Part 8

In manufactures the influence of chemistry is seen at every turn. When the century began, probably no industrial establishment in the world dreamed of maintaining a chemical laboratory; to-day, hundreds are well equipped and often heavily manned for the sole benefit of the intelligent manufacturer. Coal gas is a chemical product; its by-products are ammonia and coal tar; from the latter, as we have seen, hundreds of useful substances, the discoveries of the last half century, are prepared. Better and cheaper soap and glass owe their existence to chemical improvement in the making of alkalies; chemical bleaching has replaced the tedious action of sunlight and dew; chemical dyestuffs give our modern fabrics nearly all their hues. Metallurgy is almost wholly a group of chemical processes; every metal is extracted from its ores by methods which rest on chemical foundations; analyses of fuel, flux, and product go on side by side with the smelting. The cyanide and chlorination processes for gold, the Bessemer process for steel, are apt illustrations of the advances in chemical metallurgy; but before these come into play the dynamite of the miner, another chemical invention, must have done its work underground. For rare minerals, the mere curiosities of twenty years ago, uses have been found; from monazite we obtain the oxides which form the mantle of the Welsbach burner; from beauxite, aluminum is made. The former waste products of many an industry have also revealed unsuspected values, and chemistry has the sole honor of their discovery.

In education, chemistry has steadily grown in importance, until a single university may have need of as many as twenty chemists in its teaching staff, teaching not only what is already known, but also the art of research. As a disciplinary study, chemistry ranks high in the college curriculum, and it opens the way to a new learned profession, equal in rank with those of more ancient standing.

For the material advancement of mankind the nineteenth century has done more than all the preceding ages combined, and science has been the chief instrument of progress. Scientific methods, experimental investigation, have replaced the old empiricism, and no man can imagine where the forward movement is to end. Hitherto research has been sporadic, individual, unorganized; but fruitful beyond all anticipation. In the future it should become more systematic, better organized, richer in facilities. Through laboratories equipped for research alone the twentieth century must work, and chemistry is entitled to its fair share of the coming opportunities. The achievements of the chemist, great as they have been during this century, are but a beginning; the larger possibilities are ahead. The greatest laws are yet undiscovered; the invitation of the unknown was never more distinct than now.

MOUNT TAMALPAIS.

BY MARSDEN MANSON, C. E., PH.D.

Mount Tamalpais is the southern and terminating peak of the westerly ridge of the Coast Range, which confronts the Pacific Ocean from the Golden Gate to the Oregon line.

Its outliers form the bold headlands which skirt the Golden Gate and adjacent waters to the north, and which bound the peninsula constituting Marin County. The spurs extending to the east reach the shores of the Bay of San Francisco, and inclose small alluvial valleys of great fertility and beauty. In some instances these valley lands are fringed by tidal marshes, in part reclaimed and under cultivation.

The top of the mountain breaks into three distinct peaks, each reaching an altitude of nearly half a mile above sea level, although bounded on three sides by tidal waters.

No land points visible from the summit, except those bounding the apparent horizon, reach equal or greater altitude. The mountain is therefore a marked feature from all parts of the area visible from its summit, which area has an extent of about eight thousand square miles.

The adjoined photographic reproduction of a portion of a relief map of the State gives a general idea of the adjacent land, bay, and ocean areas.

The westerly group of islands, opposite the Golden Gate, are the Farallones. The bold headland northwest of the Gate is Point Reyes; it protects from the north and northwest winds the anchorage known as Drake’s Bay. The strip of water between the adjoining peninsula and the mainland is Tomales Bay.

The most westerly headland south of the Golden Gate is San Pedro Point, and the prominent headland farther south is Pescadero Point. The whole of San Francisco Bay is visible from Mount Tamalpais, except a few sheltered nooks and portions behind islands.

The tidal area inside the Golden Gate is about seven hundred and forty square miles at high tide; this includes that portion which extends east of the Coast Range into the valley of California, and known as Suisun Bay; this bay is connected with San Francisco Bay through the Straits of Carquinez and San Pablo Bay. Emptying into Suisun Bay at its easterly end are the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Thus the tidal waters washing the base of Mount Tamalpais are connected with the interior valley of California, and tributary to them are about twelve hundred miles of navigable channels, tapping the central part of the State.

From the summit of this peak the eye sweeps the horizon of the Pacific Ocean for nearly one hundred and fifty degrees. To the northwest, north, and northeast lie Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and Napa Valleys, the view over these being bounded by the ridges inclosing them. To the east are the Straits of Carquinez, the outlet of the fifty-eight thousand square miles of drainage of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the only water gap in the entire perimeter.

