LIGHTHOUSES.

We have seen that artificial light is needed at night not only in houses, churches, and public halls, but also in the streets of large towns and cities for the benefit of those who have occasion to travel after dark. Still further, it has been found necessary to light the shores of the great sea, so that vessels may not run upon the rocks in the darkness and be stove to pieces.

The building of lighthouses has chiefly developed during the present century, although a few lighthouses were known to the ancients. The full history of lighthouses, if we could trace it, would be very interesting. If you were asked where the first lighthouse was built you would be quite likely to guess right the first time, because you know that the first ships and the first sailors were around the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. You would certainly say somewhere along the eastern coast of that sea. Now as a matter of fact there was a lighthouse on the island of Pharos, just in front of the city of Alexandria, which was built over three hundred years before Christ. This was one of the most celebrated towers of antiquity; in fact, it is classed among the Seven Wonders of the World. It is quite likely, however, that this was not the first lighthouse. Probably there were towers on the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus which may have preceded the Pharos of Alexandria.

The Romans built lighthouses at Ostia, Ravenna, Puteoli, and other ports. All these ancient lighthouses were towers on the top of which wood was burned at night, and the blaze of the burning wood furnished the light which was to guide the mariner.

Two or three centuries ago many lighthouses were built along the shores of France and England. The first lighthouse on the coast of our country was Boston Light, at the entrance to Boston harbor, which was erected in the year 1716. Ever since the United States government has been established, much attention has been paid to our system of lighthouses. In 1852 a lighthouse board was established within the department of the United States Treasury.

Great skill and engineering ability are needed in the construction of lighthouses. Our country has long Atlantic, Pacific, and lake coasts to be protected, besides numerous rivers extending over thousands of miles. All along these coasts and rivers our government has established and maintains lighthouses. We have nearly a thousand lights on the Atlantic coast, nearly two hundred upon the Pacific, and several hundred along the shores of the Northern Lakes. The United States has also many fog signals and almost innumerable buoys. Great sums of money are necessary to build these lighthouses, many of which are now of iron. Twelve of our most famous lighthouses have cost a total sum of upward of $3,000,000 for their construction. Each year witnesses a steady improvement in the method of construction and of lighting this multitude of lighthouses.

At first, fires burning at the tops of lighthouses were the only signals and guides at night. Then came the use of oil in lamps, with reflectors constructed for the purpose. At first in this country fish oil was used, and after that sperm oil. Within the last ten years refined petroleum has been almost universally adopted for lighthouses in the United States. At present about a million gallons are used in a year. We have only a few electric lights, though two are now in use on the Atlantic coast and two or three upon the lakes.

In late years commerce has been rapidly extended. The merchant marine of the nations has grown to gigantic proportions. The amount of travel not only coastwise but across the ocean for pleasure and profit has become enormous. The nations are coming closer together and becoming better acquainted with each other. All this promotes civilization, and will ere long, it is to be hoped, operate to prevent international wars.

England has many famous lighthouses. Great Britain is an island and her coast shows a continuous series of indentations. Perhaps the most famous of her lighthouses is the Eddystone Light, a few miles off from Plymouth.

If you will look on your map of Great Britain you will find that the county of Northumberland is the extreme northern end of England, bordering on the North Sea and adjoining the southeast corner of Scotland. Off that coast you will see a little group of islands called the Farne Islands. At low tide there are twenty-five of them. On one of these little islands, early in the present century, stood the Longstone Lighthouse. It was a solitary place, and sometimes weeks would pass without any communication with the mainland. The keeper of this light was William Darling, a man of intelligence, who gave a fair education to each of his large family of children. One of these was a daughter whose name was Grace. Think what the youth of an intelligent girl would be on one of the Farne Islands. They are extremely desolate, are covered with rocks, and have very little vegetation and very little animal life except sea fowl.

