Famous Givers and Their Gifts

Near the main building are the meridian circle house, with its instrument for measuring the declination of stars, the transit house, the astronomers' dwellings, the shops, etc.

In the smaller dome is a twelve-inch equatorial telescope made by Alvan Clark & Sons, mounted at the Lick Observatory in October, 1881. There are also at Mount Hamilton, a six-and-one-half-inch equatorial telescope, a six-and-one-half-inch meridian circle, a four-inch transit and zenith telescope, a four-inch comet-seeker, a five-inch horizontal photoheliograph, the Crocker photographic telescope, and numerous clocks, spectroscopes, chronographs, meteorological instruments, and seismometers for measuring the time and intensity of earthquake shocks.

The buildings and instruments at Mount Hamilton are imbedded in the solid rock, so as not to be affected by the high winds on the top of the mountain.

In the Century for March, 1894, Professor Holden gives an interesting account of earthquakes, and the instruments for measuring them at the Lick Observatory. In the Charleston earthquake of 1886, it is computed that 774,000 square miles trembled, besides a vast ocean area. The effects of the shock were noted from Florida to Vermont, and from the Carolinas to Ontario, Iowa, and Arkansas.

The science of the measurement of earthquakes had its birth in Tokio, Japan, in which country there are, on an average, two earthquake shocks daily. "Every part of the upper crust of the earth is in a state of constant change," says Professor Holden. "These changes were first discovered by their effects on the position of astronomical instruments… The earthquake of Iquique, a seaport town of South America, in 1877, was shown at the Imperial Observatory near St. Petersburg, an hour and fourteen minutes later, by its effects on the delicate levels of an astronomical instrument. I myself have watched the changes in a hill (100 feet above a frozen lake which was 700 feet distant) as the ice bent and buckled, and changed the pressure on the adjacent shore. The level would faithfully indicate every movement: …

"In Italy and in Japan microphones deeply buried in the earth make the earth tremors audible in the observatory telephones. During the years 1808-1888 there were 417 shocks recorded in San Francisco. The severest earthquake felt within the city of San Francisco was that of 1868. This shock threw down chimneys, broke glass along miles of streets, and put a whole population in terror." The Lick Observatory has a complete set of Professor Ewing's instruments for earthquake measurements.

Accurate time signals are sent from the Observatory every day at noon, and are received at every railway station between San Francisco and Ogden, and many other cities. The instrumental equipment of the Observatory is declared to be unrivalled.

Interest centres most of all in the great telescope under the rotating dome, for which the 36-inch objective was made with so much difficulty. The great steel tube, a little over 56 feet long, holding the lens, and weighing with all its attachments four and one-half tons, the iron pier 38 feet high, the elaborate yet delicate machinery, were all made by Warner & Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio, whose skill has brought them well-deserved fame. The entire weight of the instrument is 40 tons. Its magnifying power ranges from 180 to 3,000 diameters.

On June 1, 1888, the Observatory, with its instruments, was transferred by the Lick trustees to the University of California. The whole cost was $610,000, leaving $90,000 for endowment out of the $700,000 given by Mr. Lick.

Fourteen years had passed since Mr. Lick made his deed of trust. He lived long enough to see the site chosen and the plans made for the telescope, but died at the Lick House, Oct. 1, 1876, aged eighty. The body lay in state in Pioneer Hall, and on Oct. 4 was buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery, having been followed to the grave by a long procession of State and city officials, faculty and students of the University, and members of the various societies to which Mr. Lick had given so generously.

He had expressed a desire to be buried on Mount Hamilton, either within or near the Observatory. Therefore a tomb was made in the base of the pier of the great 36-inch telescope; "such a tomb," says Professor Holden, "as no Old World emperor could have commanded or imagined."

On Sunday, Jan. 9, 1887, the body of James Lick having been removed from the cemetery, the casket was enclosed in a lead-lined white maple coffin, and laid in the new tomb with appropriate ceremonies, witnessed by a large gathering of people. A memorial document stating that "this refracting telescope is the largest which has ever been constructed, and the astronomers who have used it declare that its performance surpasses that of all other telescopes," was engrossed on parchment in India ink, and signed by the officials. It was then placed between two finely tanned skins, backed by black silk, and soldered in a leaden box eighteen inches in length, the same in width, and one inch in thickness. This was placed upon the iron coffin, and the outer casket was soldered up air-tight. After the vault had been built up to the level of the foundation stone, a great stone weighing two and one-half tons was let down slowly upon the brick-work, beneath which was the casket. Three other stones were placed in position, and then one section was laid of the iron pier, which weighs 25 tons.

