The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-04-29
FOUNTAINS.

Those Of the Crystal Palace at Sydenhan,,
| England, De,cribed.
The wonderful Crystal Palace at Sy-
denham, England, with all its accessories
and surroundings, forms picture more
fit for the genii age of the Arabian Nights
marvels than this realistic century.
Among the myriad marvels of this beau
tiful art conception-and they really are
SO numerous as to require weeks for their
proper seeing occasioned in me
feeling of such genuine admiration as the
fountains. The fountains in the palace
gardens at Versailles and the grand jet
d'eau at st. Cloud are certainly very
beautiful, hut in vastness of conception,
| in artistic grouping and arrangement, and
in startling contrivances the fountains
| at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, are I'M
questionably the hydrostatic wonders of
the world.
fountains, each throwing small river
of water straight up into the air to the
vast height of two hundred and eighty
feet-a height to which very few church
steeples in America would reach-from
which descends tons on tons of water,
changed into flashes of misty, snowy,
spray long before it reaches the ground.
Immense sums were expended to secure
this feat, and after the failure of two at
tempts the present successful system was
perfected. 1t consists of two enormous
towers each rising to height two hun
bred and twenty-nine feet from the lof-
tiest part of the palace grounds. A
well, partly artesian, five hundred and
seventy five feet in depth, supplies the
water, and series of ponderous engines
raise the water up by lifts to successive
platforms until it reaches the top of
these towers, whence it descends to feed
the two gigantic fountains. Grouped
around there are dozen other fountains
throwing streams of water one hundred
feet into the air, and countless num-
Der sending up jets twenty-five, fifty
and seventy-ive feet, all these being fed
from the various platforms or lifts in
the colossal towers. Some comprehen-
sion of the immense strain which these
towers are required to Withstand may be
derived from the fact that when the
fountains are playing they bear a weight
of water alone of 1000 tons each in ad-
dition to encoantering the immense vi
bratory shock of the water in ascending
and descending. In each tower there is
total of $40 tons of wrought iron, $40
tons of cast iron and 200 tons of glass
and lead. The space over which the |
system effountains is distributed is COM
paratively small, covering not over ten
acres yet ten miles of iron pipe, through |
the smallest of which a man can crawl, |
are required to feed the various foun-
tains. There are 11,7Ss jets in the
charge 10000 gallons per minute, or
fifty per cent. more per each twenty-four
hours than the entire daily consumption
of London, supplied by nine powerful
water works companies, and five times
the entire daily consumption of Chicago.
1t costs $1,000 every day these fountains
are in action. The scene when they are
in full play surpasses any l can re-
call or describe in real or mythical his
tory. Group after group of basins, cas-
cades and water temples rise in terraces
one above the other, with the graceful |
outlines of the Crystal Palace browning
the summit, and from out each of these
basins and temples flash a myriad of
Jets, cleaving the air far up to the blue
dome with their crystal freshness and
falling back in clouds of silver or golden
spray, tinted with the fiery opalescence
of ten million jewels. Rivers of spark
ling water cross and recross in thou
sand curving jets and mingle together in
forms of countless and matches beauty,
and from the lowest basins of all spring
the two vast currents of resistless flood
pent up in the main fountains, and shoot
straight up towards the heavens until the
locker Oh turns away dizzy and be-
wildered at trying to follow them in
their flight as they apparently pierce
the dome of the universe itself. 1t is,
in truth, an ocean of water let loose in
wild revel. The brain and Drawn of
man have formed on this round earth
few things more beautiful or more
worthy the genius of the age than these
wonderful fountains.
CREMATIoN.-The movement in favor
of cremation has been resumed in Ger
many by Dresden society, which has
addressed an appeal to all kindred So