Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/440

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424
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing beer and lying about idle on the rocks. The wooden pillows are the same as the ancient Egyptian pillows. The favorite game of the country, called Tsufuba, is closely akin to a game played in India. The common drink, a millet beer, is called doora, as in Abyssinia, and is the same as an ancient Egyptian and Asiatic drink. The so-called Mashona piano, consisting of over twenty iron notes fixed to a scale on a square piece of wood and played on a calabash to bring out the sound, has its parallel to-day in Nubia and Lower Egypt. The Makalangas are decidedly a musical race, and easily pick up tunes to play on this instrument. Every chief has his private musician, who plays at all the public entertainments and dances. As to type of countenance, the Makalanga is far the most refined of any of the Kaffir races Mr. Bent has seen.

The First Transatlantic Steamer.—A publication of curious interest is that of the Log of the Savannah, the first steamship that crossed the ocean, which J. Elfreth Watkins has contributed to the report of the United States National Museum. The Savannah was built for a sailing vessel, but attracted the attention, while upon the stocks, of Captain Moses Rogers, who had been associated with Fulton and Stevens in commanding several of the early steamboats. At his instance it was fitted up with engines by a business firm in Savannah, who wished to give that city the credit of starting the first transatlantic steamship line. Her first voyage was made from New York to Savannah, and on the second day occurs the entry: "Got steam up and it came on to blow fresh; we took the wheels in on deck in thirty minutes." This taking in the wheels during a storm through fear of having them washed away or damaged is not mentioned in connection with any other vessel. The ship reached Savannah in eight days and fifteen hours from Sandy Hook. After a voyage to Charleston and return, the vessel was visited by President Monroe, who was greatly pleased with it, and wished it to go to Washington after its Atlantic voyages, to be examined and possibly purchased for the Government service. The voyage to Liverpool began May 22, 1819. On the 24th, at 5 a. m., the Savannah "got under way of Tybee light, and put to sea with steam and sails. At 6 a. m. left the pilot. At 8 a. m. took off the wheels in twenty minutes." This was to insure the wheels getting safely to Liverpool. The Savannah reached Liverpool, steaming up the Mersey, in twenty-nine days eleven hours from Savannah, having run eighty hours under steam. Marwade's English Commercial Report described her steaming, "without the assistance of a single sheet," as being in a style "which displayed the power and advantage of the application of steam to vessels of the largest size." Vessels which saw her steaming on the passage took her to be on fire. The Savannah visited Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Copenhagen; and returning home, reached Savannah on November 30th, the fortieth day after leaving Arendale, Norway, not using steam till she got inside of the bar. She visited Washington in December. Her owners became embarrassed in consequence of the great fire in Savannah in 1820, and were obliged to sell her. She was stripped of her machinery, and served as a sailing packet till 1822, when she ran ashore on Long Island and went to pieces.

The Two Schools of Psychology.—At the second session of the International Congress of Experimental Physiology, held in London in August, the president, Prof. H. Sidgwick, spoke of the subsidence of the antagonism that prevailed a few years ago between one-sided extreme views on the neurological side and the psychological side respectively. On the one hand, the crude materialism or positivism which pushed contemptuously aside all results of introspective observation had now mostly given way before the general recognition that psychical processes are objects of experience, altogether distinct from the nervous processes which invariably accompany them; and, though we might regard them as "two faces of the same fact," they must admit that they were "incapable of seeing, or even imagining," how the two were connected; and that, in order to know what could be known of the double fact, they must give systematic and careful attention to both its sides. On the other hand, the attempt of some students of mind to mark off a department of mental phenomena elevated above the condition of being accompanied by nervous change, was now, he