Chapter C: P. Dutton

_Answer._—It has been variously interpreted. The following is the meaning given it by some writers: “You make war (the arrows) on a people you cannot conquer until you can subsist on roots and wild grain like the mouse, inhabit either land or water, like the frog, and flee with the swiftness of a bird.” Another rendering is: “We subsist in the wild fields like the mouse; live either on land or water, like the frog; flee like the bird, and slay our pursuers as we flee, for our right hands are full of arrows for our enemies.” Darius Hystaspes had demanded an offering of earth and water from them as a token of submission, and this was the answer of these invincible barbarians; and they made good their allegory. As Darius pursued them with an army of 700,000 men they led him farther and farther, through forests, swamps, and deserts, until his troops died of fatigue, malaria, and famine, and he was compelled to return, utterly defeated in his object, leaving all but a mere remnant of his immense army dead in the wilderness.

THE MISSISSIPPI AND MISSOURI RIVERS.

YELLOWSTONE, Wis.

The “New American Dictionary” says that the Missouri is the longest
river in the world, 4,194 miles, and that the Mississippi is
3,200. “Wilson’s Geography” says the Mississippi is 4,396, and the
Missouri is 3,960 miles long. Please tell us which is right, and
the reasons for these variations.

JAMES LYONS.

_Answer._—The fact is that the precise lengths of the chief rivers of the globe are not known. They shift their channels and wind to such a degree as renders it a difficult problem to determine the exact length of any one of them, and exactness in such cases is not as yet a matter of sufficient practical importance to justify the expense of making accurate measurements. If it were, it would be found that every great river varies in length from time to time by cutting new channels for itself. As a consequence all statements are only estimates, and scarcely two original writers precisely agree. The latest edition of “Lippincott’s Gazetteer of the World” does not presume to speak positively, but says: “The Mississippi is about 3,000 miles long (or, as some say, 3,160).” Speaking of the Missouri, it says: “The total length of the stream, from its source to the Gulf of Mexico, is computed to be 4,300 miles.” “Chambers’ Universal Knowledge” says the Mississippi River is 2,986 miles long from its source to its mouth, and that from the latter to the source of the Missouri is 4,506 miles. Probably Lippincott’s statements are nearest to the truth, but none of them claim to be absolute measurement.

WHY EASTER IS A MOVABLE FEAST.

CHICAGO, Ill.

Why does Christmas always fall on the same day of the month,
while the days celebrated in commemoration of Christ’s death
and ascension change? I have submitted this question to several
ministers and other learned persons without receiving a
satisfactory answer.

BUSCANDO.

_Answer._—Christ was crucified on Friday, the 14th day of the Jewish month Nisan, and rose from the dead on the following Sunday. The 14th of Nisan was the Jewish “passover,” the day observed by them in commemoration of the sprinkling of their door-posts with the blood of the paschal lamb on the night when the “Destroying Angel” passed over the dwellings of the Israelites but smote the first-born of the Egyptians. As the year of the Jews is a lunar year, and the 14th of Nisan is always a full-moon day, the Christian Church, regarding the observance of the crucifixion of Christ as a substitute for the passover of the Jewish Church, determine Good Friday and Easter Sunday by the rules for reckoning the Jewish ecclesiastical year. Christmas, intended to commemorate the birth of Christ, had no connection with the ritual of the old church, and, like some two or three hundred other immovable feast days of the Church of Rome, many of them birthdays of saints, it was finally settled that it should be observed on a given day of the common calendar.

OMAHA INDIAN RESERVATION.

BOONE, Iowa.

Isn’t it about time that the Omaha Indian Reservation was opened
for settlement, under the act of Congress approved Aug. 7, 1882?

GRANGER.

_Answer._—The same question, substantially, comes to THE INTER OCEAN at least once a week from one part of the country or another. In reply to an inquiry, the Acting Commissioner of the General Land Office recently wrote as follows:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4.—Editor of Inter Ocean: In reply to your inquiry
of the 17th ult., I have to state that this office is unable to
say what time will elapse before the Omaha Indian Reservation,
in Nebraska, will be open to settlement. The requirements of the
act of Aug. 7, 1882, as to appraisement, have not yet been fully
complied with, and these lands are still under the jurisdiction of
the Office of Indian Affairs. Yours respectfully,

LUTHER HARRISON,
Acting Commissioner.

The substance of the act above referred to is given in Our Curiosity Shop for 1882, pages 113 and 128.

FIRST AMERICAN FREE SCHOOLS.

DOUGLASS, Kan.

Where and in what year were free schools first established in this
country? Who was the first advocate of them? When did they become
general?

HENRY BUTLER.

_Answer._—A law was passed in Massachusetts in 1649 requiring every township to maintain a free school, and every town of 100 families to maintain a grammar school to “fit youths for the university;” and it is recorded in 1665 that a free school was then supported by each town in New England. The Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven Colonies soon followed this good example of Massachusetts, either in whole or in part. The first public school in Pennsylvania was established in Philadelphia by the Quakers, in 1689, free to those who could not pay. In 1694 Maryland enacted that every county should have a public school, and every parish a free library of at least fifty volumes. A free grammar school was established in New York by an act passed in 1702, but a system of free common schools was not inaugurated in this State until after 1795, in which year, on the recommendation of Governor Clinton, the Legislature appropriated $50,000 to encourage the establishment of common schools—not wholly free. It was years after this before the system of schools free to all (except colored children) went into general operation in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The Southern States waited until after the war before adopting the free-school system even for white children. Their common schools were free only for the children of confessed paupers. Who was “the first advocate” of free schools it is now impossible to determine positively. Several of them came over in the Mayflower, as there were a few free schools in Massachusetts before the above enactment of 1649, making it obligatory on every town to have them, the chief argument then being that “every child must know how to read the Bible.”

CORDOVA, MEXICO.

UNION CITY, Iowa.

My regiment was stationed at Cordova, Mexico, at the close of the
Mexican war. How old is that city, by whom was it founded, and what
is its present population?