Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-03
THE LIBRARY TABLE

1
country on whose edge lies Washing
ton is made very vivid by Paul wilstach
in his Underwater Virginia" "a great
! triangle of tides and brine" is what
he calls the Tidewater section, "all that
territory of Virginia contiguous to the
| Chesapeake Bay" Familiar as most of
us are with the geography of nearby
r, Virginia, we may find our knowledge
| clarified by the forceful descriptions of
Mr.. Wilstach. He makes Virginia ap-
| pear before us pictorially when he says
THE outline of the State is roughly an
| irregular triangle. The right or eastern
| side OF this triangle is Tidewater. The
| left or western side is the vast section
| known as the Mountains, where the
Blue Ridge and Appalachians. with
| their great valley between and with
1 their supporting foothills, roll diagonal
ly, from northern SUBMITS which look
across Maryland at its narrowest into
Pennsylvania, southwestward to a far
| corner where they taper to vanish
| ing wedge between Kentucky and Ten
nessee, Subdivisions of this major Sec
ton are Familiarity known as the Pied
mont and the Valley. The base or
southern stretch of Virginia is known
as South Side, and this includes all
/
! freshwater rivers tumble in their jour-
nels from the mountains down to the
calm fiat tidal plain" -Four large, his
toric rivers, all tidal, drain the Tide
water-the James, the York. the Rap
| pahannock and the Potomac. In three
| of them the tides end at falls, where
at the head of navigation, cities Sprang
| up in Colonial days-Richmond at the
falls of the. James. FREDERICKSBURG al
the falls of the Rappahannock, and
Washington Cor its Oldest part, George
These rivers, Mr.. Wilstach says
actually run over and into the land
and ARE really estuaries of the bay
| They are brackish when they are not
! downright salty. If the fresh
sources OF any one of them, or of all
of them, were to dry up, these rivers
would remain, for they are fed less by
| the mountain sheds than by tidal pres
sure from the ocean. They are an In
tegral part of the Chesapeake, actually
they are a part of the Atlantic Ocean.
| X X x X
Capt. John Smith, on one of his
| trips of exploration in the Tidewater,
| went up the Potomac as far as Great
Falls, according to MIR. Wilstach. AS
| Columbus was seeking a passage to the
4 ~
Capt. John Smith hoped to find route
to the Western Sea" when he sailed
! up Chesapeake Bay and explored its
tidal rivers. In the Spring of 1903 he
set out on what was the first thorough
| exploration of the bay and Tidewater. y
! He was accompanied by IA men and
| they went in an open boat. They
| dropped down to Cape Henry and
crossed the bay to the Eastern Shore
Farther up the bay they crossed to the
! western side and there rested and
mended their torn sails with their
shirts and searched for food. The other
men wished to give up the expedition,
but Smith declared, There is as much
danger to returne as to proceede." En-
| couraged by Smiths advice, they soon
| entered the mouth of the Potomac, and
after sailing up the river for about 80
/ miles met an unpleasant surprise IN
| the shape of a band of Powhatan's
| savages. After exchanges of volleys OF
arrows and bullets truce was arranged
| and Smiths party went as far up-riveI
| in his barge as was possible, where he
, found mighty Rocks, growing in some
places above the ground as high as
| the shrubby trees which would in
dicate that they had reached the end
| of this water they conceived to be end
| less in the rocky narrows above the
present city of Washington
| The true story of a pioneer told by
| one of his descendants is Simon Ken
| ton: His Life and Period" by Edna
| Kenton. Kenton shared with Daniel
Boone and George Rogers Clark the
early settlement of Kentucky. He was
perhaps the least famous of the three
but had many daring exploits to his
credit. He several times barely es-
! capped the stake when captured by the
| Indians and suffered many tortures
| He was a spy for Clark, helped to feed
by secret expeditions from the besieged
! fort, was a scout for Mad Anthony
Wayne, helped to settle Springfield
! Ohio: secuted for Harrison in the War
! of 1912, but always preserved his char
| acter of free lance. This book covers
! historically the same period as that of
! Elizabeth MADDOX Roberts recent novel,
The Great Meadow"
y X X
Edison may be the last of the great
| heroes of invention" says Waldemal
! Kaempffert, director of the Museum oil
Science and Industry at Chicago, in
his reading course, Invention and So
| ciety," just published by the American
Library Association, in its Reading
| With a Purpose series. Groups work.
| ing in industrial laboratories are viewed
F, by Mr.. Kaempffert as the successors OF
| the so-called wizards" of the past. He
| points out that the individual inventor
of the future may be unable to compete
with such groups who have at their
| disposal Splendidly equipped labora-
| tories, time and money, and who may
work for several years before producing
noteworthy results. That this will mean
1 more, rather than fewer, inventions is
Mr.. Kaempffert'S prediction, as he de-
| clares that group invention has tele-
scoped time. In the industrial labora-
| battle the lone heroic inventor" In
his course, which relates invention to
| historical and social development, Mr..
Kaempffert recommends for further
! reading books which expand these
| ideas, as we'll as discuss the lives of
great inventors, their eccentricities,
| their achievements and their rewards.
X X X !:
In Miss Welby at Steen" Archibald
Marshall has written a journal of life
on an English estate. as seen through
| the eyes of a rather remarkable young
governess. The estate is one which
was evidently not badly impoverished
by the World War, If one is to judge
by the delicate and elaborate menus
served at tea and dinner. Miss Welby,
coming to Steen from private school
in a provincial town, Is obliged to ask
the butler to curtail the dinner brought
to her each night in the school room,
but she has soon so endeared herself
to Col Bastian and Lady Isabelle that