Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

were never conquered by the Spaniards. It is said that the women of this race have from time immemorial been able to maintain supremacy over the weaker male sex, leaving the men at home to take care of the house and children, while they carry heavy burdens to market on their heads. They are very handsome, these women, and their native costume is most artistic, including a picturesque headdress.

Not far from Salina Cruz is the city of Tehuantepec, with 10,000 inhabitants, most of whom live in adobe dwellings. Minititlan, the principal town on the Atlantic coast, is mainly composed of open thatched houses, with a few of brick, which are the residences of the better class of natives and of a sprinkling of English and Americans.

Some day in the not distant future, it is expected, the Tehuantepec Railroad will be double-tracked throughout, thus augmenting greatly its facilities for traffic. Up to the present time it has cost $35,000,000-exactly half of what we have paid for the scarce-begun Panama Canal. There is every reason to suppose that it will be opened for business in the coming autumn, and in all likelihood it will be in full operation for many years before the Panama ditch is completed, affording a pathway for a large part of the commerce of the world.

[graphic][ocr errors]
[graphic][subsumed]

T

HE boring of what will be the longest tunnel in the United States, and one of the longest in the world, has very recently been determined upon by the Central Pacific Railroad Company.

Chief Engineer William Hood has finished plans and reports for the proposed gigantic six-mile hole to be bored through the Sierra Nevada mountains, in California, a short distance west of the town of Truckee, Arizona.

The object of this great tunnel is to cut down the present mountain climb of 7,017 feet by fully 3,000 feet, and thus eliminate many of the present curves and much of the grade. Chief Engineer Hood's reports contain some modifications of his first series of surveys, made some years ago, and these will doubtless be approved by President Harriman; and work, it is expected, will very soon be commenced on this great tunnel.

It is estimated that the tunnel will cost not less than $10,000,000, and that among other things it will cheapen the annual expense of operating trains over the mountain division by fully $100,000. Being over 36,000 feet in length, the tunnel will be one of the longest in the world, and certainly the longest in the United States. The longest now in existence on this continent is the 16,000foot bore in the Cascade Range in Washington, on the Great Northern Railroad.

By recently building the Lucin cut-off across the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, thereby reducing the distance by 40 miles and eliminating a great many curves and reducing all grades between Reno and Ogden to one per cent or less, the company greatly strengthened its road as a freight and passenger carrier against the forthcoming competition of the Western Pacific. The latter expects to be enabled at the very start to divert a good share of the traffic from the Central Pacific, and for that reason is building the new road with 85-pound steel rails and with a one per cent grade through the Sierra Nevada mountains, whereas the Central Pacific has a grade of 2.3 per cent.

In point of distance the Central Pacific is 97 miles shorter than the Western Pacific as designed by the engineers, between San Francisco and Salt Lake. In profile, the Western Pacific saves a climb of 2,000 feet over the Sierra Nevada, for its highest elevation on the mountains will be but 5,019 feet and with no extensive system of snow sheds like that along the Ceneral Pacific. The Gould system, therefore, as planned and constructed, will, it is asserted, be a cheaper line to operate on through traffic than the Central Pacific without the big mountain tunnel.

So it is deemed absolutely necessary for the Central Pacific to bore such a gigantic tunnel in the very near future.

[graphic]

COLORADO RIVEK NEAR WHERE IT EMERGES FROM ITS LAST CANYON.

in order that this through line west of Salt Lake may be placed on an even basis with the Gould road in the all-important matter of cheapness of operation. The Gould line as planned will come into competition with the Harriman line at nine points between the two terminals, and will cross a number of small local roads in California and Nevada which now feed the Central Pacific alone.

It is estimated that three years at least will be required to complete this giant

tunnel, even if operations are crowded forward as expeditiously as possible. Besides working at each end of the tunnel, operations will be carried on between. This will be done by sinking shafts at intervals down to the proper level and working each way. This will, of course, be attended with much difficulty, as all the excavated rock and earth will have to be hoisted, and all the necessary material for the interior of the tunnel lowered.-J. MAYNE BALTIMORE.

D'

IPLOMACY is the art of getting something as though you were giving it.

The world may owe you a living, but you must collect it yourself. Providence provides food for the birds but does not throw it in their nests.

Gold in a Thousand Sand Pits

By Waldon Fawcett

HERE may be a rich gold mine in your back yard, if you happen to be living on the site of an ancient lake. In scores of places, scattered all over the country, there are pits and mounds of black sand, out of which gold, platinum and other precious minerals may be extracted. The national government, itself, is the promoter of this latest mining sensation, which promises to make as many over-night gold-kings as the discovery of Alaska, itself.

Uncle Sam is not carrying out his new enterprise on the lines of the old-time prospector, who sought deposits of gold where none were known to exist before.

Instead, he is demonstrating that the glittering mineral may be taken in paying quantities from sources that have heretofore been regarded as not only unproductive, but absolutely worthless. In other words, gold deposits, that were of too low a grade to be worked profitably under the old conditions, are being made paying propositions by the aid of the new methods devised by the government scientists and engineers.

The disclosure of this new source of mineral wealth came about in rather an odd way. The United States has long been dependent for its supply of platinum upon the mines of Siberia and other natural storehouses in foreign countries. When the Russo-Japanese War advanced

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

the price to almost prohibitive figures and threatened, if it continued, to cut off the source of supply, the officials of the U. S. Geological Survey speedily came to the conclusion that it would be an excellent thing if this country could be made selfsufficient in the matter of platinum supply, as it is in so many other natural re

sources.

It had long been known that platinum existed in marketable quantities in what are known as the "black sands" of the Pacific Coast, but the deposits were practically useless because of the lack of an efficient and economical method of concentration or treatment. It was to the solution of this problem that the government experts applied themselves. As a first step a general invitation was extended to Pacific Coast property owners, whose holdings included such deposits, to send to the government samples of the wealth-bearing sand for free tests and there was a generous response, thousands of samples being received, varying in quantity from sacks of a few hundred pounds to carload lots.

The lay reader should not get the idea that "black sand" simply refers to one grade of sand to be found on the ordinary ocean beach. In its broadest significance the term applies to the heavy sediment that is left wherever water has had an opportunity to work on the soil. To be sure, there are great expanses of this sand on the sea beaches, but there are likewise extensive deposits of it, inland, at points which, if not now reached by rivers or other waterways, have in ages gone by been subjected to wave action. Wherever hydraulic mining has been carried on there are quantities of the material. Indeed, the placer miners have, in most instances, realized that they were discarding material that yet held some valuable deposits, but, with the equipment at the disposal of the average miner, it would have proven too tedious and too costly to attempt to recover it.

When the response to Uncle Sam's invitation for samples of black sand for testing purposes brought a goodly accumulation from all parts of the Pacific Slope, as well as from Idaho, Wyoming

« PreviousContinue »