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In the modern turbine a glowing coal fire, kept intensely hot by an artificial draft, has taken the place of the blazing sticks; the coils of steel tubes carrying the boiling water surrounded by flame replace the bronze-figure boiler, and the whirling, tightly jacketed turbine wheels, that use every ounce of pressure and save all the steam, to be condensed to water and used over again, have grown out of the crude machine invented by Branca.
At about a league distance, we commenced the ascent of the Serra D'Ora Branca, which was almost impracticable even for our mules. It is so steep and difficult, that it is the universal custom to dismount, to which, I believe, I formed the only exception, an undertaking of considerable hazard to ride either up, or down, this mountain.
As the engines of the Arrow are but perfected copies of the engine that drove the Clermont, so the power of the Turbina is derived from steam-motors that work on the same principle as the engine built by Branca in 1629, and his steam-turbine following the same old, old, ages old idea of the moss-covered, splashing, tireless water-wheel.
Every one of these minor firms claimed and received the privilege of drawing bills on Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca for amounts varying from four to six thousand pounds on no better security than a verbal understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before they fell due. Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of this insanely reckless system of trading.
"Yes," said Lingard, "we have met very few ships since we left Pedra Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But for all that, Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind. Every island in it is an eye. And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters " He did not finish his sentence. Shaw put his hands in his pockets, and propped his back against the sky-light, comfortably.
"It was vile. He was younger than the other, and knew less." Those who had won laughed. Those who had lost cursed him again; he had disgraced his branca. They would flay him, and put him in the cauldron over the wood fire, and would curse him even whilst they picked his bones for a white-livered spawn of cowards; a son of a thrice-damned ewe. The girl knew that was what they do.
About eleven, we arrived at the village of Ora Branca, so called from the light colour of the gold procured here, the gravel or sand of every stream, henceforward, produces a greater or lesser proportion of gold. The owner of the house where we refreshed, had a collection of mineralogical specimens, which interested Captain Lyon very much, he being himself a collector.
Teresa Milanollo, a celebrated violinist of the past century, published a number of compositions for her instrument, besides various works for piano. Among other piano composers in Italy during the nineteenth century may be mentioned Teresa de Blasis, Natalie Bertini, Eugenia Appiani, Bertha Frugoni, Clary Zentner, and Adele Branca Mussini.
In 1629, Giovanni Branca of Loretto in Italy, an engineer and architect, proposed to work mills and other machinery by steam blowing against vanes, much in the same way as water does in turning a wheel.
So in the seventeenth century, when the Norman, Solomon de Caus, claimed that with the vapour of boiling water he could move carriages and navigate ships, Cardinal Richelieu had him put in prison as a madman. About 1628 an Italian, Giovanni Branca, invented an engine which had the essential features of the modern turbine, but his crude apparatus lacked efficiency.
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