Sir Edwin Arnold, who in 1892 went to see the great telescope, and "by a personal pilgrimage to do homage to the memory of James Lick," writes: "With my hand upon the colossal tube, slightly managing it as if it were an opera-glass, and my gaze wandering around the splendidly equipped interior, full of all needful astronomical resources, and built to stand a thousand storms, I think with admiration of its dead founder, and ask to see his tomb. It is placed immediately beneath the big telescope, which ascends and descends directly over the sarcophagus wherein repose the mortal relics of this remarkable man, – a marble chest, bearing the inscription, 'Here lies the body of James Lick.'

"Truly James Lick sleeps gloriously under the bases of his big glass! Four thousand feet nearer heaven than any of his dead fellow-citizens, he is buried more grandly than any king or queen, and has a finer monument than the pyramids furnished to Cheops and Cephrenes."

Mr. Lick wished both to help the world and to be remembered, and his wish has been gratified.

From 1888 to 1893 the Lick telescope, with its 36-inch object-glass, was the largest refracting telescope in the world. The Yerkes telescope, with its 40-inch object-glass, is now the largest in the world. It is on the shore of Lake Geneva, Wis., seventy-five miles from Chicago, and belongs to the Chicago University. It will be remembered by those who visited the World's Fair at Chicago, and saw it in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. Professor George E. Hale is the director of this great observatory. The glass was furnished by Mantois of Paris, from which the lenses were made by Alvan G. Clark, the sole survivor of the famous firm of Alvan Clark & Sons. The crown-glass double convex lens weighs 200 pounds; the plano-concave lens of flint glass, nearest the eye end of the telescope, weighs over 300 pounds.

The telescope and dome were made by Warner & Swasey, who made also the 26-inch telescope at Washington, the 18-inch at the University of Pennsylvania, the 10½-inch at the University of Minnesota, the 12-inch at Columbus, Ohio, and others. Of this firm Professor C. A. Young, in the North American Review for February, 1896, says, "It is not too much to say that in design and workmanship their instruments do not suffer in comparison with the best foreign make, while in 'handiness' they are distinctly superior. There is no longer any necessity for us to go abroad for astronomical instruments, which are fully up to the highest standards."

The steel tube of the Yerkes telescope is 64 feet long, and the 90-foot rotating dome, also of steel, weighs nearly 150 tons. The observatory, of gray Roman brick with gray terra-cotta and stone trimmings, is in the form of a Roman cross, with three domes, the largest dome at the western end covering the great telescope. Of the two smaller domes, one will contain a 12-inch telescope, and the other a 16-inch. Professor Young says of the Yerkes telescope, "It gathers three times as much light as the 23-inch instrument at Princeton; two and three-eighths as much as the 26-inch telescopes of Washington and Charlottesville; one and four-fifths as much as the 30-inch at Pulkowa; and 23 per cent more than the gigantic, and hitherto unrivalled, 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory. Possibly in this one quality of 'light,' the six-foot reflector of Lord Rosse, and the later five-foot reflector of Mr. Common, might compete with or even surpass it; but as an instrument for seeing things, it is doubtful whether either of them could hold its own with even the smallest of the instruments named above, because of the reflector's inherent inferiority in distinctness of definition."

Professor Young thinks the Yerkes telescope can hardly hope for the exceptional excellence of the "seeing" at Mount Hamilton, Nice, or Ariquipa, at least at night. The magnifying power of the Yerkes telescope is so great, being from 200 to 4,000, that the moon can be brought optically within sixty miles of the observer's eye. "Any lunar object five or six hundred feet square would be distinctly visible, – a building, for instance, as large as the Capitol at Washington."

