The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-09-15

the most beautiful eyes-large, soft and
pathetic as those of deer-but their pig,
ugly, misshapen feet and ludicrous gait
make them anything but objects OF beauty
They cannot fly or jump, although IL Is
well known that in a race with the neetest
horse they are sure to come out ahead. Inc
owner of this novel farm resides in the city
of Mexico. but his administrators in charge
informed me that his master paid thou
sand dollars apiece for the birds, which
weigh, each, somewhere between three
hundred and four hundred pounds. He
says that each female lays an average OF
seventy-five eggs each year, every egg being
valued at 500 and weighing about two
pounds and a half Twice year their
feathers are plucked and only on the wings
and tail as the bodies are nearly naked at
their best Each plucking averages about
$780, Plucking the birds seems cruel
performance, and it is no wonder they
fight so SaVagely, sometimes killing the men
who attempt it. The only way it can be
done is by driving a bird quietly into a
corner Of the corral, where man slips
sack over its head; and then, while
four strong men hold him, the feathers
are torn out. Those that will not come
that way having to be cut-and it takes an
expert to do it, or the poor creature would
bleed to death. Their eggs can be gathered
only by strategy. The birds go wild at the
SlSub VI IL Jug, d uOIoC Va SlLLlIctl4ISillf
one or the other of these is introduced into
the enclosure, and while the ostrich is en-
gagged in trying to demOlish him, somebody
else slips quietly over the fence and steals
the eggs. In the midst of his trials the
ungainly creature can have one conSola-
ton if he only knew it-viz: that after the
captors, who torment him so, have gone to
dust, he will probably be thriving still,
the average life Of an ostrich being l2O
years.
BRAND-NEW INVENTION
relative to a method of treating pine leaves
for the purpose of converting them into a
pulp for the manufacture of strong and
superior paper-by exposing the leaves to
the action of steam under pressure-has
lately been tried in the northern peninsula
with great success. The method, nearly
as I can describe it, is as follows: The pine
leaves are put into a steam-tight vessel,
which at its lowest part communicates with
a steam supply pipe and at its upper end
with a ''worm," similar to still. Access
to the worm is shut off and steam is ad-
mitted into the closed vessel so as to expose
the fibres to the full effect under pressure
and also to its moisture and heat. The
steam serves, by its heat and pressure, to
soften the tibres and to repel
all resinous, oily, spirituous and other
matter from the pores and to vapor-
ize such matter, leaving the tibr
intact When properly softened, thetibr
are liberated from their original contents,
the passage to the worm is opened, so thaG
the vaporiZed substance may escape for
purposes of distillation. The fibres are
now removed from the vessel, and worked
into pulp after the manner in which veget =
BILE fibres are usually worked for making
paper, papier- mache and the like, and may be
bleached by means of suitable chemicals.
There are great stretches of pine reg On
in the middle peninsula, especially IN the
Laguna section and San Pedro Martin, so
that possibilities in this direction are IN
limited. On the high sierras, and in the
lofty mountains of San Rafael are miles of
dark forests, whose trees-from four to
six feet in diameter, and from thirty to
fifty feet to the first limb-are of
the black pitch variety, botanically
known as ptnus jetrW, with leaves
remarkably long, tough and fbrous. The
little pi1on pine, as the natives call it 1.-THE
Parry pine of upper California;, is more
rare belonging to a group that inhabit'
rocky peaks at high attitudes, is also found
in several localities. This is always tiny
tree, seldom more than twenty-five feet
high. with a close, rounded head of slender
limbs, bearing cones which at maturity
1.-TWO years. open widely and discharge a
few
LARGE, SWEET, DELICIOUS ECIS-
Though the southern peninsula is nearly
treeless, there are other sections where
SPLENDID timber abounds-live-oak,c cotton
wood, mesquit mountain mahogany, ETC.,
and also the intermediary vegetable forma-
tions, ranging between grass grOwths and
timber proper, of which the palm is a
species And there is a multitude of plants
including the maguey, pitta and Spanish
dagger, from which the best of paper might
be made.
Who has not heard of the phantom
Ship of California, whose hulk is imbed-
ded in the sands of the desert and whose
spectral masts have lured many treasure
seekers to destruction! At the time of its
discovery, some years ago, the press raved
about it, songsters sang it, move lists wove
it into romances, historians speculated
upon it, and joaquin Miller, the long
haired rhymester of thesSierras. dropping
into poetry with the facility of Silas Urgg,
celebrated it in these words:
And said, "a ship lies yonder, dead
And said, "DoublOons lie Sown in sand
In yon far desert, dead and brown,
Beyond where waye-washed walls look down,
AS thick as stars over head;
That three ship masts uplift.
A great ship lifting from the sand,
And lifting heavenward hand
The mysterious ship lies in the desert not
Lower California and has just been discov
cred by couple of prospectors. 1t was
first seen by one Joseph Talbot, who gives
it as his opinion that the desert in which it
is stranded was once a part of the sea of
Cortez; but that at some remote period an
earthquake threw up the chain of hills at
its mouth, entirely altering the character
of the country. The waters gradually SUD
sided, bat their mark may still be plainly
$40 CiytU seventy feet the
mountain sides all around the border. The
ship may have been a piratical craft, which
lost her way; she may have been the very
vessel named by Admiral Vizcaino, and
mentioned by Father JanipOre Sierra. She
may have been ship of exploration, un
manned by some castillian grandee, which
disappeared in the seventeenth century
with million doubloons on board-none
can tell anything about this beyond the fact
that there she is
IN THE MIDST OF THE DESERT,
'lifting heavenward a hand" whether to
beckon or to warn, and that no man has
yet been able to reach the spot.
Many have tried to reach it, but all have
usually failed. For miles around it the
alkali crust that covers the Deep hot,
singing sand is not strong enough to sup
port man or burro; there is no water for a
great distance round about, and if a man
could walk on foot through the desert,
W hen it is impossible to compel mule to
carry him, he could net be burdened with
sufficient food and water to last him
through the expedition, without which he
must surely perish. Last year two deter
mined miners were sent out, equipped
with grub stake,n with shovels and
tools, to dig up the craft and
its treasures. Time passed, they Gil
not return, and finally oCners were sent to
look for them, after the manner in which
parties go in search of the north pole and
others go in search of them. The latter,
coming in sight of this tall white ship,
found pile of fossils and marine shells-a