cherbourg, the same rate of speed was maintained by both ships. Since that time high-speed long-distance runs of war vessels have Leen repeated, so that the impression has at last been wiped out that modern warships were simply boxes full of delicate and complex machinery, scarcely fitted for the hard knocks which they were really intended to withstand. But among all the swift crulsers and bai- tleships the Variag’s 2.7 knots give her to-day first place.—Cassier's Magazine. —————— A New York woman has & unique man- ner of making a living. She goes from house to house of the fashionables of New York and directly under the eye of her customers cleans the family jewels. She carrles all her implements for cleaning in a little hand satchel and thus almost un- incumbereq goes ber rounds,