Morning journal and courier., 1891-07-08

thusiast nor an adventurer. He has no particular ambition to be great explorer, and the whole thing is to him a business proposition. He is quiet hammered man, thirty-one years old, and is a machinist and engineer by trade. He has been on the Pacific coast fifteen years, and during four years of that time was in business at Reno, Nev. He has spent a good deal of time prospecting for gold, and as a pro spector he spent 6 good deal of time eI- ploring the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico.
 About four years ago he became i'm pressed with the idea that the Dark Conti- nent ws the one remaining new country where poor man could get rich easily, and the idea has clung to him ever since He believed that there was plenty of gold in African mountains forgotten or. yet un- discovered, and he believes so yet
 He wanted to go there to prospect for pines, and in planning how he could tray el long distances throuSh an almost un- known country the idea of steam engine to travel on land early occurred to him.
 As strength and lightness are requisites MT. Lemery proposed to build the land ship almost entirely of aluminium, which weighs one hundred and siIty-eight pounds to the cubic foot, while steel weighs about four hundred and seventy-five pounds to tAc IOOk- 4ue or the en- zines would be of steel and much of the fittings and furniture inside of wood. The body of the land ship as planned is fifty feet loug, thirteen feet wide and sev- en feet high.
 It is to be made of aluminium plates one fourth of an inch thich for the lower half and one-sixteenth of an inch thick for the upper half of the sides and the roof In the rear end is a large space for wood, which can be cut and loaded anywhere and the boiler stands abaft the center
 At the forward end are two twenty four horse power cylinders working a shaft which bears a wheel outside the car at each end. By an endless chain the motion of this wheel is transmitted to larger one between the two main wheels, four teen feet in diameter, which are driven by means of chains passing over the driving wheel between them The main wheels are built like a bicycle wheel, the spokes being aluminium rods one-fourth of an inch in diameter. The tires of the main wheels are eighteen inches in diameter. The large wheels have no axles connecting with the car.
 The car rests on a shaft which passes through the driving wheels, and the main wheels are connected by strong alumi- mum bar which supports the car and can
 
 could thus go over logs without elevating the car much, and the end of the bars bearing the front main wheels can be hooked up readily, making three wheeled car easy to turn around. The front end of the car rests on a single wheel, which turns readily in any direction.
 At the front end is a drum, on which eight hundred feet of cable, to pull the car if necessary, or to pull obstructions out of the way, can be wound by a small engine for the purpose. The bottom of the car is water tank, while another wa ter compartment surrounds the outside of the car
 The interior is to provide living accom- modations for twenty men. As a steamer the body of the car or land ship resembles on its bottom flRtboat or a scow schoon- CT. A lever connects a propeller shaft with the machinery, and as the land ship climbs down into the water and begins to float, the propeller sends it onward over the glassy surface of some crystal lake, rippled only by the awful hippopotami. If the water trip be long the land wheels can be taken of and laid on the roof. When wood is to be cut the propeller is slipped off its shaft and little wood saw chews up fuel in no time. The engineer works the land ship from his pilot house | in front. The whole car is planned to | weigh fifteen or twenty tons.
 | "You see" said MT. Lemery, as he ex- | plained his drawings, 'every part will be made SO that it can be taken off very read | fly. would expect to make from three | to twenty miles day with it. according to l the troubles met in clearing away. They would be great in a forest but I would avoid forests.
 Attached to this land ship I would | have another car just like this except that | it would have no machinery, and in it l | would take three years supply of prOvi- sions and ammunition. The expense of | an army of porters would be avoided. The car would be proof against the arrows of hostile natives, and in it we could defy | thousands.
 "Well, I haven't been able to figure closely on the cost of the ship yet, but I | suppose one would cost about twenty thousand dollars. I would like to get
 financial backing enough to build two of them and two supply cars in New York, | and ought to have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I would calculate on being gone five or six years. I would go mainly to prospect for gold. That coun- | try is full of it. No, I don't know just | where would go to look for it. I would | go to most any of the mountains-per- | haps the Mountains of the Moon No, I uO nOt hHO" "HttntT lueg nave betn pro | spected or not, but I don't think so. | "Oh, yes, there's plenty of gold there. | Where else did Solomon get his goldl l would take company of strong men with me. I would have three or four mining | experts, a doctor, man to write the book, 8 photographer and a scientific man or | two. There is ivory to be traded for in | the interior, and ivory is worth six dollars a pound. I could carry tons of it. The | book and the views would be worth good