From the east to the south lie the slopes of the Contra Costa Hills and the ranges bounding the drainage into the Bay of San Francisco, and including the Santa Clara Valley, thus embracing a magnificent view of the garden spots of California, and the cities and towns around the bay--the homes of about one third the population of the State. Three prominent peaks mark the limits of the land view: Mount Hamilton, the site of the Lick Observatory of the University of California; Mount Diablo, the base and meridian of the United States land surveys of central California; and Mount St. Helena, a volcanic peak the summit of which is common to Napa, Sonoma, and Lake Counties, and whose spurs are noted for their quicksilver mines, mineral and hot springs.

The plant life of the immediate Tamalpais region is abundant and interesting; the flowering plants are represented by about eighty orders, three hundred and fifty genera, and from seven to eight hundred species, of which about one hundred are trees and shrubs.[F] Some of the Sierra forms occur on Mount Tamalpais, and it is also the locus of the most southerly extension of certain boreal species. Owing to the wide range of temperature, moisture conditions, and exposures, many of these plants can be found in bloom during every week in the year. During the warm, moist autumn and winter the hardiest species bloom from October to April in protected areas, and in the cold, exposed areas these same species require the heat of the season from April to September to bring them into bloom. Thus, within a radius of four or five miles from the summit there is not a week in the year when the flowers of certain species can not be gathered--this in face of the fact that during the months of December, January, and February the summit may be covered with sleet or snow for a day or two at a time.

[F] Estimated by Miss Eastwood, curator of the Department of Botany of the California Academy of Sciences.

Mount Tamalpais is therefore a point of great interest to the sight-seer, the tourist, and the student of Nature.

MODES OF REACHING THE SUMMIT.--For many years a trail has existed from Mill Valley to the summit, and another from Ross Valley, both practicable for pack mules. Later the Ross Valley trail was improved so as to be practicable for light vehicles, but these did not answer the needs of the increasing travel, and in 1895 the Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway Company was organized. The purpose of this company was bold--to construct a traction railroad from tide level to the summit of a peak not two miles off and nearly half a mile high appeared visionary, if not impossible, to many. But with persevering skill a road was located upon a line 8.19 miles long, having an average grade of five and a half per cent and maximum grades of seven per cent, and overcoming 2,353 feet elevation in this distance. Four and nine tenths miles are curved, the minimum radius being seventy feet. Owing to the rough and ravine-cut topography, twenty-five trestles were necessary, the curvature and grade being maintained over these.

In order to reduce the cost of grading and to develop sufficient length to overcome the elevation, the grade contour was followed as closely as possible. The very short radius employed permitted this to be done without tunnels and with but two through cuts.

The accompanying map, prepared from the United States Coast and Geodetic charts and the maps and profiles of the company, gives a general idea of the location and main features. To the student of railroad location it forms an interesting exhibit of the extreme flexibility of railway location.

The rails are steel, fifty-seven pounds to the yard, laid to standard gauge upon the ordinary redwood ties in use on the Pacific coast. Grading, trestle work, and laying cost about $55,000. The entire road cost $136,746.44, or practically $16,700 per mile.

The equipment consists of one thirty-ton geared locomotive (Heisler), one twenty-ton geared locomotive (Shay), six open canopy-top observation cars, one half-closed passenger car, and two flat cars. Cost of equipment, $22,450.[G]

[G] The writer is indebted to the officers of the Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway for the above accurate statistics.

The locomotives and cars are very thoroughly provided with brakes: first, the Westinghouse automatic air brake; second, a water brake; and, third, a powerful hand brake to each locomotive and car. The efficiency of this equipment is attested in the operation of the road without accident or injury of any kind. The locomotives are always operated on the lower end of trains, and the maximum speed allowed is eight miles per hour.

The ride up the winding cañons and through the superb scenery traversed by this road is a treat of which one never tires. The point of view, the direction, and the character of the landscape are continually changing. With no deep cuts, no tunnels, facing first one and then the other and finally all the points of the compass, sweeping around spurs, with distant views of land and sea, and near views of great beauty; then facing the steep sides of the mountain, its geology and flora affording interesting pictures; then over trestles with the branches of the bay, redwood, madroño, oak, and manzanita just out of reach--all these form beauties and attractions possessed by no other road known to the writer. A faint idea of the appearance of the road and of the scenery may be had from the appended photographs.

