388 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



MOUNTAIN OBSERYATOKIES. 



ON October 1, 1876, one of the millionaires of the New "World died 

 at San Francisco. Although owning a no more euphonious name 

 than James Lick, he had contrived to secure a future for it. He had 

 founded and endowed the first great astronomical establishment planted 

 on the heights, between the stars and the sea. How he came by his 

 love of science we have no means of knowing. Born obscurely at 

 Fredericksburg, in Pennsylvania, August 25, 1796, he amassed some 

 thirty thousand dollars by commerce in South America, and in 1847 

 transferred them and himself to a village which had just exchanged 

 its name of Yerba Buena for that of San Francisco, situate on a long, 

 sandy strip of land between the Pacific and a great bay. In the hil- 

 locks and gullies of that wind-blown barrier he invested his dollars, 

 and never did virgin-soil yield a richer harvest. The gold-fever broke 

 out in the spring of 1848. The unremembered cluster of wooden 

 houses, with no trouble or tumult of population in their midst, nest- 

 ling round a tranquil creek under a climate which, but for a touch of 

 sea-fog, might rival that of the Garden of the Hesperides, became all 

 at once a center of attraction to the outcast and adventurous from 

 every part of the world. Wealth poured in ; trade sprang up ; a 

 population of six hundred increased to a quarter of a million ; hotels, 

 villas, public edifices, places of business spread, mile after mile, along 

 the bay ; building-ground rose to a fabulous price, and James Lick 

 found himself one of the richest men in the United States. 



Thus he got his money ; we have now to see how he spent it. Al- 

 ready the munificent benefactor of the learned institutions of Califor- 

 nia, he in 1874 formally set aside a sum of two million dollars for vari- 

 ous public purposes, philanthropic, patriotic, and scientific. Of these 

 two millions, seven hundred thousand were appropriated to the erection 

 of a telescope " superior to and more powerful than any ever yet made." 

 But this, he felt instinctively, was not enough. Even in astronomy, 

 although most likely unable to distinguish the pole-star from the dog- 

 star, this " pioneer citizen " could read the signs of the times. It was 

 no longer instruments that were wanted ; it was the opportunity of 

 employing them. Telescopes of vast power and exquisite j)erfection 

 had ceased to be a rarity ; but their use seemed all but hopelessly im- 

 peded by the very conditions of existence on the surface of the earth. 



The air we breathe is in truth the worst enemy of the astronomer's 

 observations. It is their enemy in two ways. Part of the light which 

 brings its wonderful, evanescent messages across inconceivable depths 

 of space, it stops ; and, what it does not stop, it shatters. And this 

 even when it is most transparent and seemingly still ; when mist-veils 

 are withdrawn, and no clouds curtain the sky. Moreover, the evil 



