them so as to keep the long pipe in motion and prevent its choking. But, however well they may succeed in that effort, the men have considerable difficulty in avoiding some such catastrophe in their own persons; for the guano, after falling from so great an elevation, rises through the hatchways in one immense cloud, that completely envelops the ship, and renders the inhaling of anything save dust almost a matter of impossibility. The men wear patent respirators, in the shape of bunches of tarry oakum, tied across their mouths and nostrils; but the guano mocks at such weak defenses, and a brisk continued fusilade of sneezes celebrates the opening of the pipe, and accompanies, in repeated volleys and with unwilling tears, the unremitting shower of pungent dust. In the mean time, a gang of Indians are at work in the hold, trimming and leveling the guano as it pours from above. How they contrive to exist at all in such an atmosphere is matter of astonishment; but even they are unable to remain below longer than twenty minutes at one time. They are then relieved by another party, and return on deck, perfectly naked, streaming with perspiration, and with their brown skins thickly coated with guano. The two parties thus alternately relieving each other, a ship of seven or eight hundred tons is loaded in this manner in two or three days, the Indians on the island working during the night, and filling up the inclosure, ready for shipment on the following day. A smaller inclosure and pipe supply the boats of the vessels anchored off the island. The guano is dug out with pick and shovel down to the level of the rock, and on the north island the cutting thus formed is in some places from sixty to eighty feet in depth, in others it is only a few inches; but these shallow spots are comparatively rare, and usually border on some deep valley firmly packed with the prevailing substance. From the pressure of the superincumbent mass, the lower strata have become almost as hard and compact as the rock itself, and the color deepens from a light brown, or sometimes white, at the surface, to nearly black at the bottom of the cutting. The guano of the Chinca islands is said to surpass all other deposits in its strength and fertilizing qualities, and this is chiefly attributed to the fact that rain never falls on those islands. Owing to this extreme aridity of the climate, the saline particles of the manure are never held in solution, and are therefore less liable to be lost by evaporation than where the surface of the mass is frequently washed by heavy rains. Large lumps of very strong and pure ammonia are, in fact, often turned up by the diggers. The thick fogs, that at certain seasons are of nightly occurrence on the coast, convert the outer layer into a greasy paste, which is immediately baked by the sun into a hard crust that prevents even the fogs from penetrating into the interior. This crust is completely undermined by the birds that still frequent the islands in vast numbers, though they are said to bear no comparison to the myriads that formerly held sole and undisturbed possession of them. There are mews, gannets, penguins, pelicans, divers, sheerbeaks, and many other sorts of sea-fowl; but the most common is the guano-birda very handsome creature, about the size of a pigeon, beautifully variegated, and decorated with two pendant ear-drops. Naturalists, delighting in hard words, call him sulieta variegata. These web-footed colonists form regular towns beneath the crust of the guano, the various settlements communicating with each other by galleries running in all directions, so that it is almost impossible to set foot upon the untouched surface of the island without sinking to the knee in some feathered lady's nursery, and either smashing her eggs or mutilating her half-fledged progeny. The egg-shells, and the remains of fish brought to feed the young birds, or to be devoured at leisure by the old ones, must form a considerable item in the deposits. Thickly tenanted as are the islands and the air above them, the waters beneath are no less full of life. Shoals of small fish are continually passing through the channels; whales are frequently seen rolling their huge bodies in the offing; and the numerous caves that perforate the islands on every side are inhabited by colonies of seals and sea-lions, that wage an unceasing predatory war upon the sparkling shoals that pass, unconscious of all danger, their gloomy surf-bound territories. The islands themselves are perfectly barren. Not a blade of grass, nor even a particle of moss, exists upon them. They present only one brown arid expanse, in BY THE EDItor. T is stated that an act, authorizing the IT pro rata apportionment of public school money to schools organized and maintained by religious denominations, was pushed through the California Legislature at the heel of its last session, and that the Roman Catholics, who incited its passage, are preparing to profit by it. capable of furnishing food for the tiniest POPERY AND OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. nibbler that ever gnawed a grain of corn; and yet they possess sufficient fertilizing power to transform a barren desert to a fruitful garden; and they annually furnish food in other lands for thousands of hungry mortals who never even heard of their existence! They are also completely destitute of water, the Indians who live upon them being supplied with this necessary of life by the shipping in turns. Every article of food is brought from Pisco, to which port the guano-diggers occasionally resort, to spend in extravagance and dissipation their hard-earned wages. The commandant resides on the north island, in a miserable cottage. Four poles stuck in the guano, with grass mats or a few reeds stretched between them and covered in with a flat roof