Show A CAPE HATTERAS lighthouse at last after many years year of waiting there seems to be a fair prospect that a lighthouse will be built on the diamond shoal at cape ilat teras this cape it considered the most dangerous point anywhere on the united states coast litie line more wrecks and injuries to shipping occur there than anywhere else the winds the currents and the force of tile the waves cause it to be more dreaded by mariners marinero ma at certa certain in seasons of the year than cape horn itself and any craft that runs aground is liable to strike a treacherous quicksand and disappear for good shipmasters ship masters pilots carrying companies boards of trade and chambers of commerce innumerable have besought the government to interfere and avert the vast loss of life and property which occurs in that neighborhood every year experiments have already been made in warning vessels off on the shoal but to little effect A whistling buoy which was placed there was carried away by the sea and passed out of sight forever possibly being caught up by the gulf stream and landed somewhere on tile the coast of ireland as a number of american harbor bloss have been A lighted buoy was tried also but it soon became a toy of the waves and sank doubtless swallowed d up by a quicksand many memorials have reached the united states lighthouse board paying for a lightship light ship hut but that has not seemed feasible because there is evidence that the ship would either drag her anchor or snap the chain in either case ending her usefulness or else she would be surely wrecked by the strain brought upon her in this turbulent bulent t isea ea as aa well as virtually to sei the death warrant of every man detailed to servo serve upon her but a lighthouse a permanent structure tur has bas always been considered worth building there if the necessary appropriation could be obtained some five years ago two firms of contractors made estimates and agreed that tile the building of a first class lighthouse a hundred and fifty feet high with foundations a hundred feet deep ought not to cost coat over half a million of dollars or consume more than a years time it was impossible to procure from one congress so large an appropriation and the necessity for quick work when the building was once started made mad ethis this embarrassing ras sing but representative randall bandall of pennsylvania devised a plan for reconciling congressional frugality with commercial needs and accordingly in the spring of last year an appropriation of was passed coupled with authority to contract for the rest of the work after expending this sum a practice generally forbidden by law the first step in building this house will be the construction at norfolk or some more remote abl point nt where there are facilities for doing such work of a caisson about forty five feet in diameter made of bolted iron plates each two by six feet in size the whole resembling alln an inverted pan this will be fitted with a temporary wooden bottom and have one or more air shafts running vertically down through it it will be launched at the place where it is built and towed to the diamond shoal and there sunk by loading with concrete its level will be maintained by adding more concrete to any side that tips upward the excavation will then go on in the chambers at the bottom connected with the upper air by the shafts before mentioned till a proper depth has been reached and more plates will be added course after cour seat the top as the caisson sinks further into the when at last this foundation is deemed complete the superstructure will be built on it when rust eventually wears away the plates which formed the sheath of the caisson the great wass mass of solid artificial stone inside will remain as a permanent pedestal the beginning of the work will be attended with very great risk after towing the caisson to the cape an ail operation which would probably take between thirty and forty hours even from a point as near as norfolk lk two hours of thoroughly good weather will enable contractors to make it fast but storms spring up in that region almost at a moments notice aud and one might easily undo inhale in half an dourthe labor of weeks or months N Y sun |