The Chautauquan, July 1885

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. V. JULY, 1885. No. 10.

OFFICERS OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor, J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors, The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

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SOME DAMASCENE PICTURES.

BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D.D.

One is forcibly struck with the Damascene bazars. They thread the old city in all directions. Some of them are new, and some very old. The most of them are covered ways, where either side is divided into small booths, or shops. The bazar has its specialty—the brass bazar, the silversmith bazar, the goldsmith bazar, the shoe bazar, the silk bazar, and all the rest. Then there is another order of division, such as the Greek bazar and the Frank bazar. There is sometimes, however, a breaking up of all orders, for goods of very varied character you can sometimes get in the same bazar. The oldest of these quaint marts date back many centuries, and are mere holes, or rickety houses, where buying and selling have been going on for many a generation. The venders love these old places. I imagine their fathers, and even remote ancestors sat in the same spot, and did business in much the same way, and chaffed about the prices in quite as much hyperbole, four or five centuries ago, as their children do to-day, when a Frank drops into the busy way, and halts, and asks a question concerning the beautiful wares.

The love is for the old. No Damascene wants to change to the new. The smooth floor and familiar shelves of his booth he could not give up to another for many a bright bishlik.

Not long since the Pasha of Damascus, who had been long making vain efforts to get the shop-keepers of a stretch of the bazar in the “street that is called straight,” to pull down their booths and put up new ones, had to give up the task as hopeless. Finally he ordered that, at a given signal, one night, the bazar should be set fire to in a number of places. His officers did their duty well. They knew what they were about. The result was that long reaches of this one bazar were burned to the ground. The wares went up in smoke with the tinder which enclosed them.

“What could the people do?” I asked my informant.

“Do? Why, nothing at all.”

“Were they insured? Did they get any compensation back again for the destruction of their property?”

“Not in the least. The Pasha had the power. No questions were asked. The consequence is, that, as you see, new bazars are building in various places. Soon they will be occupied by gay, oriental wares, and things will go on quite the same as before. Only there will be more light and fresher air.”

Among the specialties sold in the Damascene bazars we may mention silk goods, first of all. They are combined with cotton, and woven into various patterns for dress and furniture. They defy all competition the world over. The patterns are exquisite. No wonder this artistic weaving has given the city’s name, or damask, to such fabrics for all time. Curtains and all manner of stuffs are woven, and are here displayed in such combinations as to bewilder any but Orientals. I saw, during my stay, the places where these fine silks are woven. There are no great shops, no few places where they come from. They are produced in small houses, in obscure and ill-odorous streets, and by thousands of hands, young and old. It is the toil of the poor, the young, and the infirm, in sunless cellars and obscure corners which brings out these sunny silks and beautiful designs. Queens send here from afar to buy them. There, in the hotel, I saw the Crown Prince of Austria and his fair-haired Belgian bride. Before twenty-four hours will have passed they will be buying these silks of Damascus, and in less than six months Stephanie will be wearing them at a court dinner. When she becomes Empress she will be having more of them, and her favorite rooms will likely be hung with the rich stuffs sent direct from these busy bazars, but coming first from dingy homes and little rickety looms.

Yes, one learns an easy lesson here, in these oriental countries, of the contrast between the hand that weaves and the body that wears the stuffs that adorn the world’s gayest places. In Agra, behind the barred gate, I saw the chained prisoners of the jail weaving most patiently one rich India carpet for the ex-Empress Eugenie, and another, of different figure, but even more rich, for Queen Victoria. It takes about six months for the workers to finish their work. As they weave, one hears the clank of the chains about their feet. But, in the later years, when those great carpets will still delight the eye, few will ever think of the places where the fine wool from Cashmere was woven into such pleasing shapes.

DAMASCENE TRADITIONS.

There is nothing in the way of safe tradition in Damascus. They will show you—yes, what will they not show you? I let them tell me everything, and have given no interdict to our dragoman. He is to tell me all the wildest traditions he pleases, and take me to every sacred spot, and I am to listen. No wonder he has brought me to the house of Ananias, the good friend of the blind Saul, before he became the far-seeing apostle to the Gentiles. We had to leave our carriage and go through several narrow and dirty streets, and got thoroughly wearied by the walk, and then had to wait for a key, and be surrounded by begging children, and be pounded between donkeys with heavily-burdened panniers, and be led down a damp stairway into the darkness, to find the way to the house of Ananias.

There is no harm in asking questions. So, to the question as to how they know this is where he lived, the answer came:

“Until lately, nobody knew where Ananias lived. But some years ago a learned man from the west came here and told us this was the place, and so it must be true.”

Now, I take this comfort: Ananias lived somewhere in Damascus, and there is as much probability that he lived here as anywhere else. That is enough for me. Why should we disturb things of such little moment?

But there is not much room for doubting the neighborhood of the place where Paul entered the city. It was the gate nearest the southern side of the city. The old Roman road northward terminated at the gate. It is probable that no change has taken place in the road, and that it follows just the general line, and even the curves, that it did in the remote period. On this southern side of Damascus there has been but little change in the wall from Paul’s day to ours. You can see at a glance that all the lower part of the wall is of Roman work. The blocks are large, clear cut, and brought into closest brotherhood without a grain of mortar. The joining is still perfect. It was the wall of Paul’s time, and only the upper part has been torn down and rebuilt. It is as easy to see the difference between Roman and Turkish workmanship as to trace the line between a Moslem mosque and the Theseum in Athens.

They will show you, in Damascus, the very place where Paul was let down from the wall in a basket. Let them enjoy their definite locality! But I did get, very near the alleged spot, an idea which I had never had before—that there was a mode of building which favored the letting down of any one from the top of the wall. One can see, in several places on this same southern side of Damascus, that people live in houses adjusted on the top of the wall itself. I saw one of these diminutive houses which projected over the wall so far that one might well wonder why it did not fall down to the earth. What more natural thing than that Paul was let down from just such a place. There was not a gate in the wall near by, and nothing was more natural and easy than to aid his escape in this way.

I lingered some time about the Roman gateway. It is an enchanting spot. The great blocks of stone, the pillars, the archway, the smooth stones, over which you walk to reach it, the general curve of the wall, tell of the Roman times, and bring you face to face with the little church in Damascus which was soon to set the whole eastern and western world ablaze by its leading of Paul to the light. Along all the ways, out by this Roman gate, the people were twisting silk, and getting it ready for the loom. It was of hard fiber, yellow, rich, and glistening in the afternoon shimmer of the sun, as it came back from the pink sides of the Anti-Libanus mountains. There was no available spot which was not utilized by long stretches of the silk cord. It was drawn off in all directions, and we had to walk carefully to keep from stumbling against the twister’s twist.

THE CAMELS.

Not very far from the Roman gate was the great camel space. It was the point of departure for caravans to Palmyra, Mecca, and the whole eastern world. Here were hundreds of camels. They seemed to be waiting for the finishing burdens. Some were already loaded, and were pausing for the rest. I know not how long it requires for the completing of a caravan. But it seems that when some camels are loaded they are taken to the outside space, and are kept watch over until all of the others are ready. It must be no small or brief matter to get a caravan ready. Then, when the last camel is laden, and he takes his place in the caravan, and the signal is given to move on, what a commotion it makes! Friends come down to see their friends off. It is the moving off of many people, and of vast treasures of merchandise. Merchants and travelers, and many others who wish to go to the distant places across the desert, for any purpose whatever, go with the caravan. It is the safest way, for the train is guarded, and has, I imagine, the protection of the government. There is something singularly poetical, as well as practical, in the moving of the caravan. It is a thing which does not occur every day. Much commercial gain depends upon its safe conduct and arrival. The camels must be of just the right kind to endure the long journey and the great fatigue. The gait is slow and dull. There is the dreariest monotony. Yet this is the way these people have been traveling and doing business, and keeping up the connections for all these long ages. As things now seem, it would appear to be ages still before the railway, or even the wagon, will take the place of the much-enduring camel, the ship of the desert.

BUCKLE’S GRAVE.

Close beside the space allotted for the camels which make the long caravans for Damascus, I came across the little English cemetery. It is a quiet spot, surrounded by a high wall. The gate was locked, and there was no way of getting within it. I could not tell where the key was to be found; wherever it was, it was a long distance off, in the heart of the city. So, by the aid of our dragoman, I succeeded in climbing to the top of the wall, and seeing the one grave in which I was most interested—that of Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the “History of Civilization.” Buckle had wearied himself out with literary work. His methods were not the most wise nor expeditious. He was an indefatigable gleaner of facts, and a patient gatherer of notes from all quarters, and he piled up his note-books in great heterogeneous masses. He seems to have had but little help, and not to have husbanded his strength. So, like many men who begin to rest when it is all too late, he went off on distant travel. He reached Damascus. His mind must have kindled afresh as he saw this city of weavers and strange oriental combinations, and the thought of the long and hoary history of the place. But he was too weary to think longer. He lay down to die, and here he rests, under the shadow of the thick and high walls of a little graveyard, where only seldom an Anglo-Saxon comes to visit the sacred place. The accumulation of years is beginning to tell upon the inscription. But it is still very legible, and gives the record of his brief and toiling life.

There is something singularly touching in this little graveyard. There are only a few graves, yet among them, besides Buckle’s, are several English noblemen and titled ladies. The inscriptions repeat the story of love and tears, as everywhere else. None who come here expect to die. But the difficulties of removal are great. There are great and long settled superstitions against the transportation of the dead in all these eastern countries. The best way is to let our friends lie where they fall, and to care for the perpetual beauty of their resting place. The little graveyards of the Anglo-Saxons in all the eastern cemeteries make a strange appeal to the sympathies. I have seen many of them, and always they teach a new lesson of the suddenness of death, of the pilgrimage which we call life, and of the burning love of those who remain behind, and who write their words of tenderest affection upon stone in far-off lands.

THE GREAT MOSQUE.

There are few mosques which have a more interesting history than the great one of Damascus. Of all those in existence, save only that of Mecca, the greatest interest probably clusters about this one. It is not as splendid as that of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, and yet it has some elements of touching story that not even that one possesses. It stands upon the foundation of a Greek temple. In the early Christian ages it required only an imperial order to convert a temple into a church. So, when the Emperor Arcadius, toward the close of the fourth century, wished to convert this temple into a church, all he needed to do was to declare his will, and hurl out the pagan priesthood, and make a few minor changes, and the deed was done. It became a splendid church, whose fame went out into all lands. Thus it remained until the rise of the Mohammedan faith. When Damascus was conquered, so arduous was the strife that the leader of the Christians met the leader of the Moslems near the spot where the church stood, and, by agreement, part of the church was given up to the Mohammedans, and part still reserved by the Christians. But Christian and Moslem had the same doorway. This state of things could not last a great while. The Caliph Omar I. asked the Christians to sell their right to a part of the church. They refused, and then he took it from them. But he was fair enough to given them perpetual right to other churches in the city and its environs. He then set to work to beautify and make still more splendid this ancient building. He is said to have brought from Constantinople 1,200 skilled artists, and to have searched over all Syria for the most splendid pillars and architectural adornments, with which to beautify and enlarge the building. Precious stones were used for mosaic, vines of solid gold were made to run over the archways, the wooden ceiling was overlaid with a plating of gold, and from its glittering height there hung six hundred gold lamps.

The wars and time have told strangely upon this rich, historical building. The lamps are gone, no doubt to serve the purposes of warfare. The plating on the ceiling has disappeared, probably for the same reason. Much of the splendor has departed. But there are still the magnificent columns, with mutilated capitals and defaced bases, which once belonged to the Greek pagans of Syria, and in their long life, have witnessed the worship of Baal, Jupiter, Mohammed, and the one true Savior.

The present reminders of the time when this vast building of four hundred and twenty-nine feet in length and one hundred and twenty-five feet wide, was new, are numerous and very prominent. Everywhere, at every step you take, you see the old peering out boldly through the new and the late. Here is a patch of rich and deep-stoned mosaic, which has escaped a thousand destructive forces, and still stands as a witness to the time of remote Christianity, when Mohammed was not yet born. The stained windows, with glass so somber and subdued that one can hardly see even this blazing Syrian sun’s rays through it, are few in number, but they must have been made by Christian hands, in the far gone and fading Byzantine times. Even the Roman peers through the Christian, and one sees strong evidences of the times when the star had not yet stood over the manger at Bethlehem, and when the Greek paganism ruled from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. Here is an archway with only one stone missing, which is as perfect a bit of Greek architecture as Athens can furnish to-day.

