From Chambers's Journal. A BOTTLE DEPARTMENT. had for two years been knocking about the ocean, and must, under any circumstances, have travelled many thousand miles, let its course have been what it might. Seventeen years ago, it occurred to Commander Becher that the Nautical Magazine might be made the vehicle for a systematic record of these interesting bottle-voyages. For a period of thirty or forty years previously, the newspapers had occasional paragraphs to the effect that a bottle had been "picked up," containing such and such items of information; and the question arose, whether these records, collected and tabu IN the month of May, 1859, a South Australian fisherman saw a bottle washed on shore near the mouth of the river Murray. He picked it up, and found it quite incrusted with small shells. On opening the bottle, a piece of paper appeared, on which a few words were written, to the effect that the writer was on board a ship coming from Liverpool; that on the 4th of May, 1857, the ship was near the Cape de Verd Islands; that the paper, enclosed in a bottle, was about to be cast into the sea; and that the finder of the paper, whoever he might be, was re-lated, might not in time give useful informaquested to send it to the writer's brother at Sheffield. Let us make the singular voyage of this paper the text for a brief discourse. That light, solid bodies, floating on the surface of the ocean, will move hither and thither by the action of ebb and flood tide, we all know; that a strong wind will have the same effect, irrespective of tide, we also know; and sailors know, if landsmen do not, that there are moving currents in the ocean independent both of winds and tides. But it is not known, until after long-continued and carefully made observations, what is the average amount and direction of movement at any particular place. In all probability, he was no very profound philosopher who first conceived the idea of testing this matter by watching floating bodies on the surface of the water; it was rather the manner of realizing the idea, than the idea itself, that deserves notice. A glass bottle, or a metal vessel shaped like a bottle, will sink in water if left open, because the specific gravity of glass and metal is greater than that of water; but if the bottle be securely corked and sealed, it will float, on account of the interior being filled with air instead of water. Let us suppose that a passenger, on the way to Australia, throws such a bottle overboard: unless it strikes against a rock, it may float about for a long period of time. But how is the thrower ever to know whither the bottle will float, or on what shore it may be thrown? "Well," says some ingenious individual, whose name has not been handed down to posterity, "let us write a few words on a piece of paper, requesting the finder of the bottle to send the paper to some particular address." The right plan is hit upon. If the finder be good-natured enough to respond to the appeal, and, moreover, make a record of the when and the where of the finding, he may render it certain that the bottle has performed a long and curious voyage, although the details of the voyage are yet unknown. Thus the Australian fisherman picked up a bottle which tion concerning the currents, tides, and winds of the ocean. Each record, it is true, is subject to possible calamities, numerous and varied. If the bottle be not well corked and sealed, water will enter, and bottle and paper will go to the bottom. If it strikes against a rock, its fate is equally disastrous. If it floats to some shore, it may be at a spot where it escapes human observation for a year or more, or even forever. If it be really picked up and opened, the contents may be unreadable by the finder; or he may not care about it; or he may be too poor or too ignorant to forward the paper to the required destination. Any one of these contingencies may happen. Still, good may result from a collecting of those papers which do come safely to hand, even if they be only one in a hundred. So Commander Becher thought, and he carried out his plan in an ingenious manner. In order to keep his plan within practicable limits at first, he confined his attention to a portion of the Atlantic Ocean. He laid down a chart on Mercator's projection, extending from six degrees south latitude to sixty-three degrees north latitude; and from the coasts of Europe and Africa on the east, to those of North and South America on the west. This chart he caused to be engraved to the size of about eighteen inches by twelve. On it he laid down a sort of history of every bottle-voyage of which authentic information had come to hand. He made a black spot to denote the place of the ship when the bottle was thrown into the sca; another spot to denote the place where the bottle was picked up; and