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KNOXVILLE JOURNAL.
KNOXVILLE, GEORGIA.
An American has wagered $500 in
London that he can carry a German flag
over the highways of France for 200
miles and not even be insulted. He may,
observed the New York Graphic, pos¬
sibly get forty rods from the starting
point before having the top of his head
knocked off.
The new Orphan’s Home at San Diego,
Cal., promises to be one of the most im¬
portant and best-endowed charitable in¬
stitutions in the Union. In addition to
the Home proper there will be an educa¬
tional and technical school. Four cit¬
izens of San Diego have subscribed $2,
000,000, and the city has given 100
acres of land in the city limits, worth
nearlv £ 1 , 000 , 000 .
Spain is the place for electricians just
new. The government has decreed that
all the theatres in the kingdom shall
adopt the electric light within six
months. Experts say that danger is in
this wholesale edict, for there are not
men and material in the country to do
the work in the required time, and if
there should be a general influx of elec¬
tricians, the work is likely to be too
hastily done to be safe.
The French have discovered an an
nexable island in the Pacific, declares
the New A'ork Time , and have straight¬
way proceeded to annex it. Their ac¬
quisition is Raratonga, which has an
area of possibly fifty square miles. It is
more of an island than some recent
British annexations, since it at least can
and does support a population of several
thousand natives, who live in those set¬
tlements. Raratonga is a leading island
of the Cook or Hervey group, made
very well known to the world through
the successful labors of missionaries,
who have converted a great part of the
people to Christianity.
The Mexican paper, Diario del Eogar,
tells of a large railroad contract for the
construction of a road by an English
syndicate, from Esperanza to Oaxaca,
which was signed a few days since in the
City of Mexico by General Pacheco,
representing the Mexico government,
and Mr. Louis Pombo, as representative
of the syndicate, by which the govern¬
ment guarantees to the company 8 per
cent per annum of the net proceeds on
the capital invested in the building of
the road for a term of fifteen years; the
total proceeds from the stamp revenue of
the State of Oaxaca to be appropriated
to this purpose, as also 3 per cent of all
the customhouse collections throughout
the entire republic.
The Charleston News ami Courier
claims that Claflin University, located at
Orangeburg, S. C., is the model univer¬
sity of the South for colored people.
There were 10,003 people at the recent
commencement exercises. The Univer¬
sity has seventeen teachers, fourteen
superintendents and 940 students. It ex¬
ceeds in size the famous school at Hamp¬
ton, Ya. More than five hundred students
actually pay for their own education by
the work of their hands. In the curricu¬
lum are six courses of study, with in¬
struction in nine different industries, rep¬
resented by nine special schools of agri¬
culture, carpentry and cabinet-making,
printing, tailoring, shoemaking, paint’ng
and graining, blacksmithing, merchan¬
dising and domestic economy. The
University was founded by Air. Claflin,
of Boston, but it is upheld by South
Carolina, which gives it both financial
and moral support.
QUAINT SANTA FE.
OBJECTS OF INTEREST IN AN
OLD MEXICAN TOWN.
Old Adobe Structures Erected Be¬
fore America’s Discovery—The
Remarkable Santa Fe Trail—
Spanish Chiefly Spoken.
An Atlanta Constitution correspondent
sends the following graphic pen picture
of Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico:
When old St. Augustine, down in
Florida, was but a barren stretch of
sand and Melendez was a child, Santa
Fe.wasatown of considerable import¬
ance, had although the face of a white man
never been seen by any of the in¬
habitants. There are now standing
some of the adobe structu.es that were
erected here long before Christopher
Columbus was born, and, if the stories
of the old priests are to be believed, the
church of San Miguel was built before
Ferdinand and Isabella ascended the
Spanish throne. When the Spaniards
eame here, in 1582, they found a town
of four or five hundred inhabitants, which
was then, to all appearances, several
centuries old. Its altitude—0862 feet—
assured an equable climate the year
through, had and the Indians who built the
town cultivated the plateau on
which the city now s ands, and
made it fertile as well as beauti
ful. As a rule, the North
American Indians were nomads, but the
Zuni, Moqui and Pueblo tribes were
more domestic in their habits, and they
built the first villages on the NorthAmeri
can continent. It is supposed that the
Zunis built Santa Fe and gave it the
name Pueblo, meaning “a settlement.”
From this the residents were called
Pueblos, after a while taking this name
body to distinguish them-elves from the main
of Zunis, who had moved north¬
ward and founded the towns of Moqui,
Trinidad and Pueblo—the two latter in
Colorado. Between these Indian villages
were well beaten bridle paths, the un¬
them erring instinct find of the Indir as having led
to the shortest and easiest
route through the Ricky Mountains, be¬
tween Raton and Trinidad. When the
Spaniards came here, in 1582, they were
greatly astonished to find a large adobe
structure—used by the Zunis for a coun¬
cil chamber—and they straightway pro¬
ceeded to turn it into a church, calling it
San Miguel. This is the building which
still stands, and which is believed to be
the oldest structure in the United States.
