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tion of their capacity. It is greater economy to double up the locomotives on the comparatively few trains that require that power in excess of what one will develop. The two may be operated without any additional crew, it must be understood.

These locomotives are very interesting. Tender, cab, cylinders, connecting rods, dome, smokestack, have disappeared. They look to be all cab. Only the cowcatcher and the headlight of the old order remain. The engineer and his assistant have about them only a few knobs and handles. The corridor running from end to end-for these locomotives have no front and rear; they are doubleheaders, needing no turntable at the end of the run-these corridors are walled with steel. Behind these walls are muzzled cyclones hard at work.

The countless millions of electrons rush from the transmission line to the

motors, which are the essence of being of the locomotive. Here their energy is wrested from them and they are made to do work in driving the train, after which they return to the line to again complete their cycle.

It is true that direct current and alternating current in combination had been used before for light service on certain unimportant lines. But the enormous weight of the trains, the volume of the traffic, and the character of the service, make the New Haven's a real pioneer work. When its experts began to study the problem of electrifying these twentyone miles they were told to keep in mind the ultimate electrification of the whole Shore Line route between New York and Boston. It now seems likely that this railroad thus has made a very valuable contribution to the great railway problem of the future-a uniform system of electrification.

True Liberty

When love with unconfined wings

Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at my grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered with her eye,

The birds that wanton in the air

Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups pass swiftly round With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses crowned, Our hearts with loyal flames;

When thirsty grief with wine we steep,

When health and draughts go freeFishes that tipple in the deep

Know no such liberty.

-RICHARD LOVELACE.

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66

NATURE TURNED SORCERESS

"N

By

WILLIAM THORNTON PROSSER

OW you see it, and now you don't," is a sign that Nature might well display over a little group of islands in Bering Sea, where the great Mother of the Universe plays the part of sorceress, coaxing mountain-tops from the depths of the ocean and making them disappear again in the twinkling of an eye, amid a demonstration that only a favored few have witnessed. The stage that Nature uses for her works of magic is apart from the main lanes of ship travel just to the northward of the long string of Aleutian islands that swings from America almost to the Asiatic

shore. In no part of the world do remarkable seismic disturbances more frequently recur than in this isolated spot. So often do these large-scale acts of legerdemain transpire that no visitor at Nature's black art theatre ever expects to see the conjured islands in the same form upon a second visit.

It was in September of this last season that the most recent performance was given at the Bogoslofs-for such is the name of the enchanted Bering Sea group. The officers and crew of the revenue cutter Tahoma, which had recently returned to Puget Sound from a summer cruise in the vicinity of Pribilof seal

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rookeries, were spectators at the birth of a new mountain peak, and their description of the awe-inspiring sight as a steaming mass of lava was raised above the water's surface, sending a pillar of flame and vapor miles into the heavens, while lightning and thunder accompanied the spectacle, proves that every scenic effect was called into play to produce a mighty. triumph of the of the cosmic forces.

PHOTO BY LARGER,

UNITED STATES CRUISER Buffalo, RECONNOITERING IN ALASKAN WATERS.

Nor is the volcanic action confined to this one isolated spot in the dreary wastes of Bering Sea; for when Bogoslof plunges into a series of activities the effect as a rule can be felt a thousand miles and more along the Alaskan shore.

Accompanying the last upheaval of the Bogoslofs, Alaska's most active volcano, Mt. Makushin, near Unalaska, has been in eruption, and vessels plying between Seattle and Nome reported its sides and top covered with chocolate colored effluvia, while smoke and steam arose from its crater.

Originally Bogoslof was a jagged rock rising out of Bering Sea. With turrets and buttresses it looked like a feudal castle, and after the United States acquired Alaska from Russia it came to be known as Castle Rock. Admiral Bogoslof of the Russian navy had charted the island in 1790. Castle Rock seemed to alter its size and shape between the visits of different ships, and between the seasons of 1886 and 1887 there sprang into being a second island

PHOTO BY BASSER

about four miles to the northwest. Castle Rock was about sixty miles to the northwestward of Unalaska.

