There are many people living who can remember when there were no
telegraphs such as we have now. The telephone is still younger.
Railroads are not much older than telegraphs. Horses and stagecoaches
were slow. How did people send messages quickly when there were no
telegraph wires?
When colonies in America were first settled by white people, there were
wars with the Indians. The Indians would creep into a neighborhood and
kill all the people they could, and then they would get away before the
soldiers could overtake them. But the white people made a plan to catch
them.
Whenever the Indians attacked a settlement, the settler who saw them
first took his gun and fired it three times. Bang, bang, bang! went the
gun. The settlers who lived near the man who fired the gun heard the
sound. They knew that three shots following one another quickly, meant
that the Indians had come.
Every settler who heard the three shots took his gun and fired three
times. It was bang, bang, bang! again. Then, as soon as he had fired,
he went in the direction of the first shots. Every man who had heard
three shots, fired three more, and went toward the shots he had heard.
Farther and farther away the settlers heard the news, and sent it along
by firing so that others might hear. Soon little companies of men were
coming swiftly in every direction. The Indians were sure to be beaten
off or killed.
This was a kind of telegraph. But there were no wires; there was no
electricity; only one flint-lock musket waking up another flintlock
musket, till a hundred guns had been fired, and a hundred men were
marching to the battle.