USA > Pennsylvania > Crawford County > Pioneer sketches : scenes and incidents of former days > Part 25
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In Colorado have been found great deposits of the bones of the Tetanosaur, the largest land animal that ever existed. They grew to be forty feet long and sixty feet high when erect upon their hind legs. Instead of browsing, as did the Brontrosaur and Triceratops, upon the luxurious and aquatic vegetation around the lake borders, they fed upon the foliage of trees on the mountain sides. Likewise did the Inguanadon, several times as heavy as an elephant, which had a nipping beak like a turtle's, and also walked erect, using its huge tail for support, and towering to the height of forty or fifty feet. In the Mesozoic epoch, or "Age of Reptiles," when the creature described lived, these and other herbineferous animals were the largest of the beasts. One of these, the Atlantosaur, was 100 feet long, its thigh bones measuring eighty feet in length and twenty-three inches through. They had various ways of pursuing existence. Some went on all fours and had back bones that were mere shells filled with warm air from the lungs, which served them as boats while they walked in the sea shallows in water deep enough to cover their backs, extending their long necks to crop vegetation along the shore. Of this sort was the Camera-Saures, eighty feet in length. Others had enormously long hing legs, on which they were able to wade far out into the ocean after sea weeds, and were provided with not fewer than 2,000 teeth for grinding their food. Such was the mighty kangaroo- like Hadrosaures. Yet other species dwelt on land like the Triceratops, and these were usually provided with armor and horns for defense against their enemies.
It would seem as if such monsters as are above de- scribed need have feared no living foes, but in fact they were common prey to great numbers of frightful carniver-
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ous reptiles smaller in size but of tremendous activity and fierceness, which fed upon these unwieldy vegetable eating giants.
Most terrifie of all, perhaps, was the incredibly fero- cious Laelaps, which were twenty-five feet long, stood forty feet high on its hind legs, and was built like a kangaroo. It was the most astonishing jumper that ever existed, with teeth for cutting and sharpelaws on the front feet that were evidently designed for tearing out the eyes of victims or adversaries.
Hardly less formidable and equally large was the Ste- gossanr, which was sheathed in armor plates from two to three feet in width and employed as a weapon of offense its powerful tail armed near the end on both sides with sharp spikes two feet long. This animal walked ereet also, and one of its peculiarities was a great enlargement of the spinal cord of the lower end of the back. In fact this ex- pansion of the brain material intended to provide for the wagging of the mighty spiked tail, was ten times as big as the brain in the skull itself.
Equally large and dangerous were the Meyolasaur and the Dinosaur. Their jaws were armed with huge sabre-like teeth, and they went about on their hind legs looking for something to devour. Specimens of all these are included in the collection for permanent exhibition at the National Mu- seum. Of course they represent but a few of the countless species of giant beasts that roamed over the earth in droves during this vanished epoch. They walked upon land, swam the seas, flew through the air, climbed trees, and did every- thing the mammals do nowadays. There were many kinds of crocodiles 50 feet from snout to tail, whereas the largest ones now are not more than 15 feet. It is supposed that
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those strange antedeluvian water fowl were wiped out by the mighty swimming lizards.
The turtles attained a length of 20 feet and measured seven feet in height.
It is not only the age of reptiles, however, that is rep- resented by the unparalleled collection described. Before that came the epoch of the fishes, when they ran the world and had things pretty much to themselves. Of this era the government has gathered together a vast quantity of fossil relics. The face of the earth did not then look at all as it does now. Most of what are now called continents had not been upheaved above the ocean; nearly everywhere was sea, with comparatively small land masses elevated out of it. The atmosphere was hot, moist, and loaded with carbonic acid, so as to be unbearable.
In the ocean swam enormous armored fish, such as the tymisthys, which were fifteen feet long and had such tre- mendous jaws and teeth and they could have bitten a man in two as easily as you could a radish. Later on came sharks of the fiercest type, which must have been as much as seventy feet in length at least. The biggest tooth of a man eater to-day is about an inch long, while the teeth of the ancient sharks, which are found in enormous numbers, measure more than six inches.
