226 



Popular Science Monthly 



The World's Largest Ship's Register 

 Chiseled in Rock 



DOUBTLESS "Lloyd's" is larger in 

 the sense that it contains a longer 

 list of names, but on the score of sheer 

 size there is nothing else in the world to 

 compare with the great "Ship's Register" 

 of the port of Muscat. 



Muscat is the capital of the Sultanate 

 of the same name which occupies the 

 southeastern corner of the Arabian 

 Peninsula, and from its position at the 

 mouth of the Persian Gulf it has become 

 a port of call for all \essels serving the 

 Turkish and Persian coasts, as well as 

 one of the stations for the British na\^. 

 In the early seventies the Yankee skipper 

 of an East India-Boston clipper, which 

 had been driven into Muscat by a 

 storm, whiled away the day or two that 

 his crew was busied with repairs by 

 painting the name of his ship, the 

 "Mary Wade," on the black basaltic 

 rock of the hillside above the bay. 



The striking effect of the large white 

 letters against the dark background 

 induced other skippers to follow suit, 

 and it is said that very few indeed of the 

 craft that have visited Muscat in the 

 last three decades have failed to "leave 

 their cards" on the hillside. The most 

 imposing records are those left by the 

 British men-of-war, the jackies of which 

 have vied with each other in trying to 

 make the name of- their ship the most 

 conspicuous. The names of the "Red- 



breast" and "Odin," which may be clear- 

 1\- seen in the photograph, are fifteen to 

 twenty feet high in the original, and 

 painted on carefully chiseled and smooth- 

 ed stretches of rock. To an American the 

 most interesting name is that of the "Isla 

 de Luzon," painted in 1898 before that 

 Spanish gunboat was captured by Dewey. 



Firing with Heavy Artillery at an 

 Enemy You Can't See 



ARTILLERY fire is not unlike quar- 

 reling by telegraph, according to 

 Dr. George W. Crile, an American 

 physician who visited the fighting front 

 and obser\ed the behavior of men in the 

 act of making war. "In contrast to the 

 vis-a-vis trench fighting with rifles and 

 hand grenades and dynamite," says he, 

 ("A Mechanistic View of War and 

 Peace," The Macmillan Company), "ar- 

 tillery fire is more se\ere onl\- when con- 

 centrated, and the concussive effect of 

 bursting shells brings other forms of 

 injury. . . . The process is in a measure 

 comparable to 'caisson disease' or 'bends' 

 in workmen laboring under atmospheric 

 pressure in tunnels under water. . . . 

 The artillery man rarely sees the object 

 of his fire; he has no personal contact 

 with the enem\-, but suddenly finds him- 

 self under a scorching fire, from a source 

 which he cannot ascertain, from an 

 enemy he cannot see. It is like quarrel- 

 ing by telegraph." - 



Few craft visiting Muscat have failed to "leave their cards" on the hillside. The names of 

 the "Red-Breast" and "Odin" arc from fifteen to twenty feet high chiseled in rock 



