You have all heard of the Seven Wonders of the World; did you know that two of these wonders were veritable Light-houses?

About 300 B. C., Cheres, the disciple of Lysippus, cast the famous brazen Colossus of Rhodes, a statue of the Sun God Apollo, and erected it at the entrance of the harbor where it was used as a Light-house, the flames which crowned the head of the Sun God by night serving to guide wandering barks into his Rhodian waters.

For eighty years its hundred brazen feet towered superbly above port and town, and then it was partly destroyed by an earthquake. For nearly a thousand years the sacred image remained unmolested where it had fallen, by Greek and Roman, Pagan and Christian; but at last the Saracen owners of Rhodes, caring as little for its religious association as for its classic antiquity, sold the brass of it for the great sum of £36.000, to the Jewish merchants of Edessa.

Just about the time that the Colossus was set astride the Rhodian harbor, King Ptolemy Philadelphus caused a noble tower of superb white stone, four hundred feet high, to be erected by an architect named Sostrasius, son of Dixiphanes, at the entrance to the port of Alexandria, which was a bran-new busy city in those days, a mere mushroom growth in that old, old Egypt, where the upstart Ptolomies were reigning on the throne of the Pharaohs.

It is said that this Sostrasius didn’t want his own name to be forgotten, so he carved it deep in the stone of the tower and covered it over with plaster whereon he inscribed by royal command:

“King Ptolemy to the Gods, the Saviours, for the benefit of sailors.”

Josephus tells us that the light, kept burning on the top of this Pharos, as it was called, probably from a word that signifies fire, was visible for forty miles at sea. For a thousand years it shone constantly until the Alexandrian Wonder likewise fell a prey to time and the Saracens.

The words Pharos-PhÂre, Faro, etc., have been adopted into more than one European language to express Light-house or sea-light.

Some persons suppose that great mirrors must have been used to direct the light on the Pharos and keep it from being lost, but it is most probable that no more effective means of illumination than a common fire was employed.

The only other Light-houses of antiquity of which any record has been preserved are the Tower of Conira in Spain, which Humboldt mentions as the Iron Tower, and a magnificent stone Light-house at Capio, near the mouth of the Guadalquiver, that Strabo tells us about, on a rock nearly surrounded by sea.

Then tradition points out Cesar’s Altar at Dover, the Tour d’ Ordre at Boulogne, a Roman Pharos at Norfolk, and, in early British history, St. Edmund’s Chapel at the same place, as having been originally intended for sea-lights.

Though we are far ahead of our forefathers in our scientific apparatus for illuminating Light-houses, we have never equalled them in magnificence of architecture; for, in point of grandeur, the Tour de Corduan at the mouth of the River Garonne, in France, is probably the noblest edifice of the kind in the world, and it is nearly three hundred years since it was completed under Henry IV., having been twenty-six years in building.

All these centuries it has stood strong on its great reef, and has served to guide the shipping of Bordeau and the Languedoc Canal, and all that part of the Bay of Biscay; and it promises, in all human probability, to show its steadfast light for centuries to come.

Corduan is stoutly built in four stories, each of a different order of architecture, highly ornamented and adorned with the busts of the Kings of France, and of the heathen divinities. The first story contains the store-rooms, the second, the so-called King’s apartments, the third a chapel, and the fourth the dome or lower lantern. The tower completed is 197 feet high.

When this splendid structure was completed no better method for illuminating was known than by burning billets of oak wood in a chauffer in the upper lantern; and it was considered a great matter when a rude reflector in the form of an inverted cone was suspended above the flame to prevent the light from escaping upward. It is not known, in fact, that any more effective mode of lighting was employed until 1760, not much more than one hundred years ago; and then the radiance was not especially brilliant as it would seem to us. At that time Smeaton the engineer began to use wax candles at the Eddystone Light-house, which soon degenerated to tallow dips, probably on account of the expense, and they must have given the keeper abundance of occupation in the way of snuffing and replenishing.

In 1789 a French scientist, M. Lenoir, made an epoch in the history of Light-houses, and in the progress of civilization as well, when he introduced an improvement in the way of lighting up the Tour de Corduan; for, of course, the comparative safety in coast navigation attained to by means of our modern Light-house system is of the first consequence in commerce and international communication, which means the spread of science, enlightenment and religion throughout the world. M. Lenoir placed Argand lamps with parabolic mirrors or reflectors in the lantern, which is, as it appears, a glass room on the summit of the tower entered by a trap-door at the head of a spiral staircase. Such a great change having been brought about, men of science have not rested content, but have gone on making one advance after another. In 1820 the famous diaptric instruments of Mr. Fresnel were placed in Corduan on trial, and proved such a grand success that, gradually, they have been universally adopted. The wonderful lens which you saw at the Centennial belongs to a diaptric refracting light of the first order, and oil lamps constructed on the Fresnel principle, and, placed with lenses of different orders, according to the Light-house they are used for, serve an admirable purpose. Lard is found to be the best illuminator, as a general thing, for the light it casts through lenses of the first order reaches as far out to sea as it is possible for any light to be seen on account of the convexity of the earth. Experiment has proved it safer than mineral oil, and it is cheaper than gas, which however is occasionally used near a city whence it can easily be obtained. Only in some few special instances electric light, the most intense procurable, is employed.