This was the golden age of the sealy tribe. The great reptiles that appeared on the scene in a subsequent epoch were wiped out of existence by the great cataclysm which upheaved the Rocky Mountains, the Alps and the Hima- layas and brought to a close the Mesozoic epoch. Then came the age of mammals, at the end of which we are now, man being the last arrival on the scene.
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The age of monsters has pretty nearly passed away, only a few remaining like the elephant and the whale. Small animals with plenty of sense will always survive stu- pid giants in the long run, because they require less food and know better how to avoid danger. Observe in illustra- tion how the doom of extinction has fallen upon the gigan- tie mammals which roamed over the earth by myriads only so short a time ago, comparatively speaking, as the begin- ning of the present era called Cenozoic. There was the Di- noceras, which lived in herds about the lakes, as the depos- its show, big as an elephant, but in appearance somewhere between the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, with three pairs of horns on its head and huge tusks that fitted into sheaths in the lower jaw. Others might be mentioned.
For years the government has been engaged in exca- vating their bones, which are now to make part of what is destined to be the greatest zoological show on earth, upon which, in the near future, at the great Columbian Exposi- tion at Chicago, millions of Europeans and Americans will gaze with astonishment.
CHAPTER CXLII.
BIG SALARIES AND INSURANCE.
HE following list of big salaries paid in New York will be interesting. It will be especially inter- esting to those persons who are seratching gravel quarterly to get money enough together to pay their big premiums in old line insurance companies.
Chauney M. Depew, President New York Central Rail- road, $75,000; Henry B. Hyde, President Equitable Life Assurance Society, $60,000; Richard A. McCurdy, Presi- dent Mutual Life Insurance Company, $60,000; W. H. Beers, President New York Life Insurance Co., $60,000; Frederick P. Olcott, President Central Trust Co., $60,000; John A. Stewart, President United States Trust Company, $60,000; Richard King, President Union Trust Company. $50,000; James W. Alexander, Vice-President Equitable Life, $40,000; D. O. Heald, President Home Insurance Co., $30,000; John W. Murray, Vice-President German- American Insurance Co., $30,000; R. A. Grannis, Vice- President Mutual Life Insurance Co., $30,000; Henry Tuck, Vice-President New York Life, $30,000; Gen. Louis Fitz- gerald, President Mercantile Trust Co., $30,000; Col. W. M. Trenholm, President American Surety Co., $20,000; Presi- dent Williams, of the Chemical National Bank, $20,000; President Perkins, of the Importers' and Traders' Bank, $20,000.
This list of "high rollers" is confined to New York city. Other territory could be invaded which would include
PIONEER SKETCHES.
old line insurance men whose salaries will average up well with those mentioned.
These overgrown salaries mean a great deal of hard scratching on the part of persons insured to keep their pre- miums paid up. Level premium insurance comes high. particularly when the level is placed at such a high altitude to start with.
No one professes to believe that these high-priced insurance men are paid according to services they render their respective companies. That is not the fact. There are excessive profits in their business, and excessive salaries are necessary to absorb them. Old line insurance might be very much reduced in cost to the insured if this same wanton extravagance did not prevail in every part of it. But there is not likely to be any reform in this direction. These gentlemen have become too accustomed to sleeping on flowery beds of ease. Every officer of the old line insur- ance company is a Prince Fortunatus and the public "pays the freight."
CHAPTER CXLIII.
THE INSURANCE AGENT OF THE FUTURE.
VER STOP to consider what the insurance agent of the future may be?" An insurance agent ad- dressed this question to a Broadway merchant who had declined to take out a policy and at the same time mildly intimated that insurance agents were not an unmixed blessing. "No," said the merchant, "I have not considered the insurance agent of the future, nor the future of the insurance agent." "I thought not," replied the agent, in his blandest manner. "The fact is, the people now on earth do not know how fortunate they are in regard to insurance agents." "Fortunate in regard to insurance agents ! how in thunder do you make that out?" "Easy enough," said the gentlemanly agent. "Here I come to you to-day to insure your life; you don't want any insur- ance and that is the end of it. But observe, if you please, the tendency of the times. The insurance business is becoming so popular that it is taking on a hundred different phases, and the insurance agent of the future will go equipped to write a policy for a hundred different objects. If you don't want to insure your life he will tackle you for a risk on your growing crops. Refuse that and he will come at you with an accident policy. If you have all the accident insurance you can carry, he will fish up some liter- ature from another pocket and talk burglar insurance to you. If you are willing to carry your own risk on burglars he will meet your refusal with an argument that you ought to take out a policy against breakage by the servant girl.
