That is why it appeared to the passengers that all at once every tie that bound this smooth steel track that should lead from the hoary heights to the verdant vale. And the gentle curves made cradles of the human-burdened train to the track parted, cars, and the happy maiden in high Five and the mad train began to fall down the dreamed she was at home in her hammock, mountain. Away they went like the wind. while the man of the road went peacefully On they went through the fiery furnace like to sleep in upper Six, feeling that he had a frightened spirit flying from the hearth. shown all the wonders of the West to at of hell. The enginemen were almost suffoleast one passenger in that train-load of cated in the cab, while the paint was peeled people. from the Pullman cars as a light snow is swallowed by the burning sun on a sandy desert. The engineer reached for the rope, and the long, low “toooo toooo-too toot went out upon the midnight air, and the women folks whispered a little prayer for the weary watcher in the engine cab, placed their precious lives in his left hand, and went to sleep again. The long train creaked and cracked on the sharp corners, and as the last echo of the steam-whistle died away in the distant hills, slid swiftly from the short tangent and was swallowed up by a snowshed. At that moment the fire leaped from a clump of pinions, and the sun-dried snowshed flashed aflame like a bunch of grass in a prairie fire. It had required the united efforts of three locomotives to haul the train up the hill, and the engineer knew that to stop was to perish in the fire, as he was utterly unable to back out of the burning building. At last the light is gone, they dash out into the night-out into the pure mountain air; the brakes are applied, the speed is slackened, the women are still frightened, but the conductor assures them that the danger is past. Now they can look back and see the burning sheds falling. The "schoolmarm" shudders as she climbs back to her berth, and an hour later they are all asleep. At Gunnison they get another locomotive, a fresh crew, and the train winds on toward the Pacific slope. The engine is stabled in her stall at the round-house. The driver walks about her, pats her on the neck, and talks to her as he would to a human being: "Well, old girl, we got through, didn't we? But it was a close call." THE CAPTURE OF NIAGARA. BY E. JAY EDWARDS. CAPITAL the repute it bears. No finer APITAL is not always timid, though display of business courage was ever made than that exhibited by Peter Cooper, Cyrus W. Field, and a few others, when they staked millions on the experiment of the first Atlantic cable. In a few weeks there will have been completed another enterprise having the commercial use of electricity as its end, which, involving the expenditure of a very great sum of money, furnishes a new illustration that capital can be courageous, at least on occasion; for that work which has been in progress alongside the Niagara waterfall for some four years is, after all, experimental, and the capitalists cannot know until the plant is finished, the tests are made, and the electric power is furnished, whether the undertaking is going to bring them profit, or whether they have paid dearly for their faith THE PURPOSE OF THE PLANT. The power-producing plant now near completion at Niagara Falls is an experiment, however, only as regards the commercial availability of the electric current to be generated. The use of some portion of the power captured from the Niagara cataract as a direct force brought to bear upon turbine wheels, so that they may move the machinery of immense mills, and as many mills as can be erected within the territory controlled by the company, is not experimental. None of the experts doubted the ability of the engineers, mechanical and hydrographic, to construct a plant that would furnish a water-power equivalent to all of the power used in the city of Buffalo for every commercial purpose. The driving of the greatest paper-making machine in the world by this water-power has not sand horse-power is diverted from the Niagara current, and the amount of water is as inappreciable, almost, in its effect upon the Rapids, as would be the withdrawal of a hogshead of water from the ocean. It is the design to secure perhaps as much as fifty thousand horsepower from the force of the Niagara current, by diverting it into turbine wheels for direct application. This of itself would create one of the greatest water-power plants in the world, and, if cost, transportation facilities, and other conveniences of manufacture are found to be satisfactory to the manufacturers, would be sure to rear upon the banks of the Niagara, before many years, a city rivalling Lowell, or Lawrence, or any of the great manufacturing towns in New England which have sprung into flourishing existence because water-power was near. But it was not the development of waterpower as a direct agent chiefly that led capitalists to put their money into the development of a power-producing plant. Their plan contemplated the conversion of some portion of the force of the Niagara current into electric power, and the delivery of that power to communities at least fifty, probably a hundred, and possibly five hundred miles or more away. Of course the mechanical engineers have long been aware that the power which goes to waste over PHOTOGRAPHED FROM SEAL OF THE CATARACT CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. only been proved possible by practice, but it was