One of the most singular features of this building is this—the respect which the Mohammedan shows here for Christianity. I have seen nothing equal to it elsewhere. There is here, belonging to the Greek mosque, the Madinet ’Isa, or “Minaret of Jesus,” and the Mohammedans have a belief that when the Christ comes he will appear on this minaret. Bloody as has been the history of Damascus, and violent as has often been the treatment of the Christians by the natives, the Mohammedans have been compelled to respect the Christians, and to remember the relation of this wonderful city to early Christianity.

Let me give another illustration of how the old still looks through the new. To the dragoman I said, when he seemed to have shown us everything:

“Where is that Christian inscription?”

“Oh,” he replied, “nobody goes there much now. It is dangerous to get to it. You have to leap across a bazar, from one house-top to another. It is very dangerous.”

There were two ladies in our little party, and they were not at all frightened by the outlook. It was simply a dragoman’s excuse to save himself a little trouble. We all agreed that Franz must show us the inscription. We went out of the mosque, down the street, then into the silver bazar, then up a rickety stairway, and finally out over the flat roofs of various buildings back to the outer wall of the mosque. We were at the limit, and either had to leap over a deep span, the width of a narrow street, or put a wide board across it. A couple of piasters soon provided the board from a man who was just waiting to serve us, and in one minute more we were reading, along the architrave of one side of the old mosque, these words from David, in early Greek:

“Thy kingdom [O, Christ] is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”

This inscription has stood here through all the years since they were put there first by the Christians of the fourth century, after they had changed the temple into the church. The letters are as clear as the sun in the heavens.

It is, perhaps, the only illustration where Mohammedanism has permitted a Christian inscription to stand. It is not likely to be removed in the future, but will come into use when all the mosques are again made into Christian temples.

It is not an easy climb to the top of one of these lofty minarets. But we resolved to do it. The picture never fades from the mind. Toward the west we could see, as though within arm’s length, Ubel Sheikh, or Mount Hermon, with its great folds of snow, that make his perpetual turban of spotless white. Out from the sides of the Anti-Libanus burst the Abana and Pharpar, which go singing down to the desert, and produce the damascenes of all the countries. Yonder is the Christian quarter, there the Jewish, and in another direction the Mohammedan. Far off to the northeast lies Palmyra. But we can not see it. It is a four days’ camel journey distant. The illimitable desert stretches east and south and north, and these two “better rivers” of Damascus lose themselves in those two little lakes, whose silver surface just glistens a little in this perfect sun. Fruit trees are everywhere in bloom. The almond, the plum—the damson takes its name from Damascus—and the apricot, are everywhere in full blaze, and make the city one vast nosegay. The murmur of fountains rises from a thousand courts, while the streets are alive with the streams which have been vexed and teased away by many a device from these living rivers. You get weary with the view.

We now descend. How shall we see the way down the dingy steps? By the same lamp which had guided us up. Yes, it is a veritable coal-oil lantern. Think of it—the mixing up of the centuries! My Anglo-Saxon feet have been guided to the topmost point of one of the world’s oldest buildings here in grand and hoary Damascus, by the aid of a kerosene lantern, every drop of whose petroleum has come from Oil City or its neighborhood.

Damascus, March 8, 1885.

I do not pretend that books are everything.… Some day I may say some very hard things about people who keep their books so close before their eyes that they can not see God’s world, nor their fellow men and women. But books rightly used are society.—E. E. Hale, in “How to Do It.”

THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS.

BY CLARENCE COOK.

SECOND PAPER.

Before proceeding to describe the contents of the second floor of the Museum, I must say a few words about the School of Drawing and Painting which, for the present, has its home in the building.

Although it is generally thought by those who hear of this school, and always in connection with the Museum, that it is a department of the institution, yet in fact it is only partially under the control of the trustees.

It will be remembered that the Museum was not made all at once, and out of whole cloth, so to speak, but was formed by bringing together certain collections already existing—the Athenæum casts and pictures, and the Gray collection of engravings, for instance, and by offering hospitality to certain projects connected with the study of the arts, which were in the air, but which could not take shape without some such help as an institution could give.

As my readers know, the Museum became a fact in 1876, but two years earlier, in 1874, there had been earnest talk about a school of drawing and painting, and though nothing was actually done, yet the ground was prepared by much discussion for establishing such a school on right principles of theory and practice when the time should come for doing something. The Museum once established, the trustees conferred with those of their fellow-citizens who had been urging the foundation of a school; the trustees offered rooms in the new building, the others raised the necessary funds to equip the school, and on Tuesday, January 2, 1877, the school was opened.

The school is under the control of a permanent committee, consisting of four painters, three architects, the three principal officers of the Museum, and two other gentlemen. The rooms occupied by the school are in the basement of the building; they are well lighted, warmed, and ventilated, and are furnished with all the necessary means and appliances for instruction, while the pupils have, in addition to the excellent teaching provided for them in the school itself, the advantage of free access to the permanent collections of the Museum, as well as to the special exhibitions that, from time to time, take place in the building. The school holds a high rank among similar institutions in the country; it is under the able and high minded management of Mr. Frederic Crowninshield, and it is sincerely to be hoped that before long it may find itself in quarters more ample, and better suited to the dignity of so important a factor in the culture of the community. At the same time the hope may be expressed, that the school and the Museum may never part company, but that their relations, on the contrary, may grow closer and stronger, and that in time the school may become an active part of the foundation, and be put under the complete control of the trustees. There could not be a better place for students than an institution like this, where daily seeing the finest forms of antique art, and constantly increasing opportunities for acquaintance with good modern work, illustrate and strengthen the lessons learned in the school itself.

Immediately in front of the visitor as he enters the Museum rises the ample staircase that leads to the upper rooms. The stairs mount in a broad flight in the middle of the hall, to the first landing, where they divide, and returning on themselves finish the ascent in two flights, one at the right hand and the other at the left. On this first landing was at one time placed a handsome original example of the carved settles or benches of the Italian Renaissance, but this has now been replaced by a cast of the reclining female figure called Cleopatra, but to which the name of Ariadne is now more commonly given. The original marble is in the Vatican. This cast is one of those purchased with the bequest of the late Charles Sumner. On the walls of the staircase and of the upper hall several pictures are hung, among them a few that have, at least for Americans, a historic interest. Here are the “Belshazzar’s Feast” of Washington Allston, a picture at one time much talked and written about, and which played an important part in the artist’s life; the “St. Peter delivered from Prison,” by the same painter; the “King Lear” of Benjamin West, and the “Sortie from Gibraltar” of Jonathan Trumbull. Of course these pictures are only placed here for a time, until the Museum building shall be enlarged, for when all deductions have been made on the score of artistic merit that sound criticism can demand, they will still remain as monuments in our development, and as such deserve to be hung where they can be better seen.

Lack of room crowds into the hall of this second story a number of small works, such as the collection of water-color copies from the pictures of Dutch and Italian masters made for the late Mr. Douse, and by him bequeathed to the Athenæum. They are of little value except as memoranda, and might as well be removed from their frames, mounted, and consigned to the custody of portfolios in the print-room.

Of far more value are the drawings in chalk, in pencil, and in pastel by the late J. F. Millet, belonging to Mr. Martin Brimmer; they were among the first things loaned to the Museum, and they still remain among the most valuable for delight and for instruction. At the same end of the hall, and so placed that the light from the large window is most advantageous to it, is placed a cast of the second of the Gates, made by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistery in Florence.

At the left hand, as we leave the stairs, is the entrance to the extensive loan-collections which fill all but one of the rooms on this side of the building. Although they are directly over the rooms on the first floor, the space they occupy is not so subdivided; we have only four rooms above the five below. The apartment we first enter is a large one, fifty-five feet long by thirty-two wide, and was formerly given up to the pictures which have since been transferred to the answering room on the opposite side of the building. The room opening out of this, at the western end, and of nearly the same size, is devoted to the same object, but it would be impossible within our narrow limits to give an adequate notion of their contents, particularly since, owing to want of space, no scientific arrangement is possible, and the dazed spectator moves about among objects of great value and interest, brought from every clime and belonging to every age, but deprived of much of their value because the key which order gives, is wanting.

The department of textiles, embroideries and laces is full, and of great value, and includes some Italian stuffs and embroideries purchased by the Museum under the direction of the late Alessandro Castellani. There are some fine Flemish tapestries which came from the Château de Neuilly, and a few other pieces of value, but the Museum is richest in that part of the loan collection which belongs to Japan. Dr. W. S. Bigelow has loaned to the Museum his magnificent collection of objects from that country, and it may be said of it that in the field of embroideries, lacquers, swords, sword-mounts, bronzes, ivories, and ceramics, it exhausts the subject. It is now greatly to be desired that some one should undertake the collection of the works of the Japanese artists in painting—a field of great importance, and strangely neglected.

The Museum is rich in specimens of pottery and porcelain of Oriental and European manufacture. In the latter field it is richer than the Metropolitan Museum of New York, but the Avery collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the New York Museum is finer in quality and more complete in its representative character than anything the Boston Museum has. It is also far more attractively displayed. The collection of Captain Brinckley, of Japan, of eight hundred and forty-two pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, loaned to the Boston Museum since 1884 is, however, an acquisition of great value and artistic interest, and although not particularly well displayed is instructively arranged and classified.

In the large western room there is a considerable number of small objects of the period of the Italian Renaissance, some bronzes belonging to the Athenæum, and some medals loaned by Mr. Charles C. Perkins; there is also a considerable number of reproductions of Italian medals, made by Elkington, of London, which serve a useful purpose in the absence of original specimens. There are also, in this room, several good pieces of Italian majolica; two specimens of the Della Robbia ware—one attributed to Luca, the other to Andrea, both loaned by Mr. Perkins. The collection is not rich in glass, either antique or modern. There are a few pieces of old Venetian glass, but they are neither very interesting nor very valuable.

On the south side of this division of the Museum are two rooms, one of which is occupied with a miscellaneous collection of objects in carved wood and ivory, Italian marriage chests, cabinets, tables, etc., etc., with some Japanese objects, chiefly swords, while the other is fitted up with carved oak of the sixteenth century, the lining of a room in some English house, with additions from other quarters. This is an extremely interesting apartment, and, besides the wood-carving, contains six portraits painted on panel, and forming a part of the original decoration of the room; among them heads of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth. There are several pieces of antique furniture in this room, and in the center a glass case containing some good illuminated manuscripts. The mantelpiece, in the style of the period, is a modern reproduction.

Returning to the stair-case hall, and crossing to the eastern side of the building, we find ourselves in the picture-galleries. The shape and disposition of these rooms are similar to those in the opposite wing, but owing to the greater height of the sculpture-gallery on the ground floor at the eastern end, the space above it, divided into two rooms, is several feet higher than the rest of the wing. The great height of the upper story permits this division be to made without injury to the effect.

The pictures belonging to the Museum are not without interest, although their value is not very great, if reckoned in money. The early American pictures include portraits by Copley, Stuart, Allston, and West, but with the exception of the well-known portraits of Washington and Mrs. Washington, by Stuart, there is nothing here of particular interest, although there are often pictures loaned to the Museum by old residents of Boston, which are historically valuable. It is much to be desired that the collection of portraits by Copley in the Museum of Harvard College could be deposited in the Museum. There ought to be in this institution as complete a representation of the early art of the country as can be procured, and it would be comparatively easy to accomplish this at the present time. It must not be inferred that the authorities of the Museum have neglected this portion of their mission. On the contrary, they have rendered important service in this direction, and the special exhibitions have been of interest, and of great importance. Beside miscellaneous loan collections, there have been exhibitions of the works of Allston, of William M. Hunt, and of George Fuller, and every year the visitor finds representative pictures by artists of repute at home and abroad, which excite interest, discussion, criticism, and keep the flame of art and the love of art burning, even if—and this by no fault of the institution—comparatively few avail themselves of the light. The French school of painters which had its seat near the Forest of Fontainebleau, and which is associated with the names of Millet, Corot, Rousseau, and Diaz, is better represented here than any other of the modern schools, although Courbet and Couture are both seen in good examples, Courbet especially, of whom there is a fine picture, “La Curée”—the huntsman winding his horn to call the chase together to cut up the stag. The Couture is the Heads of Two Soldiers seen in profile, and though of no importance as subject, is a good example of his method.

