Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/659

Rh accident, or loss. The immense proportions that the traffic between Europe and the United States is bound to assume within the next fifty years appear to make it almost a necessity that the ocean between the two countries should be as well known as the country between New York and San Francisco, or between Liverpool and London. That this subject has been almost a matter of indifference to the governments interested, until very recently, can not be better illustrated than by the fact, almost incredible, but nevertheless true, that a shoal on the eastern edge of the Grand Bank, directly in the track of steamers running between the two countries for the greater portion of the year, marked "Ryder Rock, twenty-one feet, position doubtful," was laid down on the charts published by the British Admiralty and United States Hydrographic Offices, until 1879, in which year the bank was resurveyed, and the shoal found to have had no existence. The United States and British Governments have recently spent thousands of dollars in Arctic explorations and relief expeditions, one of the results of which has been to show how gallantly death can be encountered. Surely, a few thousands would be well expended in the survey of this ocean highway on which thousands of lives are constantly afloat; and certainly government ships might be worse employed than in an attempt to give greater security to life and property on its treacherous surface.

If the publication of these two articles should be the means of causing one ship-master to try the southern route, or deter one steamer from ramming into an ice-field on the eastern edge of the Grand Bank, in the spring of the year, the writer will be amply repaid for any time and trouble they may have cost him.



 Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine, Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute?"

HEN one approaches this land, from the northward, in the winter season, having left the hills and valleys about his home covered with the cold, white mantle of winter, he is pleased and cheered by the green foliage. The breezes which touch him possess a delicious softness and a fragrant, spicy aroma. When, at the shores of the St. John's River, he looks over miles of clear and unruffled 