of the same material, form specimens of a high order of Chinca architecture. Furniture is of course unknown, and clothes are as nearly so as possible; but the high wages given to the laborers appear to balance the désagrémens of their position. Guano, indeed, has been used for agricultural purposes in Peru ever since the invasion of the Spaniards. Large quantities of it are consumed in the haciendas that skirt the banks of the rivers which flow from the mountains through the desert coast, raising in their passage through the arid sand-ocean long green islands of extraordinary fertility. The mode of applying the manure differs considerably from that adopted in England. It is never used with the seed; but when the plants are a few inches above the surface a long shallow trench is made close to the roots, and in this a small quantity of guano is placed, the white being always preferred. The trench being slightly covered with earth, the whole field is either laid completely under water by dams and sluices erected for the purpose, or, where no such system of irrigation exists, other means are adopted for thoroughly saturating the soil. The potatoes produced by this mode of culture are perhaps the finest, both for size and quality, in the world, and the extraordinary rapidity of their growth after the first application of the manure is most astonishing. This fact alone ought to furnish a sufficient reply to the theory that attributed the late potato disease to the use of guano. So "it is stated," say the newspapers, and we suppose correctly. It is what we might expect from the politic ecclesiastical managers of Romanism, and from the demagogical politicians of the country. If the statement is correct, it is the first instance of success in what has evidently been a grand scheme, emanating from the highest councils of the Roman Church in this country, for the subversion of our common school system-the system which Romanists, as well as ourselves, know to be the strongest bulwark of both the Protestantism and the liberties of the Republic. The light that radiates over the land from our common school houses is destructive to the medieval barbarism of Popery, and can consist only with an enlightened faith and unshackled consciences. The common school education of this nation is a consuming conflagration among the temples of Romanism. The papal papers and bishops complain that the Church loses its children and youth continually. The complaint has become very emphatic within a few years past.* The superannuated immigrant and the bigotedly educated child are alone found to be firm in their adhesion to the obsolete mummery of the system. The second generation quite generally, and the first generation to a considerable extent, are indifferent if not hostile to the arrogant pretensions of the priesthood, and desert usually the altar, and almost entirely the confessional. Our public education is accused of this effect. At first our text-books were condemned, and in many instances ignominious concessions were made by the American public to this imported public. Expurga celebrated as an Irish Roman Catholic Priest, * Zion's Herald says that "FATHER CAHILL, is coming to this country to check the defection of his countrymen from Romanism! Is not this fact significant? Does it not show that Rome has cause for alarm in America, and that, despite her boasts of anticipated triumphs here, she really fears annihilation?" tions of the noblest sentiments were made from our school manuals, restrictions were put upon the reading of the Scriptures even, and religion was virtually turned out of our schools. The alleged evil, however, continued-the Church still lost its youth. Now the effect is ascribed to the want of religious instruction, and the association of the papal children with our young American heretics. Popery is to educate her own children, and educate them not merely in the elements of wholesome secular knowledge, but in her own faith in the use of rosaries, genuflections, the worship of images of the Virgin and other saints-and the public money must be given to her for this purpose. This is her plea, and this plea is as preposterous as would be a claim to introduce into our jurisprudence the absurdities of European municipal tyrannies, because they are congenial with Popery, which has coëxisted with, if it has not created them. Popery, always in the market for the bid of demagogues, soon appeared with its ridiculous claim at the ballot-box. But the good sense of the people met it sternly there, and gave it an overthrow, the like of which was never known before in this land. In Detroit, in Cincinnati, in Baltimore, everywhere that it attempted the fool-hardy contest, it was utterly routed. A more gratifying instance of the good sense of the American people can hardly be quoted. It became quite clear that the bishops had blundered most egregiously; they had compromised their position before the nation. The blunder is irremediable. They can make no apology for it which will not exasperate it, and hereafter they will be looked upon with an inexorable vigilance. We know of no event in the history of their Church, in this country, which must tell so signally against its future success among the American people. The wrong action was impotent enough, to be sure, but the reaction is stunning; and we have no fear that the conspiracy will ever do anything more than combine our citizens in firmer support of a common provision for the common education of the children of our common country. Nothing is more important in the policy of this country than the promotion of homogeneousness of character-a common nationality among all the races that thicken on our territory. We have two great means for this end-the common ballot-box and the common school. All others put together do not equal