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The merchant began to get interested.
"Perhaps you don't keep a servant." continued the urbane agent. "Very good. We will assume that you keep a dog, and the future agent will expect to insure the dog against hydrophobia or incarceration in the pound. Allow- ing that hydrophobia has no terrors for you, the agent will offer to insure the dog against fleas."
The merchant looked skeptical.
"True, every word of it." went on the polite and cour- teous agent, "and the insurance man of the future will do more than that; he will be prepared to offer you indemnity for dog bites, cat bites, snake bites, the bite of bugs, in- seets or the sting of bees; in brief, the insurance agent of the future will be a composite fiend, a hydra-headed mon- ster: escape him at one point and he will nail you to the cross at another, he will be a Niagara of volubility: a terror astride of a tempest; while I am simply a life insurance agent," and he turned away with a sad and injured air.
"Come back young man," said the merchant, kindly, "Come back and fill out my application blank for $20,000, and accept my humble apology besides." And it was done.
CHAPTER CXLIV.
THE WATERWAYS-THEIR IMPORTANCE-COMMERCIAL VALUE.
HE principal natural inland water- ways of North America are the great chain of lakes, the Missis- sippi, Missouri, Hudson, Ohio, Delaware, Cumberland, Tennes- see, James, Potomac, Yucon, Sacramento, the Columbia and the Rio Grand Rivers; the Eric, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wabash, the Miami Valley and the Illinois Canals.
These waterways, diversified as they are, coursing through and draining a vast area of country, and floating an immense tonnage are susceptible of a great commercial increase. These waterways are a very important factor in the commerce of our country, and America owes much of her commercial greatness to these natural waterways. Their future worth and usefulness is of incalculable benefit. First, in these waterways those gigantic railway monopoly rings don't exist. If A or B desire to build vessels to plow the lakes or rivers or to run a line of boats on the canal, he can do so for the common benefit, to himself and man- kind generally.
Some say the railway is the thing. So it is for pas- senger and express traffic generally, but the railroad don't always give the best dispatch in the shipment of heavy goods. For instance, a steamboat may load iron at Esea-
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naba or Marquette and discharge her load quieker at Lake Erie ports than the railway, and with much cheaper trans- portation too. Again, A at Chicago wants to ship B 200,- 000 bushels of wheat to Buffalo ; 100,000 bushels he ships at once on board a steamer, and at the same time he orders a train of 200 cars in which to ship the other 100,000 bushels. Before these cars are placed at the elevators and loaded the steamer is loaded and made a good leg toward Buffalo and beats the train, and at a cheaper rate of freight. too. In transportation, like anything else, we can't get all the best things embodied in one system. Hence, our great waterways are fully as essential as our great railways.
And now I will mention two important connections that should be made, which I verily believe will be at no distant day, viz .: A ship canal from Erie to the Chio River. Also an outiet, by ship canal, from Chicago to the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. The growing business of our country soon will demand that these waterway connections be made. Chicago, the great central city, soon will desire to load ships at her wharves for Europe on a larger seale than it has been wont to do via the Welland Canal through Canada and down the St. Lawrence. It will not be satisfied until it has a better outlet to' the Atlantic and to the great sea ports of the world, by water the cheapest line of transportation.
We hope to live to attend the World's Fair at the Garden City (a couple years hence) when we shall expect to see New Yorkers and foreigners alike wonder at Chicago's marvelous growth, and to notice that her parks are as grand, her hotels as spacious, her business blocks as large and high and her future prospects as promising as any city on the globe.
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Greeley said "Young man, go west," and he did go west, and that's what's the matter; the great prolific west is full of the best young men of our land, with good bone and sinew, pluck, energy and money, with plenty of room to operate, a healthy atmosphere to breath, among an intelligent and wide awake people, centrally located with Chicago for their headquarters. Give her a ship canal and Chicago will boom the boomers and thus not long remain the second city of the continent.