The Centennial birth-day gift of the citizens of France to the American Republic is a colossal brazen statue of Liberty, which is to be a Pharos to light the shipping of the world into New York harbor. It will stand on Bedloe’s Island, and from the torch in its uplifted hand will flash a calcium light. Only the hand and arm were finished in time to be sent to the Exposition; but these were on so gigantic a scale that a man standing in the little gallery which ringed the thumb holding the torch seemed like an ant or a fly creeping along at that height.

Sir Walter Scott—dear Sir Walter, whose “Tales of a Grandfather” and Scottish stories and poems were so delightfully familiar to the boys and girls of the last generation, left a charming little diary of a voyage he made in the summer of 1814, on board a Light-house yacht, in company with the Commissioners of Northern Lights,—who have charge of the Light-houses in Scotland, as the Elder Brethren of Trinity House have of those in England,—their Surveyor-Viceroy, the engineer Stevenson, and a few other gentlemen.

The first Light-house they visited was an old tower, like a “border keep,” still illuminated by a grate fire on top. The commissioners think of substituting an oil revolving-light; but Sir Walter wonders if the grate couldn’t be made to revolve!

Next they came to Bell Rock, which, in olden times, was the terror of sailors feeling their way in and out of the islands and rocks and shoals of the beautiful, perilous coast of Scotland. Inch-cape Rock, as it was then called, had shipwrecked many a helpless crew before the Abbot of Aberbrathock, fifteen miles off, out of pity caused a float to be fixed on the rock, with a bell attached which, swinging by the motion of the waves, warned seamen of the danger.

Many years later, when Abbot and Monastery bells had all become things of the past, a humane naval officer set up two beacons on Bell Rock by subscription; but they were soon destroyed by the fury of the elements.

At last in 1802, people began to realize the danger of this terrible reef in the highway of navigation, and the Commissioners appointed Mr. Robert Stevenson to erect a Light-house on this point.

It was a perilous undertaking, and once the engineer and his workmen made a very narrow escape from drowning; but it was successfully accomplished by the brave and skilful Stevenson. Sir Walter thus describes this famous beacon.

“Its dimensions are well known; but no description can give the idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbraeth (Aberbrathock), the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people’s provisions, water, etc.; above that, a storehouse for the lights, oil, etc.; then the kitchen of the people, three in number; then their sleeping chamber; then the saloon or parlor, a neat little room; above all the Light-house; all communicating by oaken ladders with brass rails, most handsomely and conveniently executed.”

In the course of the voyage Mr. Stevenson determined that his “constituents” should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor (Skerrymore), where he thought it would be essential to have a Light-house. Sir Walter’s description of this visit is quite amusing and perhaps you would like to read it. The wind had blown squally all night, and in consequence everything and everybody were pitched and tossed about at a great rate, on board the little vessel. Nobody relished the attempt to land under these circumstances on this wild ridge.

“Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. Stevenson, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the Yacht, which seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, comes in sight this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water) on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low, broad rocks at one end of the reef, which is about a mile in length. These are never entirely under water though the surf dashes over them. Pull through a very heavy swell with great difficulty, and approach a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed rocks—contrive to land well wetted. We took possession of the rock in the name of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. S. It will be a most desolate position for a Light-house—the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor.”

As might have been expected, the Commissioners were discouraged at the aspect of affairs and delayed the work from year to year, but at last, in 1834, the Board placed this serious undertaking in the hands of Mr. Alan Stevenson.

Mr. Stevenson has left us a thrilling account of his noble work on Skerrymore Rocks, than which no worthier monument was ever left behind to the memory of a gifted and conscientious man.

In the first place he had to build barracks for his workmen on the Isles of Tyree and Mull, and then to begin the foundation of the tower on the only one of the gneiss rocks of the reef which was broad enough for the purpose, and this is but barely so, for at high water little remains around the tower’s base but a narrow band of a few feet of rugged rocks, washed into gullies by the sea, which plays through them almost incessantly.

Everything had to be thought of and provided for beforehand; even so small a matter as the want of a little clay for tamping holes might have stopped the work for a time.

Piers were built at Mull where the granite was quarried, and all sorts of conveniences and contrivances for the vessels and tug in use.

