About The Fayetteville news. (Fayetteville, Ga.) 18??-???? | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 1889)
GREAT SALT LAKE. CAVALRY MARCHES. The United States Soldiers Su perior to Any Other. Wonderful Feats of Marching Sometimes Accomplished. Owing to the peculiar n&turo of the service demanded of the cavalry force of our army—service for the greater part in a new and unsettled country, and against the most wily and export of •avago enemies—the experience gained in the moving of mounted troops has been of such a varied nature that proba bly no other army can boast of supe riority over our troopers in this respect, and the proper conduct of the marches of cavalry commands requires experience and judgment, intelligence, activity, and endurance of a peculiar nature on the part of both officers nnd men. Or dinary marches are generally made at the rate of about tweaty to twenty- five miles a day, this being accom plished in from five to six hours, al though there are times when the day’s journey may bo shorter or longer, owing to the distance from one another of de sirable cam ping-places, the importance of good grazing and sweet water being evident. The start from the previous sight’s camp ii usually made between 6 and 7 o’clock, although in some of the hotter parts of the country an earlier time of day is considered advisable by many cavalrymen, and the first halt is made after the column had been an hoar or so on the road. Thii is geneially the longest halt of the day, when sad dles are adjusted, and the horses al lowed to graze and rest for a few mo ments. Once every hour after that a •hort pause of about five minutes, the men invariably dismounting, is made. The gait is, as far* as the writer's ex perience goes, habitaally a rapid walk, although General Merritt recommends a trot for 10 or 15 minutes after each halt, when practicable, which appears to be the custom in most of the European ser vices. In a country where the near presence of an enemy is known or sus pected, marches are conducted with great caution, and every precaution tak en by careful soldiers to guard against surprise. Advance guards and flankers are thrown out in the front and on the sides of the column, and every ravine, coulee, or canon, every rock and bush, or group of trees large enough to con ceal a lurking foe, is carefully exam ined. It is while making a forced march, when perhaps the safety of some little community of settlers or detach ment of comrades, cut off and s ur- rounded by savage foes, depends upon the speedy arrival of tho relieving col umn, that the training, tha pluck, the perseveranca and endurance of the American cavalry are shown to the great est advantage. In the rapidity with which such marches have been made, the distances that have been traversed, the rough and inhospitable counter—often swarming ■with savage foes—over which the jour neys have been accomplished, it has proved itself the equal, if not the supe rior, to any troops of the kind in tho civilized world. A column of the Fifth Cavalry, under the command of Gen eral Wesly Merritt, marching co the re lief of Thornburgh's brave fellows in the Ute campaign of 1879, made one hundred and seventy mile3 from 11 a. m. October 2d to 5.30 a. m. on October 5 th, without losing or disabling a horse, and was in good fighting trim on its arrival at its objective point. Among many instances of the kind that have come under the knowledge of the writer, the following cases of hard and long marches by individuals may be qucteltoshow the sterling qualities often exhibited by our troopers. In 1870 the present commander of the troop of cavalry attached to the brigade of the national guard ia New York city—at that time a lieutenant in the First United States Cavalry—rode with despatches over a rough broken country one hundred and forty miles in twenty-two hours, including halts for rest and refreshment. He was accom panied by a sergeant and one man of his own troop. After resting one day, the journey back to his post was made in a little over two days, the marches being from fifty-fivo to sixty miles a day. This feat was accomplished with out any preparation whatever, tho offi cer and his men being ordered out with out any warning. Ten years afterward, Lieutenant Robertson of the same regi ment, with Sergeants Lynch and Price, rode one hundred and two miles in pur suit of a deserter, through snow an4 ice, between 10 o’clock one night and 9. 30 the next. On tho next day they started on their return journey from Fort Walla Walla, Washington Terri tory, to Fort Lapway, Idaho, which was reached in two days.