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October 13, 1909. THE PRESBYTERIj
Contributed
i
FIVE-FOOT PHANTASMS.
ru n- I O o
k. r. uu wen.
To seal* the summits of renown,
lfoud erudition all boiled down,
Armful of books which no one reads,
A hotchpotch of eccentric breeds.
Lore by the cubit, taught and won,
A made-to-order Solomon?
, All boiled down!
measuring rjast, go measuring West,
By inches get the best, compressed;
With hayless tricks for making bricks,
< A patent psychologic mix, *
A daily fifteen-minutes' guest,
And midnight oil made a jest?
All compressed!
Rare shelf of wisdom in the regions
Of fossiliferou8 new religions;
How fine to take a mental canter
Prom Plato up to Tom O'Shanter;
The Bible skipped?Tom from his perch
Leaves old Isaiah in the lurch?
Minus Church!
The five-foot spooks arise to meet us
irrom wooiman DacK to Eplctetus;
Philosophers to boom and boast us,
From Changelings on to Dr. Faustus;
Poor Shakespeare versus five-foot libel,
And poor religion versus Bible?
Poor old Bible!
It's all so funny?branch and root,
The sages reckoned by the foot;
While Harvard's Pa cares not a straw
For Harvard's brag Curricula,
And great immortals drop the crown
To frisky nondescripts boiled down?
All boiled down!
MA IN A US.
The Rev. W. M. Thompson.
K?anaus is the capital of the State of Amazonas
and has a population of about forty thousand. It is
situated on the left bank of the Rio Negro (Black
river) some six miles above its junction with the Solimoes
and one thousand miles from the mouth of the
Amazon. The Rio Negro and the Solimoes form the
Amazon proper, although the Solimoes is sometimes
? A u.ui.. i - ?
v??\.u 11 iv. niiid/.uu, [injutiuiy uctciu&c u is uic main
stream. One wonders a little why this location was
chosen* for the city. I suppose it happened as in so
many cases in the United States?it was not chosen,
hut just came to be by a kind of chance. From appearances
it would seem that this was a plateau some
four or five hundred feet above the river or it may
nave been under water and the river kept on eating
and cutting until it became a series of hills and hollows.
In any case, whether a plateau gradually cut
into hills and hollows by erosion or the bed of the
river cut down and carried away by the waters, the
result is the same. The city has spent immense
sums of money in cutting down and filling up and
large sums will still have to be expended to make the
citf what it should be. Manaus is a new city.
Twenty-five years ago it was not more than a village.
i. ,s
\N OF THE SOUTH. 5
I was told a few days ago that ten years ago there
were only two or three houses of more than one story.
You would never think so now. It is really hard
to believe that it was so then. The growth and
progress since then have been extraordinary. Electric
lights and cars were inaugurated about twelve years
ago. It was ahead of any other city in the north
of Brazil. Para is a much larger city, but Para has
had electric cars only two years and electric lights
somewhat longer. The city is having new waterworks
put in, rather an English company is doing it.
Heretofore the water has been taken from a stream
near the town, but it was small and had to be collected
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<iiiu was suDject to suriace drainage from a portion
of the suburbs. Now the water is drawn from the
Rio Negro above the city some distance.
Being the capital of the State, it is the point of
departure for all points in the vast interior of the
State, besides being an important port for ocean
steamers. It has a fine harbor and the latest harbor
improvements. The river is very deep and a mile or
two wide, giving room for steamers of all sizes. Ocean
steamers of 6,000 tons come up here any time and
during six months larger ones could come. No
other city north of Rio de Janeiro has as fine facilities
for loading and unloading ships as this one has.
This was a rather difficult problem to solve, because of
the great rise and fall in the river during the rainy
and dry seasons. The difference must be some forty
or fifty feet from the lowest to the highest water mark.
It was overcome by building two large floating piers
and anchoring them out in the river beyond the low
water mark. One of these is connected with the
shore only by cables on which carrier* run Kaet- ?nH
forth, moved by electricity, to load and unload foreign
steamers. The other, which is for Brazilian steamers,
is connected with the shore by a gang or road way,
about one hundred yards long and fifty feet wide,
down the center of which are double tracks for small
cars to go up and down to load and unload the
steamers. On either side of the tracks are broad
walks for passengers. I should have said that these
cars are also run by electricity. When the river is
low this gangway becomes an inclined plane. When
the river is high it rises and may get higher than
the land at the point where it touches shore as was
lirs 1 o o + T??MA ---1- -? ? * 1 1 *
v..v. vbji. moi. jimc, wiicii tuc river was nigner tnan
it has been for years. You had to go up about ten
feet to get on the walk. Allowances were made for
these changes so that everything went on as usual.
The harbor improvements have been made by the
Manaus Harbor Company, Ltd., an English company.
The electric lights and cars are in the hands of another
English company and the water and sewerage
in the power of still another English company, so I
have been informed. This seems to be about the case
ill all the lnrire ritiec r?f P.rnvil -*
? ?-o- -- ? ??
pouring into this country as never before. But I am
getting off my subject. Manaus is very cosmopolitan,
as might be expected. People from all parts of
the world are here and from all parts of Brazil. In
fact, the natives of this State are in a very small
minority. Several years ago I was coming up the
Amazon on an English steamer and there were eight
persons at the table at which I sat. Seven nation