When the United States revenue cutter Perry approached the islands in 1906 the officers found that a new peak had risen out of the sea between Castle Rock and Fire Island. This was named Perry Peak. Smoking and steaming, it looked like a gigantic new-made pudding. The three islands in the Bogoslof archipelago were estimated to be about 800 feet in height.

It was on the Fourth of July, of the following year, that the revenue cutter McCulloch passed the Bogoslof, and there out of the sea another peak had raised its head, this one right by the side of Perry Island and virtually forming a part of the year-old mound. This was called McCulloch Peak. Evidently it had just come into being, for it was formed of soft earth mingled with great boul

MCCULLOCH PEAK, SMOKING AND STEAMING, AT THE SIDE OF PERRY

PEAK.

ders, and from its fissures great clouds of steam constantly arose to heaven.

But this peak was destined for a short life. Passing the Bogoslofs September 1, 1907, the whaler Herman, of San Francisco, after a season in the Arctic, beheld the disappearance of McCulloch while flame shot up through clouds of steam and smoke, and the super

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stitious sailors foresaw the end of mundane things. It happened that the United States auxiliary cruiser Buffalo, commanded by Capt. Charles F. Pond, sent north to investigate the sealing operations about the Pribilof Islands, was not far away, and when Captain Pond heard of a shower of ash on the nearby islands he determined to head for the Bogoslofs and see what new act of legerdemain had been worked among those restless islands. When the Buffalo reached the spot Captain Pond found that since the visit of the revenue cutter McCulloch, earlier in the season, the strangest alterations had taken place, for the three islands had been merged into one, and the sea was 2,000 feet deep where McCulloch Peak had stood.

At one end of the new island stood Castle Rock, changed beyond recognition, by the latest disturbance, and with its outline softened and smoothed by a coating of volcanic dust and lava. Perry Perry Peak had been much reduced in height, and a low bar of land connected the three bits of higher ground.

"Rocks as large as a house were occasionally detached from the sides of Perry Peak," Captain Pond related, "rolling down with thunderous noises to the

water's edge. Strange to relate, a colony of sea lions that for several years had made their home south of Castle Rock, were flourishing despite their proximity to the center of activity, and were apparently enjoying the warm waters that surrounded the island."

. About this time the steamship Pennsylvania arrived at Nome with her decks sprinkled with ash, and reported that analysis of this effluvia showed the presence of gold. Coincident with the disappearance of McCulloch Peak earthquake shocks were felt along the coast of Alaska to the eastward and a number of uncharted rocks made their appearance, even in southeastern Alaska. It was a little later than this that the government cable between Sitka and Valdez was snapped by the sudden rising of a submarine mountain.

Perry Peak lived a few months longer, but it had disappeared when the United States fisheries cutter Albatross visited the Bogoslof group July 7, 1908. A narrow band of land then joined Castle Rock and Fire Island, but the officers of the Albatross beheld a new manifestation of the restive forces beneath the sea. What seemed to be the surface of the water adjoining the strip of land rose up

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MCCULLOCH PEAK, JUST BEFORE IT DISAPPEARED UNDER TWO THOUSAND FEET OF WATER.

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in a gigantic dome-like swelling, as large as the dome of the capitol at Washington. Then it subsided, only to rise again. Before each subsidence there was a tremendous escape of gas, like a huge bubble pushing its way through the water.

A DISTANT VIEW OF THE SMOKY ISLAND OF BOGOSLOF.

Following this phenomenon great clouds of smoke and steam issued from the same spot, gradually growing in immensity until the spellbound spectators began to fear they would be engulfed in a terrific cataclysm. The sky was filled with seething clouds of vapor, while fire, smoke and white hot lava streamed from this sea-level volcanic crater. The column that rose heavenward officers of the Albatross declare was three miles in diameter.

The cutter Perry was the next visitor to the islands, and found a new-made

peak on the site of the old Perry Peak. Members of the crew led by officers braved the danger and stood upon the shore of Bogoslof, but the heat was so great they could not long remain.

It was September 10 of this last season when the revenue cutter Manning first approached the Bering Sea volcano, and the adventurous spirits insisited on going ashore. Changes were many since the Perry had been upon the scene. Again Perry Peak had become two small mountains. Evidence of terrific heat was plain, not only in the coating of lava, moulten and dust, that covered the island, but in the skeletons of multitudes of sea

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