Avq. 28, 1890. J 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



107 



to eight miles outside, and are covered with about nine 

 feet of water. They are called the Diamond Reefs, and 

 hundreds of the argosies of commerce and thousands of 

 lives have been lost on these fearful shoals, Imagina- 

 tion cannot conceive, nor can tongue tell the scenes of 

 horror that have occurred on these accursed sands. 

 Could the keeper in his far-off post but see the pictures 

 of the desperate battles for life, the frenzied struggles 

 for existence; could be catch the despairing appeals for 

 help, the cries of utter hopelessness, the last shriek, as 

 the doomed men sank, he would end his days raving in a 

 mad house. 



"When once a vessel is driven by the stress of weather 

 upon these shoals there is no hope. The shore is miles 

 away and no human aid is near. No life-saving crew 

 could make their way through the breakers. Death is as 

 sure to the foundered barque as to a scuttled ship in mid- 

 ocean. Many, many vessels, blown out of their course 

 by the fateful uorttieast wind, in a driving snow storm, 

 when the flashing light of Hatteras was veiled from view, 

 have been carried on waves mountains high and dashed 

 on these reefs, where the league-long rollers thundered; a 

 frenzied cry, the noise of crackling timbers, the sound of 

 solid oak riven and torn, and then "Faith, Hope and Mercy 

 veiled their eyes, as Death held high carnival. Well may 

 the mariner exclaim as he neared this worse than the 

 fabled Charybdis, "Blow wind, swell billow, and swim 

 bark, the storm is up and all is on the hazard of the die;" 

 and many a. captain of a ship off Hatteras felt, no doubt, 

 as Gonzola in the tempest, when he exclaimed in the 

 fullness of his heart, "Now would I give a thousand fur- 

 longs of sea for one acre of barren ground." 



It may well be asked why these dangerous shoals are 

 not noted by a lighthouse. Such has been the intention 

 of the Government for years, but great fears are enter- 

 tained that no structure could stand the effects of the ter- 

 rible storms. Then again the shifting sands afford but a 

 poor foundation for the structure. Every board of trade 

 and every chamber of commerce has petitioned Congress 

 that a lighthouse should be erected at once on this spot, 

 and last year the Senate appropriated $500,000 for the 

 purpose, but the bill failed to pass the House. Another 

 effort will be made this session to that effect.* 



The chairman of the Lighthouse Board sayB, that "The 

 proposed work off Cape Hatteras is one of great magni- 

 tude, and is the most difficult and dangerous of the kind 

 ever attempted by the Government. To carry it to a suc- 

 cessful issue requires the highest skill, supported by the 

 best appliances and by ample means." 



Major O. E. Babcock, Chief of Engineers, was sent by 

 the Government to make an examination of these shoals 

 and report upon the feasibility of erecting a lighthouse. 

 He says in his report : 



Abating the calm weather of Juno, and a time when the tender 

 Jessamine could be taken from other work, I proceedtd on the 

 24lh ultimo to Hatteras Inlet, via Albemarle and Chesapeake 

 Canal, arriving at the inlet on the 28th. I procured the services 

 of a pilot. The sea being too rough to venture with the tender, I 

 waited until tne morning of the 29th, when, the sea being quiet 

 and but little wind blowing, we proceeded to sea at 5 A. M., 

 reached the shoal at 7 A. M., and passed in between the Inner and 

 Outer Diamond. We sounded up to within (not to exceed) 200yds. 

 of the breaker on the N.W. side of the Outer Diamond. We 

 found no sounding less than 17ft., and, to appearance, this depth 

 was carried almost on to the reef itself. 



1 am satisfied from my own observation and the assurances of 

 the pilot and all with whom I talked, that there are many days 

 during the months of June, July, August, and Sep (ember, when 

 the winds are off the shore, when the sea is quiet about the shoal 

 and when a vessel adapted to the work could go to the very edge 

 of the breaker and work for many hours at a time. 



I am of the opinion that the placing of a beacon or a lighthouse 



* Washington, July 3.— At last, after many years of waiting, 

 there seems to be a fair prospect that a lignthouse will be built on 

 the Diamond Shoal at Cape Hatteras. This cape is considered the 

 most dangerous point anywhere on the United States coast line. 

