United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The steamers got up to the town, and the Mahdi's flags were flying everywhere, and the vessels were peppered with shot from all the batteries. There is other bad news. Wilson's steamers both ran aground, and cannot be got off. Beresford is to go up and bring the party off, that is, if he can fight his way past the batteries. You see, that is what the firing in Metemmeh yesterday was about.
"I wouldna fear anything of that kind," said Mrs Snow; "I mind them all so well." "Do you ever think you would like to go back again?" said Will. "Would not you like to see the old faces and the old places once more?" "No, lad," said Mrs Snow, emphatically. "I have no wish ever to go back." "You are afraid of the sea? But the steamers are very different from the old `Steadfast'."
"What the devil do you mean " "W'y, yer ludship, four pounds jus pyes yer passyge; I thought you understood." "My passage! But I can come across by steamer for thirty shillings, first-class " "Aw, but them steamers! Tricky, they is, and unsyfe ... No, yer gryce, the W. Stryker Packet Line Lim'ted, London to Antwerp, charges four pounds per passyge and no reduction for return fare."
Most of them were from Logan's division, composed generally of men from the southern part of Illinois and from Missouri. All but two of the steamers were commanded by volunteers from the army, and all but one so manned.
I had added six from Cairo, and built a seventh; thus I left a force of eleven steamers working on the river, exclusive of two in sections. In this position of affairs Colonel Gordon succeeded to the command in the spring of 1874. Although the Bari tribe, which had been subdued, was nominally at peace, it was hardly safe to travel through the country without an armed escort.
Some of the houses on the river banks appeared to be tenanted by white people, but the majority had a haunted, desolate appearance, the only signs of life being strolling soldiers, who thrust their legs through the second story windows, or contemplated the river from the chimney-tops, and groups of negroes who sunned themselves on the piazza, or rushed to the margin to gaze and grin at the passing steamers.
For no mammal bringing forth but one young a year can stand, when their young are just born and are entirely helpless, being attacked by huge steel-protected steamers carrying hundreds of men with modern rifles or even clubs. Advantage is also taken of the maternal instinct to get the mothers as well as the young "fat," if the latter is not obtainable in sufficient quantities.
These birds were in former days called, from their extraordinary manner of paddling and splashing upon the water, race-horses; but now they are named, much more appropriately, steamers. Their wings are too small and weak to allow of flight, but by their aid, partly swimming and partly flapping the surface of the water, they move very quickly.
A private wherry anchored opposite the village above the Thelma was the only craft in the river, and a few trawlers and coasting steamers far out were the only vessels to be seen at sea. Nothing could have less suggested the likelihood of anything in the shape of "adventure," and I caught my whiting and dabs in blissful peace of mind.
It was in this present era, when steamers were gaining their now unquestioned victory, and not during previous eras, when steam was completely unknown, that sailing craft reached their highest development. Sails increased to eight on the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, and they were better cut and set than ever before. Yachts and merchantmen cannot be fairly compared in the matter of their sails.
Word Of The Day