Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/82

 noticed, marvellously small space. We were most struck by the chief "main," through which the great electric stream was carried, to feed all the thousand suns of the system, and which emitted, with an ominous force and rapidity, the whirr so peculiar to the cross-electric current. Connected with all this machinery of wires and other apparatus, there is, of course, a vast hardware and iron business.

Presently our new friend took his business seat once more at his desk, surrounded by the representative conductors of all the different communities he catered for. These were each indicated by small knobs ranged in semicircle in front of him, the knob starting outwards, with a peculiar noise by way of signal, when anything had gone wrong or happened to be wanted, in the sub which it represented. After watching and admiring the wonders of the system for a few minutes, we bid our now busy friend adieu, and after some few other but less important calls, we again took cab for our next destination.

This was Old California, as it is still called, and our chief object was to establish an agency for timely securing, and in direct course, some share in the vast energy supplies resulting from the occasional earthquake visitations to which that country was still, as of yore, subject. But now these once terrible incidents, instead of playing havoc with helpless property, as was the case a thousand years ago, are, by timely notice, foreseeing preparation, and the prompt convertibility of force, made the source of vast wealth to the population. On such happy and welcome occasions of unusual supply, the price of energy, in the over-