Viewing page 102 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Correspondence Between Professor Wise and Pofessor Henry.
The following highly important correspondence between Professor Wise and Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, arrested public attention throughout the country, not alone from the perilous character of the project discussed, but also because of the views expressed by such eminent authority on so important a subject:
PROFESSOR HENRY'S LETTER.
JOHN WISE: Dear Sir - I have just answered a letter from The Daily Graphic Company, which was received during my absence from the city, in which I advised that you make a preliminary voyage across the Continent, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, which, if successful, would fully establish the practicability of your proposed enterprise.
I have no doubt of the fact that, if your balloon can be sustained in the air sufficiently long, a voyage might be made across the Atlantic; but this is the point which, it would appear to me, from my partial knowledge of what has been accomplished in the art of ballooning, is yet to be satisfactorily established. No one, however, has had more experience in the art than yourself, and you ought not to venture on the hazardous voyage without the fullest assurance that the balloon can be sustained at the requisite elevation for, say, ten days.
I think it probable that over the ocean, at a considerable elevation, the tendency to meet adverse currents will be less than over the land; on the other hand, however, there will be a chance of meeting a cyclone - which might carry you around a circle of several thousand miles, and throw you back over the coast of the United States, since you would be most likely to meet the northern portion of the great whirl, which would be moving in the western direction - the only possible escape from which would be by ascending to a very high elevation. The higher temperature of the Gulf Stream tends to produce an ascent of air above it during the colder months of the year, but in summer this effect would scarcely be perceptible.
Your remark in regard to the greater velocity of the easterly motion of the balloon at night, is in accordance with meteorological principles, since at this period the unequal heating of the earth, by the direct rays of the sun, does not take place, and hence adverse currents are not as frequent. The cooling of the atmosphere in that part of the earth which is in the shadow, will tend to produce at the surface of the earth, after sunset, a westerly current, while, at a certain elevation above the earth, the current would, at the same time, be in an opposite direction. In the morning, just before and after sunrise, the current at the surface of the earth, produced by the cooling, would be eastward, while that in the atmosphere above would be westward.
As one in whose welfare I have long felt a personal interest, and who I am convinced is in earnest in regard to hazarding the perilous enterprise, I feel almost reluctant to express to you my views. While, on the one hand, I think the project in questions is possible under favorable conditions, on the other, it is undoubtedly hazardous. Furthermore, if successful, the one who achieves the enterprise will forever associate his name with the history of the progress of science, while if unsuccessful he will be considered as a reckless and foolhardy adventurer.
In conclusion, I would remark that, while I would be delighted to learn that you had successfully accomplished the feat, I would prefer that some one in whom I am lees interested were subjected to the risk. I am, very truly yours,
JOSEPH HENRY.
Smithsonian Institution, July 5, 1873.
PROFFESSOR WISE'S REPLY.
PROFESSOR HENRY: My Very Dear Sir - Your reply to my inquiries came to hand, and I thank you sincerely for the kind words in behalf of my welfare and safety. I can fully appreciate your generous advice, but you will nevertheless pardon me for my determination to make the test trip across the sea in preference to making it across the continent. Over the water we have a level road, which we should not find over the land; and the idea of dropping down upon the Nevada or Rocky Mountains is more undesirable than to drop into the sea, if misfortune of that kind should prevail. Furthermore, the transmarine augurs better success than the transmontane, for the reason you state - greater regularity of currents. I have encountered the water in lake and sea, in storm and calm, and have received no damage, which is more than can be said for earth and woods. My experience over and in the water in cases of adversity has wedded me more to its refuge than mountain range and woodland. But we hope to avoid these possibilities, in the belief that our air ships will serve us for ten days, and three should take us across if we sail high enough to override the cyclone region, for which we have provided in the greater capacity of the balloon to meet an expansion of gas in a 15,000-feet altitude, and cyclones rarely reach half that altitude. The Gulf Stream in the air as a counterpart of that of the sea I had considered as a probable contingency to enable us to reach the coast of Ireland, but as you point out the little effect of its influence in the summer time, we shall not expend any of our power in seeking for that. Our main reliance will be in a rapid transit in such stratum as shall serve us best, believing that it can be done inside of seventy hours. We are fully alive to the perils that abler heads than ours surround it with, but we fail to realize them in the emphatic manner in which they are pronounced; and it is the faith that abideth within us of its possibility that must excuse our determination to do this thing.
