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era era 52B
-OF
IKK COU NTY,
SUBSCRIPTION, *1.00 PER ANNUM.
EDGAR L. ROGERS,
URNESVILLE, GEORGIA.
Wishes everybody in this broad laud of ours a prosperous year into which we
ave just entered, and I rise to thank my customers and friends for the kindly
md liberal paatrouage bestowed on mo in years past. I feel proud of it Aud will
■enow my efforts to put in Finer Goods,
BETIER STYLES and LOWER PRICES
Ban I have ever done before. I have run my stock down very lovr with an eye
Eo giving my patrons an ontire ari ay of
NEW GOODS.
With greater efforts on my part to please, I intend to
TR1AB IT ON THIOK
Until I shall merit and get
The Lion’s Share
of Pike county and surrounding country’s
IRYGOODS AND CLOTHING TRADE
(I shall kee r Everything a f d bold myself ready
i to startie competition in Prices!
COME AND TRY ME
You shall have Prompt and Polite Attention.
Cut-rate prices and fti'st-c;ass goods, Messrs.
J. F. Howard and E.C, Elder are with me and
are ever delighted to wait upon customers.
PATRONIZE HOME INDUSTRY^
I OaEorn’– Walcott
GRIFFIN, GEORGIA,
Manufacturers of
■g/’ ■
V
/
CARRIAGES, BUGGIES AND WAGONS.
FINE VEHICLES MADETO SPECIAL ORDER.
Repairing done neatly, substantially and with dispatch. Home-made wagons war
ranted. A car load of
Tennessee Wagons Just Received.
Best hand made harness always on hand. We can suit you. Don’t lose your
money by investing in worthless vehicles and machine made harness. Dealers in
Rough and Dressed Lumber,
Brykin I i of House Material constantly on hand, and can make anything you
' want. Manufacturers, also, of
MOINES 1 AND BOILERS,
SAW MILLS, SYRUP MILLS FARM;
4 HINERY, ALL MANNER OF CASTINGS
py anything a full line from of Pipe Baby’s and Pipe Cradle Fittings to Locomotive. aiid engine Fixtures, Can make or
r e. a
iffiffitfi ❖ MnrpFey,
HEADQUARTERS FOR •
.aiririages, ,i Bmggtes ami
WhAmGmOhNhS
[5,000 PLOW-HOES AT BOTTOM PRICES!
Barnesville, Ga.
pike Coimfi Journal A
VOLUME I.
ZEBULON, GA., TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1889.
Raise the Curtain.
Raise the curtain—let tho brightness
Of your cheering light ihine forth;
To the pissora in tho darkness
It mny be of vital worth;
Give a glimpse to lonely wand’ror
Of your household full of joy.
It may rouse to new ambition
Some poor friendless, tempted boy.
Raise tho curtain—we are kindred—
Each to all is bound by ties
W hich forbid a selfish shutting
Of ourselves from others’ eyes;
Share your light and share your blessings;
God hath made tho whole world kin,
And his love so universal,
Takes the weakest sinner in.
Raise the curtain of your window,
Raise the curtain of your mind;
Do not let possession make yon
To the wants of others blind.
Helping others we uro strengthen’d,
Giving, we are richer made;
Aud no one so strong or patient,
But some time hath need of aid.
—[Flora N. Candoe,
A MAN-FISH.
At 1 o’clock in the afternoon of June
21, 1859, I was in tho crow’s nest or
lookout on board the New England
whaler Yankee Land, and we were hear
ing up for Valparaiso from the Juan Fer
nandez Islands when I caught sight of a
floating Unman body on thejee bow, and
half a mile away. We had only a light
breeze- and tho sea was scarcely dis
turbed, and from my perch aloft I could
see even the fish as they played about us.
1 had scarcely hailed the deck when
the floater raised his head, kicked his
feet under the surface, and, after waving
his arm as a signal, he began swimming
down to us. The sight of a man out at
sea, provided with nothing whatever to
float him, was queer enough, but there
was something much moro queer in storo
for us. I have aeon the natives of al
most every country in the water, but I
never saw anything like the speed this
floater made as lie came down to us. Ho
just smoked through water like a yawl
with her sail set to a stiff breeze. All
the men mustered forward to get sigjit, of
him, and as he came alongside he checked
his way, took a long survey of our craft,
and coolly called out:
“What ship is that?”
