Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art fifth series no. 117 vol. III March 27 1886 by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 160 lines and 20095 words, and 4 pages

Marian acknowledged the introduction with a slight bow, and bit her lip. She stole a look at Dr Whitaker, and saw at once upon his face an unwonted expression of profound dejection and disappointment.

'An' how do you like Trinidad, Mrs Hawtorn?' Miss Euphemia asked with a society simper; while Edward began engaging in conversation with the two men. 'You find de excessiveness of de temperature prejudicial to salubrity, after de delicious equability of de English climate?'

'Well,' Marian assented smiling, 'I certainly do find it very hot.'

'Oh, exceedingly,' Miss Euphemia replied, as she mopped her forehead violently with a highly scented lace-edged cambric pocket-handkerchief. 'De heat is most oppressive, most unendurable. I could wring out me handkerchief, I assure you, Mrs Hawtorn, wit de extraordinary profusion of me perspiration.'

'But this is summer, you must remember,' Dr Whitaker put in nervously, endeavouring in vain to distract attention for the moment from Miss Euphemia's conversational peculiarities. 'In winter, you know, we shall have quite delightful English weather on the hills--quite delightful English weather.'

'Ah, yes,' the father went on with a broad smile. 'In winter, Mrs Hawtorn, ma'am, you will be glad to drink a glass of rum-and-milk sometimes, I tell you, to warm de blood on dese chilly hilltops.'

The talk went on for a while about such ordinary casual topics; and then at last Miss Euphemia happened to remark confidentially to Marian, that that very day her cousin, Mr Septimius Whitaker, had been married at eleven o'clock down at the cathedral.

'Indeed,' Marian said, with some polite show of interest. 'And did you go to the wedding, Miss Whitaker?'

Miss Euphemia drew herself up with great dignity. She was a good-looking, buxom, round-faced, very negro-featured girl, about as dark in complexion as her brother the doctor, but much more decidedly thick-lipped and flat-nosed. 'O no,' she said, with every sign of offended prejudice. 'We didn't at all approve of de match me cousin Septimius was unhappily makin'. De lady, I regret to say, was a Sambo.'

'A what?' Marian inquired curiously.

'A Sambo, a Sambo gal,' Miss Euphemia replied in a shrill crescendo.

'Oh, indeed,' Marian assented in a tone which clearly showed she hadn't the faintest idea of Miss Euphemia's meaning.

'A Sambo,' Mr Whitaker the elder said, smiling, and coming to her rescue--'a Sambo, Mrs Hawtorn, is one of de inferior degrees in de classified scale and hierarchy of colour. De offspring of an African and a white man is a mulatto--dat, madam, is my complexion. De offspring of a mulatto and a white man is a quadroon--dat is de grade immediately superior. But de offspring of a mulatto and a negress is a Sambo--dat is de class just beneat us. De cause of complaint alleged by de family against our nephew Septimius is dis--dat bein' himself a mulatto--de very fust remove from de pure-blooded white man--he has chosen to ally himself in marriage wit a Sambo gal--de second and inferior remove in de same progression. De family feels dat in dis course Septimius has toroughly and irremediably disgraced himself.'

'And for dat reason,' added Miss Euphemia with stately coldness, 'none of de ladies in de brown society of Trinidad have been present at dis morning's ceremony. De gentlemen went, but de ladies didn't.'

'It seems to me,' Dr Whitaker said, in a pained and humiliated tone, 'that we oughtn't to be making these absurd distinctions of minute hue between ourselves, but ought rather to be trying our best to break down the whole barrier of time-honoured prejudice by which the coloured race, as a race, is so surrounded.--Don't you agree with me, Mr Hawthorn?'

'Pho!' Miss Euphemia exclaimed, with evident disgust. 'Just listen to Wilberforce! He has no proper pride in his family or in his colour. He would go and shake hands wit any vulgar, dirty, nigger woman, I believe, as black as de poker; his ideas are so common!--Wilberforce, I declare, I's quite ashamed of you!'

