Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table December 8 1896 by Various

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on duck."

"English duck," said the Captain. "Pretty near new. And there's something down there hitched to the spar. We don't need any fish to-day, boys. I'll gear this fast to the boat, and then I'll gropple 'round."

"That's it," he said to Sam, after making a fruitless sweep through the water with his boat-hook. "You can gropple, too, but put on a sinker, or it won't go down. Heaviest chunk of lead there is in my basket."

It was plain that he liked the quick and handy way with which Sam followed his directions, for he said:

"I've known a young lubber like you, green as grass, turn out to be a right good foremast hand. Tie it tight and swing it out. That's it. Let it go down. There! Pull!"

"I've struck something!" said Sam, breathlessly; but even as he did so he was thinking.

Wrecks? He had heard all sort of things concerning wrecks. What if a sunken ship should be away down there? The Captain said this was a topsail. He must know. Then there were lower sails. There were masts. Every ship had a hull. What about drowned people? What if he were about to pull up somebody that had been drowned?

It made a kind of cold chill run all over him, but he tugged upon his line, and something at the end of it slowly yielded and came nearer. Meantime the Captain plied his long-handled boat-hook, and now he suddenly exclaimed:

"I've hitched on a hawser! Here she comes! Look out for the boat, Pete."

"Only a rope," thought Sam, as the Captain's catch came in sight, but the old sailor's eyes twinkled, and he said to himself,

"There's something at the other end of it."

"Sam!" exclaimed Pete. "You've struck a bundle! Haul it in!"

"Can't," said Sam. "I guess it's fastened to the rope the Captain hooked."

"No, bub, it's hitched to the spar," said the Captain. "Cut it loose, and in with it."

Sam pulled out his pocket-knife, but his fingers trembled so that he hardly could open it. Then he reached over and began to cut away, but before the bit of rope that held the bundle was severed the Captain shouted:

"Wreck it is! Got another catch! It's a valise. There comes the spar, all afloat. Hullo! That's too bad. Somehow I unhitched that sail. It's gone to the bottom."

It was just so. The water-soaked canvas had been buoyed only by the wood, and as soon as that was cut away it went down out of sight.

BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.

The schools for black boys and girls in the Congo country have a very unusual feature that perhaps is not found in any other part of the world. Some of these schools are exclusively for boys, and the others for girls, and the intention is, when they grow up, to have them marry one another, thus creating civilized families, who will help to improve the people around them. Probably the young men and women will not think this is a hardship, for it is believed they will prefer to choose their wives or husbands from among those who have had some education, like themselves; and if they do not, they will undoubtedly have the privilege of choosing where they please. Whether this plan is wise or not, it shows at least that the white race is beginning to think a good deal about the black children in Africa; in fact, these coming men and women are expected to help far more than their barbarous fathers and mothers of to-day to civilize Africa.

If we were to visit Belgium this summer we should find many little black girls from the Congo in the convents there learning to read and write, sew and cook, and to do many other useful things. When they go back to their homes it is expected that they will wear the garb of the Sisters of Charity, and teach their people as the devoted white Sisters have been doing since 1892; and if they do well, they will ultimately take the place of those pale-faced women from Europe, who suffer from the trying climate. Thus far one-fourth of all the girls in the chief Congo Catholic school, the brightest among them, have been sent to Belgium for years of training.

All through the French Congo we see the government officials keeping a sharp lookout for the more promising sons of native chiefs; for some day these boys will become the most influential natives in the country, and so the French are gathering many of them into schools near their homes, and are sending others to France to be educated. Of course they will not all turn out exactly as the French hope they will.

Some years ago an African chief was killed in battle with the French forces. One of his sons was sent to France. No black boy there makes better progress in his studies, but visitors shake their heads when they hear his answer to the question what he hopes to do in the world.

"I hope to live long enough," he sometimes says, "to avenge the death of my father."

He will probably change his mind, and, at any rate, France will give him no opportunity to make her any trouble.

Professor Drummond, after his visit to Africa, said he would like to get inside an African for an afternoon, and see how he looked at different things. Wouldn't we like to know just how these boys and girls feel, and what they think, when they are suddenly landed, fresh from the depths of a savage land, in the streets of Paris, Brussels, or Berlin, and see more things in a day they never heard of than we do in a year? They learn many things, as a baby does, by stern experience. When Von Fran?ois brought an eight-year-old boy from inner Africa to the sea, the youngster chased along the beach in high glee, and before any one could stop him, tried to refresh himself with a big swallow of ocean water. This same boy, Pitti, thought the snow he saw falling in Berlin was a swarm of butterflies. The first horse he saw terrified him, and the Berlin newspapers told of his unbounded astonishment at the strange dishes and viands on his master's table. What a marvellous change in the condition of these children! Many of them were slaves, and some of them had been brutally treated and even wounded by cruel slave-dealers. To-day they have good homes, and the world is doing all it can to make them intelligent and honorable men and women.

