intersect the valleys, have another danger to encounter. Those little
streams, greatly swollen in summer by the melting of the snow on the
higher ranges of the mountains, frequently overflow their boundaries
and spread destruction and death around. If, as occasionally happens,
the stream becomes choked by débris from the overhanging precipices, it
is turned aside from its natural channel, and flows in quite another
direction; sometimes forming in its progress a lake or a small tarn,
which never again subsides, and which may destroy in a moment the long
and arduous labour of the husbandman.
A third and even more tremendous catastrophe is that known as a
berg-fall or mountain land-slip; when an overhanging portion of
some steep precipice becomes loosened from its foundations, and on
some unusual impetus being given to it, topples suddenly over and
hurls itself upon the plain beneath it. These berg-falls occur very
frequently in the Tyrol, sometimes occasioning comparatively little
damage, and even adding an element of picturesqueness to the great
natural beauty of the region; while on other occasions they are
followed by widespread havoc and destruction.
In 1771 a terrible calamity of this nature befell the little village
of Alleghe, situated on the banks of the river Cordevole, not far
from the town of Caprile in the Tyrol. The district was a fertile and
beautiful one, with several scattered villages surrounded by orchards
and corn-fields, and protected from the fierce blasts of winter by
the range of high mountains, which were at once its safeguard and its
peril. At the base of one of the loftiest of this great range, called
Monte Pezza, stood the little village of Alleghe. In the month of
January, when the mountains around were all covered with heavy snow,
a charcoal-burner was at his work in the woods of Monte Pezza, when
his attention was suddenly arrested by a distinctly tremulous movement
of the ground, and by the frequent rattling down of stones and débris
from the rocky precipices behind him. These were sufficient indications
of danger to the practised ear of the mountaineer. He knew too well
the portents of those overwhelming catastrophes that are continually
to be dreaded; and on listening more attentively, he became convinced
that serious peril was impending. Even as he watched, several large
boulders became detached from the face of the mountain, and rolled
down to a considerable distance; while at intervals the trembling
motion of the ground was too evident to be mistaken. It was growing
late in the afternoon, and darkness would soon fall on the valley; so
hastily quitting his work, he made the best of his way down to the
nearest village, and with the excitement naturally caused by anxiety
and fear, he told the inhabitants of the alarming indications he had
just witnessed, and urged them to make their escape without loss of
time from the threatened danger. Strangely enough, they seem to have
attached no value to the signs of approaching mischief which the man
described to them; and it would appear that they considered the falling
débris to be attributable to some accidental snow-slip, caused possibly
by the warm rays of the noonday sun.
Whatever they may have thought, they paid no heed to the warning; and
the charcoal-burner having done all he could to save them from the
threatened calamity, went on as fast as possible to carry his terrible
news to three other villages, which were all directly exposed to the
like danger. But they also utterly disbelieved in it, and laughed at
the fears of the poor man, whose breathless and agitated condition
clearly testified to the truth of his conviction that a very great
peril was close at hand. One and all, they refused to quit their
dwellings; and the charcoal-burner, having vainly endeavoured to
awaken them to a sense of their danger, quitted the spot himself, and
sought shelter elsewhere. Hours passed, and no further disturbance
of any kind taking place, the villagers concluded the whole thing to
have been a false alarm, and at night all retired to rest as usual,
without apparently a shadow of misgiving. Suddenly, in the midst of
the silence and darkness, a fearful crash of falling rocks sounded far
and wide through the valley; and when the first rays of the sun lighted
up the mountain peaks, a terrible scene of ruin and death was revealed.
The four little hamlets had entirely disappeared; two of them, those
that lay nearest to the slopes of Monte Pezza, were completely buried
under an immense mass of fallen earth and rocks; the other two were
submerged beneath the waters of the river Cordevole, which had been
driven from its coarse by the berg-fall, and had spread out into what
is now known as the Lake of Alleghe. None of the unhappy victims had a
moment's time for escape, even had escape been possible. The rushing
down of the mountain was instantaneous, and buried them as they lay
sleeping; and the water flowed with impetuous rapidity into the
unprotected villages, not one inmate of which survived to relate the
experiences of that awful night.
