| vol. iii.—no. 153. | Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. | price four cents. |
| Tuesday, October 3, 1882. | Copyright, 1882, by Harper & Brothers. | $1.50 per Year, in Advance. |
"ALL ABOARD!"
[THE SOLDIER'S CHEESE.]
BY DAVID KER.
Any one who had come down the St. Gothard to the village of Andermatt, just at daybreak one cold winter morning in 1799, would have seen a very curious sight. All night long the village folks had been busy packing up and carrying away in carts or on horse and mule back whatever they could most easily remove. The first gleam of dawn saw the hindmost fugitives slinking away into the passes of the northern hills, looking fearfully back every now and then at the towering crest of the St. Gothard, as if expecting the whole mountain to fall upon them at once, or to send forth a torrent of fire that would sweep them all away.
The danger from which they were flying was not long behind them. Scarcely had the sun peered above the surrounding hill-tops when the great white slope of the St. Gothard seemed to grow black all at once, like a white cloth swarmed over by flies. Instantly the whole mountain-side was alive with bear-skin caps, and glittering bayonets, and prancing horses, and bright epaulets, and rumbling wheels, and shining cannon.
Down they came, still downward, thousands upon thousands—tall sallow grenadiers in long overcoats of gray frieze, sharp-faced, narrow-eyed Cossacks with long lances in their hands, black-capped gunners, glittering hussars, blue-nosed, shivering staff officers—and high above all, fluttering gayly in the keen morning breeze, the bullet-torn standard that bore the imperial ensign of Russia.
At sight of the deserted village there was a murmur of satisfaction among the Russian soldiers; for it was now forty-eight hours since any of them had touched a morsel of food, and they were all as hungry as wolves.
"These mountain goats have run away at the very sound of our coming," said a big grenadier; "but so long as they've left some food behind them, it's all right."
"Isn't this the place where they said the famous cheese was made?" suggested a gaunt, red-bearded Cossack.
"Sure enough!" cried one of his comrades, joyfully. "Hey, brothers! won't we have a good feed when we get down there!"
A good feed they certainly did have, a few minutes later. Scarcely had the foremost battalion entered the village when a shout of "Cheese! cheese!" from the front drew every one in that direction. The little shop into which the starving men had rushed was hardly big enough to hold twenty of them at a time; but Russian soldiers, after a two days' fast, are not the men to be over ceremonious. In a trice the plank front of the store was beaten in and torn down, the shining yellow blocks which made such a tempting show were tossed into the street by hundreds, and there began such a feast as Andermatt had not seen, for many a year, even upon a market-day.
But just as they were at the busiest, munching and gnawing away like so many rats, a few dropping shots in front, followed by the roll of a full volley, made them all spring up and seize their arms.
"Infantry, form!" roared an officer, galloping in among them. "Skirmishers, advance! Forward! march!"
And now the work began in earnest. The French had covered their retreat by filling the wood beyond the village with sharp-shooters, and as the Russians moved on, the pine-clumps around them seemed alive with crackling musketry and quick puffs of white smoke, while the gray coats of fallen soldiers dotted the snow on every side.
But presently up came three or four light guns at a hard trot, and sent a shower of grape-shot rattling into the thickets, stirring the crouching marksmen from their covert like rabbits. On pressed the Russians; back fell the French; when suddenly a deep, hoarse roar was heard above all the din of the firing, and right in front of the charging Russians, as they broke from the wood, yawned a chasm as deep and narrow as if made by the cut of a sword. A quaint old bridge of moss-grown stone spanned the gulf, over which the last of the French soldiers were just filing at a run.
No time to lose, evidently. Forward sprang the Russians with a loud hurrah, when suddenly there came a report, sharp as a thunder-clap, while the whole air was filled with smoke and dust and whizzing masses of stone. The bridge had been blown up, leaving an impassable gulf between the two armies; and a taunting laugh from the French, accompanied by a volley of musketry, answered the yell of rage that broke from their pursuers.
What was to be done? Unless they could reach the enemy with the bayonet, the superior numbers of the Russians would avail them nothing; and if they stayed where they were they would be shot down like sparrows.
"This won't do, lads," cried a tall, handsome man in a rich gold-laced uniform, turning to the Cossacks who stood around him. "Follow me."
All obeyed without a word, for the speaker was no other than Prince Bagration, one of the best generals in the Russian army. Creeping round behind the thickets, that the enemy might not see what they were about, they came out again upon the river about half a mile higher up, at a point where the edge of the precipice, though quite bare and rocky on their side of the gap, was thickly wooded on the other.
"If we had three or four of those trees over here," said the Prince, "they'd bridge this gap for us famously. But how are we to get at them?"