There are "street arabs," or homeless boys, in the Congo villages, just as there are in New York city. They live on what they can pick up, and it sharpens their wits to have to hustle for a living. It would take a smart Yankee boy to beat some of these Congo youngsters in a trade. Even a five-year-old will sometimes amass a little capital. Somehow he will get hold of a string of beads. He may trade it for a small chicken, which thrives under his nurturing care, and in a few months he can sell the fowl for four strings of beads, quadrupling his capital. Pretty soon he is able to buy a pig, which follows him like a dog, and sleeps in his hut; and when piggy grows up his owner gets a good price for him in the market.

I think you have never heard of Mr. Stanley's purchase of eighteen little black boys for three cents apiece. He told me the story once, and as I have never seen it in any of his books, I will tell it here. On the upper Congo he met a slave gang that was likely to die of starvation, for little food was to be had. His offer to the Arabs of a cotton handkerchief for each of the little boys in the party was accepted. The handkerchiefs had cost the explorer just three cents apiece, and it is doubtful if slaves were ever purchased so cheaply before. The explorer tucked his boys away in corners of his little steam-boat, and as he went down the Congo he distributed them among the stations he had built along the river-banks, and there the boys were taught to read and work. He took one of them to England, where the lad soon learned to speak English, and Mr. Stanley was surprised to find how much the boy could tell him about the language, customs, and legends of the people he came from, far up the Aruwimi River.

Young folks in Africa act a great deal as other boys and girls would do under similar circumstances. If we were unfortunates who were surely dying of hunger in a wilderness, perhaps we should be as glad as these boys were to be sold for three cents apiece, if the change meant plenty to eat and a kind master; and, if, free children as you are, you were mistaken for slaves, I doubt if you could be more deeply grieved than some untutored black children have been by such a blunder. On the lower Niger lives Sanabu, daughter of a chief. Awhile ago, when the girl was fourteen years old, she was permitted to accompany the French explorer Mizon, because she knew several native dialects, besides a little English and French, and was useful as an interpreter. One day a Portuguese asked Mizon how much he had paid for his little slave, and offered to buy her. Angry tears came to the child's eyes; but she brushed them away, as she drew herself up with the air of a little princess, and said: "I am no slave. I'm as free as you are. No one shall ever sell me." Sanabu was taken to France, and all the French people know the story of her life, and of her wanderings for a year as the interpreter of an explorer.

Sanabu is not the only little girl who has gone with an explorer as interpreter. In 1888 Mr. Paul Crampel brought to France the little daughter of a chief. The explorer did not want the child, but he found that the old African would be seriously offended if he did not accept the unique present. "Go with the white man," said the stern old father, as he led the trembling Niarinze to Crampel. "You have no longer a father or mother. You are going to the white man's country."

Crampel's young wife welcomed the little girl in Paris, where she was to learn to read and live out her days. But another fate was in store for the bright young creature. The time came when France sent Crampel back to Africa on a very difficult mission. He needed an interpreter among the widely spread Pahuin tribe, who are believed to number a million people. Niarinze was one of these people, and it was decided that she should go back with the explorer as his interpreter. A great crowd on the wharf saw them waving their handkerchiefs as the steamer bore them away, and that was the last that their friends in France ever saw of them. A few months later they were in an unknown country north of the Congo, and there Crampel was stabbed to death by treacherous men. The brave girl, rushing to his aid, seized a gun and shot dead one of the men who were murdering her white friend. She was knocked down and disarmed, and we do not know whether she ever rose again. Some of the fugitives said she was killed on the spot; but there was a later report that she was led away a slave, far north toward the Sahara Desert.

Do not some of these incidents show good qualities in these far-away African boys and girls that should attract in their behalf the sympathy and interest of more fortunate children in other lands? What boy could do more to show love for his mother than the little ten-year-old on the upper Congo whose thrilling story was told by Captain Coquilhat?

One day a woman of the great Bangala tribe was crossing the Congo in a canoe with her little boy. Kneeling in the dugout, she leaned over the side as she bent to her paddle. Suddenly a huge crocodile came to the surface, closed his jaws upon the mother's arm, and pulled her out of the canoe. The one thought in the boy's mind, a thought that triumphed over his terror, was that he must save his mother if he could. The paddle drifted near, and he picked it up. He could see by the swell of the water ahead where the crocodile was swimming with his prey, just below the surface. He started in pursuit, wielding the paddle with all his might.