“The American whaler, Yankee Land,”
answered the mate,
“Want any hands?”
“Yea, we will ship you,” replied the
captain.
“Very well, sir—I’ll come aboard.”
They threw him a rope and he soon
stood on deck, tiie only unconcerned
person on the ship. He asked for a
chew of tobacco, wrung the water out of
his clothes, aud vdicn the cook brought
him gomogrub he (lid not appear over
hungry, lie refused dry clothes, saying
that iie felt better when dump, and when
he had finished eating lie explained:
“JVIy nann i Tom Finch. I quit the
English brig Saxon two days ago. I
can steer a boat or fasten to a whale with
the best of you. Give me a Jay and let
me turn to.”
“\ T ou quit the Saxon two days ago?”
queried the captain.
“Y‘cs, sir.”
“Where was she?”
“A matter of fifty miles to the l orlh
west, sir.”
“At sea?” 0
“Yes, sir.”
“How did you quit?”
“Said good-by to my watch and
jumped overboard, and have been float
ing ever since.”
There wasn’t a man in the ship who
believed his story. Indeed, what intel
ligent man would believe it? And
it was Gospel truth, as we discovered
when we reached Valparaiso. The Saxon
was there, and half a dozen of her
had seen him go overboard as stated.
A man fish had come aboard of us.
There never was a mermaid, but he cer
tainly was a merman. He was next to
amphibious. He was with us for sixteen
months, and during that time was the
wonder of our crew and of every other
crew we met. He was a stalwart, good
looking chap of 35, but his interior may
have been built on tlnNish principle. He
swam as swiftly as some kinds of fish,
and that without seeming to tire him.
He could not be drowned, and no shark
would bite him. I said he was a queer
man. The reader probably, agrees with
me. I give my word and honor that
every statement I shall make is true, and
can be proved true. „
Our .carpenter was laid up with a
broken leg, and when Finch announced
that he could use tools he became car
penter temporarily. After we left Val
paraiso, no longer doubting the story of
his two days’ float, he gave us a marvel
lous exhibition of his skill as a swimmer.
In running back to the south we struck
the fag end of a cyclone, and got a ter
rible sea. Our big ship was tossed about
like a pea, and the waves walled up on
us now and then until their crests
seemed to tower fifty feet above the rail.
Everything was lashed and double lashed,
and the cook couldn’t make even a cup of
coffee for twenty hours. While we were
lying to and hanging on for life Finch
stripped to his shirt and pants and weut
averboard for a lark. The best man
among us would have been drowned in
five minutes. He was in the water two
hours, and when he came ottt ho did not
puff »3 heavily as a man who had run
across the street. A hundred times in
those two hours wo thought ho was lost,
but he had no more fear for himself than
as if he was on dry hind, la the sixteen
months I saw him go overboard as many
as fifty times, in all sorts of weather,and
by day and by night, and yet he never
met with an accident.
I stated that no shark would bite him.
He proved this fact a thousand times
over. Harbor sharks, for reasons best
known to themselves, will sometimes
pass a swimmer by, but they are small
fry compared to tho hammer heads and
while sharks of mid-ocean. The true
man-eater is not a shore fish, except in
tropical waters. When a whaler is en
gaged in cutting in and trying out, and
is drifting off before the wind, your real
man-eater appears. I have seen them
twenty-five feet long, barnacled up and
moss-grown like ancient whales, and evi
dently a hundred years old. These are
the demons of the deep, who will rush
upon a raft and upset it or tear it to
pieces, and who Seem to feel no pain
from tho prick of a lance. We got a
wlialo to the southwest of -Conception, a
hundred miles off shore, and Finch ga\w:
us his first exhibition. Wo had an
eighty-barrel fish lashed'head and tail to
our starboard side, and were just hook
ing on to the first blanket pieco to hoist
away, when three or four monster sharks
appeared. The one who come up astern
was of such size that the men called out
in amazement. He lay with his dorsal
fin above water, and we could see every
inch of him. It was enough to give you
a chill to note his wicked eyes and his
awful mouth.