"Twist the officers' sashes into a rope, your Highness," suggested a Cossack beside him, "knot a stone in the end of it, fling it across so as to catch in one of the branches, and send somebody over on it. I once robbed a house that way myself at home in Russia."
"Did you?" said the General, with a broad grin. "Well, then, you shall make up for it by being the first man to cross. Off with your sashes, gentlemen."
The impromptu rope was soon twisted, the stone knotted in it, and flung so dexterously across the chasm that it caught in the fork of a tree at the first cast. The daring Cossack, with a sapper's axe slung round his neck, swung himself nimbly over the fearful gulf, and went to work upon the trees with such vigor that it was not long before three of them lay right across the gap, bridging it completely.
Then the Prince and his men, stirred to frenzy by the increasing uproar of the battle below, scrambled like mad-men across the perilous bridge, and rushing up the heights beyond, commenced firing down upon the French on the other side. Confounded by this unexpected attack, the enemy broke and fled, and the fight was won.
"Well done, my children," said Marshal Suvoroff, as he passed along the Russian lines after the battle, with a glow of honest admiration on his rough old face—"well done, indeed! You have given those French dogs a lesson, and shown them that Russian bayonets have points."
"If you're satisfied with us, father, that's all we want," replied a grim old grenadier, with a face criss-crossed with scars, like a railway map; "but, after all, we might well fight stoutly when we'd just had such a big meal of that good cheese."
"Cheese, eh? Where did you get it?"
"In the village yonder. We ate a whole shopful in passing through. I've got a bit left yet, if your Excellency would like to taste."
And opening his pouch, the veteran displayed to the old General's astounded eyes a half-gnawed piece of yellow soap.
A roar of laughter, which even the presence of the Commander-in-Chief could not restrain, broke from the staff officers around, and for many a day after the "good cheese" of Andermatt was their standing joke.
[THE MOON LENDS A HAND.]
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
If you drop a lump of sugar into a cupful of tea, or stir the tea about with a spoon, there will be little bubbles, floating on the surface. Watch these bubbles, and you will see that they soon slide off and gather along the edge of the cup. Boys in the first class in philosophy know what that means. It is the attraction of the cup. It is larger than the bubbles, and, as they are free to move about on the tea, they are attracted or pulled toward the sides of the cup.
If you lift the tea-cup, you find it is heavy. The great earth, that is millions of times larger than the cup, pulls it downward. We call it weight. We say the cup is pulled down by the attraction of gravitation.
Out of doors you can see the sun. It too has an attraction for the cup and for the whole round world and all it contains. It is bigger than our earth, and is pulling it toward itself. So strong is this attraction for the sun that everything that is lying loose on the earth would fly away if it were not that the world is so much nearer, and is attracting it the other way at the same time. There are some things that really start to go to the sun every day, but very fortunately they soon come back again.
Then there is the moon. She too is trying to pull everything toward herself. Poor Mrs. Moon! She is in an unfortunate position. She is pulled away toward the sun, and at the same time the earth attracts her this way. She wants to fly away and tumble into the sun, and she feels a great desire to fall down upon the world. She can't go both ways at once, so she contents herself with flying round the world once every day, and keeping us company in our journey round the sun.
The moon has her revenge on the earth. It pulls hard on the world all the time, and some of the things on the surface, that, like the bubbles in the tea-cup, are free to move, try every day to jump up to the moon. There is the air and all the water in the sea. They can move about, and whenever the moon passes overhead they move up as if to meet it. They can't go far, but they make a good start, and never seem tired of trying. If we could go up in a balloon to the top of the air we would probably find the air at one place piled up in a heap, as if it wanted to fly away to the moon if the earth would only give it a chance.
As it is not convenient for us to go up to the top of the air, we will go down to the beach to see how the water behaves when the moon goes by. No matter what time of the day or night you go to the sea-shore, you will find the water either rising up toward the moon or falling back again. It never seems to be discouraged, but as soon as it fails it starts again. You can not see it move, but if you put a stone at the edge of the water, and wait an hour or two, you will find the stone has been covered by the water or is left quite high and dry. It seems as if the whole of the great sea was forever slowly rising or falling, up and down, with a slow and solemn motion.
Any boy who lives by the shore knows that this is the tide. He knows that all his fun depends on this regular rising and falling of the tide. At high tide the fishing is good. At low tide the flats are bare, and the boys can dig clams or watch the long-legged plovers wading about in the shallow water. This curious rising and falling of the tide is caused by the attraction of the moon. The sun also helps, but in a lesser degree. How and why it all happens would take a long time to explain. We do not care for that just now, as the strange effects of the tides upon the land are more interesting.