these, and the greater of these, incomparably, is the common school. The common education of the children and youth of a nation, conducted in a common language, under a common regimen, and having, if not a common form of religion, yet a common exclusion of all formal religion-this, if anything, must give national identity to a people. Hos-necks to be priest-ridden by conspirators tility to our common schools is, then, hostility to our nationality, and the Roman ecclesiasticism of the country is guilty of this high crime. We have said it was guilty of a concerted scheme in this respect. The fact is hardly questionable. It was not till after a grand council of all the papal prelates of the country, held at Baltimore, that this war against our public education began. It then began simultaneously in all parts of the country. Roman Catholic schools sprung up everywhere, the Roman papers began to clamor all together for a division of the public school funds among religious bodies, not in proportion to their taxes, but in proportion to their children—a condition which would make Protestantism virtually endow the education of Popery. VOL. III, No. 6.—RR If the emissaries of this plot have succeeded in accomplishing their purpose in California, we hope her Protestant citizens will ferret out and correct the mischief promptly. It should not be connived at one hour. Let the fact and the process of the fact be searched through and through, and let it be known whether the energetic population of that new State will bow their against the liberties of their country—by men who, defeated in the older States, have skulked to the extremity of the republic, and there, amid the absorption of the public mind in new enterprises, and at "the heel of the session of the Legislature,” have stealthily enacted their culpable purpose. The Californians have not been understood by their brethren of the other States if they do not spurn this flagitious imposition. We hope the politicians will learn a lesson from the reaction which has attended most of these efforts of the Romanists; namely, that the political importance of the latter, so much vaunted, is little short of a humbug. We doubt not that it has been the policy of the priestly leaders to foster a sense of their numerical importance among the political leaders. There has been a preposterous exaggeration of their value in this respect. Their numerical importance in this country has been entirely overrated. There are other denominations who utterly eclipse them numerically-denominations, too, which will hereafter resent any compromise of any political party with them. It is time, indeed, that the Protestant sects of the country should distinctly assert themselves in this respect. They insist upon no coalitions of religious and political parties; but if the leaders of the latter are guilty of direct or indirect concert with Popery, the Protestant sects of the land, any or all of them, will be justified in arraying themselves against the unrighteous league. The last census of the United States shows the comparative strength of Popery in this country. We gave some remarks on this subject a few months ago, but may again refer to it opportunely here. We inserted at that time the following table : Number of Aggregate Total Value of 845,810 4,096,730 1,709,867 965,880 Baptist Christian... 7,973,962 11,261,970 Free 2,268,122 94.245 443,347 14,369,889 respecting immigration. We have had quite exaggerated apprehensions on this subject. Of our twenty-four millions, only about two and a quarter millions are natives of Europe. This is less than ten per cent. About one million of these are Irish, a people who have been supposed to be more numerous than the whole foreign-born population reported by the census. The papal statistics appear large, because they report their whole population as members of the Church; whereas the Protestant denominations only report their actual communicants, not their congregational adherents. The latter are, however, as decidedly Protestant on all general questions as the mass of Catholics are papal. The Methodist denomination alone (rating three members of the congregation to one of the Church-a small estimate) has under its religious influence above one-sixth of the population of the nation. That denomination, if none other, should openly confront Popery on all these great questions. It is a duty it owes to all sister sects, and to our common country. Any attempt by the leaders of parties to compromise the great interests of the 252,255 country with the Papal Church, must, in view of these facts, be a disastrous policy, 371,600 if the Protestant denominations choose 2,867,886 to resent it. And the time has come, we 14,636,671 believe, for them to be ready to do se, should any political countenance be shown to this great conspiracy of the Catholic leaders. The party that sides with it should be overthrown by the joint rising 1,767,015 of the Protestantism of the country. Protestantism could not do a better service $86,416,639 to American liberty, nor earn a better title to the respect of the world. 8,973,838 108,100 741,980 ALLIGATORS SWALLOWING STONES.