—Harper's WeeUy. Growing Old Through Worry. No doubt much is gained on the score of longevity from inheritance. Ances tors who have attained long life for many generations hand down tho gift to their successors. But while this may bo the greatest fortune which an ances tor can leave, it may bo dissipated like any other inheritance. No one can count upon life long without a reasona ble conformity to the laws of health. There are a fow prodigies that survive who have never observed any laws. For one dissipated person who roaches ex treme old age, there are a thousand who die in the prime of their years. Physi ologists have argued, with a great deal of force, that the duration of human life should bo a hundred years. Bnt it is far short of it. So few round up the century that every instance attracts spe cial attention. The dream of perpetual you'.h is constantly repeated. Dr. Holmes at eighty is as frisky ns akitten. He learned the art of carrying burdens lightly. Most people do not wear out. They worry themselves out of life. They aro always old because they have carried so much dead weight. No doubt the cultivation of a youthful feeling is one of tho arts of prolonging life. When people, through the indulgence of a morbid feeling, get the impression that they are too old for this world, it is a pretty sure indication that they are loosing their grip. The grace and beauty of age is to keep in touch with the world, to know how its pulse beats from day to day, and to be alive to all human interests and sympathies. Age in such a life never wholly crowds out the buoyancy of youth. The spring and elasticity survive. In most instan ces the long life has been a good life. The world has been better that the in dividual has lived in it. He has been looking more for the good than the evil things of the world. Grace and beauty have come to him with the fulness of years. One-Legged Congressmen. Senator Berry lost his leg at Corinth; Senator Butler, of South Carolina, lost his at Brandy Station, and over in the House there are three one-legged men, or were during the last Congress. Rep resentative Henderson, of Iowa, is one of them, though you’d never suspect it to see him moving about. Ho is as spry as a boy with his cork leg. Con gressmen Brown and Boothman, of Ohio, used to say they w r ero in hard luck because each had lost a left leg. If one had lost a right they could make one pair of shoes do for both. Senator Hampton had hard luck, too. He fought like a tiger on the Confederate side and came out without a scratch, only to be thrown from a mule a few years after the war and have a leg so badly hurt that it had to be amputated. The only one-armed men in the last C o gross, I believe, were General Hooker, of Mississippi, and Congress man Oates, of Alabama. They were both mighty brave men in battle, but I’ve heard they never shook hands but Ancc, refusing to do so again because it is the hoodoo or left-handed shake. Rather Mixed. In an English country church the curate had to give out two notices, the first of which was about baptisms and the latter had to do with a new hymn book. Owing to an accident ho in verted the order and gave out as fol lows: “I am requested to announce that the new hymn book will bo used for the first time in this church on Sunday next, and I am also requested to call attention to the delay which often takes place in bringing children to bo baptized; they should bo brought on the earliest day possible. This is particularly pressed on mothers who have young babies.'’ “Aud for the information of those who have none,” added the rector in gentle, kihdly tones, and who being deaf had not heard what had been pre viously said— “and for the informa tion of thoso who have none, I may state if wished they can be obtained on application in tho vestry immediately after service to-day. Limp one3, one shilling each; with stiff backs, two shillings.” Wonders of the Big Inland Sea in Utah. A Bathing Place Where You Cannot Sink, A correspondent of the Now York Times, describing a visit to Great Salt Lake in Utah, says: When the lake comes in sight it is at the right, stretching away as inimitably as cither of the great oceans that it lies between. But tho Atlantic never looks as tho Great Salt Lake did on this afternoon. It was a vast expanse of pale turquois, broken into patches of white here and there where the waves combed over in foam. The train drops you alongside the handsome station and pavilion, with bathing houses to the right and left, put up at the only sand beach on the lake by tho Union Pacific Railroad, which runs the entire estab lishment. The pavilion is at a good distance from the shore, built over the lake, and the usual shore band begins to play as the excursionists flock upon the platform or rush for the dressing rooms. Almost everybody bathes. When the stranger goes upon the pier he is apt to considor the bath with some misgivings, for the aroma from the beach is unpleasantly suggestive of a very rank pickle barrel. Once be yond the shore line, however, and the breeze that comes off the water is sweet and reassuring. It lacks the fragrance of the ocean, and there is absolutely none of the exquisite ocean smell that is only found with marine vegetation. Look out over the lake from Black Rock, that stands boldly forth half a mile to the cost, and sweep the horizon clear round to the southwest. You see nothing but water, brilliantly blue until it flashes like gold under the sun. There is a haze hanging about the horizon, thick enough to shut out Antelope and Stansbury Islands that lie off to the east and west. The water seems to rise up in the distance like the edge of a sau- oer. The view of tho ocean from the shores of Mount Desert is not more ex tensive. Garfield Beach recalls Bar Harbor in one respect. The Oquirvh Mountains rise almost from the lake