JAN. 44, 1899.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
85 
swift, and full of easy rapids, down which the water 
swung with a power and force not heretofore experi- 
enced. The rapids were particularly fine around the 
bend, past the old town of Lewisburg, ending half a 
mile below in a pretty stiff fall over an irregular stone 
fish dam, which we shot successfiilly at the only available 
point — ^just at the left of the big boulder forming the 
lowest point of the dam, which, as is usual in such 
structures, was shaped like a V, with the apex down 
stream. 
The river swept in a strong, swift flow around the two 
or three picturesque rocky islands clustered at the head 
of the backset from the big dain just above Logansport, 
flowing like a sheet of transparent varnish over the 
golden sand and gravel a foot and a half below, and we 
were shot far out on the broad, lake-like bosom of the 
backset before the effect of the strong current was lost. 
We had been dreading this backset, as it was said to be 
seven miles long, but it proved to be not more than half 
that distance, and we made most of it under sail. A 
heavy rainstorm, which had been following us all the 
morning, overtook us while we were working our way 
through the backset, but our waterproofs kept us dry 
for a while, until finally the old "gossamer" which I had 
thought good enough to do 1or this trip gave way all 
at once in the midst of a very hard downpour, and I 
was soon thoroughly drenched and chilled; so we made 
a landing near a farmhouse and pitched the tent on a- 
nice grassy shelf overlooking the water, the while the 
rain came down furioitsly.and I changed my wet garments, 
while Dave foraged for fuel. He soon returned with 
an armful of corn cobs from a nearby stable, and we put 
up the stove in the tent and had a good hot dinner. It 
rained steadily for three hours, and we stayed here until 
5 o'clock. Our tent proved perfectly tight, and we were 
snug and comfortable, while outside the wind howled 
past and the rain dashed against the side and roof of the 
tent in sheets. We had intended utilizing some of our 
spare time in writing some letters, but before we had 
gotten our "after-dinner dishes" out of the way the 
farmer — near whose liouse we had camped, and who 
had been very kind and obliging to us — paid us' a visit, 
followed by one of his kids, then another and another 
until our little 6X7 tent was crowded ; and when finally 
the family dog arrived I thought it was time to resume 
the cruise, the rain having passed over some time since. 
So the tent was taken down and repacked, and we re- 
embarked and pushed off. As we shoved out from the 
bank the old lady was observed bearing down on the 
camp. 
On reaching the dam the canoes were portaged around 
tlie head gates into the mill race on the left bank, down 
which we dropped for looyds., when we portaged back 
into the" river again. We found that the river had risen 
a foot or more since the rain, and was coming up rapidly, 
with the prospect of a 4 or 5ft. rise. We also found a 
long series of fine rapids before us, with plenty of water, 
and in a few minutes we passed the head of Biddle's 
Island and landed in front of Logansport, where Dave 
went up in town after some supplies, while I remained 
in ray canoe to Avatch the boats. I speedily had a group 
of wondering boys and men on hand in spite of the rain, 
which began again, and the river came up so rapidly that 
I several times had the aforesaid idlers lift the bows of 
the canoes higher up on the rocks to hold them to the 
shore, while points of rock, loose stones, etc., disap- 
peared beneath the water while watching them. 
Dave soon returned with his supplies, and at 6:30 in 
the evening we pushed oft' again in a drizzling rain, and 
under a fast darkening sky. and dropped down the rapids 
under the Wabash Railroad bridge and past the lower 
end of Biddle's Island in search of a good camping 
place. Eel River was observed to be looming out into the 
Wabash as we passed its mouth. We finally found a 
beautiful spot on the south bank, half a mile below the 
lower railroad bridge. The bank was too high and 
steep to get the canoes up, so we made them fast in the 
river below, with ample provision against any probable 
risCj and prepared to camp in the shore tent. The rain 
had passed of¥ and the clouds had blown away, and the 
moon was shining brilliantly, while the wind blew great 
guns. Dave went foraging as soon as the camp equip- 
ments were up on the bank, while I put up the tent flat 
on the ground, like an A tent, without the wall, as I was 
afraid it would not stand in the gale that was blowing. 
I cooked supper on my alcohol stove inside the tent 
on account of the high wind outside, awd after our 
evening pipes around Dave's brisk camp-fire we turned 
in and slept soundly and snugly all night, although it 
was a snapping cold night outside. 