Some months passed; and the first horror of the catastrophe had a
little faded, when another berg-fall took place, again followed by
lamentable consequences. It occurred in the month of May and in
daylight; but a much smaller loss of life was the result, though
the destruction of property was even greater than on the previous
occasion. Owing to the tremendous force exerted by the falling débris,
the waters of the lake, which had never subsided since its formation,
instantaneously rose into an enormous wave, and rushed violently
up the valley; wrecking houses and farm-buildings, destroying the
flourishing orchards and corn-fields, and carrying away a portion of
the parish church of a village which had been re-called Alleghe, after
the submersion of the first of that name. The organ of this church was
forcibly swept to a considerable distance; and a tree borne along on
the mighty wave was dashed into an open window of the curé's house,
while he was sitting at dinner, the servant who was attending on him
being killed on the spot. Many lives were lost during this second great
berg-fall, and terrible consternation was created in the minds of the
inhabitants of the district, which seemed to have been so specially
singled out for misfortune.
Since that time, however, no other serious disaster has befallen
them; the huge mountains of the neighbourhood have not again hurled
death and ruin on the smiling valley at their feet; and the little
lake of Alleghe, the principal memorial of the catastrophe, is only
an added beauty to the lovely scenery which surrounds it, and lies
there in serene tranquillity, all unconscious of the beating hearts
for ever stilled beneath its waters, of the happy homes rendered dark
and desolate by its cold cruel wave. More than a hundred years have
passed since then; many generations of villagers have lived and died,
and the recollection of the great berg-falls of 1771 has faded into
a mere tradition of the place; but yet, looking down into the clear
depths of the lake, on a day when there is no wind to raise ripples on
its surface, the outlines of the submerged villages can be distinctly
traced. Roofs and walls of houses can yet be distinguished; it is even
said that the belfry of the church is visible, flights of stairs, and
many other relics of the past life of the drowned inhabitants.
On the 21st of May in each year, the date of the second of those great
disasters, a solemn commemorative service is celebrated in the little
church of Alleghe, and masses are performed for the souls of those who
perished in the two fatal berg-falls of 1771.
SINGING AND TALKING BY TELEGRAPH.
People are already to a certain extent acquainted through the
newspapers with what is called the Telephone, or instrument for
transmitting musical sounds to a distance. We wish to say something of
this novelty. The conveyance of sound by means of an electric wire, has
been practised through the instrumentality of the _bell telegraph_,
used occasionally, though much less frequently than apparatus of a
different kind. The signaller does not himself ring a bell, but sets
in vibration a bell at the further or receiving end of the wire. The
electric current, passing through the wire, acts upon a small magnet,
and this in its turn acts upon a small bell or its hammer. By a
preconcerted arrangement, one single sound is understood to denote a
particular letter or word; two denote another letter or word; three
quickly repeated, have a separate meaning; three separated by unequal
intervals of silence, another--and so on. The receiver must have a
quick ear, and much practice is necessary for a due fulfilment of
his duties. Although the plan has an advantage in enabling him to
understand a message in the dark as well as in the light, it has more
than equivalent disadvantages; among which is the fact that it leaves
no permanent record.
But talking by electricity conveying the actual sounds of the voice
for many miles--what are we to think of this? And a song--the words,
the music, and the actual quality of the singer's voice; does not this
seem almost beyond the powers of such a mode of transmission? Who first
thought of such a thing is not now known. Very likely, as in most
great inventions, the same idea occurred to many persons at different
times, but was laid aside because the mode of realising it was not
sufficiently apparent.
It was about 1860 that Reis invented a contrivance for employing
a stretched membrane vibrating to a particular pitch or note; a
contact-piece was adjusted near the membrane; and a series of rapid
contacts sent a series of clicks along an electric wire to an
electro-magnetic receiver at the other end. But the apparatus could
only convey one note or musical sound.
