Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1886-09-15

valley, including the Dead Sea on the one
hand and view of Jerusalem and its en-
virons on the other.
In order to get more detailed view, I
paid siXpence and assembled the minaret
of mosque, and there high above the
offensive sights, sounds and smells of the.
place, viewed the remarkable natural pam
Drama to which have alluded. One could
stand there for hours picking out sacred
sights. The serpentine ribbon of green
which marks the course of the Jordan is
distinctly visible, the water cannot be
seen, and, indeed, is not visible till you
are within rod or so of the river bank.
At its southern extremity stretches the
Dead Sea, its waters bright and beautiful
to the eye, but deadly and nauseous to the
palate. Between lies bleak. horrid will
derness, with nothing to relieve the awful
country of Judea." With glass the ruin
ed castle of Macherus may be discerned
on the mountains of Moab, where Josephus
tells US that John the Baptist was impris-
oned and untmely executed.
DISCOVERY OF LETTERs.-Early in the
fifteenth century there was an obscure,
young man living at HARLEM, Holland,
whose sentimental affection for an equally
obscure girl led to results which revolu-
tionized the ideas of the world.
This love struck youth was sacristan, or
sexton, as we should say, of the HARLEM
Cathedral. It was his habit to wander, in
dreamy moods, outside of the city, and to
sit beneath the willows on the banks of
the canals, musing on the charms of his
beloved. Having some skill in the use of
his knife, he was in the habit of engrav-
ing, in raised letters, the initials of his
mistress, blended with his own, not on the
bark of trees, as many foolish lovers do,
but on little blocks cut from the beech or
WilloW-trees. These blocks, thus engrav-
ed, he used to carry to his lady-lOve as
pledges of his affectionate remembrances.
One day he happened to wrap some of
these letters in bit of parchment. The
next day on opening the parcel to look at
his work he was astonished to see the let
ters perfectly reproduced on the parch-
ment. The ooZing sap from the green
willow or beech block had made perfect
impression of the letters. This discovery
pleased him, though he had no conception
of its vast importance to mankind. He
made other letters on an old wooden plat
ter, covered them with black liquid, and
obtained the first proof ever seen by NOR
tai eye. Thus Lawrence Roster, the sac
ristan, while dreaming love and marriage,
had stumbled blindly upon the principle
of the art of printing.-Dr. Wise's Ro-
mantle Realities.
A FEW OF JOSH BILLINGS EPIGRAMs.
l had rather undertake to be two good
doves than one decent serpent.
TO learn your offsprings to steal, make
them beg hard for all you give them.
Piety is like beans; it seems to do best
on poor soil.
A broken reputation is like broken
vase; it may be mended but always shows
where the crack was.
If you can't trust a man for the full
amount, let him skip. This trying to get
an average on honesty has always been q
failure.
There is no treachery in silence-silence
isa hard argument to beat.
Don't mistake habits for character. The
men of the most character have the few
est habits.
The man who is thoroughly polite is
two-thirds Christian anyhow.
Flattery is like cologne water-to be
SmelC OF, not SWallOWeu.
I have noticed that the man who is al
ways telling what he will do when he gets
there, never gets there.
When man has great deal'to say, he
can say it in few words.
Products OF A Ton OF COAL.-The
possible products of a ton of coal are more
marvellous than the tabled transformations
CO Nrlx hn Of
is needed and straightway from this black,
perfumes and sweets. An exhibition was
given in London consisting solely of SUBJ
stances derived from coal: One class in
cluded the well-known anillne or coal tar
colors, the brilliant reds, orange and scar
let, to which more recently have been
added indigo and violet. Another class
contained the medicines, kairene, artificial
ouinine and antipyrene. Not so we'll
known is it, perhaps, that the odors of
sweet scented grasses, "new mown hay"
and heliotrope, may have their origin in
the same grimy mass. An artificial hello
trope was formerly prepared from vanil;
lon, a variety of vanilla, but it was found
that a substitute for vanillOn could be ex-
tracted from coal tar, and this with oil of
almonds, artificially made, gave an ex-
uuisite perfume eofheliotrope. The sweets
were represented by the curious saccharin.
of which little goes very far, as it is 22O
times sweeter than sugar.
THE EXTENT OF TERRA 1NCOGNITA.-
Professor Graun, of the Berlin Geographic
cal society, estimates that, outside of the
polar regions, all area Of at least 8OO,OOO
square miles, is still geographically terra
incognita. Europe has been thoroughly
all but the icy summit regions OF
the northermost fields, but in old Asia vast
territories are known only from hearsay,
as the solitudes of the Bactrian desert and
the mountain regions of western China.
The best maps of Central Africa still show
blanks and conjectural dots; the secret Of
the Niles Lakes has yet by no means
been satisfactorily solved; the sources OF
the Congo and the upper tributaries of the
Zambezi still rise in cloudland of ira
dition. Brazil and its border states still
contain certain large stretches of untrOd-
den virgin woods, the swamp labarynth OF
the Gran, Chaco, for instance, and the all
but timpenetrable jungles of the delta form
ed by the junction of the Rio Madeiro
and Machato, where even the native In
dians can travel only by the waterways
of an occasional inundation.
THE CHEROKEE INDIANs.-The east
ern band of the Cherokees now numbers
1929, scattered through six States, the
bulk of them in North Carolina, where
they have reservation of $4,000 acres.
There they live for the most part, in COM
mon, tilling the land as they think best.
The mass Of the Cherokees are in the In
dian territory, whittier the eastern band
has been invited to settle and share lands
and privileges with them. The latter
will, it is thought, soon 60 thither. They
would not be-so easily duped there by de-
signing whites, nor will they suffer so
much from pneumonia as they do in the
region of North Carolina.