In 1680 the Indians came to the con¬
clusion that the Spaniards, who had
changed seized the name of their city and had
their council chamber and turned
it into a church, were a sort of nuisance,
and they rose in rebellion against further
innovations. Finally, they masacred
hands every Spaniard whom they could lay
upon, burned the church saints in
the plaza, forbade the use of the Spanish
they language, had been put aside the wives to whom
married by Catholic rites
and washed themselves in the river to
purify themselves from the baptism of
the church. In 1692 the Spaniards re¬
captured they the town, and since that time
have had things pretty much their
own way. To-day the city has a popula¬
tion of 6500, of whom 5500 are Mexicans,
many of whom do not understand a word
of English. It is the only city of its
size in this country without a steam en
gine in its limits. There are but few
frame buildings—everything is adobe.
The adobe house, or “doby,” as it is
called, but is familiar to all Western tourists,
it is seen at its very best here, The
wealthiest people live in structures
which, from the outside, seem scarcely
habitable, but within are cosy and, in
many instances, luxurious. Judge
Thornton, a wealthy mine owner, has a
“doby” house near the plaza, or public
square. In the center of the building is
a square court yard, filled with magnifi¬
cent flowers, with a fountain in the
center. The doors of each apartment in
the house open on the wide veranda
which runs around the court-yard, and
the effect is very charming. The walls
of the building are nearly three feet in
thickness, giving opportunity for deep,
cushioned window seats. These thick
walls keep out cold in winter and heat
in the summer, and there are, therefore,
but two fire-places in the whole house—
for use in the event of extraordinary
severe weather. The decorations of the
lanta’s dwelling are such as one finds in At¬
l’eachtree street homes—beauti¬
ful pictures and statuary, imported car
pets and rugs, rare bric-a-brac and pot¬
teries—everything this that money can buy.
Of course, all makes the change
from the outside atmosphere of squalor
the more marked. Judge Thornton’s
home is but the type of hundreds of
others owned by wealthy Spaniards,
Mexicans or Americans, who have settled
here because of this incomparable
climate.
Reference has been made to the old
church of San Miguel. Here is to be
seen the bell cast in 1550, brought to
Mexico by Cortez and transported hither
by Indian slaves from the City of Mexico
after Montezuma’s power was no more.
Three of the altar pieces are over seven
hundred years old and were painted in
Barcelona and sent hither through the
officers of the cliur: h in Mexico. From
the door of 8an Miguel starts the path to
Trinidad, hundreds of miles away; the
trail which so astonished the Spaniards,
away back in 1582 and which, as late as
1848, astounded the civil engineers who
surveyed it and gave it the name it has
since borne—the Santa Fe trail.
Antiquarians tell us that the Santa Fe
trail is one of the most remarkable pieces
of engineering of primeval origin. It
runs in the most direct possible line to
Trinidad and thence to Pueblo, near Den¬
ver. have been Through the mountains the grades
chosen with such skill that,
notwithstanding hundred the fact that more than
two surveys have been made by
competent engineers to find a better route,
no one has yet been abie to find an easier
grade through the Rocky Mountains than
was located by these nomads hundreds
and hundreds of years ago. The line is
so direct that “the old Santa Fe trail”
has been followed closely in the build¬
ing of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa.
Fe railroad, from Kansas City to the far
West.
Colonel A. B. Steele, an archeologist
of repute, says of the Santa Fe trail:
“When you see the old road from the
car windows you may reflect that you are
historic looking upon the unused paths of pre¬
wanderers. The roads that lead
to the Mecca, the sand-drifted highways of
Sahara, the very footsteps of Christ,
are not more ancient.” The old trail is
plainly visible, since it was the only
route for years to the Paciiic coast and
soon became a broad well-worn road,
with stage houses at intervals and civili¬
zation wherever such a thing was pos¬
sible.
The Governor’s palace, a long adobe
structure, a couple of hundred or more
years old, contains the territorial offices
and many choice relics, and, in addition
to this, there are two free museums and
curiosity shops by the score. The city
surrounds a piazza (pronounced plat-za)
a large and square fenced in and covered with
grass trees. There is no architect
tural beauty except in the capitol, a
new yet rather building of brick and granite, as
bare looking. The territorial
legislature is composed principally of
men whose parents are Mexican, and the
almost universal language is Spanish, all
of which tends to make one forget he is
still in the United States.
a__________La. i —--—L
The Cocaine Habit.
