CHAPTER XVII.
Some Changes that have Taken Place in the Configuration of the Globe—Islands Born and Buried—French Revolution—Napoleon’s Influence on Europe—England’s Long Wars—Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners—Slavery Abolished—English Profanity and Intemperance—Temperance Movements—Duelling—Penny Postage—Expansion of the Press—Canals, Erie and Suez—Railroads in England and the United States—First Steamer to Cross the Atlantic—First Steamship Line.
THE changes that have taken place on the globe itself, and in its inhabitants during the life of Mr. Plant, are varied, numerous, and wonderful.
The configuration of the earth has altered to a degree incredible to any but those observant of such changes. Winchell has tabulated some of these undulatory movements that have taken place along the Atlantic shore line of the American continent and elsewhere. “At St. Augustine, in Florida, the stumps of cedar trees stand beneath the hard beach shell-rock, immersed in water at the lowest tides. Some of the sounds upon the coast of North Carolina, which have been navigable within the memory of living sea-captains, are now impassable bars, or emerging sand-flats. Along the coast of New Jersey the sea has encroached, within sixty years, upon the sites of former habitations, and entire forests have been prostrated by the inundation. In the harbor of Nantucket the upright stumps of trees are found eight feet below the lowest tide, with their roots still buried in their native soil.” Similar ruins of ancient submarine forests occur on Martha’s Vineyard, and on the north side of Cape Cod, and again at Portland. In the region of the Saint Croix River, separating Maine from New Brunswick, the coast has been raised, carrying deposits of recent shells and sea-weeds, in one instance, to the height of twenty-eight feet above the present surface of the sea. The island of Grand Manan, off the mouth of the Saint Croix River, is slowly rotating on an axis, so that, while the south side is gradually dipping beneath the waves, the north is lifted into high bluffs. Near the River St. John is an area of twenty square miles containing marine shells and plants recently elevated from the sea. One hundred and fifty miles east of this place, the shore is experiencing a subsidence.
The north side of Nova Scotia is sinking, while the south is rising, insomuch that breakers now appear off the southern coast in places safely navigable in years gone by. The ancient city of Louisburg, on the island of Cape Breton, is another testimony to the uneasy condition of the land. This place was once the stronghold of France in America, and one of the finest harbors in the world. It was well fortified and had a population of twenty thousand souls within its walls.
It was destroyed during the French and Indian War, and the inhabitants dispersed, but Nature had herself ordained its abandonment. The rock on which the brave General Wolfe landed has nearly disappeared. The sea now flows within the walls of the city, and sites once inhabited have become the ocean’s bed. In 1822, the entire coast of Chili was elevated to a height varying from two to seven feet, an area equal to that of New England and New York, having been lifted up bodily. In 1831, an island, since called Graham’s Island, sprang from the bed of the Mediterranean between Sicily and the site of ancient Carthage. The island is now but a sunken reef. Another island, as recently as 1866, rose from the bottom of the Grecian Archipelago, before the very eyes of the American Consul, Mr. Chanfield, bearing upon its slimy back fragments of wrecks that had been sunken in the little harbor of Santorin.
“An island in the Missouri River, broken into fragments and washed away, was the unusual spectacle witnessed by the people of Atchison, Kansas. For years an island of 600 or 700 acres has been one of the attractions of Atchison. It was as fertile as a garden, and was known all over the West for the excellence of the celery, asparagus, sweet potatoes and melons it produced. It had the appearance of a veritable oasis in a desert, and its green shrubbery, generous shade trees, velvet lawns, and cool spring, were a perpetual joy. Upon this island a shooting club had a home, and the base-ball enthusiasts had their grounds, and grandstand. Altogether, it was a most pleasant resort. In a single night this island was dissolved into fragments.