Four or five years ago, Mr Edison, a telegraphic engineer at Newark in
New Jersey, made an attempt in this direction. It is known that, in
one form of automatic chemico-electric telegraph, signals are recorded
by sending an electric current through prepared paper saturated with
a chemical agent which changes in colour wherever the current touches
it; the paper is moved on equably, and a pen or stylus rests upon
it, conveying the impulse received from the electric wire. Mr Edison
has tried to devise an arrangement for producing sound as well as
discoloration, something for the ear to hear as well as something else
for the eye to see. We are not aware whether his experiments have been
sufficiently successful to produce a practically useful result.
In 1874, M. La Cour sent audible signals from Fredericia to Copenhagen,
by means of a tuning-fork, a contact-piece, a telegraphic wire, and a
key to set the fork in vibration.
Mr Elisha Gray appears to have made a more definite advance in this
direction. He has transmitted the pianoforte sounds of a concert
through the wire of an electric telegraph. The performer played at
Philadelphia, to an audience at New York, ninety miles distant. The
apparatus may be called a telephonic piano; it transmits the sounds
of that instrument, but of no other. Public performances of this kind
were given in the early months of the present year. On one evening the
instrument was played at Chicago, and the music heard at Milwaukee,
eighty-seven miles distant. _The Last Rose of Summer_, _Yankee
Doodle_, _The Sweet By-and-by_, and _Home, Sweet Home_ are named as
the tunes thus played. On a second occasion the apparatus triumphed
over a distance of no less than two hundred and eighty-four miles,
from Chicago to Detroit; not much was attempted in actual music, but
the sounds were audible at this great distance. Two instruments are
required, a transmitter and a receiver. There is a keyboard of two
octaves (available therefore only for simple melodies), a tuning bar,
an electro-magnet, and an electric circuit. The play on the keys
with the fingers produces vibrations, thuds, molecular movements, in
rhythmical succession; these are transmitted by the electric wire to
the receiving apparatus at the other end. This receiving apparatus is
a large sounding-box, on which is mounted an electro-magnet. The box
intensifies the sounds by its sonorousness, through the medium of the
slight touches which the magnetised iron gives to the box at every
expansion or elongation which the electro-magnetism gives it. Delicate
experiments have shewn that there is a minute difference in the length
of a bar of iron when magnetised and demagnetised; and Mr Gray appears
to have taken advantage of this property in causing his magnetised bar
to give a succession of taps to the resonant box. We believe that the
apparatus requires wholly new setting for each tune. If so, the system
bears the same relation to real pianoforte playing as the barrel organ
does to the church organ; it does not lend itself to the spontaneous or
extempore effusions of the player.
More comprehensive, so far as the scientific descriptions enable us
to judge, is Bell's _telephone_, for the transmission of talk and
sing-song as well as of instrumental sounds. If present indications
should be really justified by future results, the imagination can
scarcely picture the number of practical applications that may ensue.
The inventor, Mr Graham Bell, went to America in 1871. He is the son
of Mr Alexander Melville Bell, whose system of 'Visible Speech' has
attracted a good deal of notice on both sides of the Atlantic. Both
father and son have been practically engaged in perfecting a system for
teaching the dumb to speak; and Mr Graham Bell set himself the task of
accomplishing something which would justify him in saying: 'If I can
make a deaf-mute talk, so can I make iron talk.'[A]
Mr Bell, when at Salem in Massachusetts, began to turn his attention
to this subject, the telegraphy of sound, or _telephony_, in 1872; but
three years elapsed before the matter assumed such a form as to enable
him to send a little musical message through a two-mile wire. Securing
his invention by a patent, he gave his first public exhibition of the
system in the autumn of 1876. The talk or speaking of an operator
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was heard at Boston, in the ordinary
conversational tones. It does not appear that the actual quality or
_timbre_ of the voice was distinguishable, but only a voice, speaking
certain words. Early in the present year, however, further improvements
were made in the apparatus which enabled it to shew even this kind of
delicacy; that is, it transmitted not merely the words in sound, but
also the tones and inflections of different voices. Singing being, in
regard to acoustics, only one variety of speaking, it follows almost
as a matter of course that if the apparatus can talk it can also sing.