VI, 
It is surprising how hard the floor boards of a canoe 
can get in the course of a night, even when made of soft 
pine; and my experience at this camp at Attica, where we 
decided to sleep in the canoes, was quite a repetition of 
that enjoyed at Wabash, and I cannot say that I got 
much if any more sleep here than I did there. We had 
found it convenient to pitch, our camp directly under 
the lower railroad bridge, and about the time I would 
succeed, after numerous twistings and turnings, in drop- 
ping off into something like a sound sleep, a train would 
cross overhead with a thunderous roar, sufficient to 
wake a dead man, and I would find mself wide awake 
again. I think it must have been during this night's 
experience that I planned the little folding hair mattress 
that I would add to the 8ft.X2oin. cockpit, already de- 
cided upon during the ample time afforded me for re- 
flection at our night's camp at Wabash. However, day 
broke at last, and we were out early for the last twenty 
miles, of, the cruise, for we had decided to end this 
cruise at Covington, and trust to the future for an op- 
portunity to explore the lower river. We found the 
river falling as rapidly as it had risen, although, as it was 
still a couple of feet above low water mark, we had plenty 
of vyater. We dropped lazily down the river, keeping on 
the shady side as much as possible, past Williamsport, 
past the mouth of Shawnee, and in a couple of hours 
reached Portland, or rather what remained of it, for the 
old village appeared to be defunct, and a cornfield occu- 
pied its site, with here and there an abandoried old house 
tumbling to decay amid the corn. We laid by here for an 
hour for a drink of water, a smoke and a rest in the 
shade. While here a couple of young men, who were 
running the river in a skiff from Lafayette to Terre 
Haute, passed us. They had camped the night before 
on the bar off the mouth of Shawnee Creek, and stopped 
with us long enough to swap yarns and tobacco. After 
two hours more idly drifting and paddling along the 
shady side of the river, we reached Baltiinore Hill, four 
miles above Covington, where we laid by for several 
hours and enjoyed our noonday lunch, smoke and siesta 
on a shady little shelf high up on the lofty hillside, where 
the delightfully cool breeze vied with the charmingly 
beautiful landscape afforded by our elevation in niaking 
our stay a pleasant one. Finally we stepped aboard 
our canoes again and took up our paddles for the last 
reach of the cruise, every foot of" which is familiar 
ground — or water if you choose — to both Dave and 
myself; and each old familiar landmark was grettcd with 
the affection every man feels for these old friends when 
Hearing his home after long years of absence. Around 
the first bend the court house towers at Covington be- 
came visible at the end of the long down-river vista. 
We passed inside of "the islands" for old acquaintance 
sake, and dallied along under the bluffs below and past 
the old stone quarry. We passed the Adamson ford, 
with its old swimming bar; dropped around the bend 
under the old drawbridge, whose perfect reflection in the 
placid waters beneath became sadly wrinkled and' dis- 
torted in the little wavelets made by the passage of our 
canoes; and at 4:30 in the afternoon I stepped ashore at 
the old steamboat landing and drew my canoe well up 
on the rocky beach and announced "the cruise is ended." 
Our arrival was expected, and we were hardly ashore 
before a dray and a carriage were on hand, the canoes 
piled on the one and ourselves piled in the other; and in 
fifteen minutes more we wei-e boys again at home, the 
boats laid out on the grass in the front yard, the tents 
put up tor an admiring crowd and our story of our 
cruise of 160 miles and seven days being told over and 
OA'cr again. _F. R. Webb. 
A. C. A. Membership. 
Applications for membership may be jiiade to the purser of the 
division in which the applicant resides on blanks furnished by 
purser, the uppHcant becoming a member provided no objection 
be mndc "■ilh fourteen days after his name has been officially 
piibli.shcd in the Forest and Stream. 
Atlantic Divi.sion. 
James II. Olipliant, Brooklyn. 
J. Norris Oliphant, Ithaca, "N. Y. 
Charles A. Smith, Montclair, N. J. 
As the yachting journal of America, the Forest and Stream is 
the recognized medium of communication between the maker of 
yachtsmen's supplies and the yachting public. Its value for ad- 
vertising has been uemonstrated by patrons who have employed 
its columns continuously for years. 
The new rules of the German Sailing Union are in- 
teresting, as the most comprehensive and systematic at- 
tempt yet made to inaugurate a satisfactory set of rules 
and to keep them permanently up to the original standard. 