I have already told you something of the way in which the sea and the waves are at work cutting out, tearing down, or building up the dry land on which we live. Perhaps you remember the stories of the walking beaches and the fight between the rivers and the sand-bars? We can now see what the moon has to do with this business.
The tide is like a wave. It is not very high, but wonderfully wide. It is so broad that a single tide-wave will reach half round the world. Out at sea it is impossible to tell whether it is high or low tide at any time. Near the shore the tides behave in a curious and often wonderful manner, and we can walk along the beaches and see how they work. One of the best places to do this is the vicinity of New York city.
South of this city is the harbor. Still farther south, past the Narrows, is the beautiful bay called New York Bay. Sandy Hook at the south and Coney Island at the north mark the broad entrance to this bay from the Atlantic Ocean. The Hudson River, that stretches far back into the country, runs along the west side of the city. On the east is the narrow and crooked arm of the sea called the East River. You know all this, and it may seem a trifle like a school-book, but your books never told you of half the wonders of this familiar place. The East River opens into Long Island Sound, and the Sound opens into the Atlantic at the farther end of Long Island. Thus it is possible for ships to start from New York and go to sea by the way of the harbor and bay, past Sandy Hook, or they may sail up the East River into the Sound, and reach the sea at Block Island, more than a hundred miles to the east of Sandy Hook.
In the same way the tide coming in from the sea may reach New York by the way of Long Island Sound and the East River, or by the way of Sandy Hook and the bay. Suppose it is low tide off Block Island, at the east end of Long Island (you should look on your map for all this). The tide begins to rise, and enters the Sound. In two hours the wave reaches Sand's Point, and begins to enter the East River. Now happens a curious thing. The Sound grows narrower, and the river is narrower still, and as all the water has to pass at the same time, it rises higher and runs faster. At Block Island the tide rises only two feet. At Hallet's Point, near the city, it rises more than seven feet. The quiet peaceful tide at Block Island becomes here a swiftly flowing stream that surges with foam and fury between the rough rocky banks, and making many a dangerous eddy and whirl-pool. It is no wonder the sailors used to call this place Hell Gate.
Let us look at this place a moment. The East River is open to the sea at each end. It is not like a real river, flowing down hill, and with a current constantly flowing in one direction. It has no current of its own, and were it not for the tides that surge backward and forward through the place twice every day, its waters would be dull and stagnant as any of the quiet lagoons behind the beaches that we have been studying. You can guess what would happen then. The place would soon fill up with mud and sand. Oysters and shell-fish would make it their home; sea-weeds and mosses would cover the bottom, and before long the river would be filled up, and Hell Gate would be closed. This wild turmoil of water just here, this swift-flowing current, keeps the place clear. The tides scour out the river-bed, and help keep it clean for the ships. There are more vessels passing through Hell Gate in a year than at any other place on this continent. If it were closed, our commerce would be sadly injured. Millions of dollars have been spent to make the channel clear, but it is the moon that keeps this great water gate open.
The same tide that first appears off Block Island, and travels through the Sound, also travels along the southern shore of Long Island, and reaches Sandy Hook. As the water grows more shallow, the tide piles up higher, and at Sandy Hook it is more than four feet high. It sweeps on into the bay, and past the Narrows into the harbor, growing higher at every step. It rushes past the Battery, and into the East River, and now it is a swift and powerful current. It rushes onward along both sides of Blackwell's Island, and at Hell Gate the two tides meet. This only increases the war and turmoil of the waters. One tide seems to be piled upon another, and the currents become more furious. In a very little while one or the other gives way. The current turns, and rushes as swiftly the other way. All this strange performance is the work of the moon and the sun.
Everywhere on the sea-coast all round the world the moon lends a hand to help the sea carve out the land. At Sandy Hook it also holds the key of the bay, and keeps the harbor open, that ships may pass out and come in. Were it not for the moon, Sandy Hook would creep slowly out over the shallow waters until it nearly reached Coney Island. The friendly tide comes sweeping in from the sea, and spreads far and wide over the bay. It fills miles and miles of bays and rivers with water, and then when the moon passes on, and the water can follow her no farther, it turns in a mighty flood, and scours and sweeps out all the channels. The outflowing tide is a big broom to brush away the sand and mud, and keep the front door of our port open to all the ships of the world. Did not the sea every day try to reach after the moon, perhaps there would be no tides. Were the tides to stop, our grand front gate would soon be shut, and our convenient back way into the Sound would be closed. It is in this way a great and wise Creator has commanded even the moon to lend a hand in controlling the sea and the land.