 More wrecks and injuries to shipping occur there than anywhere 

 else. The winds, the currents, and the force of the waves cause 

 it to be more dreaded by mariners at certain seasons of the year 

 than Cape Horn itself, and any craft that runs aground there is 

 liable to strike a treacherous quicksand and disappear for good. 

 Shipmasters, pilots, carrying companies, boards of trade, and 

 chambprsof commerce innumerable have besought the Govern- 

 ment to interfere and avert the vast, loss of life and property 

 which occurs in that neighborhood every year. Experiments have 

 already been made in warning vessels off the shoal, but to little 

 effect. A whistling buoy which was placed there was carried 

 away by the sea, and passed out of sight forever— possibly being 

 caught uo by the Gulf Str> am and landed somewhere on the coast 

 of Ireland, as a number of American harbor buoys have been. A 

 lighted buoy was tried also, but it soon became a toy of the waves 

 a,nd sank, doubtless swallowed up by a quicksand. Many mem- 

 orials have reached the United States Lighthouse Board praying 

 for a lightship, but that tias not seemed feasible, because there is 

 evidence that the ship would either drag her ancbor or snap the 

 chain, in either case ending her usefulness, or else she would be 

 so surely wrecked by the strain brought upon her in this turbu- 

 lent sea as virtually to seal the death-warrant of every man de- 

 tailed to serve on her. 



But a lighthouse— a permanent structure— has always been con- 

 sidered worth building there if the necessary appropriation could 

 be obtained. Some fiv* years ago, two firms of contractors made 

 estimates and agreed that the building a first-class lighthouse, a 

 hunurtdand fifty feet high, with foundations a hundred feet 

 deep, ought not to cost over a half million of dollars, or consume 

 more than a year's time, it was impossible to procure from one 

 Congress so large au appropriation, and the necessity for quick 

 work wtien the building was once started made this embarrassing, 

 but Representative Randall of Pennsylvania devised a plan for 

 reconciling Congressional frugality with commercial needs, and, 

 accordingly, in the spring of last year an appropriation of £200 000 

 was passed, coupled with authority to contract for the rest of rlie 

 work after expending this sum— a practice generally forbidden 

 by law. 



The bids for the work were opened this week. They were only- 

 four in number. One of them was thrown out for a technical in- 

 formality, and another for exceeding the limit of the estimated 

 expense. The third and fourth came from the two firms which 

 had already figured on the cost. One, Sonysmith & Company, 

 offered to build the light in three years for g4S8,000 in round num- 

 bers; the other, Anderson & Barr, agreed to do it in eighteen 

 mom hs for some 8485.000. 



Tbe first step in building this house will be the construction, at 

 Norfolk or some more remote point where there are facilit.es for 

 doing such work, of a caisson about forty-rive feet in diameter, 

 made of bolted iron plates, each two by six feet in size, the whole 

 resembling an inverted pan. This will be fitted with a temporary 

 wooden bottom and have one or more air-shafts running vertically 

 d«wn through it. It will be launched at the place where it is 

 built, and towed to the Diamond Shoal, and there sunk by loading 

 with concrete Its level will be maintained by adding more con- 

 crete to any side that tips upward. The excavation will then go 

 on in the chambers at the bottom connected with the upper air 

 by the sha'ts before mentioned, till a proper depth has been 

 reached, and more plates will be added, course after course, at 

 the top as the caisson sinks further into the sand. When at last 

 this foundation is deemed complete, the superstructure will be 

 built on it. When rust eventually wears away the plates which 

 formed the sheath of the caisson, the great mass of solid artificial 

 stone in ide will remain as a permanent pedestal. 



The beginning of the work w T ill be attended with very great risk. 

 After towing the caisson to the Cape— an operation which would 

 probably take between thirty and forty hoars even from a point 

 as near as Norfolk— two hours of thoroughly good weather will 

 enable the contractors to make it fast. But storms spring up in 

 that region almost at a moment's notice, and one might easily 

 undo in a half hour the labor of weeks or months.— Correspondence 

 New York Evening Post. 



on the Outer Diamond itself is practicable, and, though its con- 

 struction will be expensive and attended with danger, 1 think the 

 importance to commerce so great that: the work should be done. 