When Finch saw this shark ho said he
would drive him away. Tho Captain or
dered him to go about his business, not
wishing to loose a man,hut Finch waited
until the officers were off their guard,
and then went overboard Off the lee bow
with a great splash. There was a wild
cry from the crew aiid a rush with ropes,
hut Torn looked up ami laughed and
swam around the stern of the ship. The
big man-eater had backed off about 20
feet at the splash, but two others, almost
as large, had como up oft the quarters,
and there lay three of the winccaest fish
in the Atlantic Ocean. Everybody
shouted and gestured and half a dozen
ropes’-ends were thrown to Tom, but lie
would not mind us. He suddenly sank
below the surface and made a bee line
for the big fish, and, to my surprise, the
old fellow darted aside to escape the
collision.
It is truth to the letter that Tom Finch
drove every one of those monsters away
from the ship, and for'an hour ho pad
died about in Hie water and was un
harmed. To (he course of a couple of
hours the big shark returned. A piece
of blubber was tied up in an old coat
and dropped overboard, and he mado a
dash of a hundred feet and bolted it
down like a flash. He then took up his
station off our quarter, and not over
thirty feet way, and the sailor mounted
the rail and made a long leap right at
him. The shark went off like a streak,
and we saw him no more.
Once, when we were in the harbor of
Honolulu, Tom gave a public exhibition,
and at least 5000 people saw him swim
about among the sharks just outside the
surf. Several dogs were thrown to them
to be devoured, and gallons of blood
were poured on the water to excite them,
but Dover a one came within five feet of
the sailor. He had no peculiar odor
about him that we could detect, and
why the sharks feared him was as much
a puzzle to himself as to others.
Among Tom’s adventures was his es
cape from the Greek pirates of the zEgean
Sea a couple of years before he joined
our ship. I give this because every par
ticular of it is a matter of official record.
He was one of the crew of an Italian
brig making a voyage to Constantinople,
and on the return, while becalmed among
the islands at the mouth of the Archipel
ago, a couple of boats, carrying 20 men
each, pulled out from one of the islands
and attacked them. There were 13 men
on the brig, and, though poorly armed,
they gave the pirates a hot fight before
the vessel wus carried by boarding.
When Tom saw that all was lost be hid
himself away, and was not discovered
until the brig had been towed into a
cove. The Greeks had cooled off then,
and instead of cutting his throat they
took him ashore to make a slave of him.
The island was the rendezvous of a bad
gang and it seemed that a portion of
them were away on an expedition. For
this reason the brig was pulled into the
cove, which had very deep water, an
chored stem and stem, and her overhaul
ing was deferred until the other party
should return.
Tom was the soie survivor of the
crew, and he was treated like a (tog.
He had a smattering f the language,
and he was told thatfjiy r^grded effort by of burning his to
escape would be
alive, Neverth' on the second
night of his stay ho stole away from hi#
hut to the water, swam off to the brig,
boarded her by the foro drains, and find
ing tho two men on anchor watch fast
asleep, he brained tlrom with a capstan
bar. Tho cable at tho stern was of iiomp
and easily cut. The other was of chain,
and Tpm managed, to slip it just as tho
tide turned.. The brig was oufsido of
all the small craft, and, ns the night was
dark, no one saw her drift away, Drift
she did, however, aided by a fortunate
breeze, and next morning slio was
sighted and boarded by a Brit isli man
of-war heading up from Crete. The
Italian government made tho Greeks pay
a good round sum for tho outrage, and
Tom got monoy enough out of it to have
kept him all his days had ho been a
landsman.
He quit our ship with more fuss than
ho had entered it. For sixteen months
ho seemed perfectly'' content, and was
well up to his work. Thou the owners
at homo got into trouble and had to sell
out, and yo hauled into Kio Janeiro one
day to find a new deal on hand, We
were paid off and a new Captain put in
charge, and such of the men as wished
to go were shipped for a new cruise in a
clean ship. Must of us signed articles
thoiigh-uone of us liked the new Captain.
