Norwich bulletin., 1914-05-05

most dangerous spots, can have their families with them; they get we'll built and decently furnished homes free; they have the use of the land about the light houses, where there is any land, to culti- vate a garden and on which to keep cows and chickens, and they have the deep sea in which to fish and eke out their fare; and also they get 50 cents oay communication of rations.
 But the man aboard the lightship fares not so well. He is cooped up in prison that ramps and charges and drags a1 its moorings most of the time Then,
 too, in fog he is always liable to waken
 out of a sound sleep to ind tnat " "mls
 guided steamer has poked ner tTsd n1s through the side of his home and jostlea him into the salt and icy ocean Many
 a stout Iightshfp has been mishanoieo LII this manner. t. A bit better paid. Then, too, he IS aI lowed ninety days leave every year ,i,,e does not take this all at one, s spreads it along in reliefs Esn.noue e keepers are allowed seventy-tWo wear leave. They also take 1t in rehen- Same of the lighthouses on the great lakes are abandoned during the winter as the lakes being frozen, there is ho navigation, but where the cnahheie omen they are maintained Tbe onenwork iron-frame type or nsn. house is much in evidence on the F loriIe reefs. Built on coral. IL ,s no. sunported by iron piles forced about ten rect e IHeo the coral rock or sand Sompref9 tts light, rising 142 feet above the sea, ,S - tsIIest Inf these. The keepers quar leIs are within the structure, thirty-seVen feet in the air. +hozs Of all of Uncle Sam's Lighthouses, tnose | in Guam are perhaps the most Iiett hu, while noninally under the ngnt- house service they are intrusted Io ene | care O the naval authorlues tnat eosv co,,e Gnam Next in point of distance G0me
 tbs lights in the Hawaiian stands. They are embraced in the nineteenth nght house district The MakaPSu ,areeat | light, in those islands carries the !afsess lens in the service It is eight ,El'a aho l tbree-otiarter feet fin diameter: rms Iiirbtbouse and fog signal station was was
 completed about five years aso a'
 While the Hawaiian lighthouses are liar distant from the Pacific coast. they
 bors and so genuinely isolated as those | in Alaska. LA Cape Sarichef' m the
 Aleutian Islands. almost over to me Keepers get mail only once in nVe
 'nT The tallest- lighthouse in the country
 is the barber pole one at Capt Hatteras, on inc coast of North Carolina It Is 200 feet high. m, A light must be that height in order to be seen from the deck so sbarp fs the curvature of the earth i Cape Mendocino, on the coast of Cali
 fornia, has the highest light, it being in
 twenty.5foot 5 high ono house, , the moor oi | I,ne most expensive lighthouse Uncle | Sam ever undertook to build was that CaIifornia coast. It cost s712.0oo For | days the worknien would have to lay Il of and remain aboard their vessel lt
 being impossible to go ashore even py
 the cable rigged from ship to shore TOT
 the purpose. '--i
 I
 Possibly the most curious lighthouse in | the country is in Charleston, s. c. The stately, spire of St Philips Church IS 1 used for the purpose, its lamp being one \ of two that in sIine form range TOT | entering the harbor. the other being on | historic Fort Sumter.
 | oil. various sorts of gas and electricity | form the iliufninants in the hgntnouses | and other lights to aid navigation. puI I chiefly oil is used, on the double ground | of cheapness and practicability More tb.n eeo coo gallons of kerosene oil are | burned a year in the light stations or the. country. Electricity IS used only where 1t, can be bought cheap rom some | naarhy plant. The most notable electric iirhted lighthouse in the service is the | Famous one at Navesink, on the nign-
 is the most powerful It has about
 sO e0o 900 candlepower and its beam has
 besT, seen in the sky at distance of seventy miles. -,,
 ,sad in regular lamps. but for the more Important ones an oil vapor lamp IS
 used and this intensifies the light won-
 Oil gas under compression is used in
 many buoy lights, but acetylene gas is
 corning into more and more general use. This is used precisely as in an automo-
 biIe's lights. The statement has been
 widely printed; that acetylene-hghted
 buoys, self-lighting and self-darkening.
 are in use but this is not a fact An
 ingenious invention has been devised by
 which the rays of the sun operate c
 valve which shuts off the light in the
 daytime and permits it to come on al !. night, but as yet the service has not
 found it adaptable to buoyl