Chapter XVI: Escape of the First Mate and Crew (1)

The situation certainly looked hopeless for our lads, and the men on the sloop were already shouting derisively at them. Alaric caught another mental glimpse of the government prison, and even Bonny's stout heart experienced an instant of despair. He was still standing in the stern of the dinghy and holding the oar that he had used in sculling. Moved by a sudden impulse, and just as the extended boat-hook was dropping over the stern of the dinghy, he struck it a smart blow with his oar, and had the good fortune to send it whirling from the sailor's grasp. With a second quick motion the lad set his oar against the stern of the yawl, that was now within four feet of him, and gave a vigorous shove. The slight headway of the heavy craft was checked, and the lighter dinghy forged ahead.

"Oh, you will, will you, you young rascal?" cried the sailor, angrily, as he leaped back to his thwart, and bent to his oar with furious energy. His companion followed his example, and under the impetus of their powerful strokes the yawl sprang forward. At the same time Bonny, facing backward, and working his oar with both hands, was sculling so sturdily that the dinghy rocked from side to side until it seemed to Alaric that she must certainly capsize. She was making such splendid headway, though, that the much heavier yawl could not gain an inch. Its crew, unable to see the fugitive dinghy without turning their heads, and having no one to steer for them, were placed at a disadvantage that Bonny was quick to detect.

Watching his opportunity, he caused his craft to swerve sharply to one side, and the yawl holding her original course for some seconds before his manoeuvre was discovered, his lead was thus materially increased.

Just as Bonny was ready to drop his oar from exhaustion a shrill, long-drawn whistle sounded from the now distant beach. Its effect on the crew of the yawl was magical. They stopped rowing, looked at each other, and consulted. Then they gazed at the retreating dinghy and hesitated. They felt it to be their duty to continue the pursuit, but they also knew the penalty for disobeying an order from a superior, and that whistle was an unmistakable order for them to go back.

The cutter's third Lieutenant had returned from his expedition into the woods with three wretched Chinamen, whom, despite their eagerly produced certificates, he had seen fit to make prisoners. He was amazed to find the yawl gone from where he had left it, and the details of the chase in which it was engaged being hidden from him by the intervening sloop, he gave the whistle signal for its immediate return.

As the crew of the yawl hesitated between duty and obedience the peremptory whistle order was repeated louder and shriller than before. This decided the wavering sailors, and they reluctantly turned their boat.

As for the fugitives, they could hardly believe the evidence of their senses. Was the chase indeed given over, and were they free to go where they pleased? It seemed incredible. Just as they were on the point of being captured, too, for Bonny now confided to Alaric that he couldn't have held out at that pace one minute longer. As he said this the tired lad sat down for a short rest.

Almost immediately he again sprang to this feet, and thrusting his oar overboard, began to scull with one hand. "It won't do for us to be loafing here," he explained, "for I expect those fellows have been called back so that the whole crowd can chase us in the sloop."

"Oh, I hope not," said Alaric; "I'm tired of running away."

"So am I," laughed Bonny--"tired in more ways than one; but if fellows bigger than we are will insist on chasing us, I don't see that there is anything for us to do but run. There! thank goodness we've rounded the point at last, and got out of sight of them for a while at any rate."

"Where are you going now, and what do you propose to do next?" asked Alaric, who, fully realizing his own helplessness in this situation, was willing to leave the whole scheme of escape to his more experienced companion.

"That's what I'm wondering. Of course it won't do to stay out here very long, for in less than fifteen minutes the sloop will be shoving her nose around that point. Nor it wouldn't be any use to try and get to Tacoma--at least not yet a while--for that's where they'll be most likely to hunt for us. So I think we'd better cross the channel, turn our boat adrift, and make our way overland to Skookum John's camp. It isn't very sweet-smelling, and they don't feed you any too well--that is, not according to our ideas--but just because it is such a mean kind of a place no one will ever think of looking for us there. Besides, Skookum's a very decent sort of a chap, and he'll keep us posted on all that happens in the bay. So if you don't mind roughing it a bit--"

"No, indeed," interrupted Alaric, eagerly. "I don't mind it at all. In fact, that is just what I want to do most of anything, and I've always wished I could live in a real Indian camp. The only Indians I ever saw were in the Wild West Show in Paris."

"Have you been to Paris?" asked Bonny, wonderingly.

"Yes, of course, I was there for-- I mean yes, I've been there. But, Bonny, what makes you think of turning this boat adrift? Wouldn't we find her useful?"

"I suppose we might; but she isn't our boat, you know, and you wouldn't keep a boat that didn't belong to you just because it might prove useful, would you?"

"No, certainly not," replied Alaric, rather surprised to have his companion take this view of the question. "I would try and hand her over to the rightful owner."

"So would I," agreed Bonny, "if I knew who he was; but after what has just happened I don't know, and so I am going to turn her adrift in the hope that he will find her. Besides, it wouldn't be safe to leave her on shore, because she would show anybody who happened to be looking for us just where we had landed."

"That's a much better reason than the other," said Alaric.