The animal easily gained on the canoe, and finally, far in advance, he pulled his victim out of the water upon the shore of an island. Then he plunged into the river again and swam away, perhaps to find his mate and share his prize with her. The boy paddled straight for the spot where his poor mother lay. As he gained the shore he knew that she was either dead or senseless. He leaned over her, and saw her terrible wounds. He was not strong enough to carry her in his arms, but he could draw her to the water's edge and pull and lift until the poor body was in the canoe. With what frantic energy he worked! And he had need; for before he could push off and point his boat homeward, he saw the crocodile up the river, and coming nearer every moment.

When the crocodile had reached the shore, the canoe was well out in the river. If the animal had not stopped to crawl out on the land and look around for his victim, the boy's devotion would probably have cost him his life. As it was, the crocodile had nearly overtaken the canoe, when the boy's cries brought the villagers to the shore, and the shouts and missiles frightened the angry pursuer away. The poor mother was dead, but her little son, who had risked his life to save her, had at least the satisfaction of knowing that her body would not be the food of crocodiles.

"Don't you fire guns in your country when a baby is born?" asked a Congo native of a missionary, who had rushed in great alarm when he heard a volley fired.

"Come back," shouted the natives to him. "It's only a baby born, and everybody is glad."

That white man was glad too it was only a baby. Many an African child, more unfortunate than most of them, has been glad to be befriended by the white men who are living in their country. Here is one among many stories illustrating this.

One day, in Central Africa, Mr. Arnot found several girls in a slave caravan, nearly dead from the hardships they had suffered. He bought them for a few yards of cloth, and took them home. One of them, little Mwepo, was very bright and happy, and was the favorite in the household.

Mr. Arnot went one day to dine with King Msidi. A little girl came into the yard where they were sitting and threw herself at the King's feet. When he bade her tell her troubles, she said she was a slave whom the King's soldiers had taken from her home. She said her mistress treated her so cruelly that she had run away to beg the King's protection. Arnot was about to leave, and the sly old King told the girl to follow him if she wanted a good home. So Arnot took her hand and led her to his cottage, where Mwepo and the little stranger flew into each other's arms, weeping as though their hearts would break. Three years before they had been playing on the banks of the Luba River when slave-stealers suddenly tore them from their homes and parents; but after many months of suffering they had been reunited in the home of a white man.

GOLD, AND ITS USES.

If the average reader or thinker will devote a few minutes to the subject of gold and its uses, and how much of it annually disappears by wear, leaving no possible trace, he will find himself involved in some extremely interesting calculations. If some genius would only invent a power strong enough to attract to it the millions of invisible particles that have, and are constantly being worn off the various articles composed of that metal, what an immense amount would be recovered!

Where do these particles go? Here, there, everywhere: in your house, on the streets, in the banks, business houses, stores, and wherever man goes. As an instance of this the following is cited: There is at present a veritable gold-mine being worked in an old watch-case factory in Brooklyn. It occurred to the new purchasers of this property that during the long years of manufacturing of gold watch-cases that took place there, a large quantity of gold particles must have been absorbed by the flooring, walls, furnace chimney, etc. So they went carefully to work and tore the old building down bit by bit, and burnt and crushed the material, afterwards assaying the ashes. So far something like ,000 has been recovered. Say an ounce of this lost gold were recovered. If we melted it down and gilded a fine silver wire, it would extend more than thirteen hundred miles; or if nineteen ounces were recovered , it would gild a wire long enough to compass the whole earth like a hoop.

If you pick up a gold-leaf, such as is used for gilding purposes, it becomes a curiosity in your eyes when you realize that seventy-five square inches of it weigh only one grain. Now the thousandth part of a line, or inch, is easily visible through a common pocket-glass. Hence it follows that when gold is reduced to the thinness of gold-leaf 1/50700000 of a grain of gold may be distinguished by the eye. But it is claimed that 1/1400000000 of a grain of gold may be rendered visible.

Large quantities of gold are used in gilding portions of exteriors of public and private buildings. For instance, if we take the Church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg, we find that it required the use of two hundred and forty-seven pounds of gold to gild its five crosses. They can be seen glittering at a distance of twenty-seven miles.

A STILTED COMBAT.

BY G. B. BURGIN,

Peele sat on the platform, surrounded by a group of youthful sympathizers. "The fact is," he said, the light of battle in his eye, "I'll either have Gough's gore, or he mine. Matters have come to a crisis."

At the other end of the school-room "Grinny" Gough made an exactly similar speech. From time to time these youthful Montagues and Capulets glanced ruefully at a blackboard containing the following pregnant information:

Composition to be written by every boy in the school, instead of customary half-holiday.

SUBJECT:

Landes.--A maritime department in the southwest of France, on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. It derives its name from the landes, or marshy heaths, which occupy a considerable portion of its surface. The capital of the department is Mont-de-Marsan, and its area 3599 square miles. The population in 1893 was 35,143.

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