The poor workmen suffered dreadfully from seasickness when compelled to live on their vessel, so they erected a temporary wooden barrack on the rock, but it was completely swept away in a November gale, destroying the work of a season in a single night. The dauntless men went to work again, however, and built another shelter which stood so successfully that it was finally taken down several years after the Light-house was completed.

Alan Stevenson tells us of their life in this wave-washed eyrie, where he was perched forty feet above the sea-beaten rock with a goodly company of thirty men, where often for many a weary night and day they were kept prisoners by the weather, anxiously looking for supplies from the shore. At such times they were generally obliged to stay in bed, where alone they found an effectual shelter from the wind and spray which searched every cranny in their walls. More than once the fearfulness of the storm drove the more timid from their frail abode, which the sea threatened to overwhelm, out on the bare rock where the roofless wall of the Light-house offered a safer defence against the perils of the wind and waves.

Innumerable were the delays and disappointments which tried the courage and faith of Stevenson and his brave band. It was a good lesson in the school of patience, and they learned to trust in something stronger than an arm of flesh. More than once their cranes and materials were swept away by the waves, and the workmen left, desponding and idle. They incurred daily risks in landing and in blasting the splintery gneiss, and in the falling of heavy bodies in the narrow space to which they were confined. For all, they met with no loss of life or limb, and maintained good health in spite of being obliged to live on salt provisions for six summers.

But the hardships and responsibilities by no means end with the building of the Light-house; the keeper who has it in charge holds a most important position, for upon the skill of his hands in the management of the delicate costly lenses and machinery, the clearness of his head, and the courage of his heart, as well as his honesty and fidelity, depends, even more than upon the captain of a vessel, the safety of many precious lives and millions of property; so it is of the first importance that he be intelligent, efficient and trustworthy.

A Light which has been visible for years cannot be suffered to be extinct for one hour without endangering a vessel’s safety. The failure to illuminate at the proper time might prove fatal to the confiding mariner.

In England it is a situation for life unless the holder prove unworthy, with a pension if superannuated; but in our own country the appointments are in a measure political, and consequently liable to be temporary. This circumstance is deplored by the Board which sometimes in this way loses valuable servants after they have gained a skill and experience which only comes with time; and raw, untried hands have to be placed in positions of trust. It is hoped that some change will soon be brought about in this matter.

A year or more ago a gentleman, who holds an important position in the office of the Light-house Board and is specially interested in the comfort and welfare of the keepers, came in the course of a tour he was making on one of the Supply Ships, which carry half-yearly stores to the different posts, to a very isolated Light-house off the Florida coast, twenty miles from any human habitation and sixteen from terra firma. Just before the arrival of the vessel a little child of the keeper had died, and was about to be buried in the sea without so much as a word of prayer being said over it. Mr. —— was shocked to find that these poor people in their isolation seemed to have no idea of religion, and that there was not a book of any kind at the station. The parents made no objection to his reading the burial service over the poor baby, out of a little prayer-book which he happened to have in his pocket, and he went away determined to do his part towards making good the deficiency he had discovered; for on investigation it was found that very many Light-houses were quite as much cut off from books as the one he had visited, and one instance had occurred of a poor fellow who had actually gone crazy, from sheer mental starvation, in his loneliness.

Many persons have interested themselves in Mr. ——’s scheme. An appropriation has been asked from Congress for supplying reading matter to the six hundred and more Light-houses along our coast; and in the mean time private individuals have sent in contributions in the way of old books and magazines. The lady and gentlemen clerks at the Light-house Board have been most kind and helpful in the matter; for they always feel an interest in the condition of the keepers and their families, and when cases of suffering come to their knowledge, as lately, when a keeper at the South was burnt out and lost all his possessions, are prompt with their assistance. In this instance they helped to sort and arrange the motley piles of donated literature, which was then bound up nicely, in uniform volumes, at the Government Printing Office, and a neat little library-case of strong oak wood was made, fitted up with shelves and having heavy metal clasps and handles; and just so many volumes, always including a Bible, were placed in each case.

The Store-ships will now go out with a goodly lading of these supplies; one will be left at each station, and the next time the ship comes round the old case will be taken away and a fresh one substituted. In this way a circulating library system is established, and every Keeper well supplied with abundance of wholesome and entertaining reading matter.

You children, with your wealth of books and delightful magazines coming every month, can perhaps hardly appreciate the boon this kind thought, so well carried out, will prove; for you have never known what it is to be shut up in a lonely tower, day after day, month after month, with no outside interest or amusement. You can do your part towards brightening the lives of these men with their wives and children, and I am sure you will be glad of the opportunity. Many of you, no doubt, have piles of old magazines or story papers, or even of books, for which you have no further use. Would you not like to put up a nice package of these, and send them by Express to the “Care of the Chief Clerk of the Light-house Board, Washington, D.C.”?

New supplies are constantly needed, and in this way you could not fail to give pleasure to those who have little enough in a life of monotonous duty.