shore to a height greater than that of Green Mountains. But the Oquirrhs are bolder and moro destitute of timber. When the grass has grown upon their sloping sides, or in the strongly indent ed gulches, it is dry and brown, and there are many tufts of sage brush, with occasional dark cedars, rooted in niches that give them but a precarious hold and tho minimum of nutrition. These mountains rise so abruptly as to furnish a broad background for the group of buildings on the shore. You get a bathing suit of heavy kuit wool, just like that issued to the China man who stood in line ahead of you. It is very thick and has a startling ten dency to sag down that is increased with wetting. When you hnvo tied youtsclf up in it and joined the throng that wades out through the coarse sand to deep water you notice that the waves do not come in with the high, proud arch of those at Long Branch, Nor do they break with the roar of the ocean waves. They come in with a long, low sweep and curl over in foam with a strong hiss. One could hardly expect anything elso. This pond is of salt, pretty thoroughly saturated, and that is about all. It is four times as salt as the ocean. The Dead Sea is not much saltor. You find it out to your discomfort if you ne glect to read and follow the instructions posted upon the platform and in the bathing houses to avoid swallowing or getting the water in your eyes. You wet your head in the dressing room and then you make an effort to keep your head out of the water. The lake is low now. This is ac counted for, as is tho scarcity of water everywhere about tho mountains, by the fact that the snows of last Winter were very light. It is necessary to go out two hundred feet to get beyond your depth. Then you are beyond the low breakers, and only have to look out that the whitecaps do not dash in your eyes. There is no undertow. As soon as you have reached a point where you can no longer hold on to the bottom with your feet, your feet will come up and you will find yourself involuntarily in the attitude of observing your toes as they stick out of the water. Try to turn over, and you have only lifted your arm to make an effort when you pop over like a lop-sided cork. If you keep one ana down and lift the other, over you go; and you find that by repeating the process you can get up a speed of about forty revolutions a minute. Make the usual motions to swim and your feet will kick in the air. Your best efforts will be wasted in attempting to keep thorn in tho water, whether you are back down or up. If you get a little water in your mouth you do not need to be told why there aro patches of glistening white along the shore, whero the sun has been. It is not a good place for swimming. The best use you can make of tho opportunity is to try the capacity of the densely salt water for flotation. When you have spent half an hour in tho warm waves, and have trken the fresh-water shower pro vided in each dressing room, and a brisk rub, you are ready to admit that thcro are worse things to take in this world than a bath in tho Great Salt Lake. There aro largo birds swooping over head in long, gracoful curves and slides. Occasionally they light upon the ground, and the children fee 1 them with bit3 of cake. They are not domestic fowls, either, but young sea gulls, quite as tame as the most domestic of pigeons. The men who have been at the lake shore year after year say that tho old sea gulls come in the Spring and raise their young and then fly away. Next year the young of this Summer follow the same programme. The lake is without fish, and the gulls get nothing from it but flies that skim the waters. They find this rather a poor supply of food, and the entire brood of young depend in part upon the charity of excursionists for a living. When the last afternoon train leaves the lake these young gulls, to the number of fifteen or twenty at a time, sit in a row on tho ridge of the lunch pavilion, and watch its departure with melancholy wistfulness. Spanish Women. The Spanish eye, largo, humid, ten der, grand, languishing, furnished with lashes so long, so curling and so boauti- ful that the pencil of the artists falls to despair; the black pupil, the white sea, in which the lustrious orb sails—all is indescribable! Spanish women when they are coquettish and laughing have a sad expression. Next to the beauty of tho hair and eyes comes the beauty of tho flashing teeth. These are so universally perfect that tho student of dentistry should go to Spain to find out how they manage it. There is very little good eating in Spain. Perhaps these faultless teeth are not spoiled by cakes and pastry and sweets in childhood. But the careless traveler expocts to be rewarded when the Spanish woman smiles with a row of pearls, and he Is almost never disap pointed. Alas! here comes in the one note of disappointment. Just above the teeth is a little mustache, sometimes a very big mustache. Nature, in being so generous of her gift of hair, in a mo ment of forgetfulness added one dash of her brush too many on some of thes® beautiful faces. It is not universal, it is not inevitable, but it is common. The Portuguese women accept the mus tache and cultivate it, as young men do, curling the ends. On