The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1891-10-14
The Seven Wonders OF the World.

The Seven Wonders OF the World.
"Will you please mention the Seven
Wonders of the world, and oblige an old
Subscriber" Z"
To this day question of this kind is
occasionally addressed to editors who are
30 obliging as to publish "answers to cor
respondents" The writers do not mean
such wonders as the Hoosac tunnel or the
Suez canal, but the wonders of the an
cient world-the wonders which aston
ished Plato, Xenophon and Alcibisdes.
The "old subscriber" may have crossed
the Brooklyn bridge that morning, and
seen the statute of liberty loom up from
the mist of New York harbor, and
watched the steamer Majestic as she
moved slowly down the bay toward the
ocean. But what he wants to know is the
seven wonders which have been embed.
ded in books for 1000 years and provoked
curiosity by excluding all the wonders OF
the world except seven.
The editorial mind day cannot
remember those old wonders. Every
time the question comes there has to be a
search for them in dictionaries and
encyclopedias, where they are found to
be of great Pyramid of Egypt, the Light
house of Alexandria, the Hanging Gar
dens of Babylon, the Statute Of Jupiter
at Olympia, the Colussus of Rhodes, the
Temple of Diana at Ephesus and the
Tomb of King Mausolusl wonders which
have all perished, except the Pyramid,
and only one of which would seem re-
spectacle to the modern mind, namely
the Lighthouse of Alexandra.
We no longer approve the idea of
wasting the toll of tens of thousands of
men upon pyramids, tombs and tasteless
colossal statutes. We desire that an ex.
pensive and elaborate structure shall
have a certain basis of good sense, and
shall minister not to the pride of an indi.
vidual, but to the service or qualification
of the public.
If an.editor were asked to name the
seven wonders of the present world, he
could answer the question by turning to
Webster's Unabridged. The candidates
for place in the seven are numerous,
and by the time he had his seven well
chosen he might find. on reading the
morning paper, that his favofite wonder
had been effaced by rival in. another
continent. A few years ago, the suspen-
sion bridge over the Niagara river, with
its span of S21 feet, might have put in its
claim to be one of the seven; but after a
while the railroad bridge at Cincinnati,
with span of 1867 feet, reduced it to
the second rank, and then the Brooklyn
bridge of ,595 feet span put Cincinnati's
nose out of joint. The bridge over the
Firth of Forth in Scotland shows a span
of 1 ,62O feet. The projected bridge over
the Hudson at New York is expected to
hold up a span of 1850 feet; and now we
hear respectable engineers expressing the
conviction that bridge over the English
channel, 20 miles long, and lifted high
above the top masts of the largest ships,
is possible feat of engineering.
Something similar has happened with
regard to tunnels. Many years ago,
when I paid four English pence for the
pleasure of getting wet in the dark and
oozy tunnel under the Thames, that work
was regarded as the chief wonder of the
modern world. By and by came the
Hootunsac mel nearly five miles long,
and soon after the Mont Gents tunnel
through the Alps, seven and a half miles
long, which has been followed by two
other tunnels through the Alps. There
was something exceedingly marvellous in
the way the Mont Gents tunnel was exc
cuted, particularly to persons not familiar
With mathematics. This tunnel was be-.
gun at both ends in 1857, and was finish
ed about fourteen years after. During
that period two gangs of men were work.
ing toward one another through solid
rock in the heart of the mountain, and
when at last they met, it was found that
the direction of the two portions was per.
fectly identical. The two parts fitted
exactly except that the level of one was
foot higher than the level of the other,
which was mistake not difficult of cor.
rection, and grew out of the extreme diff