Danville, Ill.
Are you not mistaken as to the time when the Maid of the Mist ran through the great whirlpool in the Niagara River? Can you not give a fuller description than appeared in Our Curiosity Shop of Aug. 16?
Subscriber.
Answer.—The date here called in question is the one given for this feat in Clemens Petersen’s article on Niagara in “Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopedia,” but in The Daily Inter Ocean of Sept. 1 we gave an account from the lips of DeWitt C. McMurtry, now of Philadelphia, who claims to be the only survivor of that perilous passage. He says the trip was made June 29 1859. He gives the dimensions of the stanch little steamer at “about 150 feet over all and 16 feet beam.” She was a side-wheeler, with new and powerful engines, usually carrying 125 or 130 pounds pressure of steam, but set at this time to blow off at 228 pounds. The run was made to evade the payment of a mortgage held by Judge Addington, of Buffalo, and under an offer from some Toronto parties to pay $25,000 for the Maid of the Mist if delivered at Queenstown, on the Canada side, at the mouth of the river. Joel Robinson, the captain, was offered $500, the engineer, a Mr. Jones, and the fireman, Mr. McMurtry, each $100, to undertake this task. The captain had himself lashed in the wheelhouse, and the other two were shut in below under battened hatches. The distance from the last landing above the whirlpool to Queenstown is just five miles, one mile of which is through the whirlpool-torrent. This distance was made in seven and three-quarter minutes, only two of which were spent in the rapids. The boat was dashed about at a terrible rate. “When she first struck the rapids,” says McMurtry, “our boat leaped downward perhaps thirty feet. Then she was hurled clear out of the water. Down she would go, as if she would never stop, when suddenly she would right herself and, with a bound which seemed almost human, leap out of the water. The current runs forty-five miles an hour and the waves are twenty feet high. Jones and I were almost killed by the quickly succeeding shocks. I felt my strength rapidly oozing away as I clung to the hand-rails for dear life. There was barely time to catch my breath between concussions. Suddenly the current struck her sideways, she swung around, and shot down the stream. We had escaped the whirlpool. When I got out at Queenstown the water was waist high, the boat had been so racked and wrenched in her passage.” Jones died soon afterward. Robinson survived several years longer. According to this witness no one perished in the passage, as is stated in some narratives of the affair.
FEMALE SUFFRAGE IN NEW JERSEY.
Chicago, Ill.
What State was it that permitted women to vote ninety years ago?
J. M. Snow.
Answer.—It was New Jersey; which organized as an independent State two days before the declaration of independence, with a constitution that allowed universal suffrage, male and female, without regard to color. This constitution was not altered until 1844, when, among other changes, the suffrage was restricted to males; largely because of the apathy shown by women, especially those of the better class, in regard to the exercise of the ballot.