The Portland daily press., 1893-06-24

on the subject have told me within the
past year that there is rather re-
lapse in migration to California. The
more vigorous states, in point of eli
mate, like Oregon and Washington,
have proved attractive even to
Californians, while the booms or
hullaballoos attempted in various Cali
fornia towns, like Los Angeles, have
had their natural relapse. The state
has a fine agricultural development,
and is doing very well with its fruits,
but it is a good ways off; and, therefore,
it is supposed California has made
special efforts at this exhibition to dis
close her resources to the rest of the
world. She has a magnificent mission
house here, rather more agreeable to
the eye than any that saw in Cali
fornia, and decidedly more spacious.
China has purchased in our time a
strong modern navy, and if we should
apply to her government the reasoning
we employ in our own, that the life of
every one of her citizens is assessable
in damages, our rapping of the Chinese
and their frequent massacre, even to
the extent of Pacific coast governor
telling the president to mind his own
business when he asks for protection
for the Chinese who are employed, we
might have an account yet to settle
with China. These worlds fairs are
not without their benefit to civiliza-
ton. Europe, armed to the teeth and
with disputed boundary lines, sup
pressed nationalities and races, is
looking all over the globe for colonies.
The British have colonized everywhere
in advance of other nations, and many
of their colonies are turning out to
be suck holes for their capital. They
have worked up Australia at enormous
expense, and it is turning out to be a
failure and a fraud The great for
tunes brought back from Australia to
England and exploited appear to
have been merely English money
thinly quicksilyered over the back
of. a mirror, into which John Bull
looks, sees his own image and uncon-
sciously his own treasure The i'm
pudence of Firth, the British painter,
setting in the worlds fair gallery his
series of paintings called "The
Spider" has come home to roost, in the
failure of the Australian banks,
for figure which would seem to show
that there is no race on the globe
which can lose money as fast as the
English. The French, perhaps, imi-
tated Australia and the British invest
ments in the Argentine country, when
they launched their Panama canal, to
take the superfuous money of France
from the provinces and give it to the
Partisan lorettes. Frith's picture, as I
have said, shows the Spider" who is
running and plundering English homes,
presenting to them map of the United
States as the scene of his operations.
Thus, Firth unconsciously has been
steering English capital away from the
United States and into Australia. He
must be the Firth of Forth. for it is all
forth and nothing hither.
As look into the Electricity build
ing here, which is more behind at
present than any building on the
grounds, / am reminded of the fact
that first saw Cyrus W. Field, the
chief promoter of the Atlantic cable,
during the worlds fair in London in
1862. was present nearly at the
birth of a great division of modern
gunnery, at that time. Two men from
New Jersey had obtained an interest
in. what was then called the coffee
MILL gun, since the Gatling gun, the
first of all machine guns, think. I
had seen this gun in the camps of our
civil war, where it was being slzeptic-
ally experimental with. Had the
army boards which examine guns less
bigotry, we should have fought our
civil war with breech-loading rifles as
well as machine guns. Only great
calamities cause regular army officers
to learn anything. The Needle gun
was the product Of the defeat of Ger
many by France, at the battle of jena
Soon after that event, or before the
fall of Napoleon, the Germans began
to experiment with gun which would
go off much oftener than the muzzle
loader, so that with his small nation
of people he could fire as many times
DIS d OlS uGtlOu,llhS Ule ITcuCu' IeG,SO
slow was Germany to bring forward
her weapon, that not until the Danish
war, in 1865, which was simultaneous
with our American war, did the Ger
mans manage to get gun into use,
and, they made better use of it inmedi-
ately afterwards in the war with Aus
tria.
The Calling gun, think, was in
vented by man named Gatling, who
had something to do with the Indiana
conspiracy cases, which were prose
cuted under the law of high treason.
Not improbably the Calling gun was
designed to aid the secession cause in
this country. Taken abroad, it was
given a better hearing, because of the
fright which had come over all the ma
tons of Europe, through the success of
the Needle gun and of Ericsson's mont
tor. Hotchkiss, a Connecticut inventor,
went to France and was taken up by
the French and given a magnificent
armory, which the government after
ward acquired, and he left a great
fortune, and two families. Inventors
~ OIL