Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-05-05

EeSiHSIuDcJ NE ne 14dSb nOcC Ol 1
Carnival of Venice"
Yankee Doodle" etc. They all |
were heard by the astonished audi
ence in New York, although not |
with the same distinctness. The
then, as this apparatu. for
conveying sounds has been named,
is now no longer regarded as an idle
invention of a speculative brain or
diseased imagination, but a stern re-
atty which, sooner or later, is des-
tined to bring about an important
The symphonies of
Beethoven, the operas of Mozart,
DoniZetti and Verdi, the oratorios
of Handel and Mcndelssohn, the
seductive waltzes of Chopin and
Strauss, will once be heard thou
sands of miles from the place where
they are performed, But this is not
all yet. Even charts and maps may
be telegraphed. AT least, if / am
not mistaken, the meteorological re-
ports and charts of the United States
signal service are transmitted in
this way from the central station in
Washington. Last winter French
journals con lined the bewildering
statement that the police authorities
in Paris sent, by telegraph, a por-
trait of notorious criminal to the
police in Lyons for the purpose of
securing the speedy apprehension of
the offender. Electricity, therefore,
is not only a swift and faithful car
rier of messages, but also of musical
productions and Photographic pict-
ureS.
All imaginable attempts and eff
forts are made to increase and inn
prove the ways and means of local,
national and international c0mmu-
nicatiOn and rapid transit of passen-
gers and merchandise. Time and
distance loose their significance, and
almost dwindle down to nothing.
The SueZ canal, the memorable
work of Lesseps, has brought the
progressive Occident and the Won
derful Orient closer together. A
proposed canal across the Isthmus
of Central America, whether by
way of Panama, through Nicaragua
or Tehuantepec in Mexico, viii es-
tablish a more intimate connection
between the Old and the New World,
and shorten the route from Liver
pool to San Francisco by $40, 600.
In 1857, if remember rightly q am
all the time quoting from memory
only, the Harlem Sea in Holland,
covering an area of several thousand
square miles, was, by means of sew
eral huge suction pumps, completely
depleted of its water, and converted
into fertile land. Even the Sahara
in Africa, the most extensive desert
in the world, might, according to
the rather bold speculations of
French scientists, be converted into
productive land. In 1912, a large
crowd assembled at the Round
Down Cliffs in England, to watch
the issue of grand blasting. Many
thousand pounds of explosive mate
rial were deposited in the rock and
ignited by galyanic battery. In a
moment, rocks of millions of cent
weights were hurled into the foam
ing sea. The blasting operations at
He'll Gate, near New York City,
conducted by General Newton, and
in part successfully finished last
winter, are still fresh in everybody's
memory. Dynamite and other
blasting material, together $4,000
pounds, were ignited by a simple
touch Of q key in the galYanic bat
terry, and Hell Gate was burst open
without causing the much-dreaded
shocks and commissions of earth and
water.
The present tendency of the rest
less mind is to reduce time and
space to mere empty conceptions,
and to pave the way for the estab-
lishment of universal brotherhood
among all nations. Go to vast
seaport, for instance New York,
Liverpool, Marseilles, Genoa, Alex
andria, Hamburg, etc.; look at that
dense forest of masts carrying flags
of all possible cOlOrs; and examine
attentively those motley groups of
strange mariners. What a check
cred cOnglomeratiOn of heterOgene-
Gus elements! What a curious
cosmopolitan medley of nations, and
what a BabylQnian confusion of
languages! All races, from the rest
less, conquering Caucasian to the
benighted Ethiopian, the dreamy
Chinese, the crafty Malay and the
sturdy Indian; all compilations,
ranging through all possible shades
and grades, from the fair and ruddy
of the Germans and Scandinavians
to the dark and brown of the Latin
and Greek nations, the olive of
Mongolians, the dusky Of Abys-
sinians, the jet black Of negroes and
the copper or cinnamon color of the
American Indian; all languages,
from the flexible and nervous Ger
manic dialects to the sprightly
French, the sQnOrous and mellit1u-
Gus Italian and Spanish, the digni-
fed Greek, the poetiCai Arabic, the
musical Malay, to the mOnosyllabic
Chinese; all religions, from the
numerous Christian denominations
TO the fanatic Mohammedans, the
austere Brahmins, the superstitious
Buddhists and the ignorant and
wretched fetish-worshipper of At
RIGA; and all forms of government,
from the republican institutions of
the United States, of Central and
South America, Of France and
Switzerland, to the limited mon
arches of England, Germany, Bel
gI,ID, Snai0 etc the absolute