Schley County news. (Ellaville, Ga.) 1889-1939, November 14, 1889, Image 2

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CAVALRY MARCHES. The United States Soldiers Su perior to Any Other. Wonderful Feats of Marching Sometimes Accomplished. Owing to the peculiar nature of the service demanded of tho cavalry force of our army'—service for the greater part in a new and unsettled country, and against the most wily and expert of savage 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 and men. Or dinary marches arc generally made at the rate of about twenty 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 be shorter or longer, owing to the distance from one another of de sirable cam ping-places, tha importance of good grazing and sweet water being evident. The start from the previous sight’s camp i? 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 i? made after the column had been an hour or so on the road. Thi? 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 short pause of about five miuutes, the men invariably dismounting, is made. The gait is, as far as the writer’s ex perience goes, habitually a rapid walk, although General Merritt recommend? 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 raviue, 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 sur rounded by savage foes, depends upon the speedy arrival of the relieving col umn, that the training, the pluck, the perseverance and endurance of tho 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 country—often swarming with savago 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 the civilized world. A column of the Fifth Cavalry, under the command of Gen eral Wcsly Merritt, marching co the re lief of Thornburgh’s brave fellows in the Ute campaign of 1879, made one hundred and seventy miles from 11 a. in. October 2d to 5.30 a. m. on October 5th, 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 iuiividuals may be quete 1 to show tho sterling qualities often exhibited by our troopers. In 1870 the present commauder of the troop of cavalry attached to the brigade of the national guard in New York city—at that time a lieutenant in the First United States Cavalry—rode with despatches over a rough brokeu country one hundred and forty miles in twenty-two hours, including halts for rest and refreshment, lie was accom panied by a sergeant and one man of his own troop. After resting one day, the journey back to his post was male in a lit tie over two days, the marches being from fifty-five to sixty miles a day. This feat was accomplished with out any preparation whatever, the offi cer and his men being ordered out with out any warning. Ten years afterward, Lieutenant Robertson of tho same regi ment, with Sergeants Lynch and Price, SCHLEY COUNTY NEWS. it>de 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 the next day they started on their return journey from Fort W r alla W r alla, "Washington Terri tory, to Fort Lapway, Idaho, which was reached in two days.— Harper's Weekly. Growing Old Throngh 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 the gift to their successors. But while this may be the greatest fortune which an ances tor can leave, it may be 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 few prodigies that survive who have never observed any laws. For one dissipated person who reaches 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 be a hundred years. But it is far short of it. So few round up the century that every instance attracts spe cial attention. The dream of perpetual you'll is constantly repeated. Dr. Holmes at eighty is as frisky asakitten. He learned the art of carrying burden? lightly. Most people do not wear out. They worry themselves out of life. They are always old because they have carried so much dead weight. No doubt the cultivation of a youthful feeling is one of the 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 anc beauty of age is to keep in touch with the world, to know how its pulse beats from day to diy, 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 ha? been a good life. The world ha? been better that the in dividual ha? lived in it. He ha? 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 lug 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. He is as spry as a boy with his cork leg. Con gressmen Brown and Boothman, of Ohio, used to say they were in hard luck became 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 Confederata 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 bravo men in battle, but I’ve heard they never shook hands but Ance, 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 hal to do with a new hymn book. Owing to an accident he in verted the order and gave out as fol lows: “I am requested to announce that tht new hymn book wi^l bo used for the first time in this church on Sunday next, and I am also requested to call attention to tho delay which often takes place in bringing children to be baptized; they should be brought on the earliest day possible. This is particularly pressed on mothers who have young babies.” “And for the information of those who have none,” added the rector in gentle, kindly tones, and who being deaf had not heard what had been pre viously said— “and for the informa tion of those who havo none, I may state if wished they can be obtaiued on application in the vestry immediately after service to-day. Limp ones, one shilling each; with stiff back?, two shillings. ” GREAT SALT LAKE. Wonders of the Big Inland Sea in Utah. A Bathing Place Where You Cannot Sink. A correspondent of the New 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 either of the great oceans that it lies between. But the Atlantic never looks as the 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, mid the usual shore band begins to play as the excursionists flock upon the platform or rush ior the dressing rooms. Almost everybody bathes. When the stranger goes upon the pier he is apt to consider the bath -with seme 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 east, 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 cer. The view of the ocean from the shores of Mount Desert is not more ex tensive. Garfield Beach recalls Bar Harbor in one respect. The Oquirrh Mountains rise almost from the lake shore to a height greater than that of Green Mountains. But the Oquirrlis are bolder and more 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 the 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 knit 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 have tied youtself 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 else. This pond is of salt, pretty thoroughly saturate!, and that is about all. It- is four times as salt as the ocean. The Dead Sea is not much salter. 