“The big June rise in the Missouri River struck it, and to-day it is only a reminiscence. What was Kansas’s loss, however, was Missouri’s gain. With the obliteration of the island the current left the Missouri shore and struck hard against the Kansas bluffs. The result of this is that the Missouri banner has been planted a mile westward, and hundreds of acres of rich bottom land have been added to its domain, while Kansas mourns the loss of its green island and pleasant park.”
The wonderful changes going on in the configuration of England are recorded in a well-known London paper (Tit-Bits) in the following words:
“Is England disappearing? Readers may pucker up their lips and ejaculate ‘Absurd!’ but facts, nevertheless, remain and show pretty clearly that England is positively disappearing, and may in years to come be marked on the map as a vanished isle.
“On the coast the sea is encroaching upon the land at an astonishing rate. Seaside towns and villages, holiday resorts, are gradually being eaten up and the inhabitants driven inland. In many parts the sea runs up on a beach which was once far inland. In other cases churches which were at one time far from the sea now stand at the edge of cliffs and have the sea lapping almost at their doors.
“The Goodwin sands, about five miles off the coast of Kent, were at one time a portion of the mainland itself and the property of Earl Goodwin. But the sea has swallowed them up.
“The coast of Norfolk is minus three villages which it once possessed—Shipden, Eccles, and Wimpwell—all of which have been taken into the arms of the encroaching ocean. The Cromer of to-day stands miles inland of the original Cromer.
“Auburn and Harlburn, two Yorkshire villages, once promised to develop into seaport towns of considerable importance; but, like the will of Canute, the will of the inhabitants of these villages was ignored by the rising sea, and Auburn and Harlburn now exist in mere names and sand-banks.
“Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, is gradually being swallowed up. Every now and then the inhabitants move a distance inland, rebuild their houses and shops and wait patiently and philosophically for the next “notice to quit” from the sea. Many other seaside places have suffered or are suffering a similar fate.
“It may be argued, on the other hand, that some seaside towns are gradually becoming inland towns by the failure of the sea to ‘come up to the mark,’ and running out only to run in for a shorter distance. Winchelsea, Sandwich, Rye, and Southport are all suffering in this way. Winchelsea and Rye were originally two of our cinque ports, but the sea has left them standing high and dry. Sandwich was once a highly important seaport town. It now stands two or three miles inland.
“The sea is leaving Southport quite in the lurch—so much so indeed that the inhabitants have had to sink extensive lakes down on the beach to keep the sea from running off altogether and leaving merely an ordinary inland town.
“But the extension of our island in this way is very much less than the encroachment of the sea at other points, and while our land is certainly becoming more extensive in one direction, it is contracting, and with much greater rapidity, in some other. And the ultimate effect may be that our mountain peaks may form small islands, and eventually be pointed out by posterity as ‘the position in which Great Britain is reputed to have stood.’”
The nineteenth has been the most remarkable century in the world’s history. It was the most destructive and wasteful of life and property in the early part of its career, and in the latter half has been the most constructive and uplifting to the human race of any of the past centuries. The population of all Europe at the beginning of the century numbered one hundred and seventy millions, of whom four millions were engaged in the murderous work of war. The demoralization of society and the miseries inflicted on the people by these wars are beyond the power of pen to describe. France had an absolute monarchy. “The King held in his hands the unquestioned right to dispose, at his will, of the lives and property of the people. He was the sole legislator. His own pleasure was his only rule. He levied taxes, asking no consent of those who had to pay. He sent to prison men with no crime laid to their charge, and kept them there, without trial, till they died.” Political corruption was rampant. For sixty years the court of Louis XV. had festered in the most filthy debauchery. Then followed the bloody Revolution, unparalleled in history. The guillotine, worn out with its butchery of more than a million lives stood idle, and peace—rather, the lull of an unfinished storm, for a time rested upon unhappy France. Then the tumultuous hurricane burst out anew in the wars of Napoleon, which terminated only at Waterloo in 1815.