Dr Whitaker played nervously with the knob of his walking-stick. 'I feel sure, Euphemia,' he said at last, 'these petty discriminations between shade and shade are the true disgrace and ruin of our brown people. In despising one another, or boasting over one another, for our extra fraction or so of white blood, we are implicitly admitting in principle the claim of white people to look down upon all of us impartially as inferior creatures.--Don't you think so, Mr Hawthorn?'

'I quite agree with you,' Edward answered warmly. 'The principle's obvious.'

Dr Whitaker looked pleased and flattered. Edward stole a glance at Marian, and neither could resist a faint smile at Miss Euphemia's prejudices of colour, in spite of their pressing doubts and preoccupations. And yet, they didn't even then begin to perceive the true meaning of the situation. They had not long to wait, however, for before the Whitakers rose to take their departure, Thomas came in with a couple of cards to announce Mr Theodore Dupuy, and his nephew, Mr Tom Dupuy of Pimento Valley.

The Whitakers went off shortly, Miss Euphemia especially in very high spirits, because Mrs Hawthorn had shaken hands in the most cordial manner with her, before the face of the two white men. Edward and Marian would fain have refused to see the Dupuys, as they hadn't thought fit to bring even Nora with them; and at that last mysterious insult--a dagger to her heart--the tears came up irresistibly to poor wearied Marian's swimming eyelids. But Thomas had brought the visitors in before the Whitakers rose to go, and so there was nothing left but to get through the interview somehow, with what grace they could manage to muster.

'We had hoped to see Nora long before this,' Edward Hawthorn said pointedly to Mr Dupuy--after a few preliminary polite inanities--half hoping thus to bring things at last to a positive crisis. 'My wife and she were school-girls together, you know, and we saw so much of one another on the way out. We have been quite looking forward to her paying us a visit.'

Mr Dupuy drew himself up very stiffly, and answered in a tone of the chilliest order: 'I don't know to whom you can be alluding, sir, when you speak of "Nora;" but if you refer to my daughter, Miss Dupuy, I regret to say she is suffering just at present from--ur--a severe indisposition, which unfortunately prevents her from paying a call on Mrs Hawthorn.'

Edward coughed an angry little cough, which Marian saw at once meant a fixed determination to pursue the matter to the bitter end. 'Miss Dupuy herself requested me to call her Nora,' he said, 'on our journey over, during which we naturally became very intimate, as she was put in charge of my wife at Southampton, by her aunt in England. If she had not done so, I should never have dreamt of addressing her, or speaking of her, by her Christian name. As she did do so, however, I shall take the liberty of continuing to call her by that name, until I receive a request to desist from her own lips. We have long been expecting a call, I repeat, Mr Dupuy, from your daughter Nora.'

'Sir!' Mr Dupuy exclaimed angrily; the blood of the fighting Dupuys was boiling up now savagely within him.

'We have been expecting her,' Edward Hawthorn repeated firmly; 'and I insist upon knowing the reason why you have not brought her with you.'

'I have already said, sir,' Mr Dupuy answered, rising and growing purple in the face, 'that my daughter is suffering from a severe indisposition.'

'And I refuse,' Edward replied, in his sternest tone, rising also, 'to accept that flimsy excuse--in short, to call it by its proper name, that transparent falsehood. If you do not tell me the true reason at once, much as I respect and like Miss Dupuy, I shall have to ask you, sir, to leave my house immediately.'

A light seemed to burst suddenly upon the passionate planter, which altered his face curiously, by gradual changes, from livid blue to bright scarlet. The corners of his mouth began to go up sideways in a solemnly ludicrous fashion: the crow's-feet about his eyes first relaxed and then tightened deeply; his whole big body seemed to be inwardly shaken by a kind of suppressed impalpable laughter. 'Why, Tom,' he exclaimed, turning with a curious half-comical look to his wondering nephew, 'do you know--upon my word--I really believe--no, it can't be possible--but I really believe--they don't even now know anything at all about it.'

'Explain yourself,' Edward said sternly, placing himself between Mr Dupuy and the door, as if on purpose to bar the passage outward.

'Explain,' Edward reiterated inexorably.

'You compel me?'

'I compel you.'

'You'd better not; you won't like it.'

'I insist upon it.'

