what tribe it is. Some of you will soon by the retort, or large pot, in which the guess. gas coal was put, by applying fire to the Ella and Kenneth together. It is all bottom of it—just the same as if you of us--we are the tribe. Mr W. Well, as you are all perhaps convicted of throwing stones into the beautiful machinery of your bodies, we have convinced you, I hope, that, as the best gas was made from simple coal, so the best human gas is made from the simplest and plainest food. Tom. I am sure I understand that thoroughly; but what do you mean by 'human gas?' Mr W. Why do you eat food? what say you? Tom, put a sauce-pan, filled with small coal, on the fire, with the lid fastened tightly on, and then made a small hole in the lid for the gas to escape out. What must he do next? Tom. He must collect the gas, and purify it. Mr W. Which he does by passing it through lime-water. Tom. What does he do with the coke, and gas-tar? Mr W. They are both removed: if either the one or the other were to remain, they would render useless the whole apparatus. Tom. I can easily understand, from Tom. Is it to nourish the body, and this, that a great deal of our food is make it grow? Mr W. Just so; but what nourishes and supports the body? That apple you are now eating, must be converted into something, before it can nourish your body. What is that something? Tom. Is it blood? Mr W. Yes; the object of all our eating is to form blood: this is my human gas;' and, upon its being made from good materials, and also upon its complete purification, depends the working of the machinery. Tom. Pray tell us more about this machinery. Mr W. Our gas-man, you remember, had made his gas; or, in other words, he had driven all the gas out of the coal, waste, and must be carried off, when the blood has been taken from it; and I can understand gas going through lime-water, to purify it; but how our blood is purified, I cannot guess. Mr W. From what does the blood want purifying? Tom. I cannot tell. Mr W. From its diamonds, and sodawater bubbles. Amelia. Nonsense, father! Mr W. From its burnt wood-from its choke-damp-from its poison. Tom. Are you really serious? Does the blood-my blood-really contain diamonds, burnt wood, choke-damp, poison? Mr W. Really, truly and seriously, your blood, my blood, and the blood of THE PEOPLE WHO SPOIL THEIR MACHINERY. every human being, and of every breathing animal, contains these; and if the human purifying-house is out of orderif one little stone is thrown into that, so that this process stops for one minute, it is all over-death is certain and inevitable. Tom. (musing). Diamonds and poison? I am very anxious to know all about our purifying-house. Mr W. Let us talk, first, about the impurity, and then about the purifying. Why should hydrogen gas be purified? Tom. Otherwise it might cause some obstruction in the gas-pipes: is that the case with the circulation of the blood? Mr W. In many cases there is great danger from that; but the diamonds and poisonous stuff must be cleared off from the blood, or the man falls dead at our feet in a minute. Tom. You said there was poison in the blood. Why are we not poisoned with it? Mr W. I have before said, we should be, if our purifying apparatus was out of order. Tom. The quantity must be small, or it must be very weak; for the smallest portion of the poison of some of the venomous serpents causes death. Mr W. On the other hand, its quantity is enormously great-I dare not say how many pounds in the year; and when thrown off from our blood, it is as deadly as the bite of a rattle-snake. It is called carbonic acid gas, or charcoal gas-and the bright gas, oxygen, mixed together. 365 Amelia. How does it get into the blood? Mr W. Almost every thing we eat has carbon or charcoal in it. Ella. But are diamonds charcoal?the same charcoal we burn in our stove? Mr W. Sir H. Davy says they are nothing but crystallized charcoal. He made some that would cut glass, but they had none of the beauty of the diamond. Ella. 1 wish I could make diamonds out of charcoal. Tom. What would you do with them? Mr W. Well, set your wits to work; you may not actually make diamonds, but you may make many important discoveries, as was the case in the search for the philosopher's stone-though that was never found. The 'human gas,' or the blood therefore is full of this poisonous gas, or charcoal. How is it purified? Esther. By letting it run through limewater. Mr W. And where may this limewater be kept, Miss Tetty? Esther. In their stomachs. Mr W. I rather think not. The purifying house for the blood, is placed in the chest of a man. Its construction is so beautiful, that I hope you will try to understand it. Tom. Is it anything like the gas passing through the lime-water? Mr W. Not at all. Come here, Ella. Eat this piece of bread. While she is eating it, Tom, can you tell me why she bites it in pieces, and chews it? Tom. To break it up into fragments, in the stomach. Besides, how often do for the stomach. Mr W. Is that all? What is the saliva or spittle for? Tom. To be mixed with the food. Mr W. Now, remember that this bread contains the poison-the carbon of the blood. Tom. May I interrupt you ?