“The influence which Napoleon exerted upon the course of human affairs,” says McKenzie, “is without a parallel in history. Never before had any man inflicted upon his fellows miseries so appalling; never before did one man’s hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of change so vast and so beneficient. It was he who roused Italy from her sleep of centuries and led her towards that free and united life which she at length enjoys. It was he, who by destroying the innumerable petty states of Germany, inspired the dream of unity which it has required more than half a century to fulfil.” The progress made by these two countries during the century, in liberty, education, and all that conduces to the welfare of the individual and the strength of the nation, has been great beyond precedent.
England has perhaps outstripped all other nations in the advancement she has made during this period of the world’s greatest progress. Her long and terrible wars with France and her allies had wasted her people and depleted her treasury. Taxes were enormous, food was high, wages low, and work scarce. The introduction of machinery in some departments reduced hand-labor a hundred-fold. The power loom threw thousands of people out of employment. England was badly governed. The laws were all made in the interests of the rich. Multitudes of the poor were famine stricken, one in eight being fed on charity, and many died of starvation. Hunger maddens men, and hence crime abounded. Laws, numerous and terrible, were enacted for its prevention and punishment. Capital offences numbered two hundred and twenty-three. Some of the offences were ridiculous trifles. If a man appeared disguised in public, cut down young trees, shot rabbits, or stole property worth a dollar and a quarter, he was at once hanged. The treatment of prisoners was most barbarous. Young and old of both sexes were huddled together like cattle. Vermin, filth, and starvation were the common lot of all. John Howard and Elizabeth Fry inaugurated reforms in the interests of the prisoners that have since engaged the thought and effort of the best men and women of the nation.
War was carried on in the most cruel and brutal manner. Conscription and the press gang forced men from their families, and from peaceful occupation, and drove them to an unwilling military or naval, bloody field-servitude. Five hundred lashes was no uncommon punishment for some trifling offence. “The men who applied the torture were changed at short intervals, lest the punishment should be at all mitigated by their fatigue. The doctor stood by to say how much the victim could bear without dying. When that point was reached, he was taken down and carried to the hospital, to be brought back for the balance of his punishment when his wounds were healed. There is record of a soldier sentenced to one thousand lashes, seven hundred of which were actually inflicted. In the Crimean war two thousand six hundred British soldiers were killed, while eighteen thousand died in hospital of wounds and disease.”
Scientific skill directed by generous-hearted Christian philanthropy has now mitigated these horrors, reducing them almost to a minimum. The same may be said of the brutality endured by women and little children working in mines from twelve to sixteen hours a day.
Slavery, which was almost universal at the beginning of the century, has been abolished. Forty millions in Russia, four millions in the United States, and many more millions in other lands have been made free.
Nor has this freedom been confined to the chattel slave. The courts of Europe were debauched beyond description. Even in England among the higher classes, “the supreme crowning evidence that an entertainment had been successful was not given till the guests dropped one by one from their chairs, to slumber peacefully on the floor till the servants removed them.”
The temperance movement belongs to our present century, and while it has not yet accomplished all that could be desired, it has done much to lessen some of the grossest evils of society, and is full of promise for final triumph. The first temperance society was only eleven years old when the subject of this biography was born. It was organized in April, 1808, at Morean, Saratoga County, New York, with forty-three members. The American Temperance Society was formed at Boston, February, 1826, and, in 1829, the New York State Temperance Society, which in less than a year had one thousand local societies with a hundred thousand members. Soon the movement extended to the Old World, and a society was formed at New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland, and within a year sixty other societies were formed in different parts of the country. The Father Mathew crusade began in 1838, and it resulted in the enrollment of one million eight hundred thousand men and women in the temperance cause. The wave spread to Scotland, England, Wales, and the Continent. The Washington movement, started at Baltimore in 1840, doubtless advanced the cause of temperance in our country, half a million having signed the pledge. The great progress made in this direction is seen not so much in the number of temperance societies as in the fact that while there is difference of opinion as to the moderate use of wines and liquors, there is but one opinion among respectable people as to the immoderate use, and any one indulging in orgies such as those to which we have alluded would be excluded from all participation in decent society. No man of standing in good society glories in the shame of beastly intoxication; multitudes do not use liquor at all, and many others use it only as a medicine or aid to health.