Dr. C. F. Belcher, of St. Louis, in an
interview in Chicago recently, said:
The cocaine habit is now as regularly an
have accepted disease as phthisis or gout. We
in St. Louis more than a dozen
cases of it—men and women who have
let this fatal drng get the mastery of
them, and who have been completely
wrecked by its effects. One of our phy¬
sicians is among the number—one of the
brightest men in the profession. He is
now for this in an habit. insane asylum being treated
Cocaine is worse than
alcohol and opium put together. It robs
a man of his will power from the start,
and changes him into a drunken beast
after the first exhilaration passes away.
I do not know of any drug which seems
to attack so severely man’s moral side.
The cocaine user becomes a villain as
naturally sleep. as a chloroformed man goes to
He loses his sense of right and wrong
and is violent, passionate and brutal.
The effect is the same in both sexes. I
have studied cases enough to know that
cocaine must affect that part of the
brain, where if there is such a localization,
what we call man’s moral quali¬
ties abide.
Extermination of the Birds.
The birds of the Florida coast are fast
plume disappearing hunters. before There the is guns of the
scarcity of the American an especial
heron, great Louisiana egret, the
snowy the hen, the
reddish egret, Ward’s heron, and the
little blue heron, Biids that were com¬
mon at Fort Ogden a year and a half ago
are no more to be met with. The past
dry season has enabled the merciless pine
hunter of the border to penetrate dry
shod into the former impenetrable re¬
treat of the birds ,—Savannah News,
HOW IT HAPPENED.
I got to thinkin' of her—both her parents
dead and gone—
And all her sisters married off, and none but
her and John
A-livin’ all alone there in that lonesome sort
o’ way,
And him a blame old bachelor, confirmder
ev’ry day!
I’d knowed ’em all from children, and their
daddy from the time
He settled in the neighborhood, and hadn’t
ary a dime
Er dollar, when he married, fer to start
houselceepin’ on!—
So I got to thinkin’ of her—both her parents
dead and gouel
I got to thinkin’ of her, and a wundern what
she done
That all her sisters kep’ a-gettin’ married, one
by one.
And her withont no chances—and the best
girl of the pack—
An old maid with her hands, you might say,,
tied behind her back!
And mother, too, afore she died, she ust to
jes’ take on,
When none of’em was left, you know, but.
Evaline and John,
And jes’ declare to goodness ’at the young
men must be bline
To not see what a wife they’d git, if they got;
Evaliue!
I got to thinkin' of her; in my great afflic¬
tion she
Was sich a comfort to us, and so kind and
neighborly—
She’d come, and leave her housework, for tor
help out little Jane,
And talk of her own mother ’at she’d never
see again—
Maybe sometimes cry together—though, for
the moat part, she
Would have the child so riconciled and happy
like, ’at we
Felt lonesomer’n ever when she’d put her
bonnet on
And say she’d railly haf to be a-gittin’ back.
to John!
I got to thinkin’ of her, as I say—and more
and more
I’d think of her dependence, and the burdens;
’at she bore—
Her parents both a-bein’ dead, and all her
sisters gone
And married off, and her a-livin’ there alone
with John—
You might say jes’ a-toilin’ and a-slavin’ out
her life
Fer a man ’at hadn’t pride enough to get.
hisse’f a wife—
’Less some one married Evaline and packed:
her off some day—
So I got to thinkin’ of her—and it happened:
thataway.
James Whitcomb Riley.
PITH ANDPOWr.
Vein expectations—prospecting ior
gold.
A foot-note—“Please use the door¬
mat.”
Marked intelligence—A ? rofessor with-,
a black eye.
That things are mixed up slightly
When Everybody * beet” konws, the
a ‘live in garden
Of a “deadbeat” grows.
—Dansville Breeze.
“All roads lead to roam,” remarked a
Budget. tramp, studying a guide board.— Boston
A law prohibiting the intemperate
hoarding of wealth might prevent money
from becoming tight.
A cradle in a house may or may not be
girl’s a boycot. It is just as likely to be a
nest.— Picayune.
Bride—“Give me a kiss, Harry?”'
will Harry—“No; that I cannot do; but I
loan you one—if you will return it.” -
— Tidbits.
The Empress of Japan is taking lessons
on the piano. The Mikado’s fifty-seven,
physicians are giving him every atten¬
tion.— New York World.
Although And he covets it through it from life's birth,
covets brief span,
Man never, never gets the earth,
It is the earth that gets the man.
—Labor Leader.
“Have you Browning?” she asked at
the village store. “No,” replied tho
clerk; but browning.”— “we have blacking Life. and whiting,
no
“Gentleness cannot be kicked into a
cow,” says an exchange. Neither can
tenderness cr there wouldn’t be so much
tough beefsteak.— Dansville Breeze.
“What does menu mean, my dear?”
“Food for me an’ you, ’tis clear.”
“What does meander mean! Who knows f*
“When me and her out walking goes.
—Mercury. A
