Chapter 1

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 1157

NEW YORK, March 5, 1898.

Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XLV., No. 1157.

Scientific American established 1845

Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.

Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE I. ARCHÆOLOGY.--Requirements of Palestine Explorer 18489

II. BIOGRAPHY.--Emperor William II. of Germany.--An interesting biographical account of the German Emperor, with his latest portrait.--1 illustration 18486

III. CIVIL ENGINEERING.--Heat in Great Tunnels 18492

IV. ECONOMICS.--Causes of Poverty 18490

V. ELECTRICITY.--Liquid Rheostats.--By H. S. WEBB 18498

The Neutral Use of Cables 18489

VI. ETHNOLOGY.--The Influence of Scenery upon the Character of Man 18488

VII. FORESTRY.--Apparatus for Obtaining the Cubature of Trees.--3 illustrations 18493

VIII. GYMNASTICS.--A Novel Way of Riding a Bicycle. --1 illustration 18489

IX. HYDROGRAPHY.--Influence of Ocean Currents on Climate 18490

X. LANDSCAPE GARDENING.--Park Making 18490

XI. MARINE ENGINEERING.--The Newfoundland and Nova Scotia Passenger Steamer "Bruce."--1 illustration 18492

XII. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.--Machine Moulding without Stripping Plates.--By E. H. MUMFORD.--A full description of an ingenious moulding machine.--7 illustrations 18494

XIII. MEDICINE.--The Progress of Medical Education in the United States 18499

Deaths under Anæsthetics 18499

XIV. MISCELLANEOUS:

Engineering Notes 18491

Miscellaneous Notes 18491

Selected Formulæ 18491

XV. NATURAL HISTORY.--Tapirs in the Zoological Garden at Breslau.--1 illustration 18488

XVI. STEAM ENGINEERING.--An English Steam Fire Engine. --1 illustration 18493

XVII. TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION.--My Recent Journey from the Nile to Suakim.--By FREDERIC VILLIERS.--The advance to Khartoum.--An important account of the recent travels of the celebrated war correspondent. 18486

XVIII. TECHNOLOGY.--Artificial India Rubber.--This article describes some important experiments which have been made in which India rubber substitutes have been produced from oil of turpentine 18495

Deep and Frosted Etching on Glass 18496

The Koppel Electric Locomotives.--This article describes a system of electric trolley traction for narrow gage railroads.--7 illustrations 18497

Slate and its Applications.--This article details some of the various uses to which slate is put in the arts, with a view of slate store vats for breweries. 18496

Birthplace of the Oilcloth Industry. 18496

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EMPEROR WILLIAM II. OF GERMANY.

Since William II. of Germany ascended the throne as German Emperor and King of Prussia, on June 15, 1888, the eyes of Europe have been fixed on him. He has always been rather an unknown quantity, and he is regarded by the powers as an _enfant terrible_. The press of the world delights in showing up his weak points, and the "war lord" undoubtedly has them, but, at the same time, he has qualities which are to be admired and which make him conspicuous among the rulers of Europe.

He is popular in Germany, and it is not surprising, for, in spite of being autocratic to the last degree, he is honest, courageous, ambitious, hard working, and, withal, a thorough German, being intensely patriotic. Indeed, if the people of the Fatherland had the right to vote for a sovereign, they would undoubtedly choose the present constitutional ruler, for, while the virtues we have named may seem commonplace, they are not so when embodied in an emperor. One thing which places William at a disadvantage is his excessive frankness, which is, in him, almost a fault, for if he couched his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at least, excusable, in a ruler.

Since the time when William was a child he evidenced a strong desire to become acquainted with the details of the office to which his lofty birth entitled him. It is doubtful if any king since the time of Frederick the Great has studied the routine of the public offices and has made such practical inspections of industries of all kinds; indeed, there is hardly a man in Germany who has more general knowledge of the material development of the country.

In the army he has worked his way up like any other officer and has a firm grasp on all the multifarious details of the military establishment of the great country. He believes in militarism, or in force to use a more common expression, but in this he is right, for it has taken two hundred and fifty years to bring Prussia to the position she now holds, and what she has gained at the point of the sword must be retained in the same way. The immense sacrifices which the people make to support the army and navy are deemed necessary for self-preservation, and with France on one side and Russia on the other, there really seems to be ample excuse for it. To-day the German army is as ready as in 1870, when Von Moltke walked down the Unter den Linden, the day after hostilities were declared, looking in the shop windows.

