The Nevada journal., 1851-10-04
CITY, CALIFORNIA SATURDAY EVENING OCTOBER
esas HO ME.


literature that is more beautiful or af
fecting than that where Xenophon, ir
his Anabasis, describes the effect pro.
duced on the remnant Of the ten thou
sand Greeks, when, after passing
through dangers without number, they
at length ascended sacred mountain
and from its peak and summit caught
a sight of the sea. Dashing aside
their bucklers, with hymn Of Joy,
they rushed tumultuously forward
Some wept with the fullness of their
delirious pleasure, others laughed,
and more fell on their knees and bless
ed that broad ocean. Across its blue
waters, little floating sea-birds, the
memorials of their happy homes, came
! and famed their weary souls. All
the perils they had encountered, all
the companions they had lost, all the
miseries they had endured, were in
an instant forgotten, and naught was
with them but the gentle phantoms
of past and future joys. One was
again securing on his fleet steed across
the plains of Thessaly; another re-
,lined beneath the flower crowned
rocks Of Arcadia, and gazed into the
lreamy eyes Of her whose form, amid
battle and bivouac, was ever with him;
a third recalled that proud day when,
before the streaming eyes Of his over
joyed parents, and amid the acclama
ton of all Greece, he bore off from
amid competitors the laurel wreath of
the Olympian victor.
Oh! home, magical spell, all powers
full homel how strong must have been
thy influence, when thy faintest mems
ory could cause those bronzed heroes
of thousand fights TO weep like tear
full women! With the cooling fresh
ness of a desert fountain, with the
sweet fragrance of flower found in
winter, you came across tho great
waters to those wandering men, and
beneath the peaceful shadow of your
wings their souls found rest
GIGANTIC WATER WORKS IN CEYL0N.
We have held the opinion that the
Croton Works were the most gigantic
in the world, and we have heard the
assumption made that no works of
-uch magnitude ever existed in the
days of old. So far as the latter as
sertion is concerned it is not correct.
Mr.. Tenant, in his recent travels in
the Island of Ceylon, describes some
ancient water tanks, beside which our
Croton works are as some small creek
compared to the Hudson river. One
tank, named Pathariecolorn, is seven
miles long, three hundred feet broad,
and sixty feet high. The tank was
faced throughout its entire length with
layers Of square stones.
This huge tank is but one Of a great
many scattered over the country, and
had been erected for irrigation. IL is
partly in ruins, as the waters flow
freely out of huge breach two hun
dred feet broad, which appears to have
been made centuries ago. The race
which constructed these tanks has
passed away, and the country where,
at one time there existed highly ci-
vilized and skifnl engineering people,
is now the abode Of wild Veddahs,
race whose homes are in tents, and
who wander about from place to place.
An engineer has calculated that it
would cost more than $4,000,000 to
construct tue front embankment Of this
huge water reservoir What must
have been the causes which extcrmi-
mated the people who erected these
works (and they must have been nu-
merous) and left them TO fall into ruins,
tenanted only by the buffalo and un-
clad savage? The savage is surely
not the natural, but the unnatural
state of man--the savage is man ship
wrecked in social position.
Be GENTLEMEN AT Home. There
ora co,r caoo;l;oe wa ir,1o ,rinn any