Part 10

The mighty Niagara has no such background of wild beauty, nor does it ever convey such an instant impression of water force. Once I saw a big two-inch plank dropped into one of those furious water columns. It seemed scarcely to touch the water, but flew, faster than the eye could follow, over to the granite ledge and was instantly smashed into ten thousand splinters, and I knew that even before the plank had reached the ledge, the mighty power which hurled it, transmuted into electricity, had already reached, and was operating, street-cars in a city seventy miles away.

Come into the power-house. Look at the four gigantic generators, whirling and humming like leviathan June-bugs--see the wicked, sputtering little blue sparks from the commutators. From the windows at the back of the building we look up a very sharp slope, 1500 feet high, and see the penstocks--twenty-four-inch steel tubes, black, ungainly, and, at twilight, very uncanny. They follow in curves the profile of the rough ground, bringing the furious rush of water from the summit down to the turbines in the lower basement, turning out 26,000 horse-power.

The force of the water in these penstocks is terrific. Tests of a four-inch jet from one of them have been made. A rifle-bullet glances off as from chilled steel; a jet from it, no bigger than a penholder, will drill a hole in sheet steel in a few moments. At the reservoir on the summit a fly-line may be played in the water--at the foot of the penstock no mortal could thrust a bayonet one inch into it.

A United States trooper once essayed, on a wager, to cut a two-inch jet with his sword; a shattered weapon and a broken wrist resulted.

In the harnessing and curbing of these mountain streams the utmost engineering skill and ingenuity has been called into play. Often the power-house has to be situated miles back in such inaccessible wilds that the greatest difficulty has been encountered in carrying machinery and supplies to the spot. At one point in the Sierras men and material were transported across two yawning chasms by means of wire cables, under which ran a freight-carrier.

The Feather River in California makes a big horseshoe bend twenty-five miles above Oroville, coming within three miles of itself again. An enormous mountain intervenes, but the engineers tunneled that and diverted the water into that tunnel. In the lower end of that black, rushing, underground torrent are placed the great turbines and generators.

The most striking instance of the results of securing a big headway for a small stream is shown in San Juan County, Colorado. The Animus River in its course between Silverton and Durango, a distance of twenty miles, has a gradual fall of about fifteen hundred feet. Although called a river, it is but a mountain stream, tumbling over little falls and through rock-strewn gullies, at no point showing more power than would be sufficient to drive a very small grist-mill. But the genius of science has so cunningly diverted it and concentrated its energy as to develop at last 40,000 horse-power.

A dam was built a few miles below Silverton, and the water turned into a flume which is only six by eight feet in size. It will be seen that it must be a very small stream whose waters can be run through such a restricted channel. Across fearful cañons and around great mountains, through tunnels and cuttings that flume carries the water for sixteen miles to the edge of a great cliff near Durango. The cliff is over one thousand feet high, and the pipe runs over the edge and makes a perpendicular drop into the power-house below.

From the four-foot steel pipe, nozzles five-eighths of an inch in diameter conduct the water into the turbines, whirling them at a speed of four thousand revolutions per minute. The speed of the jets of water shooting from those nozzles is 25,000 feet, or over four miles per minute.

Note how the wizards of industry further concentrate and control the giant they have evoked. That forty-thousand horse-power making that mighty plunge over the cliff is met by magical machines and switched into a wire but little larger than a lead-pencil. Forty feet of that unyielding steel flume which held the power is a load for a freight car; forty feet of the wire which carries the power is but a small load for a six-year-old boy.

At one moment the power is in that roaring, headlong, terrific plunge--the next, it is miles away, invisible, noiseless, and mysterious, illuminating great arc-lamps, running heavy cars, and--to come from great to small--whirling dainty fans or cooking an egg.

There are other marvelous power-plants situated on rivers where, although the force is far less than that of the mountain torrents, the volume of water is far greater. Idaho shows the most remarkable of the developments of such water-power, and the astounding ingenuity and determination of the genii are shown as much as in the mountains. The Bear River, which runs through Idaho and Utah, carries a very large flow at an exceedingly rapid rate--for a river. At one point in Idaho no less than six great power-houses have been installed on that river, producing a total of nearly 200,000 horse-power. In order to secure good headway, and the force which this gives, two enormous pipe-lines have been built to take the water from upper reaches of the river, and, while holding that pipe almost to a level, run it across country to a lower reach, where a power-house is built, thus increasing the headway from nothing to two or three hundred feet.

One of these lines is of eleven-foot pipe, nearly five miles long; the other is a sixteen-foot pipe, half a mile long. Almost all of the current produced at these plants is transmitted by cable to Salt Lake City, 135 miles away.

It has been said by expert engineers of electrical development that it will be but a short time before the intermountain region will use no coal, that all smoke-stacks and chimneys will be abolished and electricity furnish all the power, heat, and light not only to cities and towns, but to farming communities.

We are on the way. There are some districts now where villages, towns, and farms all use electricity for power and for lighting and cooking. This is notably so in Rupert, Idaho, the home of the famous electric high school, described in "St. Nicholas" in September, 1913.

All through that town the lighting and cooking in even the humblest homes is by electricity. The few small factories use no coal or steam-power. In the mountain region over one hundred cities, towns, and rural communities have electric wires in their houses. All are lighted by them and very many have thrown out coal ranges and cook by electricity.

