The weekly Butte record., 1862-12-27
Times Funeral March

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Immortality, and with prophetic eve looked
forward 10 the closing act OF Times great
drama. as consummated in the wreck of mat
ter and the crash Of worlds" -- Passing away
is written upon the pvoudest monuments of
eaTth-born grandeur, and everything points to
the time when nature shall die. and Goi and
angels shall come and lay her in the grave.
+ The whole earth Is one vast mausoleum of
buried greatness, and We are daily treadiug
over the graves Of thirty generations.
The glory and greatness of man, as develop
ed under the mos; favorable auspices. seem to
be trausitory and evauescent in their character,
aud in some parts Of the earth the lights Of
civilization, learning and refinement are paling
their Intellectual fires before the baleful shadows
of ignorance, idolatry and superstition. In
Asia Minor the traveller treads upon a soil
rich in historic lore, and the recollectons of a
glorious past, while the present population is
degraded by ignorance and slavery The glo-
~ of twenty different nations that rose and
/ aouriShed there, have been extingushed. and
the star Of their former greatness has set in
the gloom Of a starless night, on which no fu-
ture morrow shall ever rise. The herdsman's
flock and the wild beast of the wilderness now
wander over the tombs of Achilles and Hec-
/ tor, aud the throne of Mithridates, and the
/ Antiochuses, and the once splendid palaces of
/ Priam and Crosus are now masses of shapeless
ruin, over which the destroyer Time has driven
his ruthless and desoating plow-share.
The wealthy merchants and crafty trades
men Of Smyrna do not now stop to inquire
where Homer was born, and the rich yellow
sky of ancient and once proud Iona no longer
inspires orators. painters or poets, or lights the
waning fires of a Jealous and devoted patriot
ism. The same dark and terrible doom hangs
like the gloomy pail Of death over the banks
of Jordan and Euphrates. The Republic Of
Moses is blotted from the map of nations, the
golden Tyres of David and Isaiah are no longer
swept by living hands, and the voiceless silence
of death reigns supreme where music once raw
ished the happy hearts of busy thousands
The wandering Arab, without a home or
country, now comes, Indifferent and unmoved,
to rest the poles of his tent against the shatter
ed columns of Palmyra, and make his bed upon
crumbling fragments of thrones and Crowns.
Babylon, the peerless Queen of Empires, has
not escaped the common fate, and also has
fallen beneath the crushing stroke of an inevi
table destiny and that proad city, which sway
ed the sceptre Of supreme power over the op-
pressed tribes of Asia's teemng millions, has
scarcely left behind it trace of its former
greatness, or a crumbling pillar to show where
the rampars of Semiramus once stood.
! WEILs.-At what period of mans history
! he first had recourse to wells we have no ac-
count nor of the circumstances which led him
to penetrate the earth in search of water
Wells we have no doubt, are of anteduvan
origin, and the know ledge of them, like that of
the primitive arts, has been preserved by un-
interrupted use from the period of their first
discovery. At first they were nothing more
than shallow cavities dug in moist places and
their depths occasionally increased, in order to
contain the surface water that might drain
into them within certain intervals of time;
mode of obtaining it is still practced among
barbarous people. The wells of Latakoo, de-
scribed by Mr.. Campbell. in his Travels il
South Africa, were of this description. They
were but two feet deep and were emptied every
morning. The people Of New Holland, the
most wretched and ignorant of our species, had
similar excavations at which Dempier, when
on the coast in l688, obtained supply for his
ships. He says, we filed our barrels with
water at wells which had been dug by the na-
tiyes." Wells are also connected with the
superstitions of the New Zelanders and the
Radack Islanders, when discovered by Kotze-
bue, had pits or square wells which they had
dug for water. The fresh water which Coum-
bus found in the huts belonging to the Indians
of Cuba, was probably obtained from similar
wells but which the Spaniards who found
nothing but salt water were unable to discover.
These simple excavations would naturally
be multiplied and their dimensions enlarged as
far as the limited means Of man. in the early
ages, would permit and bis increasing wants
require But when the discovery of the metals
took place (in the seventh generation from
the first pair, according to both Moses and
Sahobonithon.) the depth Of wells would no
longer be arrested by rocks, nor their construc-
ton limited to locations where these did not
occur.
Mss TooDLEs says a friend of hers has in
vented a machine to renovate old bachelors,
out of good-sized, fat old bachelor, he can
make quite decent young man and have
enough left for two small puppies.
WE pass for what We are. Character
teaches above our wills. Men imagine that