Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1892-05-26

gradually gives way 20 one OF awe and
sublimity
There Is something so terrific and ap-
palling-you feel yourself so atomless
in comparison-that you would speak
in whispers if the roar could suddenly
ease. You are an onlOoker: If assist
ing to work a gun, physical activity
would take away from the mental
strain. When Admiral Porter got his
twenty mortar boats, each armed with
an s1l-ton mortar and thirty-pound
rifle cannon. at work against the forts
below New Orleans, and the big guns
in both forts had opened in reply, there
was something akin to the sound of
heaven and earth coming together.
The mortar shells weighed over two
hundred pounds apiece, and the rush
of them through the air made ones
hair feel as if it crawled. The venom
Gus hiss of a big skyrocket was magni-
fed thousands of times, to be followed
by a crash which seemed to split the
sky open into cracks and erevices.
When the firing had continued until
all reports had been merged into one
steady roar there was little short of an
earthquake on land or sea for ten miles
around. The earth shook as if a great
steam hammer was pounding it few
yards from your feet. If standing near
a tree, YOU could feel the roots letting
90 of the soil with sound like bugs
crawling over dry leaves. On the water
great mud spots rose up here and there
to show where the earth forty feet be-
low had been disturbed. In the Missis-
sippi river itself hugh catfish leaped
above the surface in fright and pain or
tioated belly up and were carried along
with the current, gasping for breath.
Out on blue water air bubbles as large as
| dining plates foated to the surface and
bursted with snap, and fish of all
kinds exhibited the greatest confusion
and alarm.
Thirty miles away the roar was like
that of a gale sweeping over pine for
est. Horses and cattle sought to hide
away, birds flew about uttering cries of
distress, and dogs pointed their noses
! toward the sky and howled dismally
Birds and fowls felt the air and earth
waves long before human beings did,
/ become alarming. The coming of the
roar to those affair off was preceded by
iarring of the earth and a moaning
/ in the air. Springs overlooked, and the
water in wells circled around as in a
whirlpool The widest species of birds
/ left the woods and thickets and came
| flying about the houses, and rabbits de-
| serted their burrows and sought the
companionship of domestic animals
! The thunder storms of a score of years
| combined could not have rent the heav-
ems nor disturbed the solid earth as that
cannonade did.
If the beginning was painful and ex-
asperating the ending was something to
be remembered for its grandeur. One
mortar after another, one great gun
after another, was silenced by order
! The reverberations had travelled through
air and earth and water a distance of
f4ty miles. They now seemed to re-
turn back to the guns. The rent and
riven skies had kept up constant
moaning and complaining. These
! sounds gradually died away, as a man
/ in pain finally drops off to sleep. The
earth resumed its solidity again, the
sun shone forth in its old familiar way,
and the bank of clouds piled up in the
west and tinged with gold all along
their lower edges seemed proof to the
eye that the world still stood as we had
lived in it the day before those monsters
awol1e and demanded human blood and
wreck and destruction as the price of
their silence.-N Y Sun.