Mr. Benzon's propositions are particularly interesting to 
us in that they include the method, which we have for 
some time past advocated, of placing the racing machine 
in a class apart from the cruiser- racer. This is pro- 
vided for, as we suggested, by means of two formulae, a 
comparatively simple one for the racer and one in which 
freeboard and other essentials appear for the cruiser. An- 
other feature which we have advocated is the establish- 
ment of a body of experts which shall pass upon all 
new or doubtful features that infringe the spirit of the 
rule and threaten its successful continuance. No rule, 
however good at the outset, can be rnaintained under the 
stress of strong competition unless some such safeguard is 
established. The time has gone by when, after working 
for months to establish a supposedly better rule, the clubs 
will sit down quietly and watch it violated in spirit and 
often in letter with no attempt to protect it. 
The Benzon formula for cruisers is a distinct advance 
on the Y. R. A. rule; the latter, thi-ough the factor of 
skin girth, gives no inducement to added displacement, but 
merely puts a small tax on the fin type as compared with 
the moderate S section. The Benzon formula uses the 
difference between the skin girth, taken by a tape laid 
against the planking, and the chain girth, taken by a tape 
or chain stretched taut under the keel and touching each 
bilge, This difference places a certain amount of premium 
on the full section as compared to the fin. 
Our correspondent Sextant praises the new rules of 
tlie Y. R. A. of Massachusetts, in that they include some 
essentials of a good yacht, such as headroom, floor space, 
etc., that are not included in any of the regular formulas 
of measurement. This in itself is a very immaterial point, 
it has never been attempted to include all possible re- 
quisites of a yacht in a measurement formula, and there is 
no reason why an otherwise suitable formula should be 
thus complicated with non-essentials. The first thing 
needed is a hull of proper proportions, giving space that 
may be utilized to advantage for living room. This much 
attained, it is further necessary to demand a certain head- 
room, to ePlablish a minimum height of cabin house and 
to place plus or minus limits to variou ; other details ; it 
does not follow, however, that all of these should properly 
find a place in one complicated formula. It might be done 
if necessary • but it can be much better done by supple- 
mentary restrictions, which may be verified by the meas- 
urer, but which need not be carefully measured as factors 
of the rule. In the very important matter of headroom 
purely arbitrary restrictions are the best; as the required 
amount has no relation to the size of the vessel. A good 
all-round yacht of about 30ft. l.w.l. may and should have 
a clear 6ft. of headroom, and one of double the length 
needs as much and no more. Other details, of fore and 
aft space, go by the same standard, the height of a man, 
which is constant for all sizes of craft. A yacht of 25ft. 
l.w.l. should have one cabin about 7ft. long, at least long 
enough for a full berth; one of 30ft. will give two such 
apartments, and so on. These details at least do not vary 
directly with the size or racing measurement of a yacht, 
but must be arranged arbitrarily for each class. 
The Measurement of the Length 
Factor. 
In reviewing the development of yacht architecture in 
America during the past three years, there is very little 
to be found that can be considered as a substantial ad- 
vance. In the medium and larger classes there is prac- 
tically nothing, the few yachts built since Defender (Qui- 
setta, Syce and Kestrel) merely representing an increase 
of speed through a further perfection of the semi-fin type 
of racing yacht. Such changes as have been made are 
limited almost exclusively to the classes of 25ft. R. M. 
and under, in fact to the 20ft. and rsft. classes that have 
been built up by the contests for the Seawanhaka inter- 
national challenge cup. 