No ruler, except possibly Peter the Great, ever gave so many _ex cathedra_ opinions on so many different subjects in the same length of time, and of course it cannot be supposed that he has not made mistakes, but it shows that it is only by prodigious industry that he has been able to gather the materials on which these utterances are based. He is indeed the "first servant of the state," and long before his court or indeed many of the housemaids of Berlin are awake, he is up and attending to affairs of all kinds.

He is a great traveler, and knows Europe from the North Cape to the Golden Horn; and while flying across country in his comfortable vestibuled train, he dispatches business and acquires an excellent idea of the country, and no traveler can speak more intelligently of the countries through which he has traveled, and this information is brought out with good effect in his excellent after-dinner speeches.

In speaking of the versatility of the Emperor, something should be said of him as a sportsman. He has given a splendid example to the Germans. He has tried to introduce baseball, football and polo, three American games. This may be traced to the time when Poultney Bigelow and J. A. Berrian were the Emperor's playmates. Fenimore Cooper was one of the favorite authors with the young scion of royalty. The Emperor is fond of hunting, yachting, tennis and other sports and is never so happy as when he stands on the bridge of the royal yacht Hohenzollern. He is a well known figure at Cowes and won the Queen's Cup in 1891.

William II. was born January 27, 1859, in Berlin, and until he was fourteen years old his education was intrusted to Dr. Hintzpeter, assisted by Major Von Gottberg, who was military instructor. At this time his corps of teachers was increased by the addition of Prediger Persius, who prepared him for his confirmation, which took place September 1, 1874, at Potsdam. As William was to lead an active life, it was thought best to send him to the gymnasium at Cassel.

Orders were given that he and his younger brother Henry, who accompanied him, should receive the same treatment as the other pupils, and this order was strictly obeyed. He graduated from this school January 24, 1877, just before his eighteenth birthday. After this his military career began with his entrance as an officer into the first Garde-regiment at Potsdam, that he might become thoroughly acquainted with practical service. The young prince was assigned to the company which his father had once commanded. After serving here for a short time he went to the university at Bonn, and from there he went back to the army again. Emperor William ascended the throne in June, 1888, upon the death of his father Frederick III.

In 1880 he was betrothed to Augusta Victoria, Princess of Schleswig-Holstein, and on February 9, 1881, they were married. The Empress is about a year younger than the Emperor, and makes an excellent mother to her four little sons, to whom she is devoted. Their oldest child, little Prince William, the present Crown Prince, was born at Potsdam, May 6, 1882. His father's devotion to the army will doubtless prompt him to make a soldier of his son at an early age; in fact, he wore the uniform of a fusilier of the Guard before he was six years old.

The imperial family consists of seven children. The eldest, the Crown Prince of Germany and Prussia, is Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm-Victor-August-Ernst, born May 6, 1882. The second child is Prince Wilhelm-Eitel-Friedrich-Christian-Karl, born July 7, 1883. The third is Prince Adalbert-Ferdinand-Berenger-Victor, born July 14, 1884. Prince August-Wilhelm-Heinrich-Victor was born January 29. 1887. The fifth child, Prince Oscar-Karl-Gustav-Adolf, was born July 27, 1888. The sixth child is Prince Joachim-Francois-Humbert. He was born December 17, 1890. The youngest is a girl, Princess Victoria-Louise-Adelaide-Mathilde-Charlotte. She was born September 13, 1892.

Our engraving is from the last portrait of the Emperor William, and we are indebted for it to the Illustrirte Zeitung.

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MY RECENT JOURNEY FROM THE NILE TO SUAKIM.

BY FREDERIC VILLIERS, IN THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.

THE ADVANCE TO KHARTOUM.

The recent campaign in the Soudan was a bloodless one to the correspondent with the expedition, or, rather, on the tail of the advance. Yet I think, in spite of this little drawback, there is enough in the vicissitudes of my colleagues and myself during the recent advance of the Egyptian troops up the Nile to warrant me addressing you this afternoon. Especially as toward the end of the campaign the Sirdar, or Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army, Sir Herbert Kitchener, became more sympathetic with our endeavors to get good copy for our journals, and allowed us to return home by the old trade route of the Eastern Soudan, over which no European had passed since the revolt of the Eastern tribes in 1883. Unfortunately, the period for campaigning in the Soudan is in the hottest months in the year, on the rising of the Nile at the end of July, when the cataracts begin to be practicable for navigation. At the same time, in spite of the heat, it is the healthiest period, for the water, in its brown, muddy, pea soup state, is wholesomer to drink, and the banks of the river, which, when exposed at low Nile, give off unhealthy exhalations, are protected from spreading fever germs by the flood. To show you how much the people of Egypt depend for their very existence on this extraordinary river, the average difference between high and low Nile, giving favorable results, is 26 feet. Twenty-eight feet would cause serious damage by inundation, and the Nile as low as 20 feet would create a famine. The flood of the river depends entirely on the equatorial rains which cause the Upper White Nile to rise in April and the Blue Nile early in June. The muddy Atbara, joining her two sisters about the same time, sends the flood down to Lower Egypt toward the end of August at the rate of 100 miles a day. The Blue Nile in the middle of September falls rapidly away, while the Atbara leaves the trio in October. The White Nile is then left by herself to recede slowly and steadily from a current of four knots an hour to a sluggish and, in many parts, an unwholesome stream. Flies and mosquitoes increase, and fever is rife.

