Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-17
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.


fully cultivated in California.
Cotton having a beautiful red color Is
being grown in some parts of Georgia
An old homestead sold lately at Bed
ford, Mass. has been in one family for
period OF 227 years.
"A new method of diverting and healing
the insane of Blackwell's Island, n. T., Is to
have them rehearse in comedy
The most striking thing in the Peru
Wan exhibit at the Worlds Fair will be one
of the human heads that the Jivaros Indians
wear as trophies of war.
The farmers in Washington have straw
roads, which are said to be excellent They
take the straw after it is threshed and scat
ter 1t over the roads, and after awhile, When
1t is settled down, it makes road like papier
mache, smooth and dustless.
"A set of furniture for Prince Rudolph's
smoking room, made for the Prince in VII
emma just before his suicide, is now on ex-
hlbftion in a Chicago store. 1t is curiosity
OF workmanship. The chairs are covered
with leopard skin and the chandelier, bureau,
oTT na5rTack, clock, card and smoking tables, as
well as the chairs and woodbOx.are all made
OF the horns of wild animals killed in the
woods near Vienna.
AT Bayreuth, the other day, an anus
ing incident took place. NJ. Van Dyck, the
tenor, was playing PurstfdI to Madam
Materna's Rt1ldTy, and in trying to escape
from her wiles, being overcome with enthu-
sI sIasm, he seized his hair with both hands,
forgetting the presence of q wig. The ludt-
crous scene may be imagined, and poor Van
Dyck was obliged to return to the wings for
a mirror.
California will make good showing as
producer of beet sugar this year. The
Chino factory expects to produce 5000, 900
pounds Of sugar, the Watsonville factory
100000 pounds, and the Alvarado factory
2,OOOOOO pounds. This makes total of 500
tons, which seems large amount, but the
United States imports sugar to the value of
500, 10000 annually. 1t will be some time
before we can make all this sugar at home.
"A prominent lumberman of Galveston,
Tex, has in contemplation, it is said a
unique project, nothing less than shipping
huge raft of logs from Galveston to Lon
don. He thinks there is less risk in shipping
from Galveston to London than in shipping
from St Johns, n. B., to New York. The
raft will be built in three sections, firmly
lashed and spiked together. 1t will be COM
posed Of yellow pine for building purposes.
Near Higate, about 40 miles west of st.
Thomas, Canada, was discovered the largest
skeleton Of any extinct animal yet found.
1t belonged to the order of mastodon gigan-
ticus, and measured y feet from end of
nostrils to tip of tail. The tooth only of one
OF these huge monsters of prehistoric times
was dug up recently at Falling Springs, near
Belleville, Miss, which weighed IA pounds
IL ounces, and had the skeleton been dis
covered 1t would probably have been found
TO be that of an animal 30 feet long
The vastness of Names timber wealth
says the Southern L,un6ermdn, is not gener-
ally appreciated. Every year now 500, 600, 900
feet Of logs are cut in the State, about
one-third of this amount floating down the
Penobscot, and the quantity of manufac-
tured lumber that has been shipped from
the State since the first sawmill was started
is enormous beyond description. To-day
the Penobscot log crop is sawed almost
wholly for the American market, New
York, New England ports and Philadelphia
taking the bulk Of it.
I'm the collection of curiosities at Wool
wich arsenal, where the great English guns
are made, is probably the largest steel shaw
ing in the world. 1t is the result of an acct
dent. A workman who had charge of lathe
on which O 60-pounder was being turned left
his post for some time, and on his return
he found that shaving over 20 feet in
length had been turned from the guns
jacket in his absence. 1t was subsequently
tied into huge Turks head knot painted
red. white and blue and placed among the
curiosity collection.
Boston is threatened with an invasion
of black ants. State street, in the vicinity of
the Exchange building, is literally swarming
with them. They are to be seen in the
street, on the sidewalks, and crawling up
the sides of the buildings Many have made
their way into the buildings, and prove very
troublesome. They are more than a quarter
of an inch in length, and many of them have
wings about half an inch long. Their bite
is said to be much more troublesome than
that of the mosquito. Where they came
from seems to be a mystery.
MI \ F..I
has so glutted the market, says the Port
Townsend Leader, that for some time these
silver-sided beauties have been selling at
cents apiece, but the price took a tumble
yesterday and several fisherman sold a boat
load of salmon, weighing 20 pounds each, at
the pitiful price of cent apiece. One cent
for 20-pound silver salmon, the finest
price, perhaps, that food fish ever sold for
in this or any other country, but salmon are
SO plentiful that people do not know what to
do with them.
"A girl of 18 years, the daughter of sea
captain, recently navigated her fathers
ship when he and all the crew were down
with yellow fever. The bark, a coasting
vessel, bound from South America to Savan-
nah, was last spoken at sea off Navassa.
when all hands were reported i'll with yell
low fever, and no attempt was made by the
vessel which reported her to give any as
SiStance. The master or the Dark mad
with him on board his only daughter, who
appears to have been the last to catch the
fever. With the aid of one or two sailors
who managed to crawl to the deck, she navi-
gated the vessel for several hundreds of
miles, and succeeded in reaching port with
a crew dead and dying and the captain in u
critical condition
-Audrain county has ghost story In
days gone by there was a man and a maid
who loved each other with that very fierce
caloric aTdor that animates all such affairs
in Audrain county. But the parents objected
and they were separated. In the vicissitudes
of the years they lost sight of each other, bu5
they never forgot nor were consoled, and
both died of broken hearts on the same day.
In the old, happy days of their freshly bud
ded love they used to take buggy rides on
the Range Line road, and now their spooks
continue the blissful excursions Every Sun
day night the specter lovers, with horses and
chariot from spirit land, may be seen gliding
hoiselessly along the old road. An effort has
been made to authenticate the story by the
statement that the female ghost always does
the driving.
rr1rc runzr UUrDE