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Show i i The Wonders j j of America j i i By T. T. MAXEY t THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GAR DEN. I.N IX 111 Henry Shaw, a citizen of St. Louis, a lover of nature and of flowers in particular, built a large country residence near the city limits, lie surrounded it with flowers and plants of every known variety. When he died in IS'.i!), his will provided for' a board of trustees to manage the garden and left sufficient funds to support it. This wonderful floral park, said to lie the largest in the world, was thus preserved for the education, admiralion and enjoyment of all. It contains a collection embracing IfiO species of palms; a varied collection collec-tion of tropical and sub-tropical plants; a collection of the M.l known w species of cycads ; a wonderful assort ment of plants which grow best under desert conditions; numerous species of ferns and allied plants; a great array of plants of great economic value and displays of planls that feed on insects; species of the pineapple and its relatives; numerous showy, flowering plants, while in the private orchid house a representative of each of the Slid species of this beautiful flower is to be found. The out-door collection includes a water garden, several hundred varieties vari-eties of roses, numerous species of herblike plants, a rare pansy display, a variety of economic plants and trees and shrubs, native to North America and grouped in families. All told, about eleven thousand species of planls are growing in this garden. The body of Mr. Shaw reposes in a handsome mausoleum within the grounds. the most powerful loco-motives. loco-motives. AT the time of their completion, the locomotives used for hauling the long, heavy coal and other trains over the steep railroad grades in the mountains moun-tains of Virginia were the most powerful pow-erful in the world. The enormous size, weight and power pow-er of these leviathans of the rail are positively astounding. Each engine (and tender) weighs almost 900,000 pounds, is considerably more than 100 feet in length, has 20 driving wheels, is fired by machinery, exerts a straightaway pull of 176,000 pounds and, 'tis said, will haul any load that the coupling pin will hold. The boilers of these giants on wheels are about 9 feet in 'diameter. Each boiler contains H81 two and a quarter-inch quarter-inch tubes, which, placed end to end, would reach almost two miles; also seventy 5-inch flues, having a total length of more than a quarter of a mile. The fire boxes are 15 feet long and 0 font wide. The shipment of these large locomotives locomo-tives from the point of construction to the point of service presented an unusually peculiar and difficult problem prob-lem requiring great care and attention, for the reason that the tracks and bridges of the various railroads over which they hart to move were not. in all cases, built fo withstand such tremendous tre-mendous weights. They were shipped in a partially knocked-down condition and approximately two weeks were required re-quired to move them from Schenectady, N. Y., to 1'rinceton, W. Va. Three pars were necessary to carry the loose and detached parts belonging to each loconiot ive. NIAGARA FALLS. IF you can imagine a river three-fourths three-fourths of a mile wide, 20 feet deep in file middle, and containing thousands thou-sands and thousands of tons of water, suddenly tumbling over a cliff 100 feet high and dashing on the rocks below with a deafening roar and throwing up huge clouds of mist and spray, you Wave some impression of what Niagara Ni-agara Falls, the world's best-known and most popular waterfall, is like. This majestic cataract is situated in the Niagara river, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and near the city of Lufl'alo, N. Y. Ny-ah-ga-rah' is an Indian word, meaning Thundering Waters. Members of lhe Seneca tribe, 'tis said, considered the roar of the falls as lhe voice of the lireat Spirit. Thinking lie inhabited the spray, they made many and various offerings to this deity. The waterfall divides itself into two parts, American Falls and the Horseshoe Horse-shoe or Canadian Falls. Nine-tenths 'of America and a continuous rail line ; up and down the A I ia n I io coast from Key West to Halifax. It also enIN : to mind I he fuel ihat the insurmoiiiit-i insurmoiiiit-i able obstacle w hieh hail heretofore J blocked t he way had been overcome land the supposedly impossible accomplished. accom-plished. I l'.el'ore this route could lie opened. 'it was necesa ry to get trains across tlint terror to navigators, the roekv-liotioiued roekv-liotioiued tidal channel, known as : "Hell dale." between Long Island j shore and Ward's Island in the East j river, opposite Manhattan Island on I which New York city proper siamls. it was not possible to sink piers into the channel, and the slreleh was considered con-sidered tin great to be covered by one arched span. An engineer with vision came to the rescue and trains now cross on a wonderful four-tracked j steel bridge. A 1 rless. steel arch. 1 .