 As the temporary work necessary to reach the shoal will he as 

 expensive for a beacon as for a lighthouse, 1 think a lighthouse 

 not less than 80 or 100ft. high should be built, to be attended and 

 lit nights like other lighthouses. 



In my opinion a pier built on the same principle as the ocean 

 piers at Coney Island, Long Branch, and other places, can >>e con- 

 structed from a point on the inside of the shoal on to very 

 shoal itself. 



The plan adopted for the proposed tower is a mou: ^ca- 

 tion of the Rothersands Bank, Dplaware Bay, Ligl V- 

 house. Certainly the task is greater than erecting the 

 famous Eddystone. 



"Whomever fate has chosen as the keeper of the pros- 

 pective lighthouse on Hatteras Shoals he will have a 

 solitary existence, and in the winter months the spray 

 from the breakers will hide sea and heaven from view. 



The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is built upon the beach 

 and is a stately shaft 189ft. high. The outside is painted 

 in spiral bands, alternately white and black. The lantern 

 is also of the latter color. These contrasting colors, ex- 

 perience proves, can be seen further in the daytime than 

 any other combination. The first tower was erected here 

 in the year 1798, and the present one was built in 1870. 

 About half a mile away is another lighthouse, or rather 

 beacon. T. F. Smith, u staunch, level-headed man, is 

 keeper, with three assistants, Miller, Austin and Riggs. 

 Wesley Austin was the gunner of the place, and we 

 found him an enthusiastic sportsman, 



The scene oceanward from the top of the tower is one 

 full of grandeur, but on the land side the picture is the 

 very abomination of desolation. Dreary stretches of 

 sand dunes and then swamps, such as only the weird 

 pencil of Gustave Dore could have drawn. Immense 

 pools of black stagnant water, great ponds of slimy 

 liquid, dangerous, treacherous bogs, quivering quag- 

 mires, dark loathsome fens, impure sloughs, comprise 

 most of the banks, with here and there an open glade 

 upon which are built primitive log houses, occupied at 

 certain seasons of the year by woodchoppers, fishermen, 

 sheep herders and cattle men. The trees seem to have 

 been struck by lightning, or blighted by some curse of 

 nature, for most of them are prostrate on the ground, 

 while those that remain standing are bare of foliage, and 

 their skeleton branches wave sullenly in the gaie. On 

 the tops of many of these trees are huge nests of the 

 great sea fishhawks and the black-headed eagle. The 

 prone and fallen trees are covered with trailing vines and 

 tangled briers and entwining creepers, and are so inter- 

 woven and twisted together that tlie mass forms an 

 almost impassable chevaux clef rise. 



The only permanent inhabitants of Hatteras are the 

 lighthouse keeper and his assistants, with their families. 

 They have led for the past ten years such a solitary life as 

 few men could endure. Yet, on the whole, the men are 

 mildly content, if not radiantly happy, for their hearth- 

 stone is cheered by the presence of wives and families. 

 They have good houses, pure water, abundance of fuel 

 free — those three articles which cost so much in the city. 

 A nice garden, all kinds of fish, quantities of oysters, 

 clams, orabs and bay birds in summer, and flour, pork 

 and beef furnished by the Government. The problem of 

 "how to live" never addles their brains. It is true their 

 existence is not brightened by any excitement, nor is it 

 cheered by social intercourse; yet to compensate them in 

 a measure, they are shielded from those things that the 

 great master of human passions tells us is hardest to 

 bear — "the proud man's contumely," 



The insolence of office, and the spurns 

 That patient merit of the unworthy takes. 



After all, it is an open question whether one so isolated 

 from the "madding crowd" is to be envied or pitied. 

 Each position as lighthouse custodian is almost a sine- 

 cure, and is not affected by the mutations of politics. 