The school of Fontainebleau, or more properly speaking, of Barbizon, is represented by the large “Dante and Virgil,” a companion in size to the “Orpheus” of the Cottier collection in New York, but by no means so fine a work. There is no important work by Millet at present, although there have been here some good examples from time to time, and especially his “Sower,” the fine replica of that picture belonging to Mr. Quincy A. Shaw, with other smaller subjects, particularly a Sheep-shearing, a picture in which all that is best in Millet was to be seen.

The picture gallery at the Museum is such a movable feast that it would be useless to attempt a catalogue of its contents. Just now the “Automedon taming the Horses of Achilles,” by Baptiste Regnault, the “Joan of Arc,” by Bastien Lepage, and “The Walk by the River Side,” by Henri Lerolle, are among the most noticeable of the contents of the large room, although there are a number of smaller pictures that are well worth looking at. There is an effort making to purchase the picture by Regnault, and the Lerolle was presented to the Museum in 1884 by Mr. Francis C. Foster.

The remaining rooms in this portion of the building are a small one in which some fine old Dutch paintings are exhibited, and those which contain the Gray collection of engravings. The Dutch pictures, it is hoped, will one day belong to the Museum; they will form a valuable addition to its collection.

The Gray collection fills the room which runs along the southern side of this wing answering to the large picture gallery which is parallel with it on the north. This collection, formed for the late Francis C. Gray by M. Thies, a German connoisseur, is one of the two or three important collections of prints that are owned in America, and in some departments is excelled by none, while the fact that there is a fund derived from moneys left by Mr. Gray, which is devoted to the maintenance and increase of the collection, gives it the advantage over all others here, and ensures its one day becoming of national importance. It is already very rich in Rembrandts and Dürers, but the aim of those who have it in charge is to make it representative in its character, not of any one school in particular but of all the schools and styles of engraving which have existed. The collection is under the intelligent care of Mr. Edward H. Greenleaf, who makes the contents of the portfolios useful to the public by a series of exhibitions of the finest specimens of the various schools, accompanied with titles, notes, and instructive memoranda, so that in default of proper space for doing full justice to the collection in any permanent way, the course of the year brings before the eyes of students and visitors a considerable number of the prints, and thus makes no slight contribution to general enlightenment on the subject.

The next paper in this series will take up the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

SANITARY CONDITION OF SUMMER RESORTS.

BY THE HON. B. G. NORTHROP, LL.D.

The progress of modern civilization is marked by increasing attention to the sanitary condition of cities, towns and homes. Barbaric races are comparatively puny and short lived. Very old men are seldom found among savages, and the rate of mortality bears some proportion to the degree of barbarism, while early deaths everywhere diminish as the art and science of sanitation advance. The increase of knowledge and the influence of Christianity have greatly lengthened human life. Science is constantly showing how many diseases and deaths are preventable. These facts are abundantly established by statistics in all the most educated nations, and, more recently, by the careful investigations of life insurance companies and public boards of health. There has been a far greater advance in sanitary science during the last fifty years than in any previous century. But the popular appreciation of this science, though steadily advancing, has not kept pace with its discoveries. The pressing demand now is the diffusion of the art of sanitation—the practical application of its methods by the people at large. The public press, the daily, weekly and monthly journals are doing much in this direction. Some of the most widely circulated religious journals have a column regularly devoted to this subject. Our schools are helping on this good work, and here the art of promoting health and prolonging life should be learned and then applied in the family. Such principles, though they seem truisms to the scientist, should be taught to our youth, who should early memorize mottoes like the following: “Health is the prime essential to success.” “The first wealth is health.” “The health of the people is the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their power depend.” “The material precedes and conditions the intellectual.” The school may do more to popularize sanitary science than any other one agency. When this work is once done here, it will not long be true that a large proportion of our people are still living in ignorance and violation of so many of the essential laws of health. The popular neglect of such laws should not be overlooked in our gratification at their discovery.

Our wisest sanitarians affirm that more than one fourth of the diseases which still afflict modern life are preventable. Great prominence has recently been given to this subject in England and other European countries. Dr. Simon, chief medical officer of the English Privy Council, says that “the deaths which we in each year register in this country (now about five hundred thousand) are fully a hundred and twenty-five thousand more numerous than they would be, if existing knowledge of the chief causes of disease, as affecting masses of population, were reasonably well applied throughout England.” With our larger population, probably a still larger number of lives in America might be prolonged by the more general observance of the laws of health. If 125,000 needless deaths occur annually, that implies 3,500,000 needless sicknesses, there being on an average twenty-eight cases of sickness to every death. Saying nothing of the hopes thus blasted and the hearts and homes desolated, the mere money value of the lives thus prematurely ended every year would amount to many millions of dollars, often involving the abandonment of lucrative enterprises, and inducing poverty if not pauperism. In this lowest view, it costs to be sick and it costs to die.

Modern civilization relates specially to the homes and social life of the people, to their health, comfort and thrift, their intellectual and moral advancement. In earlier times and other lands men were counted in the aggregate and valued as they helped to swell the revenues or retinues of kings and nobles. The government was the unit, and each individual only added one to the roll of serfs or soldiers. With us the individual is the unit, and the government is for the people, as well as by the people. This interest in the people has been manifested in new laws for protecting their health, and by the general organization of State and local Boards of Health.

Their investigations have embraced not only the needs of cities, towns and individual homes, but have revealed startling facts as to the unsanitary condition, and consequently the peril, of certain summer resorts. Cases of loss of life from the burning of hotels have led to the enactment of laws requiring fire escapes. On account of disasters by the explosion of steam boilers, all steamboats are required to get a “bill of safety” from an official expert examiner. But the violations of sanitary laws in boarding houses, hotels and summer resorts have produced annually far more sickness and death than have such fires and explosions. The circumstantial horrors connected with these sudden and terrible disasters produce a deep and lasting impression, and prompt to stringent, preventive laws, while the deaths from bad sanitary conditions, though more numerous, are so isolated as to attract little notice. The patronage of summer resorts is already so large, and is so rapidly increasing from year to year, as to multiply their number and increase their attractions. This summer migration from city to country is more than a fashion, and is favored by such substantial reasons as to insure its permanence and growth. Even city clerks have their fortnight’s vacation for rest and refreshment by the seaside or among the hills and mountains. There is a greater exodus of teachers and members of all professions during their longer vacations—still more, families, and especially those having young children, seek this escape from the heat, dust, and miasmatic exhalations of the crowded city. Though their children may have attended the kindergarten in the city, they find the best sort of kindergarten in the open fields and varied objects of the country, with its wider range for rambles and those freer sports that are so attractive to every wide-awake boy, such as boating, fishing, hunting, watching turtles, gathering bugs and butterflies, roaming in the woods, taking long excursions on the lakes or rivers, climbing steep hills and rocky cliffs, loving flowers, observing the properties of plants and trees, and the names, habits, retreats and voices of the birds. Living much in the open air, nature becomes the great educator, and for the summer at least, the country proffers superior advantages for the physical, mental and moral training of youth. The boy, for example, who observes the birds so as to distinguish them by their beak, claws, form, plumage, song or flight has gained an invaluable habit of accurate observation never acquired while cooped up in a city.

The apprehension of cholera during the present summer is likely to increase the patronage of rural resorts. The condition of some dense centers of population invites this pest. Its most terrible ravages last summer in Naples, Marseilles and Toulouse occurred in the squalid dens so long the reproach of those cities. Our summer retreats should all be health resorts in fact as well as in name. Yet many of them—little villages in winter, with a population of a few scores or hundreds—are too often ill-prepared to be suddenly expanded into cities with a population of many thousands, during the hottest and most trying months of the year. Several State Boards of Health, within a few years, have examined many watering-places and have been reluctantly compelled to make startling statements as to their unsanitary conditions.

In some cases these unwholesome and unwelcome discoveries, though a surprise and regret to the owners, were accepted as facts, and the needful remedies promptly applied. In other instances, such disagreeable revelations awakened resentment and were treated as absurd alarms or slanderous attacks, and ignorance and prejudice held their ground undisturbed.

In regard to one famous resort the State Board of Health of Massachusetts said six years ago: “The unsanitary grounds invite a pestilence. They violate the plainest teachings of hygienic common sense. There is no adequate provision for the removal of refuse, and the wells and privies are everywhere in close proximity, and some of the latter are immense and offensive affairs, emptied only once a year, in the absence of the summer boarders. At a large boarding house the sink drain empties on the ground within three feet of the well, and at another, the well is within a foot of an open trough sink drain, so filled and obstructed that the water sets back, and a filthy puddle surrounds the well.” These were mostly driven wells, reaching water from eight to twenty feet below the surface. The theory was, that the foulest water would be fully filtered by the soil above and around a driven well. The peddlers of this patent, with their boastful advertisements, are in a measure responsible for this mischievous error, which I have met in many states. I found a large hotel beyond the Missouri River, where, instead of even a cess-pool, the kitchen drainage gathered in a surface pool close to the well. At a bakery in another resort the sink drain and cess-pool are but twelve feet from the well. Twenty-four privies and thirteen cess-pools are within a radius of 140 feet of a well used by many families. When the water from forty wells was analyzed, the chemical examination proved that sixteen of them were bad and unsafe. The official State report for 1879 contains many pages of similar details. In fifteen days after the State Board of Health called attention to the results of this investigation, the citizens held a town meeting, at which it was unanimously voted that the Board of Health of this town should adopt all proper methods to perfect and enforce stringent sanitary regulations, and promising them their most cordial support in all reasonable efforts they may make in the furtherance of this end. The Board of Health of another well-known resort, after a careful examination of the sanitary condition of Oak Bluffs and Martha’s Vineyard Camp-grounds, frankly said that “unless proper remedial measures were carried out, the abandonment of the place, as a residence for health, is but a question of time.” The State Board subsequently commended this local board for adopting wise sanitary regulations and carrying them out with such energy that the high reputation of the place as a health resort might be preserved.

The same report says: “It must not be taken for granted that this condition of things is confined to one place. Visits to various seaside resorts of a similar character on both north and south shores show little change for the better. Many individual cases are worse.”

The official inspection of many such summer resorts revealed sickening details connected with the large hotels and boarding houses. One hundred and fifty summer houses examined were, almost without exception, objectionable, on the score of danger to health, due in part to foul air, but more to contaminated well water. There is always a risk in the use of such water, and the only safe rule is to make privies and cess-pools absolutely tight, and frequently empty and disinfect them, so that they can not poison the water supply. Nearly every State health report abounds in instances of the outbreak of typhoid fever due to bad well water, and one affirms that the majority of wells in the rural districts of that state are tainted.

As is my custom, in order to adapt my lectures on “Village Improvements” to local needs, I made a cursory inspection of the streets and private grounds in the town of ⸺, which revealed a prolific source of peril to its citizens. Though I had heard nothing of the actual experience of the place, I spoke in strong terms of the danger of an early outbreak of typhoid fever and diphtheria, from the proximity of vaults and wells. After the lecture I was informed that such a dire visitation had already desolated many homes, but it was regarded as “a mysterious visitation of Providence,” and nothing was done to abate the obvious cause of the pestilence. I find it exceedingly difficult to convince men of any danger from their water supply. They are apt to resent a disparagement of their wells as they would of their children, and yet I seldom inspect a town where there is not found urgent need of the warning, “Look carefully to your wells.” Gross sanitary defects are often found even around the homes of isolated farmers, with every natural advantage for drainage and healthfulness. Hence I advise that securing “better sanitary conditions in our homes and surroundings” be made prominent among the various objects of the “Village Improvement Associations” organized in many states, and now numbering nearly three hundred.

The unsanitary condition of Memphis invited the terrible scourge of yellow fever in 1878. The occurrence of four thousand deaths in one season compelled attention to the cause and remedy. If Memphis was then the filthiest and sickliest city of the South, it now claims to be the healthiest. The case demanded and received “heroic treatment.” Over forty-two miles of sewers have been built, on the most approved plan, with one hundred and ninety automatic flushing tanks, each discharging one hundred and twelve gallons of water twice a day. While collecting facts for a lecture there on “The Needs of Memphis,” I inspected the city, and especially the “man-holes,” in company with the city engineer, who had supervised their construction, and found in none of them any offensive odor. These improvements were costly, but the recent rapid growth of this city in population and wealth proves that these liberal expenditures were wise investments. The “death-pool” of 1878 now justly aspires to be a health resort. An excellent sewer system, with automatic flushing tanks, is now in use in Denver, Colorado. I made a similar examination of the man-holes there last October, with similar results, and received the testimony of a prominent physician, to the marked diminution of zymotic diseases since the completion of the new sewers.