- ! 017 feet long, said to he the longest las well as the heaviest ever flung J across any waterway of equal width, i now bridges the gap. The entire weight is carried by gigantic 'Jot I-foot high towers on either shore. The bridge is OH feel wide, designed to curry cur-ry 70.000 pounds per linear foot. The extreme height of the arch is more than .'!O0 feet above the water. About 10.000 tons of steel were used. The towers are bedded in solid rock, and it is estimated that they contain 8,000,000 cubic feet of masonry. The bridge cost Sl'2. 000.000. THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN, THE DIVINE. THE corner stone of this great Episcopal Epis-copal house of worship, which crowns Morningside Heights in New-York New-York city, was laid on December 27, 1.X92. This church was designed to be the largest and most costly church edifice in America and the fourth largest larg-est in the world. St. 'refers at Koine and the cathedrals at Seville, Spain and Milan. Italy, only being larger. It will he over (iOO feet long and its greatest width :!00 feet. The total cost will exceed $10,000,000, and although al-though it lias been under construction for more than twenty-six years, no one can now say when it will be completed. com-pleted. The architecture is of the French gotliic style. The plans for the great' organ call for 7,000 pipes and a chime. The crypt will seat oOO and the altar is to contain loO.OOO pieces of mosaic glass. It will contain seven chapels of tongues; St. Martin of Tours or Huguenot chapel, representing the French rite; St. .lames or Spanish chapel, representing the Mozarabic rite; St. Anihroze, representing the Italian rite; St. Saviour, representing the Oriental rite; St. Coluniba or Scots chapel, representing the British rite; St. Boniface or Holland chapel, representing repre-senting til e Herman rite, and St. Aus-garitts Aus-garitts or Swedish chapel, representing the Scandinavian rite. There is to be also an open-air pulpit with a 40-foot-higli spire and ornamentations in gotliic structures. Donations, large and small, have come from every conceivable source and direction, to assist in the erection of that which is to lie America's greatest great-est cathedral a cathedral -for the people peo-ple in America's greatest city. THE OLDEST SCHOOL. THE Boston Latin school is the oldest old-est educational Institution in the United States, having enjoyed a continuous con-tinuous existence since April, 1035. From the start, it was a school for higher education, especially Latin and Greek. It appears to have been the determination of the founders "To heat Satan in each and . all of his lairs;" therefore, "For the common defense de-fense and for the general welfare should the classical languages be taught at the common charge." One day during the early days of the revolution, the master (iis lhe teachers were called ln those days), a loyalist, announced, as he dismissed school, "War's begun and school's done; deponite liliros," but the school was soon re-opened, and when the British evacuated "Boston in March. 1770. the master went with them as a prisoner. 'Tis said that, in his day, all that, was required for admission was to read a few verses in the Bible. School began at seven o'clock in the morning in summer (eight o'clock in winter) and ended at five in the afternoon, after-noon, with a recess from eleven to one. i The present building, completed in 1SS0. was, at Ihat time, "the largest structure in America devoted to educational ed-ucational purposes, and the largest in the world used as a free public school." It contains fili school rooms, each accommodating ac-commodating .'!" students. If is doubtful, indeed, if any other school boasts of a more honorali1" career, ca-reer, can show as Wng a list of prom, ni'tit men as graduates or more per sistontly conformed to the aspirations of iis originators. (Copyright, nun. Weslorn NVwspapr Vnlon) of the flow, which Is estimated to lie MtO.OOO tons per minute, passes over the Horseshoe Falls, which is hy far the more Impressive, of the two. Below the falls the river is considerably consider-ably narrower than it is above the falls, and the wafer rushes, at a frightful fright-ful sliced, through a seven-iuile-long gorge, in which is located the famous Whirlpool ltapids. The edge of lhe cliff over which the water plunges info the canyon below, wears away at the rate of about five feet h year. Geologists declare Ihat this mighty fall has been in operation fo- nbout 20.1X10 years. HELL GATE BRIDGE. THE completion of the New York Connecting railroad gave us our first all-rail through route from New England, via New York, to the rest |