During this conversation the dinghy had been urged steadily across the channel, and was now run up to a bold bank, where the boys disembarked. After removing Alaric's bag and the several cans of provisions so thoughtfully furnished them by Captain Duff, Bonny gave the boat a push out into the channel, down which the ebbing tide bore her, with many a twist and turn, toward the more open waters of the sound.

"To be left in this way in an unknown wilderness makes me feel as Cortez must have felt when he burned his ships," reflected Alaric, as he watched the receding craft.

"I don't think I ever heard about that," said Bonny, simply. "Did he do it for the insurance?"

"Not exactly," laughed Alaric; "and yet in a certain way he did too. I'll tell you all about it some time. Now, what are you going to do next?"

"Climb that bluff, lie down under those trees while you eat something, and watch for the sloop," answered Bonny, as though his programme had all been arranged beforehand.

They did this, and Alaric was so hungry that he made away with a whole box of sardines and a tin of deviled ham. He wondered a little if they would not make him ill, but did not worry much, for he was rapidly learning that while leading an out-of-door life one may eat with impunity many things that would kill one under more ordinary conditions. He had just finished his ham, and was casting thoughtful glances toward a bottle of olives, when Bonny exclaimed. "There she is!"

Sure enough, the sloop, with the cutter's yawl in tow, was slowly beating out past the point on the opposite side of the channel. She stood well over toward the western shore, and the tide so carried her down that when she tacked she was close under the bluff on which the boys, stretched at full length and peering through a fringe of tall grasses, watched her. She came so near that Alaric grew nervous, and was certain her crew were about to make a landing at that very spot. With a vision of McNeil's Island always before him, he wanted to run from so dangerous a vicinity and hide in the forest depths; but Bonny assured him that the sloop would go about, and in another moment she did so, greatly to Alaric's relief.

They could see that Captain Duff was still confined below, and they even heard one of the men sing out to the officer in command: "There it is now, sir, about two miles down the channel. I can see it plain."

"Very good," answered the Lieutenant; "keep your eye on it, and note if they make a landing. If they don't, we'll have them inside of half an hour."

"Yes, you will," said Bonny, with a grin.

As the sloop passed out of hearing the lads crept back from the edge of the bluff, gathered up their scanty belongings, and started through the forest toward the place where Bonny believed Skookum John's camp to be located.

After an hour of hard travel, they came suddenly on the camp, and were terrified at sight of the cutter's yawl lying in the mouth of the creek, and the revenue officer standing on shore engaged in earnest conversation with Skookum John himself. Soon he shook hands with the Indian and stepped into his boat. Just as it was about to shove off, a villanous cur, scenting the new-comers, darted toward their hiding-place, barking furiously.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

STORIES OF CONGO DISCOVERY.

THE SECOND LARGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.

BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.

About a hundred years ago the school children of our country were reading in their Morse's Geography that there were no great mountains in North America, and that our largest mountains were the Alleghanies, which were supposed to be a continuation of the Andes, interrupted by the Gulf of Mexico. Teachers in those days edified boys and girls with more or less amusing misinformation such as this about the land they lived in. It was three hundred years after Columbus had discovered America, and such blunders in the text-books show how very slowly geographical knowledge had grown in those centuries.

But there has been a revolution. For over fifty years men and women have been eagerly studying this great house where we abide, with its five big rooms and its thousands of little ones. No one ever saw before such zeal for geographical discovery. Africa heads the list, for that continent, a fourth larger than our own, which was scarcely known a century ago, except in its outlines and along some of its rivers, has been thrown open to our gaze in nearly every corner; and the part of Africa where the greatest amount of work, the largest interest, and the most surprising discoveries have centred is the basin of the Congo, the second largest of the world's river systems.

Europe knew of this mighty river before she ever heard of Columbus. For four centuries sailors of various lands saw the Atlantic tinted for forty miles from the shore by the yellow Congo tide; but no one knew till Stanley told, eighteen years ago, where this mighty flood came from. Livingstone lived and travelled for many months along the far upper Congo, but the great old man died in the belief that he had traced one of the sources of the Nile. It was the Niger problem reversed. Nobody knew for centuries where the Niger River reached the sea. Nobody knew where the Congo gathered its great floods. One river needed a mouth, and the other a fountainhead, and so some wise geographers united the two, making the Niger the upper part of the Congo. Mungo Park, who traced the upper Niger for a thousand miles, believed it was a Congo tributary, if not the Congo itself; and the Tuckey expedition perished of fever among the lower Congo cataracts in 1816, while bravely trying to fulfil their mission to ascend the Congo to the Niger, if the two rivers were really one.

Eighteen years ago Stanley traced the Congo from central Africa over 1500 miles to the ocean. His great discovery made him famous, but other men who followed him, some of whose names are hardly known, except to geographers, have travelled far more widely in the Congo basin than Stanley was able to do. He led the way, and forty or fifty followers, scattering all over the Congo basin, which is half as large as the United States, have been revealing this land to us; and students of the ocean have been studying the sea-bed off its mouth. Let us glance at a few facts that have been learned about this mighty river system.