It was curious that ho and Tom Finch.
took a strong dislike to each other at
first, sight, but the sailor had signed and
would not desert. Wo had only got
well outside when the new Captain mado
us a speech. vVe had mado an average
cruise up to this date, and tho ship was
in good condition all tlio way around,
but he would not have come up to the
mark had ho not insulted and abused us.
We had a call aft, and I remember how
ugly he looked as he surveyed us for a
moment, as an overseer looks over his
slaves, and then said;
“You infernal lot of sojers and lob
scouses, there’s n new deal aboard this
ship and I want you to understand it on
the go off I There’s to be no more sojer
nud picnicking. There's to. be no
more gamming between cabin and fo'ens
tle. If we have a man aboard whom the
sharks won't bite he’d better look out for
me! I will bite him if he doesn’t walk
chalk! There’s got to be discipline
aboard and the quicker you come'to it
the better for your lazy carcasses! Go
forward and go to work or I’ll be among
yon!’’
Almost every Captain gives a crew
that sort of talk. The average master
looks: upon his men as below the brute
creation. Ho thinks it necessary, to brag
and bluster and threaten to let them
know the wide difference between them.
He had made a break for Tom, who had
entered as a boat straw, and every man
of us foresaw trouble.
Wo had been five days out when tho
row came. Several of the men had been
brutally knocked about without excuse,
arid one day as we were on whaling ground,
and Tom was placing his bout in order,
Capt. Locke took occasion to find a deal
of fault. It was plain to all of , us that
ho wus seeking a fuss, and that lie was
bent on stirring Tom up. He
kept at it until he roused him
self to fury and struck tho
sailor. We kucw Tom would never
stand that, nor did he. lie squared off
and felled the Captain like an ox, and
during the confusion he took refuge in
the cabin and barricaded the door and
armed himself. Wasn’t the old man
howling mad when he e.ame to! Ho
issued all sorts of orders, but took
precious good care not to expose him
self to Tpm’H fire.
The sailor held tho cubin'for three
days, allowing the crew to move about
as they pleased, but watching to fire
upon the .Captain if he exposed himself.
On' the third night, when we were a good
hundred miles off Cape Frio, he dropped
out of one of the stem ports into tho
open sea, and the first we knew of it wo
heard him laughing as he swam away,
fjix months later wo had a “gam” with
the Scotch whaler Janet, and the men
told us that they picked Tom up when
he had been afloat three days, and landed
him three weeks later at Bahia.—[New
York Sun.
A Family of Coincidences.
On Glade Mountain, W. Va., resides
perhaps the most peculiar family in the
country. It is a family of coincidences.
The father and mother were married on
tho 14t,h day of October; they have had
nine children, all of whom were born on
the 14th of October; five of the chil
dren are dead, and all five of them
ceased to breathe on the 14th day of
October. The name of the head of the
family is Joshua Franklin. He says that
he was a Confederate soldier; that ho
was captured twice by the United States
soldiers, and that lie lost two brothers in
the war, and that all four of the mishaps
or misfortunes of war occurred' on the
memorable 14th of October. In tho
neighborhood the Franklin family is re
garded with superstition, and not a hu
man being can be prevailed to stay cither
in the house or on the premises on either
day or night -on the 14th of October.—
[Chicago Herald.
NUMBER H.
PHOSPHATE BEDS:', 11 U
4
South Carolina’s Curious
its of Life-giving Rock.
Methods of Mining the Most
Valuable Fertilizer Known.
The phosphate beds of Charleston,
S. C., have proved of great value to tho
place, and tlioy have moro than com
pensated for tho gradual loss of the cot
ton trade which has gone largely to the
cities north or to Savannah on the south.
These beds and tho great “Ashley fish
basin” nre the most wonderful and inex
plicable formations known to geologists.