'Explain. Say what you have to say; I can endure it.'

'Tom!' Mr Dupuy murmured imploringly, turning to his nephew. After all, the elder man was something of a gentleman; he shrank from speaking out that horrid secret.

Edward Hawthorn's colour at that particular moment was vivid crimson. The next instant it was marble white. 'A man of my colour!' he exclaimed, drawing back in astonishment, not unmingled with horror, and flinging up his arms wildly--'a man of my colour! For heaven's sake, sir, what, in the name of goodness, do you mean by a man of my colour?'

Marian burst forth into a little cry of intense excitement. It wasn't horror; it wasn't anger; it wasn't disappointment: it was simply relief from the long agony of that endless, horrible suspense.

'We can bear it all, Edward,' she cried aloud cheerfully, almost joyously--'we can bear it all! My darling, my darling, it is nothing, nothing, nothing!'

And regardless of the two men, who stood there still, cynical and silent, watching the effect of their unexpected thunderbolt, the poor young wife flung her arms wildly around her newly wedded husband, and smothered him in a perfect torrent of passionate kisses.

But as for Edward, he stood there still, as white, as cold, and as motionless as a statue.

CANAL NAVIGATIONS.

Until the middle of the last century, our forefathers thought far more of foreign enterprise than of the internal communications of their own island. An Englishman of the time of Elizabeth might be acquainted with all the intricacies of the Arctic Ocean or of the West Indies; but it by no means followed that he was able to sketch a map of his own country. The sea was the great highway of trade and fame, and the commercial towns were all seaports.

This was the state of the communications in England in 1757, when the Duke of Bridgewater, having been crossed in love by one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings, turned his attention to the more prosaic employment of canal construction. His idea was to construct a waterway, or 'navigation,' from his coal-pits to Manchester, a distance of ten miles. Short as this distance appears in our time, it offered so great a barrier in those days, that the supply of fuel was always limited and uncertain. The duke, who was desirous of engaging an engineer to put his idea into practical form, was advised to employ the famous millwright Brindley, who had already made himself a name in the district for his clever contrivances in the pottery-works and the silk-factories. Like many others who have risen to fame, Brindley was a self-made man. To his natural-born genius, there were united two characteristics which are necessary to all such pioneers--great perseverance, and a confidence in his own judgment which overbore all the adverse criticism of the multitude. His diary, which is extant, shows his school education to have been of the scantiest; the words, spelt in the broad Staffordshire dialect, and the painfully crabbed writing, excite alternately our amusement and our respect; whilst it shows throughout the dogged determination of the individual to overcome difficulty.

Brindley was no sooner installed as engineer of the works than he completely altered the duke's plan. To construct the proposed canal--or 'novogation,' as Brindley has it--it was necessary to cross the river Irwell, and it was here that he first showed his marvellous courage and skill. The duke's plan had been to drop the canal by a series of locks to the level of the river, and to raise it again on the farther side by the same means. But Brindley, who foresaw that locks would always prove a great hindrance to traffic, decided that the canal should not change its level, but should cross the river on a stone aqueduct. Nothing of the kind had ever before been attempted in this country, and, to ordinary minds, the idea of boats, laden with coals, sailing, as it were in mid-air, seemed preposterous. It must be allowed, to the everlasting credit of the duke, that, although somewhat uncertain in his own mind as to the result of the scheme, he nevertheless allowed Brindley to proceed. In spite of general ridicule, the works were commenced, the aqueduct was built; and derision was turned into amazement when the canal-boats passed over and the structure showed no sign of collapse. The packhorses were dispensed with, and the price of coal in Manchester fell to one-half. The success, both to the projector and the community, was so complete, that the duke at once sought further powers to extend the canal westward, and thus to open communication with the port of Liverpool. After much opposition from landowners and others, Brindley commenced this extension; but although no great engineering difficulties were encountered, the expenditure for some years had been so heavy that the want of money threatened to offer a serious obstacle to the completion of the scheme. The duke's credit became so low that the greatest task of the week was the collecting of a sufficient amount to pay the wages of the labourers on the works; and it was only by much scheming and economy that the works were at length completed.

