Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/443

Rh in the ancient margin of the lake, two hundred and twenty-five feet above the present level of Lake Erie, but one hundred feet lower than any of the outlets of the chain of triangular lakes which had been the nucleus of this great inland sea. Southwestward from this water-gap runs a broad but now almost deserted water-way communicating with the valley of the Wabash River, and by this passage the drainage of the "Erie-Ontario" basin found an outlet to the Mississippi.

The Head-Waters of the Orinoco.—The Guaharibos, an Indian tribe living near the head-waters of the Orinoco, are described by M. Chaffaujon as of small and mean stature, with slender limbs, stomach inordinately distended, long and coarse hair, and bestial physiognomy. They were absolutely nude, and carried nothing but a stick. Their repast consisted of palm-shoots, a quantity of half-rotten fruit, and some balls composed of white ants. Some others, to whom the traveler exhibited at a distance pieces of cloth, knives, etc., fled as soon as he attempted to get near them. The source of the Orinoco was found to be a mountain-torrent springing from a peak which was named Ferdinand de Lesseps, in the Sierra Parima range (3,300 feet high). M. Chaffaujon studied the remarkable bifurcation of the Orinoco by means of the Cassiquiare, whereby a connection is established with the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and found it to be the result of the undermining and washing away of the clay banks of the river during the rainy season. The outlet from the Orinoco descends a few inches every year, and is now nearly half a mile from its original position. In entering the Cassiquiare the current has the same force as that of the Orinoco, but quickly increases in rapidity after traversing the clay deposits. This communication between the two streams is believed to be recent.

The Progress of Cremation.—It is now fourteen years since Sir Henry Thompson proposed cremation as a method of disposing of the dead eminently desirable to be adopted on sanitary grounds. The proposition fell as a shock upon a large part of the public; and it may be recorded as among the curiosities of the human mind that, although there is no conceivable relation between cremation and religion, it was regarded by many persons high in the Church as a covert attack on Christianity. Yet it was not new; for it had been proposed in Italy in 1866, experimented upon by Gorini and Pollini, with published results in 1872, and illustrated, with the display of a model furnace at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. The Cremation Society of England was formed in 1874. Opinions of legal authorities were obtained to the effect that the proposed process was not illegal, provided no nuisance was occasioned by it. An arrangement with one of the London cemeteries for the erection of a crematory on its grounds having been vetoed by the Bishop of Rochester, an independent property was obtained at Woking, on which a Gorini furnace was erected. A test of this apparatus, made by Prof. Gorini himself in 1879, showed that in it complete combustion of an adult human body could be effected in about an hour, so perfectly that no smoke or effluvia escaped from the chimney, every portion of organic matter being reduced to a pure, white, dry ash, absolutely free from anything disagreeable. Several cremations had in the mean time taken place abroad; one at Breslau and one at Dresden in 1874, and two at Milan in 1876. The Cremation Society of Milan was established in 1876, and soon became popular and influential. It erected a handsome building, with a gas, and afterward two Gorini furnaces, in which four hundred and sixty-three bodies were cremated to the end of 1886. Similar buildings have been built and used at Lodi, Cremona, Brescia, Padua, Varese, and Rome; and in all seven hundred and eighty-seven bodies have been cremated in Italy. The only place in Germany where the practice has been regularly followed is Gotha, where a building was constructed with the permission of the Government, in which four hundred and seventy-three cremations were performed from January, 1879, to the 31st of October, 1887. Cremation societies have been established in Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, and Norway, and in various parts of the United States. A crematory has been built in Paris, and was first used on the 22d of October last. The English crematory did not go into operation until 1884, after Mr. Justice Stephen had pronounced his judgment that the process was legal, if performed