Tho deposits consist of nodules of phos
phate of lime, thickly interspersed with
the huge bones and teeth of antediluvian
mammalian mid marine mammoths of gi
gantic proportions. Tho mastodons,
giant baboons, prodigious gorillas, liz
ards thirty-three feet long, and other
huge graminivorous and carnivorous
quadrupeds have been found lying in
the same lied with briny leviathans, vora
cious marine vultures and other monsters
of tho deep. The beds have been
styled by Agassiz as the “greatest curi
osity of tho world,” and they constitute
by far the most valuablo fertilizer known
to man since tho exhaustion of the Peru
vian guano deposits. That they are an
almost inexhaustible source of wealth to
tho whole state may well be judged, and
thousands of people are engaged in get
ting the forth I zers' to market. The
amount of trade in pliospato rock in
Charleston amounts to several million
dollars a year, aud it is increasing stead
ily year by year ns tho demand for the
fertilizers becomes more general through
out the world. The deposits underlie a
vast region of the country, thirty miles
wide and seventy miles in length.
Scientists differ as to the origin of this
great deposit and in their estimation of
tho quantities of rock contained in:the
deposit. The rock forms the bed of
many rivers leading to tho ocean, and
crops out of the land at many points.
The river deposits are mined with crow
bar, pick and dredges. The land rock
is excavated with pick and shovel and is
found in a seam ranging in thickness
from three to thirty inches, at. a depth of
about ten feet below the surface of the
ground. The country hi which the rock
is found is generally level, and the soil is
soft and moist. The rock is sounded
for 1iv a lung, sharp-pointed steel rod.
When rock is struck from six to ten feet
l>elow the surface a test pit is sunk
ascertain tho thickness of the stratum
and to find if tho rock will analyze up to
the standard.
From the mines the rocks are hauled
in dumping cars to the washers, The
rock is here crushed into pieces of uni
form size. It then falls into fn troughs or
tubs resting on an incline, each of
these tubs an octagonal shaft, cased in
iron and set with blades or flukes, re
volves, which turns the rock around and
forces it out of tho tubs upon screens.
While in the tubs it is subjected to a
continuous aud powerful stream of water
which cleans it of ail foreign matter.
There are sixteen companies now en
gaged in mining the land rock, with a
joint capital of about $2,000,000.
production of these mines averages about
300,000 tons of rock a year. This in
dustry has been the bed-rock of Charles
ton life for many years, and now it seems
all along the coast the perennial fruits of
the. earth, which in themselves are things
of beauty, will become as valuable in a
commercial sense as the life-giving rock
which has been vitalized by the decaying
bones of antediluvian mori
sters. Side by side with the
,
rivers and fields which furnish
forth phosphate rock are tire broad sa
vannas and low-lying islands where mel
ons, Cabbages, asparagus, potatoes and
strawberries flourish abundantly. Large
quantities of these products are shipped
north every, year.—[Commercial Adver
tiser.
Who Directed Booth’s Captors? 1
.
I had an interesting chat with a col
ored woman who was a slave in Mary
land just previous to the assassination
Lincoln,writes a Washington correspond
ent. Speaking of that tragedy, she said:
“I didn’t see Booth when lie came
Dr. Mudd’s, but I saw his bools and
razor. The boots were long ones,
must have readied*to his hips.
know that Booth was captured in Mudd’s
barn, which was burned to the ground.
The soldiers came down there with
rush, and were going by when a little
boy, not more tlian five years old, told
tiiem that there was a man in the barn.
He was betrayed by that little boy.”
" " Signs of Greatness.
Mrs. Hopeful—Is my boy
any? Professor of Penmanship—He.
is
ting", worse. His writing is now so
no living soul cau read it.
“How lovely! The darling! He'll
a great author some day,!’—[Now
Weekly.