Meanwhile, the Staffordshire Potteries had begun to clamour for a waterway, and Brindley had undertaken the survey of a canal which was to connect them with the Trent and Mersey. Wedgwood, the great potter, gave all his influence to a scheme for uniting his factories with the sea, and even removed his works to a site on the proposed canal, known henceforth by the ancient name of Etruria. The great undertaking in the construction of this canal was the tunnel, a mile and a half in length, under that part of the Pennine chain which separates Staffordshire from Cheshire. This tunnel was to constitute the highest point or 'summit-level' of the canal; and the supply of water was to be obtained from a system of reservoirs situated at a still higher elevation and fed by the surrounding hills. But tunnelling was a new experiment in engineering; many unforeseen difficulties arose to hinder the work, and it was only after eleven years of heavy anxiety and stubborn perseverance that this last link in the communication was completed. The carriage of a ton of goods from Liverpool to Etruria, which had cost under the old system fifty shillings, was reduced to one-fourth. This tunnel, the pioneer of many miles of tunnelling since constructed, still exists. It is simply a long culvert, just large enough to allow of the passage of a single barge. There is no accommodation for hauling the traffic through, and the barges are consequently propelled from end to end by the exertions of the boatmen alone. Fifty years after its construction, the traffic on the canal had increased to such an extent that the mouths of the tunnel were perpetually blocked by a crowd of boats waiting to pass through, and the fights and quarrels among the boatmen for first place were a disgrace to the Canal Company. After much pressure, the authorities called in the Scotch engineer Telford, and to him was intrusted the construction of a second tunnel. The want of suitable machinery, of skilled labour and of money, were obstacles comparatively unknown to Telford, and the new tunnel, large enough to allow of a towing-path, was constructed in three years. The two works, side by side, represent fifty years' progress in the science of engineering.

But to return to Brindley and his triumphs. In North Warwickshire, a colony of iron-workers had sprung up in the midst of a plain, worn into narrow 'hollow-ways' by the tread of the ubiquitous packhorse. The few letters sent to this large village of blacksmiths were addressed 'Birmingham, near Coleshill,' this latter place being the nearest point on the high road. Through this district, Brindley succeeded in cutting a canal from the Trent to the Severn; and thus Birmingham, the Potteries, and Manchester were each connected with the Irish and North Seas.

Brindley's last great work was the projection of a canal from Leeds to Liverpool; but owing partly to the difficulties of the country passed through, and partly to the scarcity of labourers through the continental wars, the canal was not completed throughout until 1816, long after Brindley's death. The summit of this canal is in the wild and stony district of Pendle Forest, where are situated the great reservoirs--one being over a hundred acres in extent--which feed the higher levels of the canal with water. These reservoirs are maintained in repair and efficiency at the present day by the owners of the numerous stone quarries of the district, to whom the canal offers great facilities for transit.

Under Rennie and Telford, canal construction was continued, and old methods were improved upon. The Barton aqueduct of Brindley sank into insignificance before the works of these later engineers, whose canals, instead of winding round the hillsides to avoid cuttings, were led through hills and over valleys regardless of obstacles. Besides the completion of English canals, we owe to these two men the construction of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde and the Caledonian Canal, in Scotland; and the two parallel canals in Ireland which connect Dublin with the Atlantic. Thus, in half a century was the country covered with a network of waterways, giving an impulse to manufactures which had hitherto been shut out from foreign markets.

To turn to the present century: M. de Lesseps has been so successful with the Suez Canal, and promises to be with the Panama one, that it is no wonder that he should have many followers; and it is to be noted that the canals proposed now are all on the large scale--canals for ships of large size. They are mostly through narrow necks of land, although one of them is to connect an inland town, Manchester, about thirty miles from salt water, directly with the sea. The Isthmus of Corinth is the site of another; and still another is to run into the great Sahara of Africa and convert it into a great salt-water lake. How long this lake would take to fill up with solid salt is a nice question, which we have not sufficient means of determining, as the other 'salt lakes' of the world are all supplied with fresh water, and have only as yet attained to a more or less briny state.

AN IRISH TRAVELLING THEATRE.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet