The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1898-02-26
NEW COAST FORTIH|CAT|ONS
ARTILLERY is BEING MOUNTED.
A Hundred TeIegraphic Dispatches
Sent Within Twenty-Four Hours
officials Claim Ii IL Only Follow
ing out n Previous Plan.

New York. Feb. 22.-Nearly 100 tele-
graphic dispatches We're sent from Gov
ernor's island, the army headquarters, to
various points of fertilization along the
seaboard from Eastport, Me, to Calves
ton, Tex, says the World. All of these for
tifications in which guns and mortars
have been mounted are under the control
of General Merritt, commander of the de-
paTtment of the east.
General Merritt spent very little of the
day at the island his staff attending to
the usual amount of telegraphic CORE
spondence During his absence, Colonel
Barber, adiutant general of the depart
ment of the east, was in charge. The cod
onel refused to discuss the reasons of the
activity along the sea board, except to say
that everything now being done was mere
ly the execution of coast defense pro
gram outlined several months ago.
1t was learned from other sources that
orders had been received on the island On
Friday night to send from Fort Wads-
worth to Sandy Hook 20 men to clean the
big guns in the fortifications there and to
transfer considerable quantities of ammu-
milton. The same orders brought instruc-
tions to send 40 men from Fort Schuyler
to Willets Point to clean the guns there
and to overhaul the ammunition. Fort
Hancock, at Sandy Hook, is also still in
the hands of the army engineers and ord
nance bureau
The engineers are constructing the aP-
DlappmaOtG for tho ert,pc ord v,,orto,-, u.k
to come, and when they complete the work
the ordnance bureau will have to set the
guns and carriages and test them before
the fort can be regularly transferred to
General Merritt's command. This work
will not be finished until late in the spring
and the quarters for the artillery will not
be finished under the present program un-
til October. Not until then will Fort Han
cock be an official reality.
Two days ago the artillery expert sta
toned at Governors Island, the man rec
ognized by army men as the most skillful
artilleryman in the country, returned from
tour of inspection of the Notifications
from Boston to Charleston The last place
he visited was Fort Caswell, near Cape
Hatteras. On his way back to Governors
Island he stopped at Washington and con
ferred with Secretary of War Alger. At
Fort Caswell he found three high-calibre
guns in splendid shape which he did not
know had been set up. He visited the Bos
ton forts, the Notifications at Dutch and
Gull Islands, at the entrance to Long
Island Sound, Forts Hamilton, Wads-
worth, Hancock and Slocum, the fortifca-
lions on the Delaware Bay coast, and at
other places down the coast.
Referring to General Miles recent order
to General Merritt, commanding the de-
partment of the east, to Immediately de
tail men and officers to all coast defense
points where modern guns are mounted, it
was said at the war department today
that while the order was issued as report
ed. it was nothing more than following
out the plan of the war department, for
INFLATED several years ago, when the pres
ent system of coast defense was inaugu-
rated The order calls for at least 20 men
and the necessary officers to take charge
of each of such defense emplacements as
have been completed and turned over to
the war department