The region is one of mines everywhere, some of them the largest in the world; and nearly all of them have discarded their gigantic steam-, hoisting-, and pumping-engines for electric motors. There is, it is asserted, more than enough water-power running to waste to do every particle of work now done by steam, horses, and men and women in the region, from impelling the enormous sixteen-wheeled mountain Moguls to rocking the babies' cradles by motor.

Across the northern part of Idaho and Montana, over a wicked country of mountains and cañons, the western division of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad runs all its trains by electricity, as you have read in your last month's number of "St. Nicholas," while farther south, across Utah and Colorado, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company completed its plans three years ago for the electrification of its road to Denver; but the scheme of the kaiser to lick the world in ninety days failing, material became too costly to warrant the change from steam to electricity.

But the power is ready or could quickly be made ready. Every year the two great companies which have been formed by the consolidation of numerous small owners of power-plants, are building dams and reservoirs and flumes, getting ready for the not far distant day when steam-engines will have to be looked for in the Museum of Antiques and Curiosities in Salt Lake City.

OUT IN THE BIG-GAME COUNTRY

BY CLARENCE H. ROWE

In the big-game country! Is there a healthy, red-blooded American boy who does not feel a thrill of excitement at the thought? In spite of our civilization, there is, in many, a lingering thrill in the very thought of the chase, handed down through a long line of ancestry dating back to the time when the chase meant food rather than sport.

The stage setting for big game is perfect. In the sheep country of Wyoming or the deer country of Colorado it is at an altitude of from nine to thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, where the air is clear and crisp with the tang of winter, the huge stretches of wild open country lying like a picture at one's feet. Could anything be more beautiful and invigorating?

A reconnoitering-point will sometimes reveal a view of almost a hundred miles. Across a gulch of some twenty miles the distant buttresses of red sandstone rock are painted with slashes of golden copper, the somber pines straggling almost to the top, interwoven with the delicate tracery of the quaking asps, now beautifully colored by the frosts. At our feet nestles a "park" (as the valleys are called), and possibly a silvery thread of water winds in and out. Nature paints with a full, rich palette in this glorious Western country! The skies rival those of Italy in depth, and, while possibly a bit more crude in raw color, are, for this very reason, more in keeping with the broad, vigorous landscape.

In the big-game country everything is big--not only the game, but the mountains, the valleys, and the people. Small statures bred in these surroundings expand and broaden--it is only natural.

All this seems far removed from the subject of elk, Rocky Mountain sheep, and bear, but to every true sportsman these constitute fully one half of the game.

The Rocky Mountain sheep are by far the most majestic and dignified of the animals of this locality. They are fond of the rock-studded mountain-sides, and often a huge sentinel ram, silhouetted against the sky, will reveal the feeding-place of a group of ewes and lambs. The task now, if one is fortunate enough to be to the windward of him, is, after tethering your horse, to work slowly and carefully to within range, usually from two to four hundred yards. Distances out there are most deceptive, owing to the clear, rarefied air, and an object that seems to be a few hundred yards distant may prove to be almost a mile.

Elk come next, and the lucky hungry hunter who has bagged his "six-point" buck would need more space than at my command to tell how he did it.

Antelope surpass both sheep and elk for timidity. They are extremely wary and possibly the most difficult of all game to get within range. They are found in the lower and open country.

Underlying all the hopes and expectations in the hunter's mind is the thought of _bear_, and of course first of these stands the grizzly. These are getting scarcer every year, and most of us, if we _must_ get a bear, will have to be content with a yearling or a two-year-old black bear. There is no special country for them. As a rule, in the summer and fall they come down in the low parks to feast on the berries. Toward winter they are more likely to be found higher up the slopes. After the first snow an occasional raid on the highest and loneliest ranches is looked upon by Bruin as "the thing." At one of the ranches nestling at the foot of Mount Evans in Colorado, miles away from any other habitation, a rancher put a cow-bell on each of his horses when turned loose, thinking to frighten the bears. Bruin had a penchant for the frisky little colts gamboling about the mountain-side and thought it quite neighborly to chase the whole herd, mares and all, helter-skelter down to the ranch. It was quite common for the rancher to be aroused at night by the clanging of bells and the clatter of hoofs as the horses scampered into the corral.

Sheep, elk, and bear all go above the timber-line. The height of this line varies in different sections; ten thousand to ten thousand five hundred feet is an average.

A good wiry horse that isn't gun-shy and will allow packing the game back to camp is a necessity, for often a bag is made too far from camp for a regular pack-animal to bring in.

Above all, in the confusion of getting together the regular camp outfit, don't forget to slip a paper of trout flies and line into the duffle bag. The little streams winding through the parks will reward an hour's casting with half a dozen or so delicious mountain trout running from six to ten inches in length. They are small, but make up in quality and flavor. When the hunt is over, we take our parting look at the grim old mountains, so silent and peaceful, and wend our way back to civilization, happy and humble in the overpowering glory and majesty of what the natives call "God's own country."

Transcriber's Notes

Possible printer errors have been silently changed; proper nouns have been standardised; other non-standard spelling has been retained.

Italic text in the original is shown with _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Travel Stories Retold from St. Nicholas, by Various