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 the scarcity of water everywhere about the 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 thewhitecaps 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 arns 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 them in the 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 are patches of glistening white along the shore, where the sun has been. It is not a good place for swimming. The best use you can make of the opportunity is to try the capacity of the densely salt water for flotation. When you have spent half an hour in the 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 there are worse things to take in this world than a bath in the Great Salt Lake. There are large birds swooping over head in long, graceful curves and slides. Occasionally they light upon the ground, and the children fee l them with bits of cake. They are not demestic fowls, cither, but young sea gulls, quite a9 tame as the most domestic of pigeons. The men who have been at the lake shore year after year say that the 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 the ridge of the lunch pavilion, and watch its departure with melancholy wistfulness. Spanish Women. The Spanish eye, large, humid, ten der, grand, languishing, furnished with lashes so long, so curling and so beauti ful that the pencil of the artists falls to despair; the black pupil, the white sea, in which the lustriou? orb sails—all is indescribable! Spanish women when they are coquettish and laughing have a sad expression. Next to the beauty of the hair and eyes comes the beauty of the flashing teeth. These are so universally perfect that the 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 expects 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, sometime? a very big mu?tache. 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 these 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 tho eud?. 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, to foreign eye? at least. But it is said to be agreeable to native eyes. An Impressive Sight on a Manor-War. I happened to be on board a United States man-of-war at sundown during the call for colors. When the bugle sounded the first call the band gathered at the stern of the vessel on deck, and at the second call the officers stood with their off facing ( caps 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.— Neus York Star. The Age for Consumption. Consumption is rare in childhood, but increases rapidly after the age of 15, and is most common between the of 25 and 30. Those ages who escape it till the latter ago are less and less prone to ^ 83 ^hey advance in years, and may es cape it entirely, even though they may have a hereditary predisposition to it. SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS. Excellent brown paper can oo;r be ■aade, it seems, ont of peat fibre. The doctors of Seville, Spain. proclaiming the discovery ^ of a most ef. ficacious cure for hyprophobia. Experiments by a Parisian sciehtisi have proved that daylight entirely ceases in the waters of the Mediterranean »t a depth of 1518 feet. An Austrian railway official has i vented ci a portable telephone forspeakiiK from a railway train at any point st ping to the nearest station. op The railway from Buenos Ayres to the foot of the 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 appirat as contain German silver coils, which are brought to red heat by the electric cur rent, and the cooking is done on a range fitted with these coils. There are many simple rules of health violated because it is consid ered incovenient to obey them, but it is a violation of these same simple rules that burdens life with that greater inconvenience ill-health. The busy man .will find that it takes far less time to comply with hygienic laws than it does to suffer the s tk ness resulting from their violation As a general result of numerous ex periments, caudle power, as determined by means of the Bunsen photometer, affords no correct measurement either of light-giving energy or of the lumi nosity of the source of light, the direc tion of the error always being such as 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 wave\ would make a height of 84 feet from crest to base. The length from crest to crest was found to be 386 feet. While the deepest tone that our ears are capable of recognizing is one con taining sixteen vibrations a second, the phonograph will record ten vibrations or less, and can then raise the- pitch un til we hear a reproduction from them. Similarly, vibrations above the highest rate audible to the ear can be recorded on the phonograph, and then re- 1 produced by lowering the pitch until we actually hear the record of those inaudible pulsations. The Moors are said to have mad i ra , per from linen in the thirteenth century, - all paper known before that being ap- ■ parently made from cotton. In the British Museum are some specimens of ' linen paper from the fourteenth century. Recently Professor Church has discov ered an Episcopal Register of 1273 | from Auvergne, 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- j istence of a concentric zone of rock filled with magnetic iron, situated about ] 100 miles below the surface of the earth. If only fifteen per ceut. 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 be due to protuberances o' the magnetic mass into the exterio* non-magnotic shell. A Peculiar Anniversary, A curious celebration occurred receB' lv in the City of Mexico. It wa? th* 38th anniversary of the punishment ia* flicted upon Emperor Cuauhtemoc by Cortez to induce him to reveal the hid' ing place of the Montezuma treasure. The meeting was held around the statue of Cuauhtemoc, and' was attended by Indians from tho most distant village?, dressed in the ancient dress, who exe cuted dances of the time of the con quest. An address in the Indian ^ 30 ' guage was delivered by the governor ^ Tlaxcal a.— Ch icago Herald. It Was a Tongh Bird. Defining tho Species.—Jonc? (strug gling with a tough morsel)—Wai*^ what do you call this bird? Waiter—Woodcock, sail. Jones—Ah! basswood!— Bwlityl** Free Press.