Since the death of Mr. Lick others have added to his generous gifts for the purchase of special instruments, for sending expeditions to foreign countries to observe total solar eclipses, and the like. Mrs. Phœbe Hearst has given the fund which will yield $2,000 or more each year for Hearst Fellowships in astronomy or other special work. Colonel C. F. Crocker has given a photographic telescope and dome, and provided a sum sufficient to pay the expenses of an eclipse expedition to be sent from Mount Hamilton to Japan, in August, 1896, under charge of Professor Schæberle.

Mr. Edward Crossley, a wealthy member of Parliament for Halifax, England, has given a reflector and forty-foot dome, which reached Mount Hamilton from Liverpool in the latter part of 1895.

Mr. Lick's gift of the telescope has stimulated a love for astronomical study and research, not only in California, but throughout the world. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific was founded Feb. 7, 1889; and any man or woman with genuine interest in the science was invited to join. It has a membership of over five hundred, and its publications are valuable. The society holds its summer meetings on Mount Hamilton. Very wisely, for the sake of diffusing knowledge, visitors are made welcome to Mount Hamilton every Saturday evening between the hours of seven and ten o'clock, to look through the big telescope and through the smaller ones when not in use. In five years, from June 1, 1889, to June 1, 1894, there were 33,715 visitors. Each person is shown the most interesting celestial objects, and the whole force of the Observatory is on duty, and spares no pains to make the visits both interesting and profitable.

James Lick planned wisely when he thought of his great telescope, even if he had no other wish than to be remembered and honored. Undoubtedly he did have other motives; for Professor Holden says, "A very extensive course of reading had given him the generous idea that the future well-being of the race was the object for a good man to strive to forward. Towards the end of his life, at least, the utter futility of his money to give any inner satisfaction oppressed him more and more."

The results of scientific work of the Lick Observatory have been most interesting and remarkable. Professor Edward E. Barnard discovered, Sept. 9, 1892, the fifth satellite of Jupiter, one hundred miles in diameter. He discovered nineteen comets in ten years, and has been called the "comet-seeker." He has also, says Professor Holden, made a very large number of observations "upon the physical appearance of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn; upon the zodiacal light, etc.; upon meteors, lunar eclipses, double stars, occultations of stars, etc.; and he has discovered a considerable number of new nebulæ also." Professor Barnard resigned Oct. 1, 1895, to accept the position of professor of astronomy in the University of Chicago, and is succeeded by Professor Wm. J. Hussey of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Sir Edwin Arnold, during his visit to the Observatory, at the suggestion of Professor Campbell, looked through the great telescope upon the nebula in Orion. "I saw," he writes, "in the well-known region of 'Beta Orionis,' the vast separate system of that universe clearly outlined, – a fleecy, irregular, mysterious, windy shape, its edges whirled and curled like those of a storm-cloud, with stars and star clusters standing forth against the milky white background of the nebula like diamonds lying upon silver cloth. The central star, which to the naked eye or to a telescope of lower power looks single and of no great brilliancy, resolved itself, under the potent command of the Lick glass, into a splendid trapezium of four glittering worlds, arranged very much like those of the Southern Cross.

"At the lower right-hand border of the beautiful cosmic mist, there opens a black abyss of darkness, which has the appearance of an inky cloud about to swallow up the silvery filigree of the nebula; but this the great glass fills up with unsuspecting worlds when the photographic apparatus is fitted to it. I understood Professor Holden's views to be that we were beholding, in that almost immeasurably remote silvery haze, an entirely separated system of worlds and clusters, apart from all others, as our own system is, but inconceivably grander, larger, and more populous with suns and planets and their starry allies."

Professor John M. Schæberle, formerly of Michigan University, has discovered two or more comets, written much on solar eclipses, the "canals" of Mars, and the sun's corona. He, with Professor S. W. Burnham, went to South America to observe the solar eclipse of Dec. 21-22, 1889; and the former took observations on the solar eclipse April 16, 1893, at Mina Bronces, Chili.

Professor Burnham catalogued over one hundred and ninety-eight new double stars, which he discovered while at Mount Hamilton. He, with Professor Holden and others, have taken remarkable photographs of the moon; and the negatives have been sent to Professor Weinek of Prague, who makes enlarged drawings and photographs of them. Astronomers in Copenhagen, Vienna, Great Britain, and other parts of Europe, are working with the Lick astronomers. Star maps, in both northern and southern hemispheres, have been made at the Lick Observatory, and photographs of the milky way, the sun and its spots, comets, nebulæ, Mars, Jupiter, etc. Professor Holden has written much in the magazines, the Century, McClure's, The Forum, and elsewhere, concerning these photographs, "What we really know about Mars," and kindred topics.