There is probably no mariner, tourist or traveler, who 

 passing Hatteras, when glancing shoreward catches sight 

 of the beacon light gleaming from afar, who does not 

 wonder who are the inmates of the lone light tower and 

 how they live. The keeper, who spends his lonely life in 

 lighting the lamp as regularly as the day ends, must pos- 

 sess one preeminent quality. He must be positively and 

 absolutely trustworthy. Other men in different voca- 

 tions may forget or neglect their duty sometimes, and no 

 harm will come of it; but the vigilance of the lighthouse 

 keeper must never relax. Upon him devolves a responsi- 

 bility in human life and capital so vast that no words can 

 accurately gauge it. Frequently, in the dead of night, a 

 stiff northeast gale springs up, and scores of outgoing 

 vessels, from the little brigantine to the stately barque 

 sailing seaward, catching sight of the Hatteras light, 

 turn their prows oceanward; and speeding from the 

 treacherous sands, ride out the storm by running before 

 the gale in reefed canvas or scud under bare poles. 



Suppose the light should go out? No pen could describe 

 nor imagination conceive the horror that would ensue. 

 Death would ride the gale, and how many sailors instead 

 of embarking to the strand, would pass across to the 

 Stygian shore, and how many freighted vessels of com- 

 merce would be shattered weeks upon the shoals. 



Thus it is that when the right man for the right place is 

 found, no political influence can oust him, for he has the 

 whole maritime power of the country at his back. 



During the day the keeper has litcle or nothing to do. 

 He pays a visit to the foot of the tower every morning, 

 where the oil cans and working tools are kept, and with 

 his assistant in a few moments ascends to the top by a 

 circular stairway of two hundred and odd steps, and fills 

 the reservoir of the lantern with lard oil; this burns with 

 a more steady flame, and gives less heat than any other 

 except sperm oil. A few minutes is spent in polishing 

 the lens, and then pulling a canvas shade over the re- 

 flector, the keeper descends, locks the door of the tower, 

 and his day's work is done. Uatil sunset his time is his 

 own, he can hunt, attend to household chores, lounge, 

 smoke, sleep, or step across the way where the beacon 

 keepers are stationed, and spend hours in gossiping. 



As the day wanes, and the shadows creep from wood- 

 land and deep, the keeper with his lamp ascends to the 

 light, inspects the machinery, uncovers the lens, gives 

 them a finishing polish, and glancing at his watch, 

 touches a match to the lantern just as the sun sets by 

 the almanac time. Slowl3 r the flime runs around the 

 circular wicks, and in about five minutes the whole in- 

 terior of the head of the tower is bathed in a refulgent 

 glow. 



The machinery is similar to that of a town clock; and 



the glass case with its costly reflecting lenses, smoothly 

 and regularly revolves around the Argand light, and 

 every ten seconds a dazzling white flash illumines any 

 one point in the compass, and the eastern flash can be 

 seen tweuty-five miles out r 3a. 



There are two watches. The keeper goes on duty at 

 sunset, and is relieved by his assistant at midnight, who 

 in turn remains at his post until sunrise. The top of the 

 tower is warmed by the great lamp, but in very cold 

 w T eather a stove is fired in addition. Thus in the most 

 biting weather the tower's loft is well heated, and the 

 custodians keep their watch, and ward in comfort. They 

 may, and perhap ■» they do, doze the long hours away, but 

 by long habit their senses have been so refined and sharp- 

 ened, that any derangement of the machinery startles 

 them into instant wakefulness, just as the miller arouses 

 the moment the great wheel ceases to turn. 



Several times during the present custodianship the deli- 

 cate clock work that revolves the disk has become dis- 

 arranged, and the keepers and their wives have had to 

 turn by hand through the long night the glass globe with 

 mathematical regularity. The necessity of this proceed- 

 ing is patent, if a ship sighted a fixed light, that was 

 marked on the chart as a ten second flash, it would cause 

 the skipper to lose his bearing and possibly cause him to 

 drive his craft on the reefs. Chasseur, 

 [to be concluded.] 



TRAPPING DAYS.-I. 



