Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/240

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��Popular Science Monthly

��The World's Largest Ship's Register Chiseled in Rock

DOUBTLESS "Lloyd's" is larger in the sense that it contains a longer list of names, but on the score of sheer size there is nothing else in the world to compare with the great "Ship's Register" of the port of Muscat.

Muscat is the capital of the Sultanate of the same name which occupies the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, and from its position at the mouth of the Persian Gulf it has become a port of call for all \essels serving the Turkish and Persian coasts, as well as one of the stations for the British na\^. In the early seventies the Yankee skipper of an East India-Boston clipper, which had been driven into Muscat by a storm, whiled away the day or two that his crew was busied with repairs by painting the name of his ship, the "Mary Wade," on the black basaltic rock of the hillside above the bay.

The striking effect of the large white letters against the dark background induced other skippers to follow suit, and it is said that very few indeed of the craft that have visited Muscat in the last three decades have failed to "leave their cards" on the hillside. The most imposing records are those left by the British men-of-war, the jackies of which have vied with each other in trying to make the name of- their ship the most conspicuous. The names of the "Red-

��breast" and "Odin," which may be clear- 1\- seen in the photograph, are fifteen to twenty feet high in the original, and painted on carefully chiseled and smooth- ed stretches of rock. To an American the most interesting name is that of the "Isla de Luzon," painted in 1898 before that Spanish gunboat was captured by Dewey.

��Firing with Heavy Artillery at an Enemy You Can't See

ARTILLERY fire is not unlike quar- reling by telegraph, according to Dr. George W. Crile, an American physician who visited the fighting front and obser\ed the behavior of men in the act of making war. "In contrast to the vis-a-vis trench fighting with rifles and hand grenades and dynamite," says he, ("A Mechanistic View of War and Peace," The Macmillan Company), "ar- tillery fire is more se\ere onl\- when con- centrated, and the concussive effect of bursting shells brings other forms of injury. . . . The process is in a measure comparable to 'caisson disease' or 'bends' in workmen laboring under atmospheric pressure in tunnels under water. . . . The artillery man rarely sees the object of his fire; he has no personal contact with the enem\-, but suddenly finds him- self under a scorching fire, from a source which he cannot ascertain, from an enemy he cannot see. It is like quarrel- ing by telegraph." -

���Few craft visiting Muscat have failed to "leave their cards" on the hillside. The names of the "Red-Breast" and "Odin" arc from fifteen to twenty feet high chiseled in rock

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