The duel was made a legal way of settling disputes between gentlemen, and even, “Fox, Pitt, Castlereagh, Canning, O’Connell, and Wellington, had all attempted the slaughter of a foe.”
Profanity was almost universal. “Erskine swore at the bar. Lord Thurlow swore on the bench. The King swore incessantly. Ladies swore orally and in their letters. The chaplain cursed the sailors, because it made them listen more attentively to his admonition.” Obscene books were exposed for sale by the side of bibles and prayer-books.
Education was limited in its range and extent, and only the more wealthy could enjoy its benefits. In 1818, more than one half the children in England were without school advantages. In manufacturing districts, forty per cent. of the men and sixty-five per cent. of the women could not write their own names.
Penny postage, first proposed by Rowland Hill in 1837, adopted by Act of Parliament in 1839, and followed since then by every civilized country in the world, has proved to be a great adjunct in the education of the people.
The freedom and expansion of the press during this century have also been a great power for the enlightenment of mankind. True, it has not been an unmixed good, but let us hope the good has been, and will continue to be in the ascendant.
Canals, before the days of railroads and steamships, did much for the transportation of merchandise and intercommunication of the people. The Erie Canal, 363 miles in length, commenced in 1817, and finished in 1825, is said to have been one of the first impulses given to New York City in its ascendancy over every other city in the United States. On account of its great cost many of the people were opposed to it; “but in 1866, it was ascertained that besides enlarging many of the principal cities, and adding to the comfort and wealth of nearly all the people of the State, it had returned into the public treasury $23,500,000 above all its cost, including principle, interest, repairs, and superintendence.”
In this same year, 1825, New York City was first lighted, partially only, with gas.
The Suez Canal, opened in 1870, was used by only 486 vessels, with a total net tonnage of 436,609, but its use was steadily increased, until in 1891, it rose to 8,698,777. When the canal was opened, it had cost $100,000,000, that is, $1,000,000 a mile, and since then $40,000,000 more have been expended in improvements. These are large amounts, but the canal pays annually from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 over the interest of its bonded debt.
The introduction of railroads into England and the United States marks a great era in the progress of these two nations, not to say that of the whole world, though the event is of comparatively recent date, as the following account taken from a recent issue of the New York Tribune goes to show:
“The Chicago Record says that Edward Entwistle who has lived in Des Moines, Iowa, for forty years, ran the first passenger engine. He was born at Tilsey’s Banks, Lancashire, England, in 1815, and was apprenticed to the Duke of Bridgewater, who had large machine shops at Manchester. The first railroad for general passenger and freight business was completed in 1831, between Manchester and Liverpool, a distance of thirty-one miles. The Rocket, the first locomotive or passenger engine, was built under the direction and according to the plans of George Stephenson, in the works where young Entwistle was serving as an apprentice. Stephenson engaged Entwistle as his assistant in the engine. The line being opened for general traffic, young Entwistle was put in charge of the Rocket, and for two years made two round trips every day between Liverpool and Manchester, one in the forenoon and the other in the afternoon. He came to this country in 1837.”
When Mr. Plant was nine years old, there were only three miles of railroad in the United States. They were completed in 1827. Now there are 173,453 miles, and the speed of trains has been increased from ten miles an hour to more than seventy miles. The sleeping-and parlor-cars have made travel one of the great luxuries of this most luxuriant century. The first ocean steamer that crossed the Atlantic was the Savannah, which made the trip to Europe in the year 1819, the year Mr. Plant was born, and in 1838, the first regular line of Atlantic steamers was established.
