796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ty," and holding twenty-five tin cans, each containing a pound of gun- 

 powder. Probably there was no intent in either case to injure vessel 

 or passengers the offender only desired to get his powder safely 

 landed at the vessel's destination without paying duties or high freight 

 charges. Present laws cover this species of fraud much better than 

 they do the worse crime of plotting to destroy ship, crew, and pas- 

 sengers. 



When explosions are mentioned, one naturally thinks first of gun- 

 powder. Explosions in powder-factories in Maine and Missouri de- 

 stroyed the entire building and killed, in one case one workman, in 

 the other eleven. A similar disaster in Mexico destroyed a whole 

 square, burying many families under the ruins, and about sixty 

 bodies were recovered. Some mishap in firing the fog-gun at Bird 

 Rocks Light-house, on the St. Lawrence, ignited a barrel of gunpowder 

 near by, killing three persons. A Louisiana merchant, in his store, 

 struck a match to light a cigarette, and a scintilla of the burning 

 sulphur flew into a can containing twenty-five pounds of powder. 

 The explosion demolished the building and stock of goods, killed the 

 careless proprietor and injured two blameless by-standers. Now, gun- 

 powder has been so long in use and is so familiarly known, that there 

 ought to be an end of such carelessness as accounts like these indicate. 

 Very rarely, a disaster by gunpowder occurs which may be called pure 

 accident. In a room where drugs were ground in quantities, dust of 

 sulphur, also of saltpeter, gradually settled on the beams, in corners 

 and crevices, and in the various places where dust in such a work-room 

 is wont to gather, and it was intermingled naturally with dust such as 

 every breeze brings, supplying a modicum of carbon. The mixture 

 was equivalent to gunpowder, and, when a workman dropped a light- 

 ed candle, the roof flew off in fragments. He was scarcely to blame. 

 There is a " white gunpowder " about which a prudent person might 

 make a mistake. But the majority of powder explosions are attribu- 

 table to sheer carelessness. The trouble is that "familiarity breeds 

 contempt " ; yet how to induce greater care is a perplexing ques- 

 tion. 



Nitro-glycerine and dynamite have done their share of mischief. 

 In Colorado, four out of five men, who were preparing a charge of 

 nitro-glycerine for a mining blast, were killed by a premature dis- 

 charge ; and in Pennsylvania a magazine containing three hundred 

 pounds of this substance exploded, doing immense damage. At Coun- 

 cil Bluffs, just as the Garfield memorial exercises were closing, there 

 was a fearful explosion of a car-load of blasting-powder, probably dy- 

 namite, which demolished the railroad company's buildings and nearly 

 fifty of their cars, dug a hole in the ground forty-five feet across and 

 fifteen feet deep, shattered buildings throughout the city and glass 

 windows even in Omaha across the river, and made itself felt as far as 

 Missouri Valley, twenty miles away. One can not judge from the brief 