It is found that more water pours into the ocean through the Congo's mouth, which is six miles wide, than from all the other rivers in Africa put together. The soft, dark-colored mud brought down by the river has been distinctly traced on the ocean bottom for six hundred miles from the land. In no other part of any ocean do the influences of the land waters make themselves felt so far out to sea.

But it is not the deep lower Congo, which large steamers from Europe ascend to the foot of the rapids, nor the roaring torrents along the 235 miles of the cataract region, that have attracted most attention. It is the placid upper Congo, with its few reaches of rapids, and its many tributaries, stretching away to far-distant parts of inner Africa, that has kept the map-makers busy. This is the part of the continent where explorers have been most active and the results most remarkable. No part of the world of the same extent ever yielded so many geographical surprises as did this region from 1885 to 1890. It was simply impossible for the cartographers to keep their maps abreast of the news as it came from the upper Congo.

In January, 1885, the missionary George Grenfell started from Stanley Pool on his little steamboat in quest of villages of friendly natives where mission stations might be planted with good prospects of success. He had previously been far up the river, and thought he knew it very well; but on this trip he accidentally got out of the Congo, and did not discover his mistake until he had steamed along a whole day, and found that his little craft was pushing into a region where no white man had ever been before. Grenfell had stumbled into the mouth of the Mobangi-Makua River. For more than two years Stanley and his followers had been travelling up and down the Congo, but they never saw--or at least they never recognized--this great affluent, which is larger than any European river except the Volga and the Danube. Grenfell forgot his missions for the time, became the zealous explorer, and kept on his course up the wide river until he was stopped by rapids, having left the Congo about 400 miles behind; and while he was threading the virgin stream Stanley was in England making his large map of the Congo, on which not a trace of its greatest tributary appeared. The distinguished explorer was the first victim of the swarm of discoveries which from that day for years made every new map of the Congo behind the times as soon as the next mails arrived from the river.

Perhaps some of the other white men had seen the mouth of the Mobangi-Makua, and thought it merely an arm of the Congo enclosing an island; for this is the region of the sealike expansion of the river, where only a water horizon could be seen from either shore if it were not for the myriad islands that cut the river into scores of tortuous channels. There were white men on these Congo banks who neither saw nor heard of the fleet of vessels that passed them a few miles away, carrying the hundreds of men of the Emin relief expedition. Before Stanley came whole tribes on one shore had never seen the people who lived across the river.

A little later in 1885 a steamboat was sent up the Congo to the mouth of the big river that enters it at Equatorville. No vessel could have a more pleasant mission, for this steamer was the bearer of loving letters from home and fresh supplies of European food for Wissman's party of explorers, who had been in the African wilderness for many months, and might be in sore need of succor. It was thought the party was quite certain to emerge from the great unknown region south of the Congo at Equatorville, and the reason for this belief is interesting.

Many years before, Livingstone had crossed the upper waters of a river, the Kassai, now known as the second largest Congo tributary. Stanley believed the Kassai emptied into the Congo at Equatorville, and all the map-makers adopted his hypothesis. Captain Wissman and his comrades were sent from Germany to march inland from the Atlantic to the upper waters of the Kassai, and then to follow it to its mouth; and as this point was supposed to be at Equatorville, the mails and supplies for Wissman were sent there, and the officers of the steamer expected any day to see his expedition float into view.

Wissman reached the upper Kassai, and discovered there a remarkable tribe, the Baluba, whose chief had cut down all the palm-trees in his country to keep his people from getting drunk on palm wine. This chief helped Wissman to hollow big canoes out of tree-trunks, and then he and many of his subjects, who engaged with the explorer as paddlers, set out with the white men down the unknown stream.

Wissman expected that the river would carry him far to the north, but in a few days he was much surprised to find that he was travelling much further west than north. Day after day he floated further and further to the west, and after many weeks, and some curious adventures that cannot be told in this chapter, he reached the Congo. A few days later another stern-wheeler ascended the Congo, and at Equatorville pulled up to the shore alongside the waiting vessel.

"What are you doing here?" asked the Captain.

"Oh, we're waiting for Wissman, and it's high time he came."

"Let's see; how long have you been waiting for Wissman?"

"Well, we've been here a little over two months. We're running short of supplies ourselves, and if the party doesn't turn up here within the next week, we shall leave Wissman's mails and boxes, and go back to Stanley Pool."

"Well, Wissman has the start of you. He's at Stanley Pool now."

"You don't mean it! Reached the Congo? How long ago?"

"Just a week."

"Why didn't he follow the Kassai to its mouth, as he was ordered to do?"

"He did. You see, this river here isn't the Kassai. The Kwa River is the Kassai. Wissman reached the Congo at Kwamouth over 200 miles south of here."

More work for the map-makers. This story illustrates the surprises that came to Europe month after month from the Congo basin. The geographers had to pull to pieces most of their preconceptions about the lay of the land and the extent and direction of the rivers. The waters of the Sankuru, for instance, which Livingstone and Stanley had crossed in their upper part, were found to reach the Congo about 700 miles from the supposed point of confluence. Lakes that had appeared on the maps, on native or Arab authority, were wiped out. A part of the Lualaba, or western head stream of the Congo, was found to have no counterpart in Africa. The narrow gorge, forty-three miles long, through which it flows, walled in by perpendicular rock masses rising a quarter of a mile above the stream, resembles our great Western cañons. In these few years nearly all of our notions of Congo hydrography away from the main stream were completely changed.

This was not all. While threading these numerous rivers in their little steamboats, the explorers found many new peoples who had been buried from the world's view in the dark Congo forests or on the vast inland plains. You have read of the ancient troglodytes and of the prehistoric lake-dwellers of Europe. Proofs of their existence are found among the earliest evidences of human life; but the Congo basin to-day has two large centres of lake-dwellers. Many thousands of people live in huts reared high on piles out of reach of floods; and a few lakes are dotted with these habitations, thus placed beyond the easy reach of enemies.

The explorers discovered the widespread haunts of the Batwa dwarfs--the keen little hunters who had been seen when Stanley wrote his book, _The Congo_. Their researches proved that the Congo basin is the greatest hotbed of cannibalism the world ever saw. These and many other discoveries kept geographers on the alert. Thus the Congo basin has contributed a chapter to geographical and anthropological discovery that has scarcely been surpassed in importance or romantic interest.

THE BROKEN CHARGE.

BY JAMES BUCKHAM.

Would you hear of the bravest, coolest deed
Ever inspired by a nation's need?

Thomas McBurney--a Kansas-bred Scot--
Lay in his rifle-pit, waiting a shot.

Over him whistled the enemy's balls;
_Ping!_ and they struck in the rampart walls.

Suddenly out of the woods there broke
A line of cavalry gray as smoke.

A troop--a regiment--a brigade.
Oh! what a rush and a roar they made!

A wild, swift charge on the frail redoubt,
Carbines ready and sabres out.

Hither and thither, like frightened hares,
Fled the sharpshooters out of their lairs.

All save Thomas McBurney; he
Thought not first what _his_ fate might be.

Uppermost thought in his hero soul,
To save the fort, and the field control.

On they thundered, the cavalcade.
McBurney waited; his plan was made.

Fifty yards from his cairn of rocks--
Up he popped, like a Jack-in-the-box!

_Bang!_ and the leader's horse went down,
Neck outstretched in the wire-grass brown.

Over him tumbled a dozen more,
And the Colonel--his heart and his head were sore.

"Halt!" he cried, and the broken line
Stopped, strung out like a trailing vine.

Lo! in the valley's dim expanse
Tossing flags and bayonets' glance.

Re-enforcements! At double-quick
They cross the meadows and ford the creek--

Boys in blue, with their banners bright,
Just in season to turn the fight.

Thomas McBurney, as cool as you please,
Settled down on his dust-grimed knees.

To pray? Yes, thankfully--and to run
A well-greased cartridge into his gun!

THE VANISHED ISLAND.

"Let her go off a little, Ralph; you'll come out better in the end if you don't jam your boat too close to the wind. Keep your sail full, even if you don't point quite so high, and you'll go faster through the water, and get quicker to the place you're bound to."

So spoke Grandfather Sterling one summer afternoon to his grandson as the old Captain's cat-boat _Mabel_ was being tacked across the bay, after a day spent in picnicking on one of a number of the little islands that were to be found within a few miles of the Captain's down-east home.

"Grandfather," said Ralph, after letting the boat run up in the wind to ease her of a strong and sudden puff, "while we were fishing to-day you made the remark that the last time you had fished off an uninhabited island you were a good many thousands of miles from this part of the world. Is there a good story connected with it?"

The old mariner nodded his head in the affirmative.

"Yes, my lad, as usual I have an exciting yarn to spin you, even if the subject is nothing more than that of an uninhabited island, and to-night, after dinner has been tucked away, you may expect to hear it. But here's the dock, so mind your eye, and let me see you bring the _Mabel_ to it in ship-shape style."

Ralph steered so as to go to leeward of the pier, calculating the distance his boat would reach after she had been thrown up in the wind, and a moment later he put the tiller down and gathered in his sheet. The _Mabel_ shot ahead with considerable speed for a moment, then her way became slower and slower, and when her snub nose touched the dock there was not enough force in the contact to send a tremor through the boat.

"That's Boston fashion, my boy," said Captain Sterling, regarding his grandson proudly.

That evening Ralph's grandfather related to the lad a story, which he named, "The Yarn of the Vanished Island."

"It is so many years ago now that I dislike to tell you the number, for fear that you will think that I am growing old; so I will simply say that when I was a hearty young seaman I found myself out in San Francisco 'on the beach,' as sailors put it when they have neither money nor employment. I could have had both by remaining on the _Dove_, the vessel in which I had sailed around Cape Horn, but the treatment received on board had been so bad that all hands deserted as soon as she reached California. I made myself scarce until the ship sailed, then found a berth on a top-sail schooner called the _Queen_, that traded around the Sandwich Islands, bartering all kinds of trinkets with the natives for sandal-wood and the plumage of beautiful birds, which in the days I refer to were common on all the islands. The sandal-wood and feathers were carried to China and traded for tea, and this was taken to California and sold in different ports along the coast.

"We were a happy family on board the _Queen_, for we all lived in a big cabin aft, and Captain Josiah Crabtree, the master of the schooner, who was a very eccentric and pious old fellow from Massachusetts, and who had made a considerable fortune in the trade, kept strict order among us, and seemed to consider himself responsible for our spiritual as well as earthly welfare, for he held church service regularly every Sunday morning on deck, and obliged all hands to be present. He quoted Scripture on all occasions, and always had an appropriate verse handy for anything and everything, whether it was a call to meals or an order to tar down the rigging. In spite of his peculiar ways we respected him so much that during the time I served on the schooner I never heard a profane word used--in fact, it would have been unhealthy to do so, for Captain Crabtree was over six feet in height, and was what is called a 'muscular Christian.'

"On the voyage I sailed with him, the master of the _Queen_ was to try a new plan. The supply of feathers had been falling off for the last two or three voyages, so he determined to go hunting on his own account. He explained to us that there were a number of small islands to the northward and westward of Hawaii that were uninhabited, and that he proposed to visit several of them, leaving a man on each, supplied with provisions, a shot-gun, and plenty of ammunition, and that during the short time we were to play Robinson Crusoe he expected us to shoot as many birds as possible, and to carefully save their feathers until he should come back and pick us up. This plan suited us first rate, for we looked upon it as promising a great lark, and were anxious for the _Queen_ to cover the twenty-five hundred miles of water that separated us from the little islands with their delightful climate on which we were to picnic.

"After a long passage, for the schooner was a slow sailer, we sighted the first of the group, and one of the men was set on shore. I was left on the second one, and found it a paradise, with its snow-white beach, its beautiful, luxuriant vegetation and woods, and its balmy air laden with the odor of flowers. The Captain told me to look out for his return about a fortnight later.

"As there was a rivalry among the sportsmen on account of a money prize offered for the one who secured the largest amount of gay-colored feathers, I soon got my little camp in shape, and settled down to business. So numerous were the birds, and so proficient did I become in the use of my fowling-piece, that by the time the two weeks had passed my store of treasure almost filled the large sack that I had brought from the schooner.

"It was the night of the fifteenth day that I had been on the island. Ever since early morning the atmosphere had been so stifling that I had lain under the trees almost suffocated. The earth itself seemed to burn. It was not only the fearful heat and the absence of anything like a breeze, but there was a sulphurous smell in the air, and the water from the spring had tasted so hot and bitter when I tried to drink it that I was not able to swallow it.

"At length I fell asleep, but only to be awakened by a fearful rumbling, followed a moment later by a crash that threatened to rend the island in twain. At the instant I took it to be thunder, but the starry splendor of the sky told me to look elsewhere for the cause. Almost before I could reason, the island commenced to rock and heave as though it was a ship at sea, and such an overpowering smell of sulphur was sent forth that I fell to the ground overcome with terror and faintness. During the remainder of the night the rumbling went on at times deep down in the heart of the island, but there were no more of the awful shocks and crashes that had stunned me in the beginning. Slowly the daylight came, bringing with it a gentle breeze that cleared away the sickening atmosphere, and then as the day broadened I made out, to my joy, the _Queen_ standing toward the land.

"An hour later, when the schooner's boat touched the beach, I threw my bag of feathers into her and followed them. Then on our way to the vessel, which was hove to about a mile off-shore, I gave my companions an account of my last night on the island. When we reached the _Queen_ I rehearsed my story to the Captain. He was deeply interested in its details, and was in the middle of a scriptural quotation when he stopped suddenly, gave a cry, and pointed to the island.

"We were not more than two miles from it at the time, so that it lay in full view from our deck in the brilliant sunshine. The dazzling white beach had disappeared, and the sea looked to be creeping up toward the trees that grew on the higher ground inland. As we all gazed, fascinated at the scene, the trees were sucked down slowly into the deep. Soon nothing but the tops of the tallest ones were left, and a moment later even these had entirely disappeared, and the ocean swept clear to all points of the horizon. The beautiful island on which I had lived for two weeks, and through whose woods and vales I had roamed, was swallowed up, to be seen no more forever, and amid the foliage in which I had lain two hours before the fishes were then sporting at the bottom of the Pacific."

A WIDE-AWAKE COLLECTOR.

One of the most enterprising stamp-collectors that has ever come to our notice was a small Swiss boy, who, during the late war between Japan and China, wrote the following note to Marshal Yamagata, in command of the Japanese forces:

HONORED MARSHAL,--I am only a school-boy ten years old. I live at
Berne. Upon the map, Switzerland is smaller than Japan. I was very
pleased to hear that you have been serving the Chinese as my
ancestors served their enemies. I hope that you will conquer all
China, and throw down the famous wall which prevents people from
going there. No doubt it is because of that wall that I have not
got any Chinese stamps in my album. You must have captured a lot
where you are, and I should be pleased if you would send me some.

