Eurasia

by Christopher Evans

CHAPTER V.

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION.

I called at the Department of Information, and when I was introduced I realized that I was in the presence of one of the world's greatest teachers. She gave me a warm handshake and said, "I have been expecting you, and now that you are here, I will take pleasure in showing you the workings of the department over which I have the honor to preside. There are no Government or private detective agencies in our country, but a constant watch is kept on all public officials as well as private violators of the law, by the Government placing for sale in every postoffice and every military station and every prison Government envelopes with fifty-cent stamps on them, and any person interfering in the sending or tampering with said letters is punished by imprisonment for five years at hard labor. Steel boxes with a slit in the lid to receive the letters were placed in every postoffice, military station and prison, and could not be opened except by a commissioner from the Department of Information. Any person could buy one, for there was a printed address on them, and send it to the President, who has at the present time three hundred secretaries (young ladies chosen from the orphan home) to read the letters, answer them and send a copy to the Minister of Justice who has them Classified, and acting on the information sends orders out to bring the guilty parties to justice, and as punishment is meted out only to the bribetakers, for it is only acting according to the mandates of human nature for a relative or friend to try to get a person out of trouble to offer a bribe, carried with it no penalty, but it left the bribetaker at the mercy of the other party, and in consequence of adopting this system very few public officials proved untrue, and crime has greatly diminished. Our department has charge of all mail matter and telegraph, telepost and telephone lines and wireless stations and all newspaper books and magazine publications, and we edit the National Gazette; besides we have charge of all Government scientific research parties, and if you will call again to-morrow I think I will be able to introduce you to the Chief Engineer who stands very high in his profession, and who has, by placing an Astronomical Observatory on the summit of Mount Everest, attracted the attention of the civilized world."

CHAPTER VI.

DEPARTMENT OF MINES.

I called at the appointed time and was introduced to the Chief Engineer, who invited me to accompany him on an inspection tour, to which I gladly assented, and, after a week's pleasant travel by rail, we arrived at the station on the southwestern slope of Mount Everest at an elevation of twelve thousand feet above the sea. We had arrived in the evening and enjoyed a good night's rest, and, eating a hearty breakfast, we walked out to take observations of the locality, before taking our trip to the summit, and the Chief told me of the way by which they finally erected an observatory on the highest mountain of the earth.

"Five years ago the President sent for me," explained the Chief Engineer, "and asked if I could plan an observatory on Mount Everest. I replied that I would try to do so if the Government saw fit to place me in charge of the undertaking. I received my commission the next day and, calling to my aid two of the ablest engineers in the service of the Government, we selected a site for the entrance of the tunnel and next we searched for suitable power to do the work. We found a waterfall twenty miles distant, where we built a power house, installed turbines and dynamos and built an electric line to this place. We then erected a machine shop, in which we placed our electric engines and air compressors, and built a railroad connecting with the main line, and after we had done that we started the tunnel. As you will observe, the tunnel is a round bore twelve feet in diameter, and no explosives were used in making it. We used a tunneling machine driven and operated by compressed air, boring on the average fifty feet every twenty-four hours, and we washed the debris away by a powerful stream of water directed against the face of the tunnel so as not to obstruct the work. We gave the tunnel for the first five miles a grade of one foot in ten and from that point to the summit a grade of sixty degrees, and laid heavy steel segment rails six feet apart bolted to the solid rock, by this means dispensing with ties and permitting a free flow of water and slum. We found it necessary to build a chamber within the mouth of the tunnel sixty feet long, with automatic doors opening and shutting, to secure an abundance of air in the tunnel, and also in the observatory. The tunnel required no timbering, as we bored all the way through synetic granite and encountered very little water, and when we were about to break through at the summit we provided the workmen with fur clothing, and with air respirators, so that they would not be overcome by the cold and rarety of the atmosphere. We had a car driven by electricity to carry the men and material into the tunnel, having four cogwheel drivers on each side, and the tunnel throughout was lighted by electricity. We built the observatory of composition metal and glass, which was carried up on the car-but come along and you shall see for yourself."

We entered an observatory car that was run by its own dynamo but in case of the dynamo giving out a trolley wire overhead could furnish power any moment. After a pleasant ride of an hour's duration we came out of the tunnel into the observatory and I saw two magnificently mounted telescopes, one for visitors to look through and the other one for taking photographic views. I looked through the visitors' telescope and to my astonishment the sun was blue and when I asked one of the astronomers present the reason for it he replied that the sun was a great dynamo and that the dazzling brightness seen at low altitudes was caused by our atmosphere offering like the filament in an incandescent lamp great resistance to the electric energy of the sun producing a brilliant glow and if you were able to go outside the atmosphere of our earth you would only see the sun as a dark body in space and you would find yourself in absolute darkness and eternal silence. Night fell and when I looked again through the telescope and gazed on the countless hosts of heaven's millions of suns there came into my mind and I repeated aloud that noble passage in the Bible, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." I remarked to the Chief Engineer as we went down to the station, that a great many people visited the observatory, for I had looked in the visitors' book, where every person was required to sign his name. He replied, "Yes, if a private company owned it, it would make the stockholders wealthy, for it has become to the globe-trotters what Mecca is to the Mohammedans for no tourist would dare to return home without registering at the observatory and we encourage them by publishing their names in the National Gazette.