THE METEOROLOGICAL STATION.--The advantages of Mount Tamalpais as a meteorological station have long been recognized, and many efforts have been made to utilize them. It frequently projects many hundreds of feet above fogs which cover the adjacent shores, and during these periods one can look out upon an ocean of rolling, fleecy clouds which break upon the mountains around its base and visible from its summit. This freedom from obscuring conditions gives an opportunity to more freely observe and study meteorological phenomena, and caused the Weather Bureau to make a series of preliminary observations in 1897, and, these resulting favorably, a fully equipped permanent station was subsequently built. The results have fully equaled expectations. The advantages of the location may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. It is close to the coast line, and is so elevated that it is not seriously affected by the local indraught of air through the Golden Gate and adjacent gaps in the Coast Range. This local indraught is a disturbing and often a misleading factor in all observations taken near and south of the Golden Gate for at least a score of miles. The elevated station on top of the peak eliminates the source of errors based upon observations at lower stations, and enables the forecast official to determine the effects of the local disturbances, and thus to give observations taken at or near sea level their true weight at the proper time.

2. No station in the United States has so full and free a projection into the lower third of the vapor-bearing stratum as has the station on this peak. No other station furnishes, as it does, an opportunity to study the distribution of vapor in the lower third of that stratum of the atmosphere, the physics of which is most important to human life and industries.

3. In studying the phenomena connected with the occurrence of fog, this station furnishes highly valuable data that could be obtained from no other; and, again, enables the student of weather lore to correct misleading impressions and deductions based upon observations taken below the one-thousand-foot contour above sea level.

On the 16th of June, 1899, the observations taken on Mount Tamalpais marked a difference of about thirty degrees in temperature over those around its base. In San Francisco, at Point Lobos and at Point Reyes, the temperature was down to 48°, while on Mount Tamalpais it was 79°, thus marking an approaching change in weather conditions, and giving the Weather Bureau the first opportunity of using the vertical temperature gradient in forecasting.

As a station for furnishing the data for a study of the problems of the physics of the atmosphere Mount Tamalpais is of further importance, as it stands near the easterly limits of the great area of high pressure which, during summer, lies over the North Pacific and which dominates the climatic phenomena of California for the greater portion of the year.

Stations on the Hawaiian Islands to the south and others on the Aleutian Islands to the north of this area of high pressure will still further aid in the solution of the great and vital problems now before meteorologists. These stations are the most reliable ones which can surround on three sides the two great “weather breeders”--the “summer high” and the “winter low” of the North Pacific.

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

BY JAMES HARRIS VICKERY, LL. B.

“In truth these ‘cut-and-dried’ schemes are of no value at all, unless as monuments of the mingled simplicity and ingenuity of their authors.”--LAWRENCE.

The view has been very generally entertained that all efforts to promote the cause of peace and order in the world by cut-and-dried schemes are bound to fail, and it must be admitted that few truer words have been written than those which stand at the head of this article. But this truth, like some others, may be abused. Evidences are not wanting to show that the incredulity which preceded the convening of the Peace Conference, the skepticism which marked its first sessions, and a certain want of faith which has since been manifested in various quarters in the practical value of the measures adopted, are all mainly due to a misapplication of this truth.

The measures formulated at The Hague do not constitute a “cut-and-dried scheme,” but, on the contrary, they form an additional step in a natural, healthy, and orderly evolution of the forces of peace which have so effectively asserted themselves in the improvement of international relations during the latter half of this century.[H]

[H] For an excellent statement of the work of the Conference from the German point of view, see Die völkerrechtlichen Ergebnisse der Haager Conferenz, by Professor Zorn, of Königsberg, one of the German delegates, published in the Deutsche Rundschau, January _et seq._

THE GENEVA RED CROSS RULES.--The first matter to which attention will be invited is the extension of the Red Cross rules to naval warfare.

The Geneva Convention of 1864, which marks the beginning of the organization known as the Red Cross Society, inaugurated a vast and beneficent improvement in the then existing usage of nations as regarded the care of the sick and wounded in war. Its two salient features are the neutralization of the officers and forces of the society and the disabled soldiers under their care, and the establishment of a _system_ to govern the conduct of its humane work.