Unfortunately for this record of his enterprise, the boy's name is unknown to us, but it is stated that the Marshal, having received the letter, was so much amused by it that he took the trouble to secure a large number of Chinese stamps and to send them to his lively little correspondent.

BY GASTON V. DRAKE.

XI.--FROM BOB TO JACK.

LONDON, _July_ --, 189-.

Dear Jack,--We're still in London, and I guess if we stay here
until we've seen it all we'll never get to Hoboken. Talk about your
three-ringed circuses! London beats 'em all for side-shows and go.
When you think you've seen all there is to see you come across an
entirely new lot of museums, and parks, and hysterical spots to be
visited, and I'm just dizzy trying to remember what Pop told me not
to forget. What with St. James's Palace and Madame Tussaud's
wax-works, the Zoo and the National Gallery, I hardly know what I
saw where, except that of course I didn't see any wax-works at the
Zoo.

I think altogether the Zoo and the wax-works are the things I've
liked best of all about here. The National Gallery is pretty good,
but after you've seen about forty-two miles of pictures, some of
'em as big as a farm your eyes get tired and the back of your neck
sort of hurts. Still, I went through it because Pop said I ought
to, and whenever I have a nightmare nowadays instead of seeing
boojums and snarks I see old masters. You never saw an old master
did you? Well you needn't be in any hurry to. They aren't the sort
of things boys like very much. They're generally cracked so's to
look like a go-bang board and keep you guessing about what they're
pictures of, but Aunt Sarah who studied art last winter in Yonkers
says they're very educating, and I guess she knows. She says she
does anyhow and I don't think she'd say a thing that wasn't so. I
can't say that I've learned much from 'em except perhaps that the
pictures you and I draw in the backs of our spelling books aren't
so bad after all.

Pop says he's learned one thing from 'em too. There used to be a
fellow named Gainsborough that painted acres of pictures every
year, and Pop says his things are fine and prove that theatre hats
aren't modern inventions and he's right about it. He's got several
pictures in this gallery that would drive me crazy if I had to sit
behind 'em at a matinee. There were some pictures there though that
I'd give house-room to if they asked me, by Sir Edwin Landseer.
Pictures of dogs. I tell you he could paint dogs that bark. It was
as much as I could do to keep from whistling to 'em and patting 'em
on the head, and one little spaniel was painted so well that it
seemed to me I could see his tail wag. Pop says that that was all
imagination, but Aunt Sarah said no it was art, and I let 'em argue
it out between 'em. Whatever it was though that painted dog's tail
wagged and it was worth travelling miles to see.

I was kind of disappointed with St. James's Palace. I expected to
see something like a transformation scene at Humpty Dumpty, gold
doors, and fountains, and bands playing and all that. You'd think a
Palace would be different from a factory anyhow, but it wasn't,
very. It didn't look any livelier than a jail would, and as far as
the outside of it was concerned I couldn't see that it was any
handsomer than the Grand Central Depot in New York, and not half as
big. They wouldn't let us inside. I thought perhaps the Queen was
asleep and they were afraid I'd whistle, but Pop said she didn't
live there any more, and I didn't blame her. I wouldn't either if I
could help it. I dare say it's very fine inside, with onyx
stairways and solid gold banisters for the children to slide down,
but outside I wouldn't give a cent for it. If it wasn't for the
soldiers with their big bear-skin hats and robin-red-breast coats
on I wouldn't have cared if we never saw it. The soldiers were
worth looking at, though most of 'em have such great big bulgy
chests you'd take 'em for pouter pigeons.

Right alongside of the Palace is where the Prince of Whales lives
and while we were looking at it he came out in a cab. He was
another disappointment. He wore a beaver hat just like Pop's, and
instead of having a scepter in his hands he carried an umbrella and
a cigar; just the sort of man you'd expect to meet on Broadway any
day of the year. Somehow it's hard to get used to the idea of a
real live Prince wearing a beaver hat and carrying an umbrella, and
it almost makes me sorry I came. I suppose if I could really find
out how to go to Fairyland and should go there I'd find all the
fairies dressed up in pea-jackets and sailor hats like most of the
boys we see nowadays, and probably they'd be playing ball or riding
bicycles instead of flying about on gossamer wings and swinging on
cobwebs.

I spoke to Pop about it, and he said it was because the Prince
loved the people that he didn't dress up like Solomon. All the men
feel that they've got to dress like the Prince of Whales and if he
came out in a bathing suit and a blue plush smoking-cap on his
head, every man in England and New York that wanted to be
fashionable would do the same thing, and if he dressed as
magnificently as he knew how, in a diamond-studded dress-suit and
gold trousers, it would ruin everybody to go and do likewise. So he
wears clothes that are within the reach of all, which I think is
very nice of him, though I wish I could see him on Sunday when he
puts on his best. Pop says the way the men imitate him is very
funny. He says there was an actor once disguised himself as the
Prince who went riding through the Park on a donkey with bells on
its hoofs, and next day sixty-three of the most fashionable young
men of London appeared the same way, and when they found out that
they had been fooled they were so angry that they wouldn't go to
that actor's theatre again, but everybody else thought it was such
a good joke that they went and the actor made a fortune.