—If bread has charcoal-poison in it, why does it not poison us? Mr W. You may have a pound of charcoal in your stomach, but you must not keep a drachm of it in your blood. Ella's bread is now in her stomach, and is mixed with a peculiar juice, called the stomach, or gastric juice. Tom. I have read very wonderful accounts of this juice. Mr W. Not more wonderful than true. It has, by this time, reduced Ella's bread to a pulpy mass; but it could dissolve bones or sinews almost as readily. Tom. How is it that it does not dissolve the stomach itself? Mr W. That is one of the most astounding proofs of the wisdom and goodness of God. It attacks and overcomes dead bone, but leaves untouched everything that has life. Tom. Then, if I have swallowed a live frog, he might live comfortably. Mr W. He might live, because many have lived in stomachs, for a short time. It was a custom once, among the ignorant, to swallow young frogs, with the view of their eating away some impurity we hear of live worms in the stomach ? Tom. But if I bit him, and killed him, . he would soon be dissolved by this stomach juice. Mr W. We are forgetting Ella's bread. It is now a pulp. It will soon reach the second stomach, and then it is mixed with bile or gall; and here, again, the most wonderful changes take place. A white milky fluid separates from the rest: this is the future blood. Ten thousand little sucking pumps take up this precious lymph, as it is called, and it is carried, by one of the blood-pipes, into a larger pipe, near the shoulder. We will say where it goes to, to-morrow. An Evening Hymn. The sun, which Thou hast made to shine The moon and stars, which all arc thine, Heavenly lights, they hang on high, To yield Thee praise combine; And now the hour of rest is nigh, I yield me to sweet sleep; In splendor I am far beneath The meanest twinkling star, More great and glorious far. Then keep me, Lord, in thy good way, Quintin Harewood and his Brother Brian. CHAPTER VI. Our voyage to the North Pole. Capt. Parry and Capt. the icebergs. The unfortunate steamer President. In the end of my last chapter I tried to harpoon a whale, but I never after wished to repeat the experiment. The next day we proceeded on our course, and passed many whalers, some of them very busily employed. Since the expeditions of Capts. Ross and Parry, a voyage to the North Pole is considered by many as a light affair; but they who try it will find that there is still something to endure. People seem to think that these en terprising voyagers have skimmed the floating ridges of ice from the main; cleared away the mountainous icebergs, and thawed a road through the impenetrable barrier of the Frozen Ocean; but those distinguished navigators would tell a different story. The way is hedged up still as much as ever. He who has set bounds to the raging ocean, and said 'Hither shalt thou come and no further,' has forbidden the mariner also, so far as regards all useful purposes of navigation, to pass this dreary scene of desolation. None but the Almighty hand that reared the frozen ramparts of the Northern Sea can unlock the icy gates that bar the passage. being fitted out on voyages of discovery. It calls forth enterprise, encourages hardy habits and resolution, extends knowledge, and it ought also greatly to increase our thankfulness, by convincing us that we are in possession of a thousand comforts of which the inhabitants of northern climes know nothing. It was many a long year before Captain Ross and Captain Parry deservedly gained so much of the public favor, that I was buffeted about among the icebergs of the North. It would be utterly impossible to describe half the peril to which a vessel is liable in some situations in the polar sea, when extreme cold, and wind, and currents, and ice, and icebergs, all seem to unite their influence to overwhelm her. Sure I am that when first I found the ship hurried along by the current among rifted ice and floating icebergs, it troubled my spirit. It seemed that I was of no more consequence than a flake of snow, or a bubble on the water; and I saw, plainly enough, that the most skilful seaman had no more power to preserve himself from destruction, than the commonest cabin boy. Mountains of ice, almost as hard as stone, with ragged edges and points, were dashed against each other with a thundering noise, so that the timbers of the ship, if the vessel had happened to be between them, would have been crushed together as easily as if they had been But for all this I like to hear of ships formed of paper. It was an awful scene! we were hurried through narrow straits with these craggy masses of ice,-the wind whistling, the sea roaring, and the fields of ice crushed together till they lifted one another up high out of the water. Sails and rudder were alike useless, and every moment was an escape from death. All that could be done was to be ready to take advantage of any favorable position into which we might be thrown. We saw and felt our utter helplessness; and though no word was spoken, many a silent ejaculation escaped our lips for safety. Long since our return home the loss of the steamer President has happened, and many surmises suggested about her probable fate. Among the casualties, to which she was exposed, she may have been inclosed by ice; and although many people wonder where such immense icebergs are congealed, and floated by currents into warmer latitudes, to my brother Brian and myself, after our voyage into the northern regions, it was no longer a wonder. Some of these sheets of ice were miles in length, and others towered far above our topmasts in all manner of fantastic forms. But it is almost certain, from all circumstantial evidence, that this ill-fated steam-ship foundered in a storm; for there was a tremendous one arose a few days after she left Newyork, and one of the packet-ships saw her laboring amidst the waves at a distance, this being the last ever seen of her. |