Through the channels between these islands the sea rushes with great force, and many a brave ship has gone down, dashed to pieces upon the rocks. In 1838 a large steamer named the Forfarshire struck these rocks and was broken in two within sight of Longstone Lighthouse. This steamer had on board more than forty passengers and twenty officers and crew. Three persons only were in the lighthouse—Mr. Darling, his wife, and Grace. The storm was furious, the sea was running high, and through the mist, with the aid of his glass, Mr. Darling could make out the figures of the sufferers who were still clinging to the broken vessel. The lighthouse-keeper shrank from attempting their rescue, but Grace insisted that they must make the effort to save them from certain death. Even the launching of the boat was extremely hazardous. The old lighthouse-keeper thought it impossible, but he could not resist the pleadings of his daughter. The mother helped to launch the boat; the father and daughter entered it and each took an oar. It was a terrible undertaking to row the frail boat, and it required not only great muscular power but the most determined courage.

The rescuers succeeded in reaching the rocks, but found great difficulty in steadying the boat to prevent it from being destroyed on the sharp ridges. There were nine persons clinging to the broken vessel. These nine were all rescued. By tremendous energy, great skill, and almost superhuman efforts they were rowed back to the lighthouse in safety.

This heroic deed of a young woman scarcely twenty-three years of age was heralded abroad until she became well known all over Europe, and the lonely lighthouse was soon the centre of attraction to thousands of curious and sympathizing persons. The Humane Society sent her a most flattering vote of thanks, and a public subscription was raised amounting to about thirty-five hundred dollars. Testimonials of all kinds were showered upon her, which produced in her mind only a sense of wonder and grateful pleasure.

This brief outline of Grace Darling is here given because her heroism served to call the attention of the world to the importance of lighthouses and the isolated life of the keepers and their families. You will find a picturesque account of the life of Grace Darling in the first volume of Chambers's "Miscellany." This story does not stand alone in lighthouse annals, but again and again has it been matched in later times and in our own country.

One of the most famous lighthouse heroines in America was Miss Ida Lewis, whose father kept the Limestone Lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor of Newport, R. I. This lighthouse-keeper's daughter very early in life became skilled in rowing and swimming. One day, when she was eighteen years of age, four young men were upset in a boat in the harbor. Ida quickly launched her own skiff, pushed off, rescued them, and brought them safely to shore.

At another time three drunken soldiers had stove a hole in their boat not far from the lighthouse. Two swam ashore and Ida reached their boat in season to save the third. Two years afterward a sheep was being driven down the wharf when the animal plunged into the water. Three men running along the shore in pursuit found a boat and pushed out after the sheep. A heavy "sou'wester" was blowing and the boat was carried away into deep water. Ida Lewis, in spite of the high wind, rowed out in her little skiff and brought them safely ashore.

One winter a young scapegrace stole a sailboat from the wharf and put out to sea. About midnight the gale drove the boat upon the Limestone rocks a mile from the light, but the boy clung to the mast all night. In the morning Ida Lewis found him, as she said, "shaking and God-blessing me and praying to be set on shore." By these and other instances in which Miss Lewis rescued those in danger she became famous, and her praises were heralded in the newspapers and spoken at many firesides. The citizens of Newport presented her with a boat as a token of their admiration of her bravery.

These famous instances and many more that could be added to them would seem to indicate that life in a lighthouse, with the mind constantly running out to the sea, becoming familiar with the storms that rise, and observing the dash of the waves and the roar of the wind—life inured to hardship, but shut up within the safe keeping of the solid walls of the little tower high above the raging waves—it would seem that such a life is calculated to give courage, strength, and fortitude, and to endue the heart with a heroic forgetfulness of self.

How important is the position of a lighthouse-keeper! Many lives are in his hands, and on his fidelity depends the safety of millions of dollars of property. Boats and ships of all kinds, steamers great and small, sail away from one shore of the vast sea to the opposite shore, or along the coast, all in comparative safety because of the various beacon lights.

Indeed, is not the lighthouse itself a great lesson in morals? Every one of us—every one of the seventy million people of the United States has a part in the lighthouse. It is we, the people, who are furnishing the government with its resources, and it is the great government of our country that builds the lighthouses to warn mariners of danger. The modern lighthouse is the symbol of benevolence. It carries with it the lesson of "loving thy neighbor as thyself." This is the lesson of the lighthouse to the people of the land, though its service is performed for the people of the sea.