North Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1850-1852, 1850-11-06


over ship at sea, and passenger ngersshour after
hour, alone on the deck. The waters plunge and
welter and glide away beneath the keel. Above the
sails tower up in the darkness almost to the sky. and
their shadows fall burthen on the deck below.
In the clouded night star is seen, and as the
ship changes her course, the passenger knows not
which way is East West, or North or South.
4! What island, what sunken rocks may be on her
course or where they are he knows not. All around,
to him, is mystery. He bows his head in the SUBJ
mission of utter ignorance. -.
But of science have read the laws of the sky.
And the next day this passenger beholds the captain
looking clock, and taking of the place of the
sun, and with the aid of couple of books composed
of rules and mathematical tables making calculations.
And when he has completed them he is able to point
almost within hand breadth TO the place at which,
after unnumbered wndings, he has arrived in the
midst of the 80.
Storms may have beat, and currents afifted but he
knows where they are and the precise point where,
hundred leagues the water, lies his native shore.
Here is approaching and making use of the
revelations of science. DO.
Night again shuts down the waste of waves,
and the passenger beholds single SEAMAN stand at
the Wheel and watch, hour after hour, it vibrates
beneath lamp, little needle which points ever, as
! it were, living finger to the steady pole.
This man knows nothing of the rules of navigation,
nothing of the of the sky. But reason and
perence have given him faith in the commanding Of
cer of the ship, faith in the laws that control her
COURSE faith in the unerrng integrity OF the little
guide before him. And so ithout single doubt he
!
/ through night and the waves.
| And that faith is not disappointed With the
morning he behods far away the summils Of the
gay and misty headlands, rising like cloud in the
horizon, and as he Them the hills appear, and
the lighthouse at the entrance of the habor, the
spires and the churches and the shining roofs sight
of joy, and he tries to detect his own dwelling.
! PUMPING A LAKE Day. DR.. j. V. G. Smith, the
editor of the Boston Medical Surgical Journal who
is now on visit to Europe gives an interesting de-
scription in his editorial correspondence from Hol
land, of the manner in which the Lake of HARLEM is
being drained by steam engines, and its waters sent
to the - ---r
'Six miles from Amsterdam s.the land lake of Ha-
arem, 81 miles long by ii in width, which, 300
years ago, found TO be perceptiby increasing by
shooting its waters further and further, and covering
up the land, threatening the first commercial port of
the realm with obstruction by flowing in upon its
banks. Various schemes at that remote epoch
devised by able counselofs stay the threanng dam
ger. Three Dutch engineers, of owledged abil
ty, proposed draining off The WATER first raising it by
wind mills They entitled to remembrance from
having suggested the plan adopted in 1849 for
ing an impending calamity. =
Seven years since, delay being longer safe canal
was dug around the whole circumference ofthe lake
-averag ing 200 feet in width by ten deep. Three
monster engines are housed on the sides of the lake.
some six or eight miles apart, each moving eight
monstrous pumps. All the pistons raised at
once, at every revolution of the machinery raising
900 gallons of water, which is emptied into the
canal, whence it is FASTENED on by a>fourth engine
faster than it would otherwise move 10 4e,Zuyder
Zee, and thus it reaches the sea- fifteen mites distant
In April, l649, the pumps, worked by three of the
mightest steam engines perhaps ever constructed,
were set In motion, and up to this date. July 25th
have lowered the contents Of the lake seven feet
BY next April it is anticpa ted that the bottom will
be fairly exposed, and all the water conveyed away
from this ancient basin. All this is executed at the
expense ofCiovernment."'