I was going to tell you about the wax-works at Madame Tussaud's and
the Zoo in this letter, but Pop says it's time for me to go to bed,
because we are going to have a hard day to-morrow. We're going to
take a coach and drive out to Hampton Court and back, so I'll have
to close here. I wish you'd ask that Chicago boy if he's a
grand-nephew of Baron Munchausen. I told Pop about that
prairie-yacht and how Billie's seal-skin cap saved him from being
scalped, and Pop was very much interested and said he thought he
knew now who Billie was, and when I asked him who, he said the
grand-nephew of Baron Munchausen, a man who never told the truth
unless it was absolutely necessary.

Yours ever,
BOB.

P. S.--I've just got out of bed for a minute to tell you that you
never saw such monkies as they have at the Zoo. They look almost as
human as some of our Aldermen in New York, Pop says.

The success of the New Manhattan Athletic Club in managing the recent in-door interscholastic games has suggested the possibility of having the club manage the National meet in June. This would be a very good scheme, if practicable, because experience has shown that hitherto the chief obstacle in the way of success for scholastic meetings has been poor business management.

It is not always possible for young men who have nearly all they can attend to at school to devote enough time to the business management of an athletic meeting to make it a thorough success; and it is therefore well, when possible, that this kind of work should be turned over to those who have more time and greater experience for the amount and kind of work required. The N.M.A.C. handled the recent games in a satisfactory way, and there is no reason to think that it would not carry out the plans for the National meet fully as well.

At the in-door games the club assumed the entire financial responsibility, and offered prizes besides; but the managers would naturally feel some hesitancy about doing the same thing for an out-of-door meeting, where the weather must have so much to do with the attendance. The constitution of the National Interscholastic Association stipulates, I believe, that the prizes in each event shall amount in value to $25. The N.M.A.C. would not care to saddle itself with the responsibility of offering thirteen or fourteen sets of $25 medals, besides paying the rental of the grounds and other incidental expenses; but I am informed on good authority that the club would be perfectly willing to assume the responsibility of securing grounds and of making all arrangements for advertising and management, as they did for the in-door games, at their own risk. Should there be any surplus after these expenses have been defrayed, this would go toward paying for the prizes--no set of medals to cost more than $25; and should there still be a surplus after that, the money would be turned over to the National Association's treasury. The club, I am sure, does not wish to make any profit out of the enterprise.

By such an arrangement, of course, there would be no shining medals on a table in the middle of the Berkeley Oval for the contestants to admire before they had been defeated in their events, and that would doubtless detract much from the interest in these games of our friends the medal-hunters; but on the other hand it would be a good thing if it could be announced that there would not be any medals on show that day, as this might keep these same medal-hunters off the grounds--which would be an advantage.

The prizes, as I have frequently said, are purely a secondary consideration; and even if there was not enough money left over, after all the expenses had been paid, to get anything better than ribbons, the success of the National Association would not suffer, for the games are not held for the purpose of distributing gold and silver disks, but for the purpose of encouraging amateur sport and to bring about meetings between the strongest athletes in the schools of the country. At the Olympic games which have just closed in Athens the victors received mere olive wreaths, but these wreaths are as precious to them as if they were of gold or precious stones. It is not the value of the wreath itself, it is what the faded leaves represent that the true sportsman cherishes.

D. P. White. O. E. Robinson. C. M. Hall.

B. Kinney. E. L. Johnson. A. Robinson. S. L. M. Starr.

W. L. Van Wagenen. H. W. Goldsborough.

ST. PAUL'S TRACK-ATHLETIC TEAM,

Winners of First Place at the N.M.A.C. Interscholastic Games, March 28, 1896.]

It would not be fair to ask the N.M.A.C. or any club to assume the responsibility for the rent of the grounds and other necessary expenses, and for the medals too. It is a sufficient risk for them to undertake to pay for the former, without going into jewelry. I hope the National Association's Executive Committee will see the advantage of having the games--their first venture--managed by a club or an association of older and more experienced men, and come to an understanding on some such lines as the N.M.A.C. may propose.

A number of letters have come to this Department recently asking for suggestions about the construction of hard tennis courts. There are several kinds of these, the gravel court being by far the best of all. A gravel court is laid out by first digging about fifteen or eighteen inches down and filling this hole with broken brick, stone, and other coarse rubbish to within six inches of the top. Then coarse gravel of any kind should be put on and well packed down with a hose. This layer should come up to within two inches of the top. The last two inches should be filled in with fine screened gravel, and if this will not bind, add a little clay. On top of all this put from one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch of the finest red gravel--just enough to give color to the court. If too much of this red gravel is put on it will not bind well. It soon wears off, and then more should be laid on, and after this has been done a few times a court will keep its color all summer.

The advantage of such a court is that it needs but little care. All you have to do is to sweep the gravel off occasionally, and water and roll it. A light roller is sufficient for this purpose, as it is expected to affect the top layer of the gravel only. The best way to mark out a gravel court is with an inch tape nailed down with tacks. Whitewash will not do, as it spreads. The least satisfactory kind of hard court is made of cinders. These pack fairly well; but a cinder court requires a great deal of care to keep in order, and is always a dirty place to play on, the balls becoming black after a few sets, and consequently useless.