proved possible even before the first stone was blasted from those rocky banks to make place for the foundations of the mill. To-day this colossal machine, dragonlike in its length and suggestion, the longest single piece of machinery in operation in any of the factories in the world, runs as smoothly, and delivers its finished product as perfectly, as the most exacting of mechanics or manufacturers could demand. To effect this only a little over three thou THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMPANY, the Niagara precipice is sufficient to turn the wheels of probably every manufactory in the United States, if it could be com- It is now nearly five years since a few of municated to them. For years a little of the citizens of Niagara Falls determined the Niagara force has been utilized at the to attempt the organization of a company Falls; paper-mills and other manufactories to develop the Niagara water power and have long been established there. But the supply from it electrical power to near-by expense of utilizing the power on any large manufactories, and perhaps to the city of scale by the diversion of it to water wheels Buffalo. They met with the usual discour to try and interest them, if he were once interested himself. would have closed his ears to it entirely. As it was, it seemed to him too magnificent, almost too sublime, a scheme. upon his enlistment followed, under his influence, the enlistment of other important people. The company was organized, the needful money provided, the contracts given out, and upon a beautiful day in the spring of 1891, with appropriate and impressive ceremonies, the first spadeful of earth was turned. Mr. Stetson is a very busy lawyer. He is not a constructor, but a critic. It has However, he was at last persuaded, and not been his business to conceive and execute any of those plans which have developed into the greater business establishments of these years, but it has been his vocation to criticise, to view with the lawyer's eyes, to satisfy the statutes, and to show those who do plan what their rights and responsibilities are under the law. Therefore it was natural that, when the proposition to capture and control for the market some portion of Niagara's water power was made to him, he should The enterprise so fraught with difficulties. be little disposed to listen. Perhaps, had in the mere getting organized, involved in the suggestion been made by one who its execution yet more trying problems. was not an old and valued friend, he It was necessary to determine not only the A WORK OF THE LARGEST DIFFICULTIES. JUNCTION OF THE MAIN TUNNEL AND THE WHEEL-PITS. mechanical possibilities contained in the plan of construction, but also whether the expense entailed would be reasonable or would be so great as to make it prohibitive. And back of all others lay the ever-perplexing question whether the electric current, having been produced, could also be made available for delivery at considerable distances from the plant. On this the opinions of some engineers were discouraging. The reports of others had something of hope in them; but it was the splendid confidence of so great an engineer as Dr. Coleman Sellers, supplemented by that of Lord Kelvin, Mr. Clemmens Herschel, and one or two others, upon which the faith of the capitalists was based. The problem was, perhaps, not wholly solved in theoretical demonstration until Nicola Tesla, that illuminating wizard of electricity, persuaded these capitalists that he had discovered and, in great measure, perfected mechanical appliances which would make it possible to deliver the electric current, under complete control, and without costly loss from waste, a long distance; certainly as far as Buffalo and Rochester, and, as he himself firmly believed, as far as Albany, three hundred miles away. Mr. Tesla also has faith that, with the improvements suggested by experience, it will be possible by and by to deliver the current at fairly competitive prices as far away as New York City on the east, and as Cleveland and other of the greater towns in Ohio on the west. Whether Mr. Tesla's views are correct, is something that is yet to be tested. We cannot know, in fact, whether the electric current can be delivered with commercial profit to any considerable distance from the plant until (which will be a few weeks hence) the turbine wheels are actually started, their colossal power is delivered to the dynamos, and, after being by them converted into electricity, is conveyed thence to the testing points. The scientific world is awaiting these experimental tests as it awaited the first flashing of the message through the Atlantic cable; and the world of commerce and manufacture is awaiting them with no less interest. In Great Britain, lacking any colossal water power like Niagara, it is already proposed to set up sufficient plants at the coal mines for the local conversion of the coal into electricity, to be delivered all over England and Scotland; and this will surely be done if the Niagara enterprise succeeds. THE FEEDING CANAL. The power plant proper consists first of an inlet canal situated about a mile and a half up the river from the American Falls. This canal is really a great reservoir into which the water backs. The opening, or great, gates, are placed not at the upper but at the lower end, the end nearest the Falls. That was done because the engineers believed that the current would be too strong if the water was admitted directly from the river. It therefore goes in by |