Accordingly, a lady sang _The Last Rose of Summer_, and was distinctly
heard at the distant station; the sounds 'had about the same effect as
if the listeners were at the rear of a concert-hall, say a hundred feet
from the singer.' The sounds of laughter and applause were similarly
transmitted, with the proper rhythm and key or musical pitch. In
instrumental music a violin could be distinguished from a violoncello;
a test more delicate than would be supposed by many persons.
In all the earlier experiments of Professor Bell, he employed galvanic
batteries to produce the current; but these were afterwards dispensed
with, and their place supplied by permanent magnets. With this improved
arrangement, sounds were conveyed through a wire to a distance of a
hundred and forty-three miles, from Boston to North Conway in New
Hampshire. Last February a lecture was delivered, on the subject of
Telephony, by Professor Bell at Salem, and was audible, word for word,
at Boston. In order to shew that the transmission is equally available
in both directions, provided the proper apparatus is at both ends,
the lecture from Salem to Boston was followed on the same evening by
singing and speech-making from Boston to Salem.
From the patent specifications and from the descriptions in American
scientific journals, it would appear that a phonographic reporter
of some skill is needed, to translate the audible sounds into words
and write them down. We must first comprehend, however, the mode in
which the sonorous transmission through the wire is brought about; for
this it is which really constitutes the principle of the telephone.
Ordinary telegraphic coils of insulated wire are applied to the poles
of a powerful compound permanent magnet; and in front of these is a
thin vibrating diaphragm or membrane, with a metallic contact-piece
cemented to it. A mouth-piece or trumpet mouth, fitted to collect and
intensify waves of sound, is placed near the other surface of the
diaphragm. It is known that the motion of steel or iron in front of
the poles of a magnet creates a disturbance of electricity in coils
surrounding those poles; and the duration of this current will coincide
with the vibratory motion of the steel or iron. When, therefore, the
human voice (or any other suitable sound) impinges through the tube
against the diaphragm, the diaphragm itself begins to vibrate, and
the contact-piece awakens (so to speak) electrical action in the coils
of wire surrounding the poles of the magnet; not a current, but a
series of undulations, something like those produced by the voice in
the air around us. The undulations in the coil produce a current in
the ordinary telegraph wire with which it is placed in connection. A
similar apparatus at the other end is hereby set in action, but in
reverse order; that is, the wire affects another coil, the coil another
diaphragm, and the diaphragm another tube, in which the sounds are
reproduced in audible vibrations.
It is said that even a whisper can in this way be reproduced at a
distance, the maximum extent of which may possibly be much greater than
has yet been achieved. At one of the exhibitions given to illustrate
this system, Professor Bell stationed himself in the Lyceum at Salem;
Mr T. A. Watson at Boston. An intermittent current, sent through
the eighteen miles of telegraphic wire, produced in the telephone a
horn-like sound. The Morse alphabet was then transmitted in musical
sounds, audible throughout the lecture-hall. Then the sounds of an
organ were made to act upon the apparatus, and these in like manner
were transmitted; two or three tunes being distinctly heard in
succession at Boston. Professor Bell then signalled to Mr Watson to
sing a song; this was done, and the words as well as the tune of the
song heard. A speech was then made at Boston in the simple words:
'Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be able to address
you this evening, although I am in Boston and you in Salem.' This
speech was heard distinctly in the Lyceum at Salem, and was followed by
many questions and answers sent to and fro.
If monotones be adopted instead of those variations in pitch which
belong to ordinary music, it is believed that several telephonic
messages may be sent through the same wire at the same time. It would
be agreed on beforehand that all sounds in C (for instance) shall be
intended for one station alone; all those in D for another station,
and so on; each diaphragm would vibrate in the manner belonging to
the sound-waves impinging upon it; but each station would attend only
to those in a particular pitch. Such is the theory. Whether it can be
practically carried into effect, the future must shew.