In nearly every city of the Middle West high-school associations have been organized during the past year or so, and these associations have done much toward encouraging school sport, and toward making the contests among their members more systematic than they have been heretofore. In Wisconsin interscholastic football and baseball games have until recently been carried on in a haphazard fashion, without any special attempt toward the formation of a union that might properly recognize the claims to supremacy of the successful team.

Last fall, however, the initial steps toward placing all branches of sport on a sound and permanent basis were taken. The season of 1895 clearly showed the need of an organization, and in December representatives from the schools of all the principal cities of southern Wisconsin met in Milwaukee and formed the Southern Wisconsin Inter-High-school League. The purposes of the organization are to develop all kinds of athletic sports in the schools, and to encourage a friendly rivalry in the various contests among its members. It also aims to correct some abuses which have crept into interscholastic sport--abuses which always will creep into any kind of sport where there is no restriction of government or organization. The league is divided into four circuits, each embracing the cities located in a certain territory, and the team which carries off the honors in its own circuit contests for the State Championship with the leaders in the other circuits.

The constitution of the Wisconsin League, while placing many wise restrictions upon its members, leaves them free to arrange their own schedules of games and to manage their own affairs as may seem best and wisest to them. The league will open the season of 1896 with baseball and track athletics--the field day for the latter to be held in Madison on June 9th. The first interscholastic field day of the Wisconsin schools was held June 8th of last year, under the auspices of the Wisconsin University Athletic Association. Twelve high-schools were represented, and many good records were made, a brief account of which was given in this Department in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE for July 2, 1895. Much interest is being displayed now in the coming meeting, and doubtless even a better showing will be made than that of last season.

It is in football, however, that the various schools of the league expect to see developed the hardest struggle for the championship. Last fall, although no organization had been effected, the contest for first place was a hard one, and the interest aroused in the schools was intense. Madison High-school justly deserves to rank at the head of the scholastic teams of that section. Her eleven won every game played. In fact, M. H.-S. has only been defeated once in football since it put an eleven into the field, three years ago. Of the eighteen contests in which it has engaged only one was lost, and that to the strong team of the St. John's Military Academy, which ought not to be classed as a school team, or played against by school teams, so long as the academy authorities sanction the methods at present in vogue at Delafield. The reason for M.H.-S.'s good record rests, doubtless, in the fact that Madison is an enthusiastic football town, and the school team gets much valuable experience and benefit from playing against the university eleven.

The formation of the Twin-City Dual Interscholastic League, which was mentioned in this Department last week, was brought about by complications which arose in the league formerly composed of the St. Paul High, the Minneapolis High, and the Duluth High schools. The old league fell to pieces, and the new one was constructed on different lines, which promise to make the venture a success. I am glad to say that I was misinformed concerning the presence of the standing jumps on the card. Mr. George Cole is the President, Stewart J. Fuller, the Vice-President, George Angst, Secretary, and Chester H. Griggs, Treasurer. These young men have all been prominent for some time in interscholastic sport, and if they can control the policy of the league, it will doubtless earn a high standing among similar associations.

The organization does not aim to control track athletics only, but will also look after the football and baseball interests of the St. Paul and Minneapolis schools. Track athletics have only been taken up systematically for the past five years in these two cities, and yet the schools have made rapid strides in this short time, and have sent a number of clever men to Eastern colleges. The St. Paul High-School has perhaps done better than most of the schools in that section in sending good men East. Winters, the well-known Yale tackle, Cochran, the end-rusher, and Langford, the stroke of the present Yale crew, are all graduates of that institution.

The Inter-collegiate Association has stricken the bicycle race from the regular schedule of the spring games. It would be a very good thing if the New York and Brooklyn I.S.A.A.'s, and, in fact, if all interscholastic associations would follow their example. The New York and Brooklyn associations could combine and have a bicycle field day in the same week of the annual interscholastic meetings, or at any other time that might seem more convenient, and do away with the unpleasant bicycle event at the track-athletic meeting altogether.

I suggest that the New York and Brooklyn associations combine, because it seems to me that it would be more profitable, on account of the larger number of entries, the greater interest, and the greater attendance such a union would command. Should the bicycle event be stricken from the interscholastic card, an excellent substitute would be a relay race. Relay races, as I have frequently said within the past few weeks, are becoming more and more popular all over the country, and sooner or later the relay race will become a standard event on every track-athletic card. Therefore, the sooner the interscholastic managers recognize this fact and put the race on their schedules, the better. If the entries for the relay races are so numerous in an association as large as the New York or Boston I.S.A.A. it would be possible to have the preliminary heats run in the morning, and have only finals at the games in the afternoon. This is a matter well worthy of consideration.

THE GRADUATE.

This Department is conducted in the interest of stamp and coin
collectors, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question
on these subjects so far as possible. Correspondents should address
Editor Stamp Department.