578 



MONTANA. 



MOON, OBSERVATIONS OF THE. 



emasculating the functions of the Legislative Assem- 

 blies of the Territories is to an alarming and danger- 

 ous extent a denial of home-rule ? and a vote of a want 

 of confidence in their people which no past history or 

 present danger palliates or excuses, and to our now 

 ever-varying and rapidly expanding settlements and 

 industries is, and will continue, an embarrassment. 



We demand faithful, honest, and intelligent offi- 

 cers to discharge public trusts, honest and economic 

 administration of government, cessation of appoint- 

 ments of carpet-baggers to office in the Territories, 

 legislative and executive action to appreciate the value 

 of silver and continue it as ono of the measures of 

 commercial values in the industrial economy of the 

 world. To this end there should be created a per- 

 manent financial commission whose duty it should be 

 by every process occurring to intelligent and fair- 

 minded men to induce the civilized nations to recog- 

 nize that this great commercial measure is essential to 

 the industries of the world and the happiness of man- 

 kind, and that our Legislature should keep the same 

 objects in view. 



We demand that the system of espionage which has 

 been given such vigorous growth, and has been ani- 

 mated with such malignant purposes, shall cease, and 

 that reports of special agents of the Tarious depart- 

 ments of the Government shall be published as soon 

 as the pretended criminals implicated can be ar- 

 rested. 



We demand the abrogation of those regulations 

 which prevail relating to the cutting of timber, and 

 that said law be pdministred in the liberal spirit which 

 dictated its amendment, and that it be so amended 

 as that the citizens of the West on lands unfit for agri- 

 culture shall, without waste, destruction, or exporta- 

 tion, have the free, untrammeled right to its use for 

 all domestic, farming, mechanical, and mining pur- 

 poses. And we dp deny that there is any law extant 

 whereby the Interior Department can farm out to fa- 

 vorites any portion of the public domain for the pur- 

 pose of cutting timber, but assert that the rights 

 which that law secures are equal- to every citizen, and 

 that the regulations which propose to make it a matter 

 of party patronage are in violation of the statute itself, 

 and in clear contravention of the inalienable rights of 

 American citizens. 



That the diminution and entire destruction of the 

 Indian reservations is a plain duty of the hour, and 

 that the continued existence of them over one fifth of 

 the geographical area of the Territory of Montana is a 

 reproach to the civilization of the age, and we pledge 

 ourselves to efforts for their rapid extinction. 



On November 2 the Democratic candidate 

 for delegate was elected. The vote was : Dem- 

 ocratic, 17,990; Republican, 14,272; total, 32,- 

 162. The total vote in 1884 was 26,969, show- 

 ing an increase in two years of 5,293. The 

 Legislature is Republican on joint ballot. The 

 following is the list of counties, with the total 

 vote of each : 



COUNTIES. Vote. 



Beaverhead 1,459 



Choteau 1,283 



Custer 1,626 



Dawson .. 419 



Deer Lodge 3,797 



Fergus 1,105 



Gallatin 8,088 



COUNTIES. Vote. 



Jefferson .............. 2,186 



Lewis and Clark ....... 5.102 



Madiaon ............... 1,529 



Meapher .............. 1.381 



Missoula .............. 2.433 



Silver Bow ............ 5.8S6 



Yellowstone ........... 968 



Dividends, The following are the Montana 

 dividends, in mining companies, from Jan. 1 to 

 Oct. 31, 1886 : 



COMPANIES. Amount. 



Alice $75,000 



Boston and Montana 1 50.000 



Helena M. & K. Co. . 59.686 



Moulton 60,000 



Granite Mountain . . 920,000 



Amy & Silversmith. 166,568 



COMPANIES. Amount. 



ElKhorn .......... $50.000 



Hecla ............. 150,000 



Montana Co. (Lim- 



ited) ........... 496,350 



Total ......... $2,127,604 



MOON, RECENT OBSERVATIONS AND STCDT OF 

 THE. We here quote a few of the descriptions 

 of lunar desolation that have been brought to 

 the support of the theory that the moon is " a 

 dead world, a worn-out planet." One writer 

 says, " No vegetation clothes its vast plains 

 of stony desolation." Farther on we shall 

 see that all the proofs we can apply in the case 

 point unmistakably to the presence of vegeta- 

 tion and the absence of stones there, except 

 what may have slowly formed by incrustation 

 from the up-flow of its waters about the rims 

 of its fountain-basins, analogous to the exam- 

 ples of the Yellowstone region. u There is 

 no rosy dawn in the morning, no twilight in 

 the evening." Had the author of the forego- 

 ing quotation ever examined with sufficient 

 care the surface of an undulating lunar plain, 

 when the sun was low upon it, he would have 

 seen long reaches of shadow so luminous as to 

 be with difficulty distinguishable from the por- 

 tions in the light, and a careful examination of 

 any good lunar photograph will show the same 

 thing. This is twilight. " The nights are pitch- 

 dark, and the shadows black as ink." It is so 

 common for us to see the entire dark surface 

 of the moon with a crescent on one edge, that 

 children call it " the old moon in the young 

 moon's arms." If this side in shadow did not 

 reflect a very considerable amount of light, we 

 could not see it at all ; and, as to the " frightful 

 abysses " often mentioned, there is, on the side 

 visible to us, only one that equals those of the 

 earth, and that is not as abrupt as the Yosemi- 

 te valley. 



The earth being four times greater in diame- 

 ter than the moon, its apparent disk is sixteen 

 times greater in superficial area ; and as it pre- 

 sents to the moon exactly the same phases that 

 the moon does to us, but without being ob- 

 scured by clouds, and this also being true in re- 

 lation to starlight, it follows that this " black- 

 as-ink " darkness in the lunar night is abso- 

 lutely unknown there, but is in reality a quality 

 of the nights of the earth only. By the same 

 writers we are assured that, on account of the 

 absence of an atmosphere, the lunar mountains 

 retain all their original angularity and sharp- 

 ness of outline. But no person endowed with 

 the ordinary capacity of vision can examine a 

 good photograph of the moon without finding 

 abundant evidence of denudation, from sharp, 

 clear-cut outlines through all degrees of soft- 

 ening down, to depletion so complete that the 

 original forms can only be surmised. There 

 are examples of ancient ring-mountains so de- 

 pleted by time and atmospheric action that 

 their location can only be detected under the 

 most favorable conditions of illumination even 

 by the best of telescopes. 



The declaration that, if life existed upon the 

 moon, we could see it with our telescopes, is 

 directly refuted by the fact that an animal as 

 large as six elephants and most favorably situ- 

 ated for observation would not make a percep- 

 tible speck upon the field of the most powerful 