-The Indians on the banks of the Oronoko assert, that previously to an alligator going in search of prey it always swallows a large stone, that it may acquire additional weight to aid it in diving and dragging its victims under water. A traveler being somewhat incredulous on this point, Boli The representation of the Roman Church here is surprising, and should undeceive at once our political managers. It has but one thousand one hundred and twelve churches, which can accommodate only six hundred and twenty-one thousand hearers! -not one-cleventh of the number of churches belonging to the Methodists, scarcely more than one-eighth the number of the Baptists, not one-fourth the number of the Presbyterians. It has not one-thirty-var, to convince him, shot several with third of the whole number reported, while the Methodists have more than one-third, and the Baptists nearly one-fourth. The comparative feebleness of Popery among us, as shown in this table, accords with the statements of the Report his rifle, and in all of them were found stones varying in weight according to the size of the animal. The largest killed was about seventeen feet in length, and had within him a stone weighing about sixty or seventy pounds. The National Magazine. DECEMBER, 1853. EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS. In this TABLE-MOVING.-"Much of Europe is still agog We notice several new publications on the subject in England-one by a grave clergyman, contending (as did Mr. Beecher) that the devil himself, or at least his immediate invisible associates, are responsible for the mischief. We think the disrespectful charge (in this form, at least) is not due to that quarter; but that the simpletonism of our times, perplexed by a newly developed scientific fact, has become crazed, and needs only good scientific guidance to thread its way out of the delusion. We contend for our former solution of this mystery, and are glad to be able to lay before our readers some sensible remarks on the subject from an evidently sound-headed critic in our present number. Please not pass them by. BEARDS or NO BEARDS, seems to be among the "great questions" of the times, if we may judge from the frequent discussions of the subject in our exchanges. We have heretofore inserted several articles, witty or profound, upon it, from our European magazines. Dickens, in his Household Words, takes rank gallantly among the non-shavers. After belathering the subject at much length, and with great energy, he coneludes emphatically thus: "Surely, enough has been said to make it evident that the man who, at the end of his days, has spent about an entire year of his life in scraping off his beard, has worried himself to no purpose, has submitted to a painful, vexatious, and not only useless, but actually unwholesome custom. He has disfigured himself systematically throughout life, accepted his share of unnecessary tic douloureux and toothache, coughs and colds, has swallowed dust and inhaled smoke and fog, out of complaisance to the social prejudice which happens just now to prevail. We all abominate the razor while we use it, and would gladly lay it down. Now if we see clearly-and I think the fact is very clear-that the use of it is a great blunder, and if we are no longer such a slovenly people as to be afraid that, if we kept our beards, we should not wash, or comb, or trim them in a decent way, why can we not put aside our morning plague, and irritate our skin no more as we now do?" Common-sense that, certainly-a common sense as old as the patriarchs and apostles, but nullified by our modern succumbency to fashion. Fashion, however, is itself now taking a turn in its route, and will probably soon be found jogging along with a long beard in the train of the "good old times." Even the Spirit-Rappers have entered the field of the "long-beard controversy." A "medium" of Boston, by whom evidently some waggish spirit speaks, addresses to the world, through the Tribune, an oracular article against the razor. His reasons against its use smack also, to some extent, of good common sense. says: He "1. In the first place, it seems to us that an allwise Creator could not have placed the beard of the male man on his face, without some wise end to be obtained by its growing there. 2. The hairs of our head are numbered,' and therefore each and every one is designed for some good use. 3. It is as much a subversion of the designs of God to shave off the beard as it would be to cut down a forest of trees, and afterward, by continual exertions, to prevent another growth of trees or vegetables on the soil. 4. To practice shaving is a continual exertion on the part of man to destroy the works of God, and unnatural, because the Creator is in the continual endeavor to reproduce and establish a beard. Such has been the strife between this medium during more than forty years, that he shaved off what the Creator reproduced, until he cut off about thirty feet in length of beard from his face! What a monstrous destruction of the vitality of the system, as well as of refined nutriment?" After this substantial logic the writer lapses into his monomania, and reports from the invisibles on the subject. He proceeds:― "5. It has been told to this medium, from the spiritual world, that the beard has especial reference to a guard kept by spirits over the speech of men, of the power to do which they are in a great measure deprived the moment the beard is removed from man's head. 6. They say, also, that a man, by removing the beard from his face, destroys the distinction that God has wisely placed there to show that he is a man and not a boy. 7. That the destruction of this distinction causes men, women, and children to forget that he is a man, and that thus impertinence and frivolity of speech are engendered in all the race, as the constant effect of removing a distinction so salutary." spirits," After these opinions from the " which do not seem quite as sensible as Dickens's, or the "medium's own logic, the writer rounds dashed off with a little more common-sense, with some slight freaks, as follows: "10. It is a duty we owe to God to submit to al the disadvantages of wearing it, if any there be, and to influence our fellow-men to omit sharing, and employ the necessary time and expensos more usefully. 11. The disadvantages of wearing it are not worth mentioning, as a little skill in training it wit keep it well out of the way, without trouble, as [ know from near a year of experience. |