I arrived in Cairo on a sweltering day in July, and found four colleagues, who had been waiting for a week the Sirdar's permission to proceed to the front, still waiting. Luckily, the day after my arrival a telegram came from headquarters, saying that "we might proceed as far as Assouan and their await further orders." This, anyhow, was a move in the right direction; so we at once started. It was rather a bustle for me to get things ready, for Sunday blocked the way and little could be done, even on that day, in Cairo. I procured a servant, a horse and two cases of stores, for the cry was "nothing to be had up country in the shape of food; hardly sufficient sustenance to keep the flies alive." My colleagues, who had the start of me, were able to procure many luxuries--a case of cloudy ammonia for their toilet, and one of chartreuse, komel and benedictine to make their after dinner coffee palatable, and some plum pudding, if Christmas should still find them on the warpath, were a few of the many items that made up the trousseau of these up-to-date war correspondents, though at least one of them had been wedded to the life for many years. Unfortunately I had no time to procure these luxuries, and I had to proceed ammonialess and puddingless to the seat of war. My comrades were quite right. Why not do yourself well if you can? One of them even went in for the luxury of having three shooting irons, two revolvers and a double-barrel slug pistol, so that when either of the weapons got hot while he was holding Baggara horsemen at bay, there was always one cooling, ready to hand. He also, which I believe is a phenomenal record with any campaigner, took with him thirteen pairs of riding breeches, a half dozen razors and an ice machine. Even our commander-in-chief, when campaigning, denies himself more than two shirts and never travels with ice machines. But the thirteen pairs impressed me considerably. Why thirteen, more than fifteen, or any other number? I came to the conclusion that my colleague must certainly be a member of that mystic body the "Thirteen Club," and as he had to bring in the odd number somewhere to keep the club fresh in his memory, he occasionally sat upon it.

I found, after all, there was some wisdom in his eccentricity, for, when riding the camel, mounted on the rough saddle of the country, I often wished that I had my friend's forethought, and I should have been glad to have supplemented mine with his odd number. No doubt my colleague's idea in having such a variety of nether garments was to use them respectively, on a similar principle to the revolvers, when he rode in hot haste with his vivid account of the latest battle to the telegraph office.

But, unfortunately, this recent campaign did not, after all, necessitate these elaborate preparations, for there were no dervishes for us to shoot at or descriptions of bloody battles to be telegraphed. At all events, the cloudy ammonia and the thirteen breeches, with the assistance of a silken sash--a different color for each day of the week--made the brightest and smartest looking little man in camp. However, when I reflect on this new style of war correspondent, who, I forgot to mention, also carried with him two tents, a couple of beds, sundry chairs and tables, a silver-mounted dressing case, two baths, and a gross of toothpicks, and I think of the severe simplicity of the old style of campaigning when a famous correspondent who is still on the warpath, and who always sees the fighting if there be any, on one arduous campaign took with him the modest outfit of a tooth brush and a cake of carbolic soap, I joyfully feel that with the younger generation our profession is keeping pace with the luxury of the times.

FROM BERBER TO SUAKIM.

Toward the end of the campaign four colleagues--Messrs. Knight, Gwynne, Scudamore, Maud--and myself, took this opportunity of traversing a country very little known to the outside world, and a route which no European had followed for fourteen years, from Berber to Suakim. Moreover, there was a spice of adventure about it; there was an uncertainty regarding an altogether peaceful time on the way--a contingency which always appeals strongly to Englishmen of a roving and adventurous disposition. Only quite recently raids organized by the apparently irrepressible Osman Digna had been successfully carried out a few miles north and south of Berber. At the moment General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the wells on the Suakim road.

I was hardly prepared for this journey--one, probably, of twelve days--for my campaigning outfit, which I was compelled to leave on board my nugger on the Nile, had not yet arrived in Berber. Unfortunately, I could not wait for the gear, as the Sirdar insisted on our departure at once, for the road would be certainly insecure directly General Hunter returned from covering our right flank on the Atbara. I had no clothes but what I stood up in, and I had been more or less standing up in them without change for the last two weeks.