The unpleasantness of being deemed reckless and foolhardy is already discounted, as that is the baptism of our profession in the eyes of the many; and the few exceptions to this that we find in the sparser world of science outweighs all that sort of agony, and the success of our enterprise will compensate our good friends who stand by us on scientific principles. And if we possibly should fail to reach the other side high and dry, and be plumped into the sea, we paddle to shore, dry our clothes, and try it again, as we should then, at least, have learned the desideratum in the matter. But you may smile at the self-complacency in leaving no margin for success and risk of life. Pardon us for that weakness of having none to make, because we see only the science in the thing; and the practice of aeronauts we understand tolerably well. For me, an old advocate of aerial travel across the sea and around the world, it would be a shame to my life's profession to sneak out of the world without trying to leave an honorable record as a memorial of its ultimate utility. I feel earnestly impressed that this experiment must be made, and made successfully, and, with my good and faithful companion, Washington H. Donaldson, will try and make it so, though we shall attempt it with a paraphernalia that is comparatively as much be hind what it ought to be as were the puny caravals of Columbus to what they should have been for his aim and object. It comforts us greatly to learn that scientific men - and those who look heavenward betimes - have faith in our proposition; and we will try to make them feel not ashamed of that faith, by the effort we shall put worth. Allow me, again, to thank you for your kindly considerations, and the satisfactory answers to my inquiries, and believe me as ever, your friends and fellow citizen,
JOHN WISE.

ASHES TO ASHES.
THE CREMATION IMPROVEMENT.
A society exists in New York whose purpose is to encourage cremation as a substitute for the burial of the dead, and the subject is at present attracting much attention both in this country and Europe. There are many things to be said in favor of this revival of an ancient custom, and so many against it that there is little probability of its ever being established in America. The favorable side of the question is briefly presented in the following article from the pen of a famous scientist and contributor to this paper:
CREMATION
Civilization is periodic in its progress and decline. The history of the Bible and the history of Rome will be repeated, and in many things is now being enacted. Embalming and cremating will again find its repetition as our modern civilization advances. What seems barbarous and unrefined at first thought, may become classic and desirable to the intelligent upon mature analysis of its merits in the direction of a higher plane of civilization. There can be nothing more impressive in the funeral rites than the urning of the ashes of the dead after the solemn dirge attendant upon the ceremonies of our departed friends. The memorial urn becomes a household spirit, and its sacred ashes continually remind us of the way we must all go sooner or later. The last of earth of a dearly beloved child, of any kindred, as enshrined in the sacred urn, appeals more impressively to our affections and God-like attributes, that does the idea of a damp, dismal vault, or a cold and dark grave, where the worm fattens upon the smoldering flesh of the departed.
There are many excellencies in the fashion of cremation over that of our mode of burying the dead. Grave yards have no claims upon the sanitary considerations and well-being of communities. They are behind the age of refinement. They are nurseries of epidemics. They propogate disease of the atmosphere by the effluvia of death dealing virus in the form of blood poisoning pores. The exhalation of a decomposing body which died of small-pox, may infect a whole city, and through that produce its epidemic over a great area of territory that is thickly inhabited. Cremate the body and the virus of its disease is neutralized, and the ashes may be preserved without danger of propagating disease and death.
While it is more impressive, more in accordance with scientific refinement, more in accordance with the instincts of a soothing memorial, it is less expensive than the pageants of plumed carriages, and fenced out lots that look more like menagerie cages than sacred enclosures for the remains of those whom we cherish in our memories.

CREMATION.
THE BENEFIT TO HEALTH.
Editor Evening Herald:
It is a scientific question with more than probability for its verisy that epidemical diseases can only be perpetuated by the transmission of virus from infected bodies to uninfected bodies. Perpetuation by transmission is a law of nature throughout its whole design. The animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdom are all subject to its order. Life and death are correlative. Reciprocal functions they are. The living organic tissue is built up of protoplasmic masses. Protoplasmic masses result from bodies after death. The white corpuscles of our blood are living animals. The death dealing spore exhaled from the decomposing body is the virile animal that vitiates our blood when we inhale it from the infectious atmosphere in which it floats, and into which it was cast from our grave yards. This is the scientific plea for cremation.
To destroy the virility and power of propagation of these infecting spores we must cremate our dead. Fire is the purifier of infected and infectious things. Fire will eradicate the farmer's greatest enemy - the germinating power of the seeds of ill weeds. Fire is the best known agent to save us from the dire results of the charnel house.
Cremation is the word of the intelligent - the refined mind. Cremation has no terrors for it. Enlightenment and cremation will travel side by side.
Fixed fashions and fogyish ideas are not easily dispelled I know. Weak minded innocent people will fear the fire of cremation more than the fire of perdition at first thought, no doubt, but let a score or more of the elite of society once lead off in the matter of sepulture by the classic pyre, and all the world will pray to be cremated then.
"What seems to us but dim funerial fire,
May be Heaven's distant lamp,"
Why, a hundred acres of dead bodies in all the various stages of decomposition, with their exhalations of various diseases, compounded in the atmosphere and transmitted by its agency into our lungs and blood, is enough to make the most conservative mind shrink from the barbarous fashion of perpetuating disease and innoculating death upon the living, by the present fashion of sepulture. It is enough to propagate a death-wave that will spread over the whole country and form an epidemic upon a continent.
It is matter for statesmen, philosophers and scientists to consider, and the sanitary requirements of the age call for a revision of social progress in this line of our civilization. Our present mode of sepulture is a true exemplification of "Let the dead bury the dead." Cremation responds to it in the spirit of progress and refinement, "Let the living take care of the living." Destroy the protoplasmic germ that lurks in our living bodies awaiting an opportunity to turn on us and devour us. He is a good servant but makes a bad master. Cremation is his antidote.