PRINTED EVERY TUESDAY
-AT—
ZEBTJLON, - GEORGIA*
-I1Y-
'tfi'Jfii* LEE,
t
S. SPLENDID ADVERTISING AGENT.
The History of Handwriting. ,
■The earliest writing of the Western
that of the so-called Uncial manu
scripts, waa copied moro or less directly
from the inscriptions cut on brass or
stone. The type of letters wna practi
cally the same, Hut with the change of
the materials used there came almost nec
essarily in time a change in the mode of
forming the letters. Cursive manuscripts
—that is, manuscripts wrftten in a run
ning hand, with flowing and connected
letters, took almost universally by the
tenth century the place of the earlier
Uncial manuscripts, with their stiff up
right, isolated letters, and linndwrittingy
as we now understand it, emerged. But
during tho Middle Ages writing wus the
art of a comparatively few highly
trained scribes, carried by. some of them
to a wonderful height of perfection.
After the introduction of printing the
very finest writing disappeared, for the
profession of the scribe was superseded,
but tho number of those Who could
write passably increased as the habit of *
correspondence grew, and writing was
no longer for tho ordinary man tho diffi
cult, laborious process that it used to be.
With increased practico handwriting be
came somewhat .easier and more free.
The progress io this direction went on
with little interruption from the sixteenth
to the eighteenth century; each genera
tion shows somewhat of an advance on
that which had preceded it. The writ
ing became continuously less awkward
and less stiff. But it is in our fathers’
time and in our own, that the great
Change lino t»hoa. plnea. The
number of letters which are now written
has led to increased speed
in the writing of them, With
increased practice the hand come*
to move moro speedily and easily; there
is no longer the same care in the forma
tion of the indiyidual letters which there
was while people liad more time for
writing. Words are, so to speek, dashed .
off; and we are content if we can make
the whole word intelligible without con
sidering too minutely the letters of which
it is formed, I think, too, that the im
provements which have been introduced’
in the mechanical appliances for writing
in pens, ink and paper jiave not been
without their influence, and this influ
ence has tended in the direction of giv
ing greater freedom and facility to the
writing. The (great superiority which
in the* nppliAKOVB rva< h?
England enjoy over most of the nations
of the Continent, will also explain why
it is that the handwriting of English
men lias a bolder character than that of
most foreigners.—[Murray’s Magazine.
Big Gambling Profits.
There never was a gambling resort in*
tho world like Monte Carlo. It is a mine
of wealth to the managers of its magni
ficent tiger lairs, and a very simple calcu
lation will show how princely are the
profits of the tables. The management
admits tlmt its annual profits are $3,500,
000—in fact it is over $5 000,000. Now,
inasmuch as the chances of the table are
1 to 36 in favor of the bank, to gain an
nually $3,500,000, which it professes to
do, $120,000,000 must have been staked
on its tables—must have been won and
lost., The bank’s $3,000,000 profits is
its royalty—at the rate of I to 86 —on
tliis enormous amount of money, which
must therefore have been played, lost and
won. It is this fact of the gambler deai
ing with large, masses of money that
partly accounts for the faseiuation exer
cised by gambling. A careful player
who begins with, say $1000 capital, may
have fingered, according to the doctrine
chances, $36,000 before he loses his‘capi
tal. If he plays long enough tlio bank
royalty of one in thirty-six is sure to
swallow up his capital, and then he has
had all the emotion^of having been alter
nately successful or tho reverse, rich or
poor- At Monte Carlo the bank jpyulty
must .inevitably ruin all who ploy long
enough to have risked their capital
thirty-six times. The annual profits of
the tables exceed the annua! aggregate
ineoihe of all tho Vanderbilts, During
the lifetime of Mr. Blanc it was easy
enough to get a statement of the amount.
Blanc delighted in letting it be known
what, a wonderful prosperous fellow he
was. Ilis daughters, who married
princes, arc not proud of the source of
their wealth, and since their father’s
death have sought to. divert attention
from themselves and their affairs as much
as possible. M. Wagatha is now the
general manager of tlio Casino, and he
has' lately given it'out that the net profits
of the tables last year were only $1,250,
000, or one fourth of what they used to
be.
A Clean Breast of It. «
Browbeating Lawyer (to opposing
witness)—Where you ever arrested for
felony?
The Witness (desperately)—Yes.
Lawyer—Alia! What was that fe’.
ony?
Wituess—Arson.
Lawyer—What building was it that
you set fire to?
Witness—^fic ice paiaco at Montreal.