Our caravan of nineteen camels, with two young ones, quite babies, following their mothers, and a couple of donkeys, about seven in the evening of the 30th of October quitted the mud-baked town of Berber, sleeping in the light of a new moon, and silently moved across the desert toward the Eastern Star. Next morning at the Morabeh Well, six miles from Berber, our camels having filled themselves up with water, and our numerous girbas, or water skins, being charged with the precious liquid--till they looked as if they were about to burst--our loads were packed and we started on a journey of fifty-two miles before the next water could be reached.

We made quite a formidable show trailing over the desert. Probably it would have been more impressive if our two donkeys had restrained their ambition, and kept in the rear instead of leading the van. But animals mostly have their own way in these parts, and asses are no exception to this rule. The two baby camels commenced "grousing" with their elders directly we halted or made a fresh advance; they probably had an inkling of what was in store for them. After all, the world must seem a hard and unsympathetic place when, having only known it for two or three weeks, you are compelled to make a journey of 240 miles to keep up with your commissariat. One of these babies was only in its eighteenth day. In spite of its tender youth the little beast trotted by the side of its mother, refreshing itself whenever we came to a halt with a pull from her teats, and, to the astonishment of all, arrived in Suakim safe and sound after twelve days' marching.

To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should explain that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel necks early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell. Sometimes the sound is not unlike the bray of an ass, occasionally it reaches the dignity of the roar of a lion with the bleating of a goat thrown in, then as quickly changes to the solemnity of a church organ. It is altogether so strange a sound that nothing but a phonograph could convey any adequate idea of it. It is a thing to be heard. No pen can properly describe it. After a long march, and when you are preparing to relieve the brute of his load, he begins to grouse. When he is about to start in the morning he grouses. If you hit him, he grouses; if you pat his neck gently, he grouses; if you offer him something to eat, he grouses; and if you twist his tail, he makes the same extraordinary noise. The camel evidently has not a large vocabulary, and he is compelled to express all his various sensations in this simple manner.

The first part of our journey was monotonous enough, miles and miles of weary sandy plains, with alternate stretches of agabas or stony deserts, scored with shallow depressions, where torrential rains had recently soaked into the sand, leaving a glassy, clay-like surface, which had flaked or cracked into huge fissures under the heat of the fierce sun. And at every few hundred yards we came to patches of coarse camel grass, which had evidently cropped up on the coming of the rain, and, by its present aspect, seemed to feel very sorry that it had been induced to put in an appearance, for its sustenance was now fast passing into vapor, and its green young life was rapidly dying out as the sun scorched the tender shoots to the roots. But camels thrive on this parched-up grass, and our brutes nibbled at it whenever one slackened the head-rope.

We traversed the dreary plain, marked every few yards by the bleached bones of camels fallen by the way; the only living thing met with for two days being a snake of the cobra type trailing across our path. The evening of the second day we camped in a long wadi, or shallow valley, full of mimosa trees, where our camels were hobbled and allowed to graze. They delighted in nibbling the young branches of these prickly acacias, which carry thorns at least an inch in length, that serve excellently well for toothpicks. Yet camels seem to rejoice in browsing off these trees, and chew up their thorns without blinking. This I can partly understand, for the camel's usual diet of dry, coarse grass must become rather insipid, and as we sometimes take "sauce piquante" with our cold dishes, so he tickles his palate with one inch thorns.

Climbing ridge after ridge of the dunes, we at last saw stretching before us in the moonlight the valley of Obak, an extensive wadi of mimosa and sunt trees. Our guides halted on a smooth stretch of sand, and I wondered why we were not resting by the wells. Near were three native women squatting round a dark object that looked to me, in the faint light of the moon, like a tray. I walked up to them, thinking they might have some grain upon it for sale, but found to my surprise that it was a hole in the sand, and I realized at once that this must be a well. One of the women was manipulating a leather bucket at the end of a rope, which after a considerable time she began hauling up to the surface. It was about half full of thick, muddy water. Further on along the wadi I now noticed other groups of natives squatting on the sand doing sentinel over the primitive wells. I never came across a more slovenly method of getting water. The mouths of the holes were not banked or protected; a rain storm or sand drift at any moment might have blocked them for a considerable period.

Not being able to get water for the camels was a serious matter, as our animals were not of the strongest, nor had they been recently trained for a long journey without water. This was the evening of the third day from Berber, and many of the poor brutes were showing signs of weakness. We resolved, therefore, to hurry on at once to the next well, that of Ariab; so we left the inhospitable wadi, and started at three in the morning on our next stretch of fifty-three miles.