THE watershed lying between the headwaters of the 

 streams which flow iuto Hudson Bay on the north, 

 Lakes Supprior and Michigan on the east, andlthe Missis- 

 sippi and Missouri rivers on the south and west, is dotted 

 with small lakes; and these together with the country 

 along the small streams which flow down from it, form 

 what was probably the finest trapping ground for furred 

 animals in the United States of America, if not in the 

 world. Lying in Dakota, Minnesota. Wisconsin and 

 Iowa, it formed a country which the Indian tribes re- 

 linquished with reluctance, and which cost thousands of 

 precious lives before the strife was finally decided in 

 favor of the all powerful pale face. To those, who, like 

 the writer, were familiar with it in the days when the 

 elk roamed by hundreds over the plain, when for leagues 

 in extent the buffalo chips caused the western half of the 

 great plateau to resemble the corral of the stockman, 

 when the muskrat houses in the lakes and ploughs could 

 be counted to the number of a thousand in a single day's 

 journey, and when the flight of the wildfowl was suf- 

 ficient to suggest Burdette's fanciful description of the 

 wild geese on the Platte River, where they numbered a 

 million geese in each flock, and where the flocks aver- 

 aged one for each half mile — it was never a matter of 

 wonderment why the Sioux fought hard and long before 

 they finally relinquished to the white man this best of all 

 their hunting grounds. 



In the fall of 1804 the writer began trapping furred 

 animals in this part of the great Northwest, when the 

 line of furthest settlement on that part of the then 

 frontier extended from Spirit Lake, Iowa, to Mankato, 

 Minn., and beyond which the deserted cabins of the 

 murdered settlers along the Des Moines River and the 

 remote shores of peaceful Lake Shetek, were the only in- 

 dications of the advancing civilization destined to blot 

 out all trace of the savagery of the Indian race. The 

 country swarmed with furred animals, and the only 

 drawback to the enjoyment of the wild life of the trap- 

 per was the ever present consciousness of the necessity 

 of sleepless vigilance against savages whose cunning and 

 ferocity were proverbial, and against the vicissitudes of 

 the most rigorous and treacherous winter climate which 

 ever lay out of doors. 



The inducement held out to an early settler to turn his 

 attention to trapping during the fall and spring was very 

 great. The trapping ground began at his own door, 

 while traveling representatives of the great fur companies 

 called at his cabin once or twice each year, eager to pur- 

 chase for cash, at a good figure, each and every skin 

 which he and his family coitld secure; and this, too, dur- 

 ing the period of time when his new farm was as yet un- 

 productive and when the naked heels of poverty-shod in- 

 dustry were in danger of being trodden upon by nimble- 

 footed want. 



"When, during the great war of the rebellion, muskrat 

 skins sold for 50 cents each, many a settler, although en- 

 tirely unskilled in the art of the trapper, by the purchase 

 of a few dozen muskrat traps easily secured enough skins 

 to exchange for the winter's supply of clothing and 

 groceries for his family; and an itinerant preacher, whose 

 line of travel extended along the. Spirit Lake frontier, 

 was known to have purchased a much-needed horse, sad- 

 dle and bridle, by the simple expedient of spearing 

 muskrats, with a rat spear made of the rod of the end 

 gate of a worn out wagon. This sport of rat-spearing 

 beneath the ice was considered fully equal to wing-shoot- 

 ing prairie chickens, while being manifestly much more 

 remunerative. 



The rat spear was a round rod of steel, or of iron, steel- 

 tipped, half an inch in diameter, with a single short barb 

 2in. from the point, and with a wooden handle 2in. in 

 diameter and 18in. in length, the whole spear being 

 about 5ft. long. Although it could be used for months 

 each season, yet the very best time for its use in the 

 whole year was when the young ice first coated the sur- 

 face of the sloughs and lakes, and if the trapper was so 

 fortunate as to find new ice an inch or two thick, entirely 

 free from snow or other hindrance to its transparencey, 

 he quickly found that a week's spearing with such favor- 

 ing conditions was worth all the rest of the season for 

 the use of this implement. One trapper named Simpson 

 speared 77 rats in one day, a most unusual catch. 



Preceding quietly along on the smooth, thin and trans- 

 parent ice, the trapper silently approached the strange 

 mound of rushes, reed3 and canes, which, anchored to 

 the bottom of the slough, formed the abode of the musk- 

 rat, and drove his spear diagonally down through the 

 house, and an instant's pause enabled him to tell by sound 

 or feeling whether a wounded rat, impaled upon the cruel 

 spear, was struggling to free itself from the deadly rod, 

 or whethes his thrust had proved a clean miss. If a rat 

 had been speared, a hole was chopped into the house with 



