operations. The soldiers on our frontiers in Arizona, New
Mexico, and through the mountainous regions further north, are able to
signal with a true telegraphic language to stations nearly a hundred
miles away.

Considerable progress was made in telegraphy in the after part of the
eighteenth century. This progress related to the transmission of
visible messages through the air. In the time of the French Revolution
such contrivance occupied the attention of military commanders and of
governing powers. A certain noted engineer named Chappe invented at
this epoch a telegraph that might be properly called successful.
Chappe was the son of the distinguished French astronomer, Jean Chappe
d'Auteroche, who died at San Lucar, California, in 1769. This elder
Chappe had previously made a journey into Siberia, and had seen from
that station the transit of Venus in 1761. Hoping to observe the
recurring transit, eight years afterward, he went to the coast of our
then almost unknown California, but died there as stated above.

The younger Chappe, being anxious to serve the Revolution, invented
his telegraph; but in doing so he subjected himself to the suspicions
of the more ignorant, and on one notable occasion was brought into a
strait place--both he and his invention. The story of this affair is
given by Carlyle in the second volume of his "French Revolution." One
knows not whether to smile or weep over the graphic account which the
crabbed philosopher gives of Chappe and his work in the following
extract:

"What, for example," says he, "is this that Engineer Chappe is doing
in the Park of Vincennes? In the Park of Vincennes; and onward, they
say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, the assassinated
deputy; and still onward to the Heights of Ecouen and farther, he has
scaffolding set up, has posts driven in; wooden arms with elbow-joints
are jerking and fugling in the air, in the most rapid mysterious
manner! Citoyens ran up, suspicious. Yes, O Citoyens, we are
signaling; it is a device, this, worthy of the Republic; a thing for
what we will call far-writing without the aid of postbags; in Greek it
shall be named Telegraph. '_Telegraphe sacre_,' answers Citoyenism.
For writing to Traitors, to Austria?--and tears it down, Chappe had to
escape and get a new legislative Decree. Nevertheless he has
accomplished it, the indefatigable Chappe; this his Far-writer, with
its wooden arms and elbow-joints, can intelligibly signal; an