a straight line connecting the two. He would of course have preferred to trace the crooked routeoften, doubtless, a very crooked route-which the bottle had really followed; but this was precisely the kind of knowledge which he did not possess, and which, indeed, was the very problem to be ultimately solved. One hundred and nineteen bottles had their voyages and travels put into print in this way. Very curious it is to see the lines of route as thus marked out. Some-let the actual course The writing within directed that the paper should be sent to the passenger's brother, to a particular address at Woolwich; and after passing through many hands, the paper was transmitted by the minister of marine as directed. have been what they may-display a ten- filled with odd scraps of verses and jokes. dency from east to west; others as decided If there was a request that the paper should a leaning from west to east; and each is a be sent to the admiralty, foreign officials member of a group pretty constant in its displayed readiness in complying with the travelling characteristics. For instance, request; and even if the parties concerned most of those which were thrown into the were only moving in private life, the same sea near the north-west coast of Africa were, thing was often courteously done. Thus, if found at all, discovered on the shores of a bottle was picked up on the French coast, some or other among the West India Isl-near Bayonne, which had been thrown into ands. If set afloat anywhere on the route the sea nine months before by a passenger between England and New York, they have on board the merchant-ship Lady Louisa. a tendency to effect a landing about the Scilly Islands, or on the Cornwall or Devon coasts. If our arctic explorers launched a bottle when about to enter the stormy seas of Greenland, there was a fair chance that it would land somewhere on the Orkneys or the Hebrides; on the other hand, some of The Nautical Magazine became a recogthe bottles appear to have made most eccen-nized treasury for narratives of these bottletric voyages; and it was evident that much voyages; and the number increased so fast, had yet to be learned before the varying ef- that Commander Becher deemed it desirable fects of currents, tides, and winds could be to revise in 1852 the chart which he had known. prepared in 1843. He added sixty-two to This bottle-chart attracted a good deal of the former number, and rendered his chart attention among nautical men. It was ren- a much more fully occupied piece of paper dered more useful by several pages of ap- than before. Again did the contributions pended text, giving the chief particulars of accumulate, and again was the engraver set each bottle-voyage-such as the name of the to work; for in 1856, Commander (now ship, the signature of the person who cast Captain) Becher caused a third edition of the bottle into the sea, the date, the latitude the chart to be prepared. A Mediterranean and longitude, the place where, and the time series was also commenced in 1853, and bewhen, the bottle was picked up, and the in-ginnings have been made for an Indian and terval which had elapsed between the im- Pacific series; but for a long time to come mersion and the finding of the bottle. A the Atlantic will be the chief scene of bottlecorrespondence which followed the publica- voyaging, owing to the large number of ships tion of the chart rendered evident the fact, that are always crossing it. that large numbers of these erratic bottles are always floating about, having a much greater chance of being lost altogether than of ever coming to hand. A surgeon on board an Indiamen stated that he threw bottles overboard every day during the voyage, each bottle containing a paper with a memorandum such as those above averted to; so far as he knew, very few of those bottles reached the hands of persons who, took any further interest in the matter. Sometimes the bottle, or its paper, had much to go through before the wishes of the writer could be fulfilled. In one instance, the commander of the Chanticleer threw a bottle overboard in the Atlantic; it was picked up by a peasant on the coast of Spain four months afterwards; he kept it two months, not knowing what to make of the matter; it passed into the hands of a more intelligent Spaniard, who sent it to the British consul at Corunna, by whom it was forwarded to the secretary of the admiralty. Sometimes the object of the writer was evidently a useful one-that of contributing his mite towards a history of the winds and waves; while others displayed mere vanity and waggery, the paper being Some of these bottles make very long voyages, and, considering the circumstance, often in a short space of time, though in other cases the period has extended over several years. As we have already remarked, however, both time