Cumulative evidence on the danger of using tainted water might be given to an indefinite extent, like the following: Thirty-one out of one hundred inmates of a convent in Munich, affected with typhoid fever; the outbreak of typhoid fever in Princeton, New Jersey, two years ago; the fearful epidemic at Waupun, Wisconsin, in April last, and the terrible pestilence now desolating Plymouth, Pa. are all attributed to infected water. In Plymouth nearly one hundred persons have already died, and over one thousand have been prostrated—in the opinion of the physicians, poisoned by water pollution. Such facts should everywhere prompt to sanitary precautions, and enforce the motto, “Eternal vigilance is the price of public health.”

In a popular summer resort of Massachusetts there occurred eighty cases of typhoid fever during 1881, out of a population of only 1,500. The citizens were alarmed, and prompt and thorough investigation discovered and removed the cause. The mischief had been done mainly by tainted water. The remedies suggested by the board of health—clearing of premises, securing of better drainage and plumbing, removing of all decomposing matter, abolishing all cess-pools and leaching vaults, draining marshes and pumping out and cleansing all wells and cisterns that afforded chemical evidence of being tainted—were energetically applied. The owners of these beautiful cottages and villas spared no effort or expense to restore this attractive resort to its former salubrity. If any community of its size was ever more earnest, prompt and united in such a work of restoration, I should be glad to learn its name. In the face of peculiar difficulties on this rocky peninsula, nearly five miles of sewers were constructed. Hundreds of chemical analyses of the drinking water were made. Of the wells and cisterns so examined, nearly sixty per cent. contained water unfit for drinking or cooking. As a result of this renovation, the local board of health is quoted in the Massachusetts report for 1883 as saying: “These vigorous correctionary measures completely checked the epidemic, and not a single case of the fever has since appeared here that could not be traced to some other locality for its origin.”

Another seaside city, much resorted to in summer, with a regular population of over 3,000, after suffering severely from zymotic diseases, especially typhoid fever, requested the State Board of Health to investigate the cause of this excessive mortality. Nine tenths of the population here are crowded in one village of small area, having many narrow streets, with small house lots, necessitating a dangerous proximity of cess-pools, privy vaults and wells. This danger is increased by the nature of the soil, mostly sand or gravel, that facilitates rapid percolation. The climate itself is pronounced more equable and salubrious than that of any other part of the State, and therefore specially attractive to the health-seeker. The mean winter temperature is seven degrees warmer than that of Cambridge. The insular position of the town, and the sensible proximity of the Gulf Stream lend their combined influence to modify the extremes of temperature, such as exist in the inland parts of the State. The summer temperature of the water upon its shores renders sea-bathing recreative, invigorating and pleasurable, even to the delicate invalid. With such rare natural advantages for salubrity, the high death rate is traced to preventable causes. The water of eleven wells showed, on chemical analysis, a great degree of pollution. The remedial plans, prepared at the suggestion of the State Board of Health, were submitted to the action of the town meeting held February, 1884, and were favorably received. But at a subsequent meeting, this favorable action was reconsidered, and since that time no action has been taken.

The last two reports of the State Board of Health of New Jersey contain valuable accounts of the sanitary investigations of the health resorts of that state. The following statements are abbreviated from these volumes. Within thirty miles of New York City is to be found half the population of the state of New Jersey. Of this number, according to the judgment of engineers, chemists, physicians, and boards of health, not one half are supplied with water fit to drink. As our risks from impure water are even more than those from ordinary impure air, it behooves all to guard against any contamination of potable water. If there is a neglect of sanitary care, and especially of a good water supply, it is too late to adopt the policy of concealment, or to point to a death rate of from twenty-six to thirty as a justification, when so large a city as London can point to a death rate of only twenty per thousand, and many an English town of 30,000 inhabitants, to a death rate of only sixteen or eighteen. The sea coast of New Jersey, more than that of any other state, abounds in popular summer resorts. The State Board of Health has carefully inspected these resorts, notified the proprietors of existing defects, and reported them to the public when they were not remedied. Their first visits were often occasions of protest, and even of denunciation on the part of proprietors, many of whom, on sober second thought, were convinced of the truth, and corrected the evils complained of. The latest inspection says that the sanitary condition of most of these places has been greatly improved. In 1883 it is said of ⸺, where are six hotels and over one hundred cottages, “This locality shows no improvement in its care of sanitary conditions. No skilled attention is given to drainage. The water supply is mostly from driven wells, which are generally surface wells. Privy vaults are of the crudest description. Slop water is disposed of in cess-pools, often in close proximity to wells. This sanitary lawlessness has not been without its deleterious results.” The last report speaks of the same place as improving, but there are still some sanitary defects.

One popular resort shows some marked improvements. While some of the large hotels have still rows of cess-pools, they are kept in better condition than formerly. Still it has not equaled expectation in its efforts to provide a much needed system of sewerage. The hotels exhibit some of the very best and some of the very worst methods for the disposal of water-closet refuse. In one hotel enormous brick vaults had no modes of ventilation, and nothing but the shortness of the season protects the inmates. These New Jersey resorts are no worse than those in other states, and as a rule are salubrious and most desirable retreats, but the self-satisfied carelessness of some wealthy owners of hotel property has made light of these defects, and they have been tardy in their correction. Visitors in such hotels, before taking rooms, should have an expert make a sanitary inspection in their behalf.

These facts from different states clearly show that the sanitary condition of summer resorts is the question of first importance to all who frequent them, and that a rural location, naturally salubrious, has often proved a death-pool when made the home of a dense crowd in the hottest months of the year. This frequent outbreak of preventable diseases in large watering places proves the necessity of applied hygiene in such resorts, where the management often betrays gross ignorance or carelessness on this vital point.

In this respect the Assembly grounds at Chautauqua form a happy exception. Some details may suggest the changes and plans needed elsewhere. Last summer, while meeting lecture appointments there, I made a cursory inspection of the grounds around each of the four hundred and twenty-eight cottages in this “city in a forest,” including its numerous boarding houses. The village is very compact, and the cottages are sometimes too closely crowded together. But everywhere the sanitary conditions are admirable. The three essentials—pure air, pure soil, and pure water—are well assured. Special effort is made to guard these three “Ps.” No old fashioned privies are now allowed. The last two nuisances of this sort were removed while I was on the grounds. Some ten public vaults are located at convenient points, each built of stone or brick, laid in cement, and thus made water tight. Each is daily supplied with disinfectants, and emptied every other night, and then well cleansed with water. There are sixty-seven private vaults, made in like manner, water tight, and frequently emptied. The water-closet pipes emptying into them are said to be all carefully trapped. The waste is conveyed by night to farms far away from the grounds.

Every family is required to provide a barrel for garbage, kitchen slops and wash water, which is emptied daily. No soiled water may be thrown on the grounds. The daily inspection detects any violation of this rule. There are no alleys, lanes, back yards or dumping grounds where garbage can be thrown and secreted. There is no filth-saturated soil, and the atmosphere is not tainted with the gases of decay. The decaying leaves, so abundant in this forest city, are removed or burned.

Numerous wells, carefully guarded from surface drainage, and eight springs furnish pure water. Borings some thirty feet deep, near the engine house by the lake, have opened three flowing springs, the water in five-inch pipes rising seven feet above the lake. This proves to be a mineral water (pronounced by Dr. Edwards, the lecturer on chemistry, a wholesome chalybeate tonic), is forced into a large tank on the hill, and thence distributed in pipes near the surface over the grounds free to all. There was little to criticise in the sanitary condition of the grounds, and the few suggestions which I made were promptly carried out by the efficient superintendent.

WAYSIDE HOMES.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL.

No form of charitable work undertaken in this busy century holds more perplexity and uncertainty than that for women, who, whether for great or small offenses, have come under the ban of the law, and who pass from the shadow of the prison to confront a public feeling which is, in the main, so absolutely antagonistic as to leave small chance for reform, or hope of making new and better place.

It is certain that there is much justification for such feeling. There are few in whom the missionary spirit is strong enough to enable them to accept undaunted, the possibilities involved in receiving as a member of the family, a woman whose desire for reform may be outweighed a thousand times by the power of her appetites, and whose influence may bring contamination to all within its reach. Even in less dangerous cases, where youth and ignorance are the excuses for the violation of law, there is always the fear that association with older offenders has given a knowledge of evil that will work equal disaster, and thus the door is as effectually closed against the slight as against the confirmed transgressor. It is part of the popular conviction that work for women is far less productive of results than work for men, a conviction that has a certain foundation of truth. Even in the Water Street Mission of New York, in which the most apparently hopeless class was reached and held, McAuley was constantly baffled by this fact, and in time accepted it as inevitable. He did not question, more than other workers have done, why this was so, or how far the world was responsible for the state of things he bewailed, but came at last, by almost unconscious steps, to the conclusion given in a talk with the writer.

“You’ve wondered, at times, that we didn’t have more women here,” he said, a year or two before his death. “Don’t you know that you can haul in a hundred men to one woman? What it means, the good Lord only knows, but they don’t stay put. They cry an’ promise, an’ promise an’ cry, an’ you do for ’em with all your might, an’ all at once they’re off, an’ may be you never see ’em again.… When a girl’s once down, it isn’t once in five hundred times that you can pull her out. Take that very one you was so sorry for. She’s been to every meeting ’round here, an’ cried an’ begged to be helped. She’s been taken first to one ‘Home’ an’ then to another, an’ she’s run from every one back to her old life. The system’s wrong. That’s my opinion. You take a ‘Home’ where a lot are in together, an’ the devil’s let loose. They chew tobacco an’ chew snuff, an’ get drunk on the sly, an’ the old ones tell the young ones all their lives, an’ the last end is worse than the first, for they learn a lot of deviltry to add to their own. There ain’t but one way, as I can see, to save ’em. Keep ’em apart. Let Christian families that can, make up their minds to take one at a time; hedge her round; give her enough to do, an’ get her interested, an’ pray night an’ day she may be kept. That will save a good many, for it’s mostly worked where it’s been tried. But there ain’t anything in our work so discouragin’ as this very thing. What you going to do? These girls comin’ out of homes where a dozen, may be, has herded in one room, what do they know of decency or cleanliness? What can they know, I’d like to know? No, I tell you; the work’s got to begin at the beginning. Get hold of the children. Send them off. Do anything that’ll train them differently. They’re born in sin and born to sin, and the Lord only knows what’ll come if good men and women don’t wake up and take hold.”

Admitting the serious nature of the difficulties involved, it is quite certain that many of them have been born of an utterly false estimate of the relative degrees of guilt in men and women. Neither time nor space allows discussion of this point beyond the suggestion that in the present White Cross movement, and the questions that at once arise as the first necessity in any understanding of its nature or need, may be found the secret of much that has made against women. Simple justice, the last acquired and, it would seem, the hardest won of all virtues, makes chastity as binding an obligation upon man as upon woman, and gives to both, when repentant, the same pardon and the same hope for a future. Thus far, charity has ignored the woman, forcing her to bear not only the pain and sorrow of unblessed motherhood, but the sentence of perpetual banishment from the society whose laws she has defied.

It is at this stage that workers among the poor most often find her, hopeless, and in the large proportion of cases driven back to crime as her only resort. They form a great proportion of the inmates of any prison for women. Every town and village has its quota of candidates for reformatory or jail, and mourns, collectively and individually, over the terrible tendencies of this class, with small thought that prevention may be easier than cure, and that if children born to such conditions come into the world, society is bound to see that their training shall, as far as possible, neutralize the results of such inheritance. Society has no time for prevention. It proposes to pay for prisons rather than for industrial schools; to labor with full fledged criminals, rather than to crush out vice while still in embryo, and congratulates itself on the magnificent liberality of its provision for the criminal, and the remarkable success of the prison system as a whole.