Mr Cromwell Varley, during his researches in duplex telegraphy,
produced an apparatus which he is now trying to apply to telephonic
purposes. A limited amount of success was achieved in July of the
present year, through an electric wire connecting two concert-halls in
London; but the apparatus requires further development. It comprises
among other details a series of tuning-forks, one for each note.
There does not, so far as description goes, appear a probability that
telephones would be so applicable as the machines already in use for
ordinary telegraphic purposes; for reasons which we need not detail
here. The conveyance of sound is the novelty; and whimsical suggestions
have been put forth concerning the possible results, such as the
following: 'One of the first steps which a young couple, upon their
engagement, would naturally take, would be to have the speaking-wires
laid down to their respective rooms, and then, at any time, far from
the curious eye of the world, they would be able to indulge in sweet
converse.' Another: 'The extension of the system might not prove so
pleasant in other cases. Thus, for example, university authorities
might take it into their heads to attach an instrument to every room in
the college, in order that the young men might report that they were
steadily at work every quarter of an hour.' Another: 'It is hardly
going too far to anticipate the time when, from St James's Hall as a
centre, Mr Gladstone will be able to speak to the ears of the whole
nation collected at a hundred different towns, on Bulgarian atrocities,
or some other topic of burning interest. Nor need we despair of seeing
Herr Wagner, from his throne at Bayreuth, dispensing the "Music of the
Future" in one monster concert to St Petersburg, Vienna, London, New
York--in short, to all the musical world at once.'
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The subject of 'Visible Speech' is not unfamiliar to the readers
of _Chambers's Journal_. In the number for May 12, 1866, a succinct
account of the system is given--a system intended to remedy the utter
want of agreement between the appearance and the sound of a letter or a
word.
'HELEN'S BABIES' AND 'OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.'
The two small volumes which give the title to this article, afford an
amusing account of the troubles that befell Mr Burton in ten days,
during which he somewhat rashly undertook the supervision of his sister
Helen's Babies, the best children in the world (so their mother assures
him), and of the vicissitudes through which his young wife subsequently
passed, while endeavouring to manage 'Other People's Children.' To
many, the incidents will appear too ridiculous; but it is to be kept in
mind that the children are American, who for the most part are allowed
to do pretty much as they like, and who, amongst other tastes, possess
an untiring voracity for 'candy.'
When we first make his acquaintance, Harry Burton, a salesman of white
goods in New York, is a bachelor aged twenty-eight, and is in some
doubt as to where he shall spend a short holiday, so as to secure a
quiet time for reading; when he receives a letter from his married
sister, Mrs Lawrence, asking him to go to her house, while she is
absent with her husband on a few days' visit to an old school-fellow.
She admits that she is not quite disinterested in making the request,
as she shall feel easier about her two small boys Budge and Toddie,
aged respectively five and three, if there is a man in the house; but
promises him undisturbed quiet, and leisure for improving his mind.
Mr Burton accepts with alacrity, having a vivid recollection of a
lovely house, exquisite flowers, first-rate horses, and unexceptionable
claret and cigars; to which the remembrance of the pure eyes and
serene expression of his elder nephew (whom he has only seen on flying
visits to his sister) lends an additional charm. It occasions him
a slight misgiving when the driver of the fly in which he proceeds
from Hillcrest Station to Mrs Lawrence's house, alludes to his young
relatives as 'imps;' and it is not without some heart-sinking that he
meets them on the road, in torn and disreputable garments, each bearing
a dirty knotted towel, which Budge promptly informs his uncle are not
towels, but 'lovely dollies.' Mr Burton is self-sacrificing enough to
hoist the boys into the carriage; and it is rather hard on him that,
just as Toddie raises an awful yell, on being forbidden to try and
open a valuable watch, they should meet another carriage containing
Miss Mayton, a charming lady, whose presence at Hillcrest, we imagine,
may have had something to do with determining Mr Burton's movements.
However, the lady is gracious in spite of the dusty and heated
appearance of her admirer, caused by his contest with Toddie, and he
arrives at his destination in a celestial frame of mind.