A ship canal from Lake Erie to the River Ohio Would suit the Buckeye and Pennymite I know;
However such improvement to be made I think probable, But it will be from Chicago to the Mississippi River,
Chicago, soon to be the greatest city in our land, The great fertile west centering in from every hand, Booming Chicago until she will demand
An outlet for her shipping to Dixie's Land.
Chicago, the chosen site for the great World's Fair, Where will congregate Johnny Bull and lion in his lair,
Asiatic, Turk, the Hindoo and the Russian bear,
French, Germans, Chinese, Japs and all creation will be there.
And when the people of all creation come together A scene to be remembered later and forever,
That Chicago's facilities were fully adequate
To feed the world and feather her nest at any rate.
THE SHIP CANAL SURVEYS.
The vast, increasing amount in heavy commodities to be transported, iron, coal, lumber and agricultural products, naturally calls for a ship canal from Chicago to the Missis- sippi River, and from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.
It has been demonstrated in France and in New York that railroad competition cannot destroy the utility of large canals.
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Again, it has been demonstrated that it is not best for any corporation or combined systems to control the com- mercial traffic of America than it is best for any political or religious faction to hold the reins of our government forever.
Referring to the regions of the interior embraced in the basin of the Mississippi, there are few localities where ship canals are feasible, and fewer still where there is a sufficient traffic of the kind usually transported on canals to warrant their construction. A careful study of the divid- ing region separating the waters of the Mississippi and the great lakes will disclose the fact that there are but two points where the natural conditions are favorable for the construction of large canals. One of these points is at Chicago, where it is comparatively easy work to make a canal draining the waters of Lake Michigan into the Illinois River.
From the town of Hennepin, on the Illinois, by a series of locks of about 250 feet aggregate lift, it is possible to cross from the Illinois to the Mississippi at Rock Island; this is the Hennepin Canal proper, or annex of the Illinois and Lake Michigan Canal project. Its advocates propose a steamboat, rather than a ship, canal, for it would be not to exceed nine feet in depth, although quite wide and of almost unlimited business capacity. Its western connections would be the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and it is thought that steamboats would annually gather up in the Northwest and take to Chicago 2,000,000 tons of agricul- tural produce. A great extent of the country at the western extremity of the canal would have to be gleaned to produce such a traffic. Congress has already made the first appropriation for this project.
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The other point where it is possible to obtain practi- cally an unlimited water supply, for canals connecting the lakes and our interior rivers, is the one now in the hands of the Pennsylvania Ship Canal Commission, whose report has been recently made and ordered to be printed by the Legis- lature, with maps. The length of the proposed canal is only 130.4 miles from Pittsburg to Conneaut Harbor, on Lake Erie. It has been proposed heretofore to enlarge the Miami Canal from Cincinnati to Toledo, and also via the Wabash River to Toledo, and surveys of both routes were authorized by Act of Congress in 1880 of the size of the Erie Canal of New York, viz .: seven fect in depth with double locks 110 feet by 18 feet. The estimated cost of the Wabash Canal enlargement from Toledo to Lafayette City, Ind., 216 miles, was 824,236,135.17. There were fifty-four locks with a total lockage of +48 feet, but as Lafayette is just about 200 feet above the Ohio at the mouth of the Wabash, and fully 250 miles distant, at least twenty-five locks and dams would have been required to extend a permanent seven foot navigation to the Ohio, which would have brought the total cost to at least $35,- 000,000. The length of the Wabash route is fully 400 miles longer than the Beaver-Conneaut route between the Lake and the Ohio River.
It is not conceivable that a ship canal in such an indi- rect route would prove of any but local advantage. The principal articles of Ohio River commerce in great demand on the lakes are coke and coal, and this route leaves the river too low down to be of much benefit to such commodi- ties, and but little iron ore trade would be expected in re- turn.
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ANOTHER LAKE OUTLET.
The other route from Toledo was via the Miami River to Cincinnati, for the same sized canal with double locks. The elevation of its summit above Lake Erie is 370 feet; descent from the summit to the Ohio 512 feet; total aggre- gate lockage 882 feet. The estimated cost was $28,557,- 173; its length 238 miles. This is probably as large a canal as ever will be built to the lake from Cincinnati. Other small canals have been proposed from Portsmouth to Lorain Harbor, a distance of 274 miles. The Ohio Canal from Portsmouth to Cleveland, 312 miles, is still in operation. On the Lorain route, or cut off, the lockage would have been about 1,069 feet, while on the Cleveland route it is about 1,130 feet, as compared with 750.8 feet on the Beaver route, which route is considerably less than half that of any of those named, and, besides, it possesses advantages in ro- gard to water supply possessed by no other, save that from Chicago, while so far as prospective business is concerned, no rival project in the country can be compared with it.