Women are supposed to be merely occasional offenders, and that there are, in every state, hundreds outside of the prison who are habitual law breakers, and an equally large proportion within its walls, is a proposition received as incredible. Yet it was not till Massachusetts found herself forced to deal with eight hundred per year of such cases, that the first reformatory was organized, in 1865, and the number has increased steadily with the increase in population. County prisons, of which there were twenty-one, were, too often, simply nests for propagating vice. In a few of the larger ones great order and system prevailed. In the smaller ones there was next to none, and male and female prisoners, dirty, ragged and obscene, mingled together and interchanged lessons in new forms of vice. In all of them three classes of offenses were to be found, women convicts being sentenced usually for drunkenness, unchastity, or larceny; the relative prevalence of the three being indicated by the order in which they are given. The first class, wherever found, are most often Irish women, at, or past, the middle age. They are not criminals, though at times, in some cases, dishonest or unchaste. Often they are eager to reform, and yield to the temptation to drink as many men yield, for the momentary relief from grinding care and anxiety. Many of them become accustomed to the short sentences usually given by magistrates for this offense, and there are countless women who have had thirty, forty, and even fifty short imprisonments. A long term, or, in aggravated cases, imprisonment for life, affords the only security, the mere smell of liquor being often enough to awaken appetite and bring on a wild debauch. The three crimes can in almost every case be traced back to a neglected childhood.

“My mother died whan I was a bit of a child, an’ my father drank and beat me,” is the story of nine tenths of these cases, and will remain the story. The life of a single great tenement house, if told in full, as it has recently been done, shows how the seed is sown, and what harvest we may expect, and prison systems, however admirable, can touch but the smallest proportion of those who come within their walls. And even here, in this system, which deserves all the eulogy it receives, women have had but the most meager share of the benefit intended. It is only here and there that, spurred on by some great souled woman, wrought to white heat of indignation at the suffering and ignominy heaped upon these weak and most miserable sisters, there has grown up a better system of treatment, or a refuge in which reform has been made possible. Even to-day, in cities where reform is supposed to have perfected itself, there are Houses of Detention, at the mention of which compassionate judges shake their heads, and use any and every pretext to avoid condemning, for even a week, a young girl guilty of some first and slight offense, to their unspeakably infamous walls. Who enters there leaves hope behind, and life in any real sense, is over, once for all, for the sad soul that has learned what awaits it there.

In a little town of Massachusetts, many phases of this question have long since been answered. The work is so quietly carried forward that few save those interested in philanthropic problems have any knowledge of its nature or scope. In the belief that its story will awaken, not only interest, but stronger faith in the possibilities of reform, its outlines are given here. From its success grew the greater work which makes the title of the present article, a work which would have seemed well nigh impossible had not such demonstration first been made of its entire feasibility.

Practically, its foundation was laid in Dedham, thirty years or more ago, where a temporary asylum was afforded to women just discharged from prison, and much the same methods were adopted in the Springfield “Home for Friendless Women.” But as one of the most efficient workers wrote at the time: “The more thoughtful saw from the first that they were working only at the top of the tree, and must go to the root to accomplish real good in large measure. The necessity of making the term of imprisonment one also of instruction, was apparent; also the vital need of purifying the corrupted by personal contact with pure and good women, laboring among them in a spirit of love and sympathy.”

It was not until 1870 that, after a preliminary meeting in Boston, officered by some of her most earnest citizens, a memorial was presented to the legislature, in which the need was set forth of better prisons for women, and of a reformatory discipline for all criminals. This was called “The Memorial of the Temporary Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners in Dedham, and of the Springfield Home for Friendless Women and Children, and of others concurring with them.” The names of Whittier, Henry Wilson, Bishop Eastburn, and many others equally noble, were affixed, and the almost immediate result was the establishment of the Prison Commission of the state, and a few years later, the building of the separate prison for women at Sherborn. Thirty acres of land were purchased here, and the prison was placed upon a knoll, from which one of the finest views in the county may be had, a neighboring pond giving a full supply of pure water, and the facilities for drainage being excellent. The form chosen for building was a cross, with two more transverse sections, one at the front, and one for hospital purposes, at the rear. But forty-eight strong cells for the more refractory class were built, the majority occupying small, separate rooms, divided by brick partitions, and each owning a window. The basement has two large laundries, one for prison, the other for outside use, the latter bringing in a comfortable income toward the support of the prison. Over this laundry is the prison kitchen and bakery, the work in both being done by the prisoners, under supervision. Above this, in the third story, is the large hall used as a chapel, and a library adjoining it, while the second story contains two large work rooms, one for sewing, and the other for making chair bottoms. Sewing machines are in the first one, and here all the clothing for the prison is made, as well as a good deal for another institution. A school room is also on this floor, occupied six hours a day, the women going to it in classes, each class having an hour’s instruction a day. Here many take their first lessons in reading and writing; easy arithmetic and geography are also taught.

The prison has four divisions, for the classification of convicts, the three higher ones each containing what is known as a “privilege room,” the prisoners who have obeyed the rules being allowed to spend an hour each evening under the supervision of the matrons, before they are locked in for the night. Four cheerful dining rooms are provided, and unlike the county jails, where prisoners eat alone from a tin pan, the women gather, under the supervision of matrons, each with neat plate and basin, learning order and decorum, and in many cases having their first experience of clean and palatable food. The matrons have comfortable rooms, commanding a view of the corridors, and a private dining room and kitchen in the basement. A parlor on the second floor is also at their disposal, thirty matrons and assistants using it in such intervals of leisure as come.

The chief officers may be either men or women, at the pleasure of the Governor, these being superintendent, steward and treasurer, the remainder being all women, and including a deputy superintendent, a chaplain, a physician, school mistress, and clerk. The wishes of the founders were carried out in making the superintendent a woman, Mrs. Edna C. Atkinson’s name having become the synonym for patient and most faithful labor in this untried field. There are others as worthy, but with her, they shrink from any public recognition, content to have laid silently the foundation of a work which is copied in detail wherever the same results are desired.

The hospital is a model of its kind, three stories in height, and thirty-two feet wide by seventy-seven long. The dispensary and wash room, the doctor’s sitting room and some small wards for special cases are on the first floor. The second one has a large ward, sunny and airy, with space for twenty beds, and at one side bath rooms, and a small room where the dead are laid until burial. The convalescent ward is on the third floor, and in each and all, is the exquisite neatness which is a revelation to every occupant. Of the physical misery that finds alleviation here, one can hardly speak. “Intemperance, unchastity, abuse from male companions, neglected childbirth, hereditary taints, poor food and clothing,” have all done their work, and demand all the skill the physician can bring to bear. The work is hard and often repulsive, but the sick prisoner is especially susceptible to influence, and often, when all means have been tried in vain, yields at last under the pressure of pain and gratitude for its relief, and goes out from the ward a new creature spiritually as well as physically.

From the beginning they are made to feel that here is one spot where love and sympathy are certain. There is no convict dress branding them at once as infamous. Each division has its own; blue check of different patterns being chosen to distinguish the different grades. The upper ones have neat white aprons for Sundays. Night dresses and pocket handkerchiefs are provided to teach neatness, and every woman is required to have smooth hair and a well-cared-for person. In the nursery, an essential department of a woman’s prison, the babies show well fed, happy faces, and are as neatly and warmly clothed as the mothers. This department has sixty rooms, each ten by twelve, with a bed and crib for mothers with infants, while above it is a lying-in ward, with all necessary appliances. Often there is not the slightest hint of maternal instinct, and the mother must be watched to prevent the destruction of the child, but more often it is strong, and desire for reform is first awakened with the longing that the child should know a better life. The bright, clean quarters, the regular employment, the sympathy and encouragement, on which, no matter how skeptical or scoffing in the beginning, they come to depend, all foster this desire. Indifferent even to common decency in the beginning, unknown instincts awaken, and here is one answer to the argument sometimes made, that criminals have no right to attractive quarters. Here, again, the same worker already quoted may speak: “In the first place, the loss of liberty is a terrible privation, especially when the term of confinement is long. Most persons will bear any hardship rather than be confined, even in a pleasant place. The depraved women of our prisons are indifferent, at first, to the things which please a higher taste. The dark and filthy slums of Boston are far more charming to them than the clean and sunny prison. The work is hateful to their idle habits, and being unpaid, it has no motive to incite them to performance. The silent, separate rooms, the quiet work room, try them inexpressibly. There is no danger that the prison will be too tempting. They long for the intoxicating drink, the low carousals of their usual life, and when discharged from an ordinary prison, with no reformatory influence, eagerly rush into the old haunts, and begin anew the foul life.… Ferocious, indeed, are they, when long habits of intoxication, joined to ignorance and strong passions, are subjected to the restraints of a prison.”

“No woman can govern a ferocious woman,” was asserted in the beginning, by a well known Senator; but that point settled itself years since, women having proved better able to control women, no matter how brutalized, than any man has ever been. In one case a woman was sent from a neighboring prison, who came determined to create disturbance. Insurrection seemed inevitable, such passion of revolt had she communicated to many, but wise management quelled it at once. Three strong men were necessary to convey her from the yard to the punishment cell, but this was done under the personal direction of the superintendent, and the men were allowed no violence or abuse. For days she remained unsubdued; then quieted, and at the end of ten was conquered and transformed into a quiet, orderly, obedient worker.

“She was that patient and kind she did all she could for me,” was her comment on the superintendent, and her case is illustrative of dozens of the same nature. Nothing impresses them more than the unselfish nature of the care bestowed, and as their skill in manual labor develops, their interest grows with it, and they begin to take pride in what may be accomplished. They are ready, when the term of confinement ends, to lead decent lives, but they must be shielded for a time, else ruin is inevitable.

Here, then, comes in the mission of a “Wayside Home.” The thought of such shelter came many years ago, to the man who gave all his life to making paths plainer for sinning and suffering souls, and who in the “Isaac Hopper Home,” as often called the “Father Hopper Home,” solved the problem in a degree. Even here, however, admission was conditioned on a letter or word of endorsement, and there was no spot in all the great city in which a homeless and friendless woman, without such word, could find temporary refuge. It remained for Brooklyn to offer such a possibility, and the quiet home that in the early spring of 1880 opened its doors, asked but three questions:

“Do you need help?”

“Are you homeless?”

“If taken in, will you remain a month, keep the necessary rules of the house, and do your share of its work?”

These question are “the hinge on which the door swings, and when once a woman crosses its threshold she stands on her honor, and is trusted just as far as she will allow.”

Cramped for room, dependent upon voluntary contributions for furnishing, provisions, and all the running expenses of such an undertaking, the first year found them without debt, and with ninety-nine women sheltered and protected, sixty-two of whom found places, and, with but few exceptions, proved faithful and worthy of trust. During the second year two hundred and twenty-four were helped, cramped quarters forcing the managers to refuse many applications. Half of the income for that year was earned by the inmates, in laundry, sewing room, and days’ work outside. A larger house was taken, but the same principle of free admission continued. Many who left the Home voluntarily, and some even who had been expelled, returned, penitent and sorrowful, and were received again, and given another chance, the only bar to return being in the discovery that the influence of a woman in some cases did more harm than could be counteracted in the Home, in which case there is written across her name, “Not to be admitted again.”

A matron and two assistant matrons are employed, the matron having general charge of the house, keys, and work; the first assistant, of sewing room and laundry; and the second of the kitchen and all household supplies. But thirty women can be accommodated at any one time, and it is hoped that a building especially for the purpose may soon give the added facilities so imperatively demanded. The work holds little poetry, and the expression of some of its subjects is so debased and apparently hopeless, that one gentleman, accustomed to give freely, remarked: “I see nothing better to do than to tie a rope round their necks and pitch them into the river.”

The poor souls were themselves much of his mind, but a month or two gave a very different aspect to affairs, work and the certainty of sympathy bringing new life. Undisciplined and weak, in the power of appetite both inherited and acquired, they have fought battles whose terror the untempted can never know; fought and won, the roll now holding hundreds of names. Working against perpetual obstacle and disadvantage, the story of the five years is one of triumph for managers as well as managed. “We began,” said one of the workers, “holding in one hand the key to an empty house, for which the rent was paid for one month, and in the other hand all our worldly possessions—five dollars—and since that time we have bought our present home, and furnished it comfortably for our work. It accommodates thirty-five women, and three matrons, and we have paid on it $5,000, carrying a mortgage of $9,000. None of these things are the ultimate of our work. They are but means to an end, and that end the saving of the lives and souls of these women.”

Effort of as extended a nature is possible only for a body of earnest workers, but this mere hint of its nature and results may perhaps convince some who have doubted its possibility, and serve as the clue to companion methods in country towns. Faith in possibilities, both human and divine, has been the condition of success for what is already accomplished, and the village may test these no less than the city. Reports filled with every practical detail may be had by addressing a note to “The Wayside Home, 352 Bridge Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.,” and the writer stands ready, at any time, to answer questions as to methods, assuring all doubters that, for all patient workers, success is certain.

The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. In the twilight alcove of a library, with a time-mellowed chair yielding luxuriously to your pressure, a June wind floating in at the windows, and in your hand some rambling old author, good humored and quaint, one would think the Spirit could scarce fail to be conjured. Yet often, after spending a morning hour restlessly there … I have strolled off with a book in my pocket to the woods; and, as I live, the mood has descended upon me under some chance tree, with a crooked root under my head, and I have lain there reading and sleeping by turns till the letters were blurred in the dimness of twilight.—From Prose Writings of N. P. Willis.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[Sunday, July 5.]

The Influence of Jesus.—(I note again, as a characteristic of the morality of sonship, the way in which it secures humility by aspiration, and not by depression.) How to secure humility is the hard problem of all systems of duty. He who does work, just in proportion to the faithfulness with which he does it, is always in danger of self-conceit. Very often men seem to have given up the problem in despair, and they lavish unstinted praise upon the vigorous, effective worker, without any qualifying blame of the arrogance with which he flaunts the duty that he does in the world’s face. “The only way to make him humble,” they would seem to say, “would be to make him idle. Let him stop doing duty and then, indeed, he might stop boasting. His arrogance is only the necessary price that the world and he pay for his faithfulness.” To such a problem the Christian morality brings its vast conception of the universe. Above each man it sets the infinite life. The identity of nature between that life and his, while it enables him to emulate that life, compels him, also, to compare himself with it. The more zealously he aspires to imitate it, the more clearly he must encounter the comparison. The higher he climbs the mountain, the more he learns how the high mountain is past his climbing. It is the oneness of the soul’s life with God’s life that at once makes us try to be like him, and brings forth our unlikeness to him. It is the source at once of aspiration and humility. The more aspiration, the more humility. Humility comes by aspiration. If, in all Christian history, it has been the souls which most looked up that were the humblest souls; if to-day the rescue of a soul from foolish pride must be not by a depreciation of present attainment, but by opening more and more the vastness of the future possibility; if the Christian man keeps his soul full of the sense of littleness, even in all his hardest work for Christ, not by denying his own stature, but by standing up at his whole height, and then looking up in love and awe and seeing God tower into infinitude above him—certainly all this stamps the morality which is wrought out within the idea of Jesus with this singular excellence, that it has solved the problem of faithfulness and pride, and made possible humility by aspiration.

And yet, once more, the morality of Jesus involves the only true secret of courage and of the freedom that comes of courage. More and more we come to see that courage is a positive thing. It is not simply the absence of fear. To be brave is not merely not to be afraid. Courage is that compactness and clear coherence of all a man’s faculties and powers which makes his manhood a single operative unit in the world. That is the reason why narrowness of thought and life often brings a kind of courage, and why, as men’s range of thought enlarges and their relations with their fellowmen increase, there often comes a strange timidity. The bigot is often very brave. He is held fast unto a unit, and possesses himself completely in his own selfishness. For such a bravery as that the man and the world pay very dear. But when the grasp that holds a man and his powers is not his self-consciousness, but his obedience to his Father, when loyalty to him surrounds and aggregates the man’s capacities, so that, held in his hand, the man feels his distinctiveness, his distinctive duty, his distinctive privilege, then you have reached the truth of which the bigot’s courage was the imitation. Then you have secured courage, not by the limitation, but by the enlargement of the life. Then the dependence upon God makes the independence of man in which are liberty and courage. The man’s own personality is found only in the household of his Father, and only in the finding of his personality does he come to absolute freedom and perfect fearlessness.—Phillips Brooks.

[Sunday, July 12.]

True Christianity.—Lord Jesus Christ, thou eternal and only Prince of Peace! Thou most blessed and truest rest of faithful souls! Thou hast said, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest to your souls. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace.

Alas! how often have I sought for rest in this world, but have not found it! For my soul, being immortal, can not rest or be satisfied with anything but thee alone; O immortal God, thou and thou alone art the rest of our souls. The world and all that is in it is hastening to decay; they all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. How then shall my soul find rest in such fleeting and changeable things?… O God, my soul can not be satisfied but in thee, the supreme good. My soul hungereth and thirsteth after thee, and can not rest till it possess thee.…

O thou rock of my salvation! in which my soul trusteth and is at rest.…

O Lord Jesus, how ardent is thy charity! how pure, how free from deceit! how perfect! how spotless! how great! how exalted! how profound! In a word, how sincere and hearty is thy love! Suffer, I beseech thee, my soul to rest in this thy love.… Here let my poor soul rest free from fear of danger or disquiet. In thee let all my senses rest, that I may hear thee sweetly speaking, O thou highest love! Let my eyes behold thee, O thou celestial beauty! Let my ears hear thee, thou most harmonious music! Let my mouth taste, thou incomparable sweetness! Let the refreshing odors of life breathe upon me from thee, thou most noble flower of paradise!… Let my heart rejoice in thee, my true joy! Let my will desire thee alone, thou only joy of my heart! Let my understanding know thee alone, O eternal wisdom! Lastly, let all my desires, all my affections rest in thee alone, O blessed Jesus, who art my love, my peace, and my joy!

Take out of my heart everything that is not thyself. Thou art my riches in poverty; thou art my honor in contempt; my praise and glory against reproaches; my strength in infirmity; and in a word, my life in death. And how, then, should I not rest in thee, who art my all in all? My righteousness against sin; my wisdom against folly; redemption from condemnation; sanctification from my uncleanness.…

Let me, I beseech thee, surrender my whole heart to thee, since thou hast given me all thine. Let me go out of myself, that I may enter into thee. Let me cleanse my heart and empty it of the world, that thou mayest fill it with thy celestial gifts, O Jesus, the rest of my heart, the Sabbath of my soul! Lead me into the rest of a blessed eternity, where there are pleasures at thy right hand for evermore. Amen.—Arndt, “A prayer for obtaining true rest and tranquility of soul.”

[Sunday, July 19.]

For Prayer is a

Conversing with God,

The Key of Heaven,

The Flower of Paradise,

A Free Access to God,

A Familiarity with God,

The Searcher of His Secrets,

The Opener of His Mysteries,

The Purchaser of His Gifts,

A Spiritual Banquet,

A Heavenly Enjoyment,

The Honey-comb of the Spirit,

Honey Flowing from the Lips,

The Nurse of Virtues,

The Conqueror of Vices,

The Medicine of the Soul,

A Remedy against Infirmities,

An Antidote against Sin,

The Pillar of the World,

The Salve of Mankind,

The Seed of Blessing,

The Garden of Happiness,

The Tree of Pleasure,

The Increase of Faith,

The Support of Hope,

The Mother of Charity,

The Path of Righteousness,

The Preserver of Perseverance,

The Mirror of Prudence,

The Mistress of Temperance,

The Strength of Chastity,

The Beauty of Holiness,

The Fire of Devotion,

The Light of Knowledge,

The Repository of Wisdom,

The Strength of the Soul,

The Remedy against Faint-heartedness,

The Foundation of Peace,

The Joy of the Heart,

The Jubilee of the Mind,

A Faithful Companion in this Earthly Pilgrimage,

The Shield of a Christian Soldier,

The Rule of Humility,

The Forerunner of Honor,

The Nurse of Patience,

The Guardian of Obedience,

The Fountain of Quietness,

The Imitator of Angels,

The Conquest of Devils,

The Comfort of the Sorrowful,

The Triumph of the Just,

The Joy of the Saints,

The Helper of the Oppressed,

The Ease of the Afflicted,

The Rest of the Weary,

The Ornament of the Conscience,

The Advancement of Graces,

The Odor of an Acceptable Sacrifice,

The Encourager of Mutual Good-will,

The Refreshment of this Miserable Life,

The Sweetening of Death,

The Foretaste of the Heavenly Life.—Arndt.

[Sunday, July 26.]

Sermon on Luke iv, 1-13.—The weapons of Jesus?—say we rather the weapon—for he has but one, it is the Word of God. Three times tempted, three times he repels the temptation by a simple quotation from the Scriptures, without explanation or comment. “It is written”—this one expression tells upon the tempter like a tremendous discharge upon an assaulting battalion. “It is written”—the devil withdraws for the first time. “It is written”—the devil withdraws for the second time. “It is written”—the devil gives up the contest. God’s word is the weapon which Satan most dreads—a weapon before which he has never been able to do aught but succumb. Most justly does Paul call it the “Sword of the Spirit;”[A] and John describes it, in the Revelation, as “a sharp, two-edged sword, proceeding out of the mouth of the Son of man.” With that “Sword of the Spirit” in our hands, our cause becomes that of the Holy Spirit himself, and we shall be as superior in strength to our adversary, as is the Spirit of God to the spirit of darkness. Without it, on the contrary, left to ourselves, we shall be as much below him as is man’s nature below that of angels. Adam fell, only because he allowed this sword to drop. Jesus triumphs, because no one can wrest it from his hand. But why is it that the Son of God, instead of meeting the enemy with some new sword brought from the heavens whence he came, took up only our own weapon, from that very earth where Adam had, with such cowardice, left it? This is for our example. From what that weapon accomplished in his hand, we must learn what it can do in ours. Let us, then, take it up in our turn; or, rather, let us receive it from him, resharpened as it were, by his victory, and we shall have nothing to fear. To all the adversary’s attacks let us oppose a simple “It is written,” and we shall render vain his every endeavor.… If after having heard him on the theater of temptation, scoffing at the word of God, we could (allow me the expression) follow him behind the scenes, and hear him confess to his accomplices that he is lost if he can not succeed in wresting from our hands this irresistible weapon! If we did but know all this, and if, like the valiant Eleazar, “we could keep hold of our sword till our hand clove unto it”—oh, then we should be invincible, yea, invincible!—Monod.

[A] Revelation i:16; ii:16; xix:15-21; Hebrews iv:12, “The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joint and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

“WE SALUTE THEE, AND LIVE.”

BY MARY MATHEWS-SMITH.

Soldiers brave, in days of old,

Facing dangers manifold,

Looked unto their king to cry—

“Thee we do salute, and die.”

Service for an earthly king

Other ending can not bring;

Whatso’er thy record be,

Death is all it gives to thee.

Christian brave, where’er thy way,

Thine it is with joy to say—

“King, to whom our hearts we give,

Thee we do salute, and live.”

Service for the heavenly King,

Love and life eternal bring;

He alone true life can give,

Him we may salute, and live.

A GROUP OF MUMMIES.

BY OTIS T. MASON.

Whenever the word mummy is mentioned almost everybody thinks of Egypt and the ancient embalmers, with their tedious processes and costly ceremonials. The term does include the Egyptian prepared bodies, but it does not exclude some found elsewhere. Indeed, in Washington, there will be seen in close proximity, in the Smithsonian building, an exceedingly dry company, made up of individuals from Alaska, Arizona, Mexico, Kentucky, Peru, and Egypt.

Whoever has marked the tender solicitude with which the things around us seem to beckon us in this way or in that will understand that even the disposal of the dead has been influenced by such suggestions. Passing through a dense forest one seems to hear the branches and undergrowth say: “Come this way, pass along here, we are opening to make way for you.” Well, it is so in every human art; natural objects supply the materials, the tools, and suggest the simplest forms. There can be no potters where there is no clay, no chipped arrow heads where there is no stone to flake, no wood carving in the arctic regions where grows no timber. Yet the good people in all these places have arts, they make excellent baskets in which they carry water and boil their meat, polished spearheads and axes of volcanic stone, and most delicate carvings in ivory or antler.

As to the disposal of the dead in different regions and ages, all we have space to say is that the voices of nature around each people have told them how to perform this sad rite. In the frozen regions, where the ground is never thawed, no graves are dug. By the seaside the primitive fisherman is launched upon the wide expanse in his own canoe. In rocky regions cairns and cists conceal the wasting form. On the soft prairie mounds cover the dead out of sight. In those arid regions where the rainfall does not affect the atmosphere to any extent the process of desiccation takes place more rapidly than chemical changes. The water, which forms the greater part of the human body, soon removes and leaves but a few pounds of bones, dried flesh and skin. This may be called natural mummification, the process of which is aided either by extreme cold, extreme aridity, or preservative elements in the soil.