and space are left very vaguely determined, for there is a great doubt whether the bottle will be picked up just when it has concluded its voyage; while the route followed is in almost every instance much longer than a straight line between the two points. So far as concerns the measured distance in a straight line, we find instances of 690 miles, 2,020 miles, 2,260 miles, 3,600 miles, and 3,900 miles. The bottle found on the Australian coast in 1859, adverted to in our opening paragraph, must have made a voyage of very many thousand miles, for the editor of the Nautical Magazine, judging from the known directions of currents, inferred that it had been carried from the Cape de Verd Islands eastward or south-east by the Guinea current, then westward by the equatorial current, then along the American coast by the Brazilian current, then across the South Atlantic eastward towards the Cape of Good Hope, and then across a wide stretch of ocean to Australia. In 1858, a from the course of the various currents, it is bottle travelled from Manilla to the Moluc- believed that this bottle had been first carcas, about 1,000 miles, in six months, showing ried south by the Guinea current, then west that there are pretty active influences at work by the equatorial current, then north-west in those seas, even without allowing for any into the Gulf of Mexico, and then by the unknown sojourn of the bottle on the shore. Gulf Stream to Cornwall. Many singular This sojourn is indeed sometimes a long one. examples are on record, tending to show that, A bottle from the Thunder, in 1847, was on an average, there is an eastward movenearly three years before it was picked up; ment of the surface-drift in the northern part one from the Lark, in 1838, four years; one of the Atlantic, and a westward in the tropfrom the Manning, in 1810, five years; one ical part. The Corsair threw out two botfrom the Lady Louisa, in 1830, nine years; tles in 1838; one was picked up 160 miles one from the Symmetry, in 1825, ten years; off, the other 250 miles, but both had folone from the Carshalton Park, in 1827, eleven lowed nearly the same general direction. years. The most lengthened delay ever re- The Blonde, already mentioned, threw out corded, was that of a bottle from the Blonde, two bottles in 1826, within five days of each which, thrown into the sea on the 23d of other; one was espied fourteen years afterSeptember, 1826, on a voyage from Liver- wards, and the other nearly sixteen years, pool to New York, was picked up on the but both nearly on the same part of the French coast on the 15th of June, 1842- French coast. The Alexander threw out two nearly sixteen years afterwards. How long bottles on the same day in 1818; both were it had remained in that spot no one can tell. found fourteen months afterwards on our It has been contended by some persons, western coasts. When Captains Collinson seamen, sarans, and others, that the voyages and M'Clure started for Behring's Strait in of the bottles are often too capricious to ren- 1850, in search of Sir John Franklin, they der much scientific service; and they ap- both threw bottles into the sea while sailing peal to the bottle-chart for many curious down the Atlantic: the bottle from the Ininstances of this. Some authorities assert vestigator (M'Clure) was launched on the that there is a current to the east from Lab-22d of February, about 600 miles north of rador and Newfoundland towards the British the equator; that from the Enterprise (ColIslands; yet Sir John Ross asserts, that in linson) was launched nearly at the equator, 1818, he threw into the sea twenty-five cop- on the 3d of March. After voyages of 186 per cylinders, when his arctic ship was about and 367 days, respectively, these bottles entering Davis' Strait; and not one of these were picked up almost exactly at the same floating cylinders was ever known to come to spot on the Honduras coast. The Wellinghand a fact which appeared to him some-ton threw out two bottles in 1836, on two what incompatible with received notions. In 1819, two bottles were thrown out on one day from the Newcastle; one was picked up on the coast of Ireland, and the other at the far-distant Azores. But it is very fairly contended, on the other hand, that these so-called "capricious" voyages are not capricious at all; but depend on physical causes which, though not well understood at present, may by and by be rendered intelligible by these very voyages themselves. One or more of Ross' cylinders may, for aught we know, be at this moment snugly housed in some creek or cove among the scantily inhabited Hebrides. Of the two bottles, one of which travelled to Ireland, and the other to the Azores, both may have travelled together to the lastnamed place, where one ran ashore, while the other got into another current which swept