a very delicate face the little feminine mustache is not •always disagreeable, but to one who has passed the blossoming hour this heavy, dark, masculine belonging be comes an almost offensive feature, te foreign eyes at least. But it is said te be agreeable to native eyes. An Impressive Sight on a Man-of-War. I happened to be on board a United States man-of-war at sundown daring the call for colors. When tho bngle sounded the first call the band gathered at the stern of the vessel on deck, and at the second call the officers stoodjwith their caps off facing the flag as it flut tered down into the hands of the sailor who manned the halyards, while the band played “Hail Columbia.” The gathering shades of evening, the mar tial surroundings, the attitudes of re spect and the stirring strains of the mu sic combined to make it a beautiful and impressive sight.—New York Star. The Age for Consumption. Consumption is rare in childhood, but increases rapidly after the age of 15, and is most common betwoen the ages of 25 and 30. Those who escape it till the latter age are less and less prone t# it as they advance in years, and may 63- capo it entirely, even though they may have a hereditary predisposition to it. SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS. Excellent brown pap« ean now be made, it seems, oht of pent fibre. The doctors of Seville, Spain, are proclaiming the discovery of a most ef ficacious cure for hyprophobia. Experiments by a Parisian scientist have proved that daylight entirely ceases in the waters of tho Mediterranean at a depth of 1518 feet. An Austrian railway official has in vented a portable telephone forspoaking from a railway train at any point stop ping to the nearest station. The railway from Buenos Ayres to the foot of tho Andes, a distance of about 275 miles, is as straight as an arrow. It forms the largest stretch of “bee line” road in the wofld. Some of he electric cooking apparatus contain Gorman silver coils, which aro brought to red heat by tho electric cur rent, and tho cooking is done on a range fitted with these coils. There aro many simple rules of health violated because it is consid ered incovcnient to obey them, but it is a violation of these same simple rules that burdens life with that greater inconvenience ill-hcalth. The busy man will find that it takes far less time to comply with hygienic laws than it does to suffer the sick ness resulting from their violation. As a general result of numerous ex periments, candle power, as determined by means of the Bunsen photometer, affords no correct measurement either of light-giving energy or of tho lumi nosity of\the source of light, the direc tion of tho error always being such a* to favor sources of a low degree of in candescence when compared with those of higher temperature. Carefully repeated experiments made by an experienced English navigator at Santander, on the north coast of Spain, showed the crest of the sea waves in a prolonged and heavy gale of wind to be 42 feet high, and allowing the same for the depth between the waves would make a height of 84 feet from crest to base. The length from crest to crest was found to be 336 feet. While the deepest tone that our ears are capable of recognizing is one con taining sixteen vibrations a second, tho phonograph will record ten vibration* or less, and can then raise the pitch un til wo hear a reproduction from them. Similarly, vibrations above tho highest rate audible to tho ear can be recorded on the phonograph, and then re produced by lowering tho pilch until we actually hear the record of those inaudible pulsations. The Moors aro said to have mad:: pa per from linen in the thirteenth century, all paper known beforo that being ap parently made from cotton. In tho Ijiitish Museum are somo specimens of linen paper from the fourteenth century. Recently Professor Church has discov ered an Episcopal Register of 1273- from Auvefgno, in which paper some strands remaining show to have been linen. This carriei linen paper back further than was supposed. Professor E. Hall, in a recent paper, thinks the phenomenon of terrestrial magnetism can be explained by the ex istence of a concentric zone of rock filled with magnetic iron, situated about 100 miles below the surface of tbs earth. If only fifteen per cent, of iron were present, this zone need not ex ceed three miles in thickness. The ex istence of the magnetic poles at the north would bo due to protuberances of the magnetic mass into the exterior ■on-magnetic shell.. A Peculiar Anniversary. A curious colebration occurred recent ly in the City of Mexico. It was tho 38tli anniversary of the punishment in flicted upon Emperor Cuauhtemoc by Cortez to induco him to reveal the hid ing place of the Montezuma treasure. The meeting wa3 held around the statue of Cuauhtemoc, and was attended by Indians from tho most distant villages, dressed in the ancient dress, who exe cuted dances of the time of the con quest. An address in the Indian lan guage was delivered by tho governor of Tlaxcala. —Chicago Herald. It Was a Tough Bird. Defining the Species.—Jones (strug gling with a tough morsel)—Waiter what do you call this bird? Waiter—Woodcock, sah. Jones—Ah I ba?swood!—Barling Free Press.