At the dawn of modern international law during the first quarter of the seventeenth century not only the sick and wounded of a vanquished foe, but every prisoner, and even women and children, suffered to the fullest the indignities and cruelties incident to the rough warfare of the age; but the growth of mercy has softened the asperities of war, and among the milestones that mark this advance toward a more humane usage the Red Cross Society holds an honored place. Under its rules the sick and wounded were no longer left to the irregular and capricious care of private benevolence, but were made the subject of organized and systematic treatment by a staff of skilled physicians and experienced nurses provided with hospital and ambulance facilities, and, thus equipped and assured the protection of both combatants, they were able to work effectively in their ministrations to the sick and dying.

Vast as was this progress from the days when at the siege of Acre the first real attention since the dark ages was given to the wounded by the Order of Teutonic Knights, there was still one serious imperfection that limited its sphere of usefulness--it did not apply to warfare on the seas. An effort had indeed been made in 1868 to extend the Red Cross rules to naval warfare, but it failed, and the wounded in conflicts on the sea continued to be left to the old provisions, which were necessarily inadequate and could not be exercised under the joint protection of the combatants. The virtue of the good Samaritan is a potent force, but to be fully effective on the field of battle it must be exercised under a common system established and maintained by the mutual consent of nations. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that because the effort made in 1868 to extend these rules to sea warfare failed on account of their non-ratification, they were not sustained by public opinion. Many difficulties, especially those of a technical character, stood in the way; but public opinion was ever growing in their favor, and it eventually came to be regarded as an anomaly that while the care of the sick and wounded in land warfare had been regulated upon a common basis of international agreement, no similar provision existed for the care of the victims of naval combat. Without some such extension of the rules no adequate expression could be given to the growing humanity of the age.

For these reasons it will be obvious that the next step necessary in the further development of the Red Cross work consisted of its extension to naval warfare. The Peace Conference subjected the Convention of 1864 and the additional rules of 1868 to a careful examination, considered at length the difficulties in the way, and finally adopted a new series of rules providing for an organized staff of physicians and nurses, with hospital ships and life-saving appliances, which shall, without interfering with operations, be henceforth employed in naval engagements and enjoy the protection of both combatants.

The newly formulated rules, in conjunction with the previous ones relating to land warfare, are the practical embodiment of the growing feelings of humanity and mercy in the conduct of warfare which, commencing with the Peace of Westphalia, has been ever more and more effective in securing the evolution of a better usage.

THE BRUSSELS RULES.--So, too, with reference to the rules governing the conduct of armies in the field the work of the conference represents a sound and healthy evolution.

It may be remarked, by way of preface, that the old idea of war regarded hostilities as working the absolute interruption of all relations between belligerents, save those arising from force; it also regarded the enemy as a proper object of violence and depredation. Even in the time of Grotius the universal usage permitted the putting to death of all persons found in the enemy’s territory, and in the terrible struggles of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany and the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands the story of the fate of men, women, and children at the hands of a conquering soldiery forms one of the darkest chapters in human history.

But while Grotius declared this to be the usage, he also took care to point out that considerations of justice and mercy dictate a better course, and he made a distinction between certain classes, declaring that justice requires the belligerent to spare those who have done no wrong to him, especially old men, priests, husbandmen, merchants, prisoners, women, and children. This merciful distinction was eagerly seized upon by his successors, who gradually developed out of it different rules for the treatment of the “combatant” and “non-combatant” portion of the enemy inhabitants. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which marked the close of the great struggles that had so long convulsed Europe, the older and more brutal customs fell into disuse, and the theory that only so much stress should be put upon an enemy, and primarily upon the combatant portion, as was sufficient to destroy his power of resistance was substituted for it. Along with this new usage grew the ever-increasing rights of neutrals, among them being that of trade and commerce with the non-combatant portion of belligerent states, which has done so much to lighten the hardships of war suffered by those devoted to peaceful pursuits in the enemy’s territory.

The next important step in this evolution belongs to the present century, and is due to the enlightened initiative of the United States. This step consisted in the preparation of a manual containing a code of rules for the conduct of land warfare. Keenly alive to the inevitable sufferings incident to the great civil conflict then being waged, Abraham Lincoln commissioned Francis Lieber to prepare a series of rules for the conduct of the armies of the republic in the field which should set bounds to the passions of the soldiery.[I] In pursuance of this commission, a code of rules was prepared and adopted which has since been known as Lieber’s Manual; it was published in 1863, and proved a blessing to soldier and civilian alike. So obvious, indeed, were its good results that other nations rapidly followed the lead of the United States, and similar manuals were issued by Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and other powers.

[I] See Pierantoni, Die Fortschritte des Völkerrechts im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.