Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1901-09-14
SOME LOST SECRETS.
FAMOUS PROCESSES THAT WERE
KNOWN TO THE ANcIENTS. II

Things That Our FOrefathers Were
Able to Do That We Now Find Wen
Nigh Impossible - Cement of the
Greeks and Romans.
Taking into consideration the marvel
| o1s strides we have made in almost
every branch of knowledge during the
last 200 or 800 years, it seems exceed
ingly strange that our forefathers
should have been able to do things
which we find impossible and that we
cannot discover secrets which were al
most common knowledge hundreds of
years ago. But despite the fact that
the average modern man knows more
than did the learned men of long ago.
there are mysteries of knowledge and
science which our most advanced sci
entists cannot solve.
Thousands of years ago, for instance,
the Egyptians used to embalm the
bodies of their dead kings and nobility
so perfectly that the bodies are in won
derful preservation today, as may be
seen at the British museum. Clever as
we are in this age, we cannot do the
same. The valuable secret is lost and
modern science cannot recover the lost
knowledge. We can, of course, and we
do embalm bodies, but only for tenn
porary preservation and. comparatively
speaking. in n most unsatisfactory man.
ner. Bodies which are embalmed now
.adays will not be preserved for more
than n few days at most. Very many
\ the bodies the Egyptians embalmed
before the birth of Christ are still so
perfect that the lines of their faces are
still as clearly marked as when they
were first embalmed.
Sheffield turns out the finest hardest
and most perfect steel the world pro-
duces. but even Sheffield cannot pro-
duce n sword blade to compare with
I. e,e the Saracens made and used hun
dreus of years ago, and the Saracens
never possessed the machinery we
have or had the advantage of knowing
so much about metals as we are sup
posed to know. a huge fortune awaits
the man who discovers the secret
which enabled the Saracens to make
sword blades so keen and hard that
they could cut in two most of the
swords used today.
There are n dozen different methods
of making artificial diamonds, but none
of the stones produced by these meth
DDS can compare with those made of
old French paste, the secret of which
is lost. SO perfect were paste dia-
monGs that it was difficult for even a
person with expert knowledge of dia-
monds to tell that they were artificial
ly produced, whereas most of the mod
Mi io1 10 ha
detected. and their durability is moth
ing like so great as the old paste dia-
monds.
Probably not one out Of every ten
thousand buildings standing in all
parts of the world. and built by mod
ern h us, will still be standing 500
years hence. We do not know how to
put stones and bricks together as the
ancients did, and consequently the
buildings we raise nowadays are really
mere temporary structures and will be
I'm ruins when the ancient buildings of
Greece and Italy, which were built
thousands of years ago, are in as good
condition as they are now. The secret
is not in the bricks or the stone, but
in the cement and mortar, neither of
which essentials can we make as the
ancients made them.
In modern buildings the cement and
mortar are the weakest points; in
which the Romans and
Greeks raised thousands of years ago
the cement and mortar are the stron-
gest points and hold good while the
very stones they bind together crumble
away with age. We cannot, with all
our science, make such cement and
mortar, and therefore we cannot build
such buildings as the ancientS raised.
Chemistry, one might imagine, is the
science which has, perhaps, made the
greatest strides. Yet modern chem
lists cannot compound such dyes as |
were commonly used when the great |
nations of today were still unborn. |
Now and again it happens that search
ers after antiquities come across frag-
nents of fabrics which were dyed |
thousands of years ago. and they are
astonished by the wonderful richness
of the colors of the cloths, which. de-
spite their age, are brighter and purer
than anything we can produce.
Modern artists buy their colors ready
made and spend large sums on pig
ments with which to color their can
vases. The pictures of modern artists
will be colorless when many of the
works of ancient masters are as bright
rs they are today. Just as the secret Of
1yeing has been lost, so has the secret
Of preserving the colors of artists
paints. Yet the secret was known to
every ancient artist, for they all mixed
their own colors-
How to make durable ink is another
great secret we have lost. Look at any
letter five or ten years old and you will
probably notice that the writing has
faded to a brown color and is very in
distinct. Go to any big museum and
you will find ancient MSS, the writing
If which is as black and distinct as If
the MSS. were written the day before