it round to Ireland; for it is known that some of the bottles take remarkably circuitous routes, according as they are caught in particular currents. Thus, a bottle was thrown into the sea from the Prima Donna ship in 1850, off Cape Coast in Africa; it was picked up on the coast of Cornwall; and consecutive days: one was found nine months afterwards, the other, not till after four years; but this was due to the fact that the second bottle happened to reach the same coast at a spot very little frequented. The direction of the current, or at least of the surface-drift, was very singularly shown by the voyage of a bottle in 1842. A ship left Thurso with Highland emigrants for Canada; when 1,500 miles out, a bottle was launched; and this bottle found its way to a part of the coast within two miles of the very port whence the ship had sailed five months before. Few persons now doubt the usefulness of this system. All we have to guard against is, hasty inferences from the details of any particular voyage. Captain Becher remarks, in connection with one of his charts: "The uniformity in the direction of the courses between the points of departure and arrival is very remarkable in most parts of the chart. In the equatorial regions, and in the more northern latitudes, when the effects of the Gulf Stream and westerly winds prevail, this uniformity of direction is remarkable; as also the courses of those few which have been ago. It is known that in 1493, Columbus, when near the Azores, encountered a dreadful storm; and it is stated in an old book of voyages that, on that occasion, being doubt thrown over on the eastern limits of that stream. So that in many parts of the ocean before us, a good guess might be made at the direction which a bottle would take when committed to the sea. So far as the surface-ful whether he would live to reach Spain drift is concerned, the experiment has been successful.' The admiralty share this opinion; for they have encouraged the officers of the queen's ships to launch a bottle occasionally. again, he wrote a few particulars of his voyage on a piece of parchment, enclosed it in a keg or small wooden cask, and cast it into the sea-hoping that the document might reach the hands of his joint sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. On the 27th of August, 1851 (so said the Times, on the authority of an American newspaper), Captain d'Auberville, in the bark Chieftain of Boston, picked up a floating substance on the African coast, opposite Gibraltar. It was so covered with barnacles and sea-shells that its nature could not at first be determined; but on closer scrutiny, it proved to be a small cedar keg. When opened, the keg displayed within it a cocoanut shell, coated with some resinous composition; and within the cocoanut was a piece of parchment covered with very old writing, which none on board could read. A merchant at Gibraltar, however, deciphered it, and found that it purported to be written by Christopher Columbus in 1493; that the ship was in a dreadful storm between Spain and the Azores; and that Columbus had determined to throw these documents, in three kegs, into the sea, in the hope that one of them, at least, might reach the shore. This story is so interesting that one yearns to believe it true. A keg might have re Of the thousands-nay, millions of beer-bottles, pale-ale bottles, wine bottles, brandy-bottles, pickle-bottles which are taken out annually by ships leaving our shores, any one is suitable for this purpose, if properly secured; but Captain Fishbourne, of the hydrographer's department, has suggested a better arrangement for those who really wish to regard this matter as one of scientific interest. He suggests that the bottles should be made white by the introduction of oxide of arsenic into the liquid glass of which they are made, in order that they may be more visible while floating. He also advises that, when a bottle is picked up at sea (not on the shore), it should be opened, the paper read, and another paper inserted with it, stating the particulars of the finding; after which the bottle is to be again sealed, and thrown into the sea at once. If this were done three or four times in succession, three or four points in the track of the bottle would be made known, and a rough approximation to its curve of movement might be made. So far as we can detect, by examin-mained for more than three centuries and a ing the chart and records, this ingenious suggestion has not yet been acted on. One of the most remarkable examples on record, not of the voyage, but of the finding, of a floating messenger, occupied the attention of newspaper-readers eight or nine years half unseen on the African coast; but still, we ask, where is the keg, and where is the parchment? There are persons in Europe who would almost give its weight in gold for such a precious testimony of the great navigator. were so many astronomers in Paris." M. DELAUNAY is engaged in preparing a set | much bitterness: "I did not know that there of tables of the moon's motions, which are in process of publication by the Academy of BURYING IN CROSS-ROADS.