In the National Museum there is the body of a little boy, lying on his back, his feet drawn up, and all sorts of curious relics hanging in the case with him. The body was discovered in one of the cliff ruins of the Cañon de Chelly, Arizona. The particular ruin referred to is on a benched recess, seventy-five feet above the cañon, and extends backward about thirty feet. The ancient Pueblo people, driven by some invading force, constructed their cliff houses along only a part of this bench. About fifty feet from the walls Mr. Thomas Kearn found a little oven-like cist composed of angular bowlders laid in clay. The rooflet consisted of sticks supporting stones and clay. At the bottom lay the little child, and the remains of other burials, together with grave deposits. Here, in this last resting place, the waters escaped so quickly and so quietly from the body that even the form of life was not disturbed nor any chemical changes awakened. So perfectly dried is this little fellow that even the coatings of the eye remain. This is natural embalmment by desiccation simply. In the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, are dried bodies from Mexico, preserved in the same manner. Around them were their clothing and utensils, silent and patient watchers, waiting all these centuries to give in evidence as to how those dead people dressed, ate, drank, worked, and warred.

In the palmy days of our grandparents there was a desiccated body discovered in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. This, also, has had the good fortune, after many peregrinations, to find its way into the Smithsonian. Now, Mammoth Cave is a damp place, but the earth accumulated on the floor is in places full of nitrous and other preservative salts. Indeed, the Kentucky cave subject may be called a natural pickle.

To Mr. William H. Dall we are indebted for bringing to light mummies from the frozen regions. At the time of their discovery by the Russians, the Aleuts of Unalashka had a process of mummification peculiar to themselves. Mr. Dall informs us that they eviscerated the bodies of those held in honor, removed the fatty matter, placed them for some time in running water, and then lashed them into as compact a bundle as possible. A line was placed around the neck and under the knees, to draw them up to the chin. If any part stuck out, the bones were broken so as to facilitate the consolidation. After this the body was thoroughly dried and packed in a wooden crate, wrapped round and round with seal, sea-otter, and other precious furs, enough to make a fashionable belle’s head swim. Over these were wrapped coarser skins, waterproof cloth of intestines, and fine grass mats. This crate was slung to upright poles, or hung, like a wall-pocket, to a peg driven into a crevice in some cave. In 1874 Captain E. Hennig, of the Alaska Commercial Company’s service, found in a cave on the island of Kagamil, near Unalashka, a number of these framed mummies, all but two of which the company presented to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Egypt of America for mummies is Peru. Scarcely a museum in the world is without its dried dogs, guinea pigs, parrots, and human beings wrapped in costly cloths, and the last mentioned wearing the greatest profusion of gold and silver jewelry. Along with these bodies are found corn, beans, peanuts; pottery, gourds, and silver vases; pillows, haversacks and masks; knives, war clubs and spearheads; needles, distaffs, spindles, work-baskets and musical cradles. Thousands and thousands of the most interesting things turn up, almost as expressive of ancient Peruvian life as was the library of Sennacherib, exhumed by Layard at Kouyunjik, of Assyrian life.

Beyond the care of the Peruvians and Bolivians in the clothing and encysting of the dead, it is almost certain that they left them to the atmosphere to manipulate. The work was done most effectually. Nothing can be dryer than a Peruvian mummy. It is perfectly useless to dust the cases containing them, and those who handle them are in a steady sneeze, as though invisible spirits, filled with indignation, held impalpable snuff-boxes to the nose. It is still more wonderful that insects have not done their destructive work upon these bodies. The wrappings doubtless were so securely made as to prevent their inroads, and must have contained some substance to keep them away.

In the National Museum, finally, are two Egyptian mummies. It is hard to tell how they got into such outlandish boxes and mountings. There they stand, nailed and screwed into narrow, white boxes, side by side, with mouths open, as if Pompeian convulsions had seized and embalmed them by instantaneous mummification just as the curtain was falling on a grand duet. Now, these two bodies were really embalmed (embalsamed); all the other mummies were simply dried up.

The Egyptians, Peruvians, and perhaps the Alaskans preserved the bodies as integral parts of the individual, that would be needed again. The others simply dried up, their depositors cherishing no belief in the resurrection of the body.

A TRIP TO MT. SHASTA.

Report of a lecture delivered in the National Museum of Washington, D. C., by Prof. J. S. Diller, of the U. S. Geological Survey.

The Great Basin Country is bounded to the westward by the Cascade Range in Oregon and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California. The axes of these two mountain ranges make an angle of over 140° with each other, and at their point of intersection in northern California rises Mt. Shasta, one of the most conspicuous and imposing topographical features of the Pacific coast, above which it rises 14,440 feet. Early in the days of western exploration its summit was declared to be inaccessible, but whether this assertion was made to inspire greater respect for the abode of the Indian gods, or to excuse a disinclination to physical exertion, must ever remain a matter of conjecture. Certain it is that the ascent, frequently made within the last few years by ladies is not a remarkable feat of mountaineering. Under the direction of Captain Dutton of the Geological Survey, a detailed exploration of the mountain has been accomplished.

The belt of territory bordering upon the Pacific embraces two parallel mountain chains, the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range on the east, and the illy-defined Coast Range on the west. Between these lies the valley region of the Willamette and Sacramento rivers, whose headwaters are among that complex group of mountains through which the Klamath River, in a deep cañon, finds its way to the sea.

Of all the volcanic regions of the world, the one to which Mt. Shasta belongs is the largest. It extends from Lassen’s Peak, in California, north through Oregon to Mt. Rainier in Washington Territory, and eastward far into Idaho, covering an area larger than that of France and Great Britain combined. Within this wide expanse are extensive plains, whose broad surfaces indicate that the basaltic lava beneath at the time of its eruption possessed such a high degree of fluidity that it spread out far and wide like the waters of a lake. Upon the western border the more viscous lavas built up the Cascade Range, whose mammoth arch is surmounted by numerous mighty volcanoes, among which Mt. Shasta is one of the most prominent.

Seen from all sides Mt. Shasta presents a remarkably regular outline, and its beautiful conoidal form has excited the admiration of many observers. Its slopes are exceptional for the high angle and graceful curves of their inclination. The upper 3,000 feet of the mountain, where cliffs are most abundant, dips away toward all points of the compass at an average angle of 37°. Further down the mountain the slope gradually decreases in inclination to 20°, then to 15°, 10°, and finally the long, gentle slope about the base of the mountain deviates but 5° from a horizontal plane. In all directions from the summit of Mt. Shasta its flanks increase in length as they decrease in angle of inclination, presenting a curved mountain side concave upwards, and has the greatest curvature near the top. Mr. Gilbert, in his excellent monograph of the Henry Mountains, shows that such a curve is the natural result of erosion. In the case of some volcanic mountains, however, an important coöperative cause may be found in the fact that at each successive eruption the lava decreased in quantity and became more viscous. The grandest approach to Mt. Shasta is from the north, in the broad valley of the same name, where it is presented to full view, and the deepest impression of its colossal dimensions is experienced. It stands at the head of Shasta valley, above which it rises 11,000 feet, with a volume of over 224 cubic miles, and presents, in strange contrast with the sterility of the valley, the luxuriant vegetation of the forest belt. The timbered slopes lie between the altitudes 4,000 and 7,000 feet above the sea, and belong to the most magnificent forest regions of the world. Above the forest belt the mountain rises more than a mile into the heights of eternal snow, and its brilliant white slopes present an imposing contrast to the deep green of the pines beneath. Viewed from the southeast, Mt. Shasta appears to be surmounted by a single peak, but seen from the north, the upper portion is found to be double. The smaller of the two cones, broad topped and crater shaped, has been designated Shastina, to distinguish it from the other acute cone, which rises 2,000 feet higher and forms the summit of Shasta proper.

The influence of temperature upon precipitation, and the limits which it throws about arboreal vegetation, are here most forcibly illustrated. In Shasta valley, at an elevation of about 3,000 feet above the sea, where the average temperature is high as compared with that upon the mountain itself, the precipitation is always in the form of rain, but not sufficient in quantity, especially on account of its unequal distribution throughout the year, to support more than a scanty growth of stunted trees. In the autumn storm clouds gather about the summit, and showers become frequent, spreading over the land in copious rains. Before the spring eight ninths of all the annual rain has fallen and the country is brilliant with living green. As summer advances the refreshing showers disappear and the cloudless sky affords no protection from the burning sun; the bright green fades away and the earth gradually assumes that uninviting seared aspect which pervades all nature in the season of drought. Upon the lower slopes of the mountain, by its cooling influence upon the atmosphere, the rainfall is greatly increased, and the vegetation is luxuriant. The vegetation is almost wholly coniferous. Among nearly a score of species the sugar-pine is monarch, frequently attaining a diameter of twelve and a height of over two hundred feet. Farther up the mountain these gradually give way to the firs, whose tall, graceful forms are in perfect keeping with the majestic mountain behind them. Their black and yellow spotted trunks and branches, draped in long pendant moss, present a weird, almost dismal aspect, making a fit promenade for the mythical deities supposed by the aborigines to inhabit the mountains. To assume that in the timber belt the slopes of the mountain are everywhere covered with majestic trees, would certainly be wide of the truth, for within the forests are large treeless tracts, sometimes hundreds of acres in extent. From a distance these green, velvety acres appear to be very inviting pastures, and present the most desirable path of ascent. A closer examination, however, discovers to the observer that instead of grass these green fields are clothed in such a dense shrubbery of manzanita, ceanothus, and other bushy plants, as to be almost impassable. One attempt to cross a patch of chaparral, or “Devil’s acre,” as it is sometimes appropriately called in western vernacular, will convince the traveler that his best path lies in the forest.

As the timber gradually dwindles away from the foot of the mountain to almost nothing in Shasta valley, so also it diminishes in stature, from an altitude of 7,000 feet upwards to the snow region, where the precipitation is generally, if not always, in a solid form of snow in winter and sleet in summer.

Of the tree-like vegetation, one of the pines reaches farthest up the slopes. Its stem grows shorter and the top flattens until, at an elevation of about 9,000 feet, the branches are spread upon the ground, so that not unfrequently the pedestrian finds his best path upon the tree-tops. Beyond these, on the snowless slopes, are found only scattered blades of grass, and the welcome little hulsea, the edelweiss of our Alpine regions, with its bright flowers to alleviate the arctic desolation of the place. The red and yellow lichens cling to the rocks and the tiny prolococcus flourishes in the snow, so that one is frequently surprised, upon looking back, to see his bloody footsteps.

In the Alps, between the forests and the snow, are often found extensive pastures where the herds which furnish milk for the celebrated Swiss cheese are grazed during the milder seasons of the year. In northern California similar pastures do not occur about the snow-capped summits, probably on account of the unequal distribution of the annual rainfall.

To those who are fond of novelty, the greatest interest of the upper portion of Mt. Shasta attaches to its glaciers. They are five in number, and all are found side by side upon its northern half, forming an almost continuous covering above 10,000 feet for that portion of the mountain point. Upon the northern and western slope of the mountain is the Whitney glacier, with its prominent terminal moraines. Next to the eastward is the Bulam glacier, with the large pile of debris at the lower end. Then comes the broad Hottums glacier and the Wintum. The Konwakitong, which is the smallest of the group, lies upon the southeast side of the mountain. Whitney glacier is more like those of the Alps than any other one of the group. Its snow-field lies upon the northwestern slope of the mountains, from whence the icy mass moves down a shallow depression between Shasta and Shastina. Mr. Ricksecker, who has made a careful topographical survey of the mountain, has measured the dimensions of all its glaciers. The limits of the Whitney glacier are well defined; its width varies from 1,000 to 2,000 feet, with a length of about two and one-fifth miles, reaching from the summit of the mountain down to an altitude of 9,500 feet above the sea. It is but little more than a decade since the first glaciers were discovered within the United States, and we should not be disappointed to learn that the largest of them, about the culminating point of the Cascade Range, would appear Liliputian beside the great glacier of the Bernese Oberland, and yet the former are as truly glaciers as the latter. In the upper portion of its course, passing over prominent irregularities in its bed, the Whitney glacier becomes deeply fractured, producing the extremely jagged surface, corresponding to the surfaces of the Alpine glaciers. Lower down the crevasses develop, and these, with the great fissure which separates it from the steep slopes of Shastina, attest the motion of the icy mass. They frequently open and become yawning chasms, reaching 100 feet into the clear, green ice beneath. Near its middle, upon the eastern margin, the Whitney glacier receives large contributions of sand, gravel and bowlders, from the vertical cliffs around which it turns to move in a more northerly direction. In this way a prominent lateral moraine is developed. From the very steep slopes of Shastina, upon the western side, the glacier receives additions in the form of avalanches. Here the snow clings to its rocky bed until the strain resulting from accumulation is great enough to break it from its moorings and precipitate it upon the glacier below. The most striking feature of the Whitney glacier, and that which is of greatest interest from a geological point of view, is its terminal moraine, which appears to be fully a mile in length. Its apparent length is much greater than the real, from the fact that the glacial ice extends far down beneath the covering of detritus. It is so huge a pile of light colored debris, just above the timber line, that it is plainly visible from afar off.

