Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1885 — HISTORICAL. [ARTICLE]

HISTORICAL.

The Mazarin Bible was so called from having been found in the Cardinal’s library. It was the first book printed with metal types, and cost $2,500. The old north of England phrase, “to carry coals to Newcastle,” finds its parallel in the Persian taunt of “carring pepper to Hindostan,” and in the Hebrew, “to carry oil to the City of Olives.” At one time the Finlanders and Lap landers drove a profitable trade by tiff sale of winds. After being paid the} knotted three magical knots and told the buyer that when he untied the first he would have a good gale, when the second a strong wind, and when the third a severe tempest. Some Frenchmen who landed on the coast of Guinea many years ago, found a negro prince seated under a tree on a block of wood for his throne, and three or four negroes armed with wooden spears for his guard. His sable majesty anxiously inquired: “Do they talk much of me in France ?” Ichabod Price, who died in New York City in March. 1862, at the age of eighty-one years, was a sergeant of a New York State artillery corps, as a volunteer in the war of 1812. He suggested to the War Department both rifled cannon and conical balls, which now perform destructive work at long distances; but he was not listened to. President Madison was so well satisfied of the genius of the sergeant that he was commissioned a lieutenant in the regular army of the United States. The room in the tower of London in which Sir Walter Raleigh was so long imprisoned is Bxl4 feet in size, and so low that it was impossible for Raleigh to stand erect in it. The walls of the room are eighteen feet in thickness, and there is only one window, an opening 10x20 inches, from which the only thing that can be seen is the blank wall of an adjoining building. Here Raleigh lived for fourteen years, never being once out of the room until the day on which he was taken to Great Tower Hill to be beheaded. The Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, called Coricancha or “Place of Gold,” was the most magnificent edifice in the Persian Empire. On the western wall, and opposite the eastern portal, was a splendid representation of the sun, the god of the nation. It consisted of a human face in gold, with innumerable golden rays emanating from it in every direction; and when the early beams of the morning sun fell upon this brilliant golden disk, they were reflected from it as from a mirror, and again reflected throughout the whole temple by the numberless plates, cornices, bands and images of gold, until the temple seemed to glow with a sunshine more intense than that of nature. Caerier pigeons have been used from a very early date, and the Castle of the Birds at Bagdad takes its name from the pigeon-post which the old monks of the convent established. The building has crumbled into ruins long ago by the lapse of time, but the bird messengers of Bagdad became celebrated as far westward as Greece, and were a regular commercial institution between the distant parts of Asia Minor, Arabia and the East. In ancient Egypt they were also brought to great perfection, and between the cities of the Nile and of the Red Sea the old traders used to send word of their caravans to each other, written on silk and tied under the wings of trained doves. An attempt is being made to account for the remarkable powers exhibited by some dogs on the presumption that “scent” is a faculty per se altogether distinct and different from the sense of smell. This is, as all philosophers must know, a misconception. The truth is that each species of animal has Borne specially developed faculty of relation by which it is, more than by other faculties, placed en rapport with the external world. The differences are great even among small classes of beings ; for example, among dogs some use sight more than smell—as the greyhound. The sense of smell is, howI ever, generally developed to a high pitch among those animals which have in a state of nature to hunt for their prey or to avoid predatory enemies. There is nothing that we can perceive difficult to understand in the intelligence exhibited by the lower animals. The scientific doctrine of evolutionary development affords a satisfactory solution of every problem, and renders the facts plain to see.