The development in these and similar classes during 
1896-7-8 has been mainly in three directions; in details of 
sails, spars, gear and fittings many improvements have 
been rnade, with a double gain in weight and in effective- 
ness; in construction many improvements have been in- 
troduced that give strength, with reduced weight, an ad- 
vance up to a certain point, but the most noticeable point 
in this connection is the extreme reached during 1898, 
in which every other consideration was sacrificed to light- 
ness and the boats were unduly expensive and utterly use- 
less after a few races. The most important of all, how- 
ever, is the aUered value of the length factor, which is a 
vital element of all methods of yacht measurement. Be- 
ginning with a mere accidental suggestion in the Sea- 
wanhaka races of 1895, the idea of increasing the effective 
sailing length and^ at the same time decreasing ihe nom- 
inal length as oflicially measured was developed to an 
extreme degree in the trial and cup races of 1896, making 
obsolete all existing yachts of the class and establishing 
an entirely new type. The characteristics of this type, as 
frequently described in the Forest and Stream, were 
a peculiar form and an abnormal angle of excessive heel, 
obtained artificially, if necessary; the result being that a 
yacht of little length and great beam in the upright or 
measuring^ position assumed a totally different form, of 
great effective length and reduced beam, when inclined to 
the proper sailing angle. Short of the extreme reached 
in Dominion, the so-called single-hull boats of the class, 
Glencairn II., Speculator, Seawanhaka and Challenger, 
all show a gain of upward of 50 per cent, in sailing length 
over measured length, as compared with the type of small 
racing yacht developed by Mr. Linton Hope and exem- 
plified by the American 15-footers of 1895. * 
While opinions differ as to the true value of this pe- 
cular development of a weak point in the rules, it has not 
yet been proven that it marks any material advance of 
yacht designing, or is other tlian a clever evasion of the 
letter of the rule. It is a very difficult matter to say how 
much of the great gain in .speed of Glencairn L, for in- 
stance, over the conventional half-raters and 15-footers, 
Lotus, Kismet, Sorceress and Ethelwj'nn, is due to actual 
improvement in designing, as compared with a mere 
evasion of the length measurement; and whether, if the 
recognized disparities in effective length at the best sailing 
angle could be properly equated, there would be any ma- 
. terial advantages on the side of the scow type. Impor- 
tant as this question has become in the small classes of 
open racing yachts, it is still more so as applied to 
larger craft. While the ability to shift a large proportion 
of the ballast is a material feature of the success of the 
scow t3rpe, thus making it less practicable as the size of 
the yacht increases and the proportion of live to fixed 
ballast decreases, it is as yet uncertain to what extent the 
Glencairn type may be enlarged; but a very limited knowl- 
edge of designing is necessary to prove to any yachtsman 
that under all existing methods of measuring the load 
waterline a strong inducement exists to follow as closely 
as possible the_ scow tyBe,, -with its long, flat floor and 
hard, angular bilge. 
So far as the old claims for the measurement of over- 
hang are concerned, they have but an incidental bearing 
on this new question; the difficulty is one that cannot be 
met by a tax on overhang, unless it goes to the point of 
actual prohibition of all overhang at either end. 
It has been suggested by different correspondents that 
the measurement of the waterline as now taken, in the 
upright position, be abandoned in all yachts, and that 
the measurement be made with each yacht inclined to 
some fixed angle; and this idea is, we believe, gaining 
ground as the true nature of Dominion, Glencairn and 
other extreme boats is being better, understood. The ' 
practical difficulty, however, is almost insurmountable; it 
would add enormously to the difficulty and expense of 
measuring if every yacht had to be heeled to some fixed 
angle and the longest .waterline at this angle marked and 
measured. While closely approximate measurements 
might be had in sorq.ej,cases from the design, there would 
still be a large number of yachts which would require 
actual measurement, and perhaps subsequent verification. 
There is one method which suggests itself to us as both 
effective and easily practicable, an addition to the present 
methods of measuring length as found in all rules of a 
requirement that in case the length of any fore and aft ele- 
ment of the load waterline plane when heeled to some limit, 
say 15 degrees, shall exceed the length of the waterline 
as now measured, twice the amount of such excess shall 
be added to the waterline. Such a doubling of the ex- 
cess is intended as a penalty heavy enough to be pro- 
hibitive of the Qencairn and scow type generally, while 
admitting on her present measurement any yacht with a 
waterline as full as Vigilant, for instance, or an3'-thing yet 
produced in the larger classes. In practical operation, the 
measurer could in nearly all cases satisfy himself by a 
mere casual inspection that the form of waterline is such 
as not to lengthen abnormally when heeled, so that only 
the usual measurement of the waterline would be neces- 
sary. If the form of the yacht is such as to cause any 
doubt in the mind of the measurer as to her being near 
the limit, it may be necessary to measure the actual water- 
line when heeled ; but the penalty is intended to distinctly 
discourage such extremes and make their actual heeling 
and measuring unnecessary. 
If it be determined that the deliberate heeling and the 
consequent lengthening of the waterline are desirable 
features, not to be discouraged, but to be recognized as 
admissible, provided they are fairly measured, then it will 
probably be necessary to measure the incHned waterline of 
every yacht, however difficult and troublesome such a pro- 