In comparing the morainal material about Mt. Shasta with that of Alpine glaciers, a feature that is particularly noticeable is the smallness of the bowlders. Upon Alpine glaciers they frequently have a diameter greater than ten feet, but about the Whitney and other glaciers of Mt. Shasta they are rarely as much as three feet in diameter. This is readily explained by the fact that the glaciers of Mt. Shasta do not move in deep valleys bounded by long, deep slopes, with many high cliffs which afford an opportunity for the formation of large bowlders. Although the Whitney glacier has its boundaries more clearly defined than any of the other glaciers about Mt. Shasta by the depression in which it moves, the valley is very shallow, and one looks in vain along its slopes for traces of polished rocks like those so magnificently displayed on the way from Meiningen to Grimsel, in the valley of the Aar. Below the terminal moraine the milky water of Whitney creek wends its way down the northern slope, plunges over a fall hundreds of feet high, into a deep cañon, and near the base of the mountain is swallowed up by the thirsty air and earth. The presence of marginal crevasses, lateral and terminal moraines, and the characteristic milky stream which issues from the lower end, are proofs that the Whitney glacier still moves, but the rate of motion has not yet been determined. The row of stakes planted last July were covered with snow before the party could reach them again in the latter part of October.

Upon the northwestern slope of the mountain, besides the Whitney glacier, there is the Bulam, differing chiefly in that it is contained in a broader, less definite valley, and forming an intermediate step toward the Hottum glacier, which is one of the most important and remarkable of the group. Unlike ordinary glaciers, it has no valley in which it is confined, but lies upon the convex surface of the mountain. Its upper surface, instead of being concave anywhere, is convex throughout from side to side, and its width (123 miles) is almost as great as its length (162 miles). At several places the surface of the glacier is made very rough by the inequalities of its bed. This is especially true of its southern portion, where prominent cliffs form the only medial moraine discovered upon Mt. Shasta. Throughout the greater part of its expanse the glacier is deeply crevassed, exposing the green ice occasionally to the depth of a hundred feet. The thickness of this glacier has been greatly overestimated. In reality, instead of being 1,800 to 2,500 feet thick, it does not appear where greatest to be more than a few hundred, for at a number of places it is so thin that its bed is exposed. Its terminal moraine is a huge pile, nearly half a mile in width, measured in the direction of glacial motion.

Next south of the Hottum glacier is the Wintum, which attains a length of over two miles, and ends with an abrupt front of ice in a cañon. Upon the southeastern slope of Mt. Shasta, at the head of a large cañon, is the Konwakitong glacier. Notwithstanding its diminutive size, its crevasses and the muddy stream it initiates indicate clearly that the ice mass continues to move. The amount of moraine material upon its borders is small, and yet, of all the glaciers about Mt. Shasta, it is the only one which has left a prominent record of important changes. The country adjacent to the west side of the Konwakitong cañon has been distinctly glaciated so as to leave no doubt that the Konwakitong glacier was once very much larger than it is at the present time. The rocks on which it moved have been deeply striated, and so abraded as to produce the smooth, rounded surfaces so common in glaciated regions. At the time of its greatest extension the glacier was 5.8 miles in length and occupied an area of at least seven square miles, being over twenty times its present size. Its limit is marked at several places by a prominent terminal moraine. The thickness of the glacier where greatest was not more than 200 feet, for several hills within the glaciated area were not covered. The striated surfaces and moraines do not extend up the slopes of those hills more than 200 feet above their bases. The thinness of the glacier is completely in harmony with the limited extent of its erosion, although the rocks are distinctly planed off, so that the low knobs and edges have regularly curved outlines. It is evident that a great thickness of rock has been removed by the ice, and that the period of ice erosion has been comparatively brief. During the lapse of time, however, there have been important climatic oscillations, embracing epochs of glacial advance and recession. None of the glaciers about Mt. Shasta, excepting the Wintum, terminate in cañons, but all of them give rise to muddy streams which flow in cañons to the mountain’s base. The cañons are purely the product of aqueous erosion, and contain numerous waterfalls, whence the streams in descending leap over the ends of old lava flows 50 to 300 feet in height.

In strong contrast with the arctic condition of Mt. Shasta to-day, are the circumstances attending its upbuilding, when it was an active volcano belching forth streams of fiery lava that flowed down the slopes now occupied by ice. It is the battlefield of the elements within the earth against those above it. In its early days the forces beneath were victorious, and built up the mountains in the face of wind and weather, but gradually the volcanic energy died away and the low temperature called into play those destructive agents which are now reversing the process and gradually reducing the mountain toward a general level. A microscopical examination of the rocks of Mt. Shasta reveals the fact that it is composed chiefly, if not wholly, of three kinds of lava. Several small areas of metamorphic rocks occur within its borders, but there is no evidence to show that they form any considerable portion of the mountain.

The range in mineralogical composition of the lavas is not extensive. There are only four minerals which deserved to be ranked as essential and characteristic constituents: they are plagioclase, feldspar, pyroxene, generally in the form of hypersthene hornblende, and olivine. The kind of lava which has by far the widest distribution upon the slopes of Mt. Shasta is composed essentially of plagioclase, feldspar and hypersthene, with some angite, and belongs to the variety of volcanic rocks which, on account of composition, and the place where first discovered, has been designated hypersthene andesite. Lava of this type has been shown by Messrs. Cross and Giddings of the Geological Survey to be widely distributed beyond the Mississippi. Upon the western slope of the mountain, especially in the vicinity of the prominent volcanic cone, the form of which suggests its name sugar loaf, the lava contains prominent crystals of hornblende instead of so much hypersthene and angite, and closely resembles the celebrated hornblende andesite lava from among the extinct volcanoes of central France. The third variety of lava which enters into the structure of Mt. Shasta is familiar to every one as basalt. It occurs in relatively small quantities, and has been extruded low down upon the slopes of the mountain. From the fact that there are three kinds of lava in the structure of Mt. Shasta, it must not be concluded that they all issued from the same volcanic vent, nor that they were effused from three separate and distinct openings. In reality, contributions to the upbuilding of Mt. Shasta have been made by over twenty volcanic orifices, of which two have been principal and far more prolific than all the parasitic events combined. This enumeration does not include those large fissures in the side of the cone, which are evidently attributable to the hydrostatic pressure of the molten mass within. The small number of parasitic cones on the slopes of Mt. Shasta is somewhat remarkable, especially when we compare it with the largest volcano in Europe. Although it is much higher than Etna, its base is less expansive, and its size about half that of the mighty monarch of the Mediterranean. Upon the irregular slopes of Etna there are 200 prominent subsidiary cones, beside over 400 of smaller size. On the contrary, Mt. Shasta has but a score of such accessories, and the remarkable regularity of its acute form forcibly expresses the highly concentrated type of volcanic energy which it represents.

From none of the vents upon its slopes have all three kinds of lava escaped, but from the summits of Shasta and Shastina, which are the products of the two largest and most prolific vents, both hornblende and hypersthene andesite have been effused. All the other orifices were subordinate, and each furnished but one kind of lava; from seven of them came hypersthene andesite; eight, hornblende andesite; and the remaining five, basalt. The relative age of the cones which mark the position of the volcanic vents is indicated by the amount of degradation which each has suffered. Judged by this criterion, those of hornblende andesite are the oldest and those of basalt the youngest. The latter are for the most part made of lapilli, and are not crater-shaped as is usually the case in other portions of the Cascade Range, but are elliptical in form, with dome-shaped summits. The presence of considerable piles of ejectments about the subsidiary vents indicates that the eruptions from these orifices were often of a violent character. On the other hand there are some without a trace of lapilli, or anything else to indicate an interruption in the quiet flow of lava welling out of the depths.

Upon the eastern slope of the mountain the cañon, excavated by Mud creek, brings to light the oldest Shasta lavas now exposed, and they are seen under such circumstances that their succession can be readily understood. The oldest lava known is hornblende andesite, which is now in an advanced state of disintegration, and it seems probable that in the early stages of its development a large proportion of the lavas ejected from Mt. Shasta were of the same mineralogical constitution. These were succeeded by extensive effusions of hypersthene andesite. Later in its history, several small streams of hornblende andesite again burst forth from the northeastern side of the cone, but the final effort of the volcanic energy was spent in the ejection of hypersthene andesite. The conditions which determine the oscillation in mineralogical composition of the lavas are as yet conjectural, but when discovered, and their influence demonstrated, an important step forward will have been made in determining the relations of many volcanic rocks.

A striking feature in the structure of Mt. Shasta is the paucity of volcanic ashes, lapilli, and other ejected matter. Only one important deposit of the kind has been discovered. It clings about the summit of the mountain, and is evidently the product of its last eruption. The summit of Shastina is so regular in outline, and the shape of its crater so well preserved, that many have supposed it to be composed chiefly of scoria and ashes; but this is not the case, for its slopes are of angular fragments of compact lava.

Mt. Shasta is almost a pure lava cone, and its remarkably regular form is a matter of wonder. That it is so regular is a sequence of several favorable circumstances. Although a score of parasitic cones spring from the side of the mountain, and have contributed to its upbuilding, yet their additions have been so small compared with the vast effusions from the summit craters Shasta and Shastina, as not to greatly modify the outline of the mountain. More important circumstances are to be found in the non-explosive character of the eruptions and the successive changes in the physical properties of the erupted lava, as the development of the mountain progressed.

It is well known that among the volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands the eruptions are quiet and effusive. The fiery streams of liquid lava course down the gentle slopes for many miles.

Although the mountain is 14,000 feet high, its lavas have such a high degree of liquidity, and retain their mobility so long after eruption, that the base of the mountain spread by them has a diameter of about seventy miles, and an average slope of 5° 1,800 feet below its summit. Mauna Loa is nearly twenty miles in diameter. On the contrary, at a corresponding position its greatest diameter is less than two miles, a very remarkable difference, which is due chiefly to the unequal fluency of the two lavas. The very oldest lavas of Mt. Shasta lie buried within its mass, and we know nothing of their physical properties, but from an examination of the oldest ones now visible, it is evident that at the time of their eruption they possessed a higher degree of fluidity, and were more voluminous than those of later date. The long, gentle slopes about the base of the mountain are formed by comparatively old lavas. Ascending the mountain, one goes up as if upon a giant staircase, with long, inclined steps rising abruptly over the ends of successive shorter and newer lava flows.

It is evident in comparing the older and newer lava flows of Mt. Shasta that there has been a more or less regular decrease in the quantity of lava extruded during successive eruptions, and this is exactly what we should expect when we consider that as the pipe is lengthened by successive effusions, the hydrostatic pressure of the columns of lava within is gradually augmented. The increased compress of the lava flows toward the summit of the mountain indicates that the lava of successive extrusions became more and more viscous until at last the eruptions became explosive, and gave rise to the ejectments now clinging upon the upper slopes of the mountain to evidence the character of the final outburst.

It is not only possible, but very probable that the increased viscosity of lava toward the closing scenes of the volcano is correllated to the diminution of temperature. Since the beginning of the historic period there have been no eruptions from Mt. Shasta, but the freshness of its lavas indicate that not many centuries ago, with other volcanoes of the Cascade Range, it was in a state of vigorous activity, and groups of hot springs and fumeroles about the summit still attest the presence of smouldering volcanic energy, which may perhaps some day break through its confining walls.

The upbuilding of Mt. Shasta is but a matter of yesterday, as compared with the lapse of ages, since the birth of some of its neighbors. The complex group of mountains to the westward, embracing the Scott, Trinity, Salmon and Siskiyou, are composed in large part, at least, of ancient crystalline rocks of both aqueous and igneous origin; through these the rivers have cut deep cañons, the Klamath, on its way to the Sacramento southward, from the very base of Mt. Shasta to its broad valley stretching from the Sierra Nevada to the Coast Range. The cañon of the Sacramento was cut down to nearly its present level, and the mountains sculptured into existing forms long before the eruptions of Mt. Shasta had ceased, for a fiery deluge escaping from the southern slope of Mt. Shasta entered the Sacramento cañon, and as a lava stream 200 feet deep followed its course for over fifty miles.