-The practice of Sciences. M. Le Verrier objected to them burying in cross-roads has in modern times been that they were incorrect,―that his theory of the regarded as a mark of indignity; but such was moon's motion did not concur with the observa-not its original intention. In ancient times, "it tions. M. Delaunay replied with much acrimony, and a pretty quarrel ensued, which for several weeks crowded the séances of the Academy. When M. Le Verrier's last reply was finished in the séance of March 12th, the greater portion of the audience left the hall. M. Dumas, the great chemist, is said to have remarked, with was usual to erect crosses at the junction of four cross-roads as a place self-consecrated, according to the piety of the age; and it was not with a notion of indignity, but in a spirit of charity, that those excluded from holy rites were buried at the crossing roads, as places next in sanctity to consecrated ground.”—British Magazine. like Phoebe could do little but hope for the best, so she expressed a cheerful hope that her father must know that it was right, and that he would care less, now that he was away, and pleased with Augusta's prospects. "Yes," said Robert, "he already thinks me such a fool, that it may be indifferent to him in what particular manner I act it out." "And how does it stand with Mr. Parsons?" "He will give me an answer to-morrow evening, provided I continue in the same mind. There is no chance of my not doing Phoebe rejoiced, for she had scarcely seen him since his return from Castle Blanch, and his state of mind was a mystery to her. It so. My time of suspense is over!" and the was long, however, before he afforded her words absolutely sounded like relief, though any clue. He paced on, grave and ab- the set, stern face, and the long breaths at stracted, and they had many times gone up each pause told another tale. and down the least frequented path, before he abruptly said, "I have asked Mr. Parsons to give me a title for Holy Orders." "I don't quite know what that means." "How simple you are, Phoebe," he said, impatiently; "it means that St. Wulstan's should be my first curacy. May my labors be accepted as an endeavor to atone for some of the evil we cause here." "Dear Robin! what did Mr. Parsons say? Was he not very glad?" "I did not think she would really have gone!" said Phoebe. "This once, and we will mention her no more. It is not merely this expedition, but all I saw at Wrapworth convinced me that I should risk my faithfulness to my calling by connecting myself with one, who, with all her loveliness and generosity, lives upon excitement. She is the very light of poor Prendergast's eyes, and he cannot endure to say a word in her dispraise; she is constantly doing acts of kindness in his parish, and is much beloved there, yet he could not "Yes. He told me that he had engaged conceal how much trouble she gives him by as many curates as he has means for. I an- her want of judgment and wilfulness; patswered that my stipend need be no consider-ronizing and forgetting capriciously, and atation, for I only wished to spend on the parish, but he was not satisfied. Many incumbents don't like to have curates of independent means; I believe it has an amateur appearance." "No; there lies the doubt." "Doubt ? " "Mr. Parsons cannot think you would not be devoted." "I hope to convince him that I may be trusted. It is all that is left me now." "It will be very cruel to you, and to the poor people, if he will not," said Phoebe, warmly; "what will papa and Mervyn say?" "I shall not mention it till all is settled; I have my father's consent to my choice of a profession, and I do not think myself bound to let him dictate my course as a minister. I owe a higher duty, and if his business scatters the seeds of vice, surely, obedience in the Lord' should not prevent me for trying to counteract them." 6 It was a case of conscience to be only judged by himself, and where even a sister You saw your tending to no remonstrance. Large tears swelled in Phoebe's eyes. The first vision of her youth was melting away, and she detected no relenting in his grave, resolute voice. "Shall you tell her?" was all she could say. "That is the question. At one time she gave me reason to think that she accepted a claim to be considered in my plans, and understood what I never concealed. Latterly she has appeared to withdraw all encouragement, to reject every advance, and yetPhoebe, tell me, whether she has given you any reason to suppose that she ever was in earnest with me." |