s most probable
that no more effective means of illumination than a common fire was
employed.

The only other Light-houses of antiquity of which any record has been
preserved are the Tower of Conira in Spain, which Humboldt mentions as
the _Iron Tower_, and a magnificent stone Light-house at Capio, near the
mouth of the Guadalquiver, that Strabo tells us about, on a rock nearly
surrounded by sea.

Then tradition points out Cesar's Altar at Dover, the _Tour d' Ordre_ at
Boulogne, a Roman Pharos at Norfolk, and, in early British history, St.
Edmund's Chapel at the same place, as having been originally intended for
sea-lights.

Though we are far ahead of our forefathers in our scientific apparatus
for illuminating Light-houses, we have never equalled them in
magnificence of architecture; for, in point of grandeur, the _Tour de
Corduan_ at the mouth of the River Garonne, in France, is probably the
noblest edifice of the kind in the world, and it is nearly three hundred
years since it was completed under Henry IV., having been twenty-six
years in building.

[Illustration: A MODERN LIGHT-HOUSE]

All these centuries it has stood strong on its great reef, and has served
to guide the shipping of Bordeau and the Languedoc Canal, and all that
part of the Bay of Biscay; and it promises, in all human probability, to
show its steadfast light for centuries to come.

Corduan is stoutly built in four stories, each of a different order of
architecture, highly ornamented and adorned with the busts of the Kings
of France, and of the heathen divinities. The first story contains the
store-rooms, the second, the so-called King's apartments, the third a
chapel, and the fourth the dome or lower lantern. The tower completed is
197 feet high.

When this splendid structure was completed no better method for
illuminating was known than by burning billets of oak wood in a chauffer
in the upper lantern; and it was considered a great matter when a rude
reflector in the form of an inverted cone was suspended above the flame
to prevent the light from escaping upward. It is not known, in fact, that
any more effective mode of lighting was employed until 1760, not much
more than one hundred years ago; and then the radiance was not especially
brilliant as it would seem to us. At that time Smeaton the engineer began
to use wax candles at the Eddystone Light-house, which soon degenerated
to tallow dips, probably on account of the expense, and they mu