There remains a possible rival to the Beaver-Conneaut route. We refer now to the route from the Beaver River below New Castle via. the Mahoning River and Warren Summit to Fairport Harbor, on Lake Erie. The report of the Pennsylvania Ship Canal Commission diseusses its merits, and although the summit, near Warren, is about eighty feet lower than that on the adopted route, the canal would be from twelve to fifteen miles longer than the latter. The chief objection urged against it is the difficulty of supplying its summit level in volume sufficient for a ship canal by means of feeders or conduits extending from within the limits of this State, a distance of thirty-five or forty miles from Conneaut Lake, one of the chief reser-
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voirs proposed for the Beaver-Conneaut route, and from which it is distant about twelve miles. To do this on the Warren route would effectually drain the head waters of Shenango, which would forbid therefore any branch canal from the mouth of the Mahoning up the Shenango to New Castle, Sharon and Sharpsville, in which places there are now two blast furnaces, numerous rolling mills, etc .. whereas the Beaver-Shenango-Conneaut route leaves the water intact for the supply of a branch canal to Youngs- town, and which branch would undoubtedly be built.
As designed, the canal from Pittsburg to Lake Erie will have a bottom width of 100 feet and at the surface 152 feet, and 15 feet depth of water; locks 300 feet long by 45 feet wide; the summit level will be 20 miles long. This long summit level is one of the characteristic features of the project; of itself it would be a very effective reservoir in maintaining the equilibrium of depth about the summit. The route is nearly on an air line from Pittsburg. The distance is 130.4 miles, of which 52 miles, in the Beaver and Shenango Rivers, nature has provided, so that only 80 miles of full canal construction is required. The greater part of the excavation can be accomplished by dredging and excavating machines. Thus the Beaver-Shenango-Con- neaut route furnishes the shortest route, the longest summit level, the best reservoirs, the best natural water supply and the business route for coal, coke and iron transportation.
CHAPTER CXLV.
LEMUEL COOK-HIS ENCOUNTER WITH INDIANS-THE ARTIST, CHARLES H. GODDARD.
EMUEL COOK removed to York State, where he took up a tract of land in the Township of Clar- endon, Orleans County. He was a pioneer and a celebrated Indian fighter. He enlisted in the Revolu- tionary War at the age of 17, and served during the war. He was the oldest surviving pensioner at his death, which occurred at Clarendon in 1866, he having reached his 107th year. His long and useful career was full of inei- dent, backed by indomitable pluck and Herculean strength. On one occasion, while at a tavern, he discovered four Indians (in the absence of the landlord) smashing up things generally in the bar room, thereby abusing and frightening the women occupants. He turned his attention to the red skins and laid them sprawling on the floor, and, lone-handed, tied their hair together in one big knot.
And dragged 'em out of door upon the green, Where these red skins might be seen. A job but a few would have undertook, But an invincible, like Lemuel Cook.
In Revolutionary days the white men also wore long hair, tied together with a ribbon on the back of the head and called a cue. One day Mr. Cook was hauling stone with a yoke of oxen and a stone boat, and as he was pass- ing a thicket of timber something went whizzing past his head; dodging his head quickly he found to his dismay that he had lost his cue, it being cut off' close to his head
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with a hatchet (he supposed) thrown by one of those bar room Indians who held a grudge at him. An Indian chief named Saucy Nick was suspected, as Mr. Cook afterward noticed that when they were to meet upon the road that Saucy Nick would turn out of the road into the field or wood to evade the gaze and probable chastisement from Mr. Cook.
The descendents of Lemuel Cook are scattered through- out the states, many of whom are living, some of them in Ohio. Mrs. E. C. Goddard, of Unionville, is a grand- daughter and Charles H. Goddard, the artist, is a great grandson, who, no doubt, would surprise the departed spirit of his great grand sire to behold him with pencil as he draws.
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