Professor Perrine discovered a new comet in February, 1896, which for some time travelled towards the earth at the rate of 1,600,000 miles per day. Professor David P. Todd of Amherst College was enabled to make at the Lick Observatory the finest photographs ever made of the transit of Venus, Dec. 6, 1882. As there will not be another transit of Venus till Jan. 8, 2004, so that no living astronomer will ever behold another, this transit was of special importance. The transit of Mercury was also observed in 1881 by Professor Holden and others.

The equipment at the Lick Observatory is admirable, and the sight excellent; but the income from the $90,000 endowment is too small to allow the desired work. There are but seven observers at Mount Hamilton, while at Greenwich, at Paris, and other observatories, there are from forty to fifty men. The total income for salaries and all other expenses is $22,000 at the Lick Observatory; at Paris, Greenwich, Harvard College, the United States Naval Observatory at Washington, etc., from $60,000 to $100,000 is spent yearly, and is all useful. Fellowships producing $600 a year are greatly needed, to be named after the givers, and the money to provide a larger force of astronomers. Mr. Lick's great gift has been nobly begun, but funds are necessary to carry on the work.

LELAND STANFORD

AND HIS UNIVERSITY

"The biographer of Leland Stanford will have to tell the fascinating story of a career almost matchless in the splendor of its incidents. It was partly due to the circumstances of his time, but chiefly due to the largeness and boldness of his nature, that this plain, simple man succeeded in cutting so broad a swath. He lived at the top of his possibilities." Thus wrote Dr. Albert Shaw in the Review of Reviews, August, 1893.

Leland Stanford, farmer-boy, lawyer, railroad builder, governor, United States Senator, and munificent giver, was born at Watervliet, N.Y., eight miles from Albany, March 9, 1824. He was the fourth son in a family of seven sons and one daughter, the latter dying in infancy.

His father, Josiah Stanford, was a native of Massachusetts, but moved with his parents to the State of New York when he was a boy. He became a successful farmer, calling his farm by the attractive name of Elm Grove. He had the energy and industry which it seems Leland inherited. He built roads and bridges in the neighborhood, and was an earnest advocate of DeWitt Clinton's scheme of the Erie Canal, connecting the great lakes with New York City by way of the Hudson River.

"Gouverneur Morris had first suggested the Erie Canal in 1777," says T. W. Higginson, "and Washington had indeed proposed a system of such waterways in 1774. But the first actual work of this kind in the United States was that dug around Turner's Falls in Massachusetts soon after 1792. In 1803 DeWitt Clinton again proposed the Erie Canal. It was begun in 1817, and opened July 4, 1825, being cut mainly through a wilderness. The effect produced on public opinion was absolutely startling. When men found that the time from Albany to Buffalo was reduced one-half, and that the freight on a ton of merchandise was cut down from $100 to $10, and ultimately to $3, similar enterprises sprang into being everywhere."

People were not excited over canals only; everybody was interested about the coming railroads. George Stephenson, in the midst of the greatest opposition, landowners even driving the surveyors off their grounds, had built a road from Liverpool to Manchester, England, which was opened Sept. 15, 1830. The previous month, August, the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad from Albany to Schenectady, sixteen miles, was commenced, a charter having been granted sometime before this. Josiah Stanford was greatly interested in this enterprise, and took large contracts for grading. Men at the Stanford home talked of the great future of railroads in America, and even prophesied a road to Oregon. "Young as he was when the question of a railroad to Oregon was first agitated," says a writer, "Leland Stanford took a lively interest in the measure. Among its chief advocates at that early day was Mr. Whitney, one of the engineers in the construction of the Mohawk and Hudson River Railway. On one occasion, when Whitney passed the night at Elm Grove, Leland being then thirteen years of age, the conversation ran largely on this overland railway project; and the effect upon the mind of such a boy may be readily imagined. The remembrance of that night's discussion between Whitney and his father never left him, but bore the grandest fruits."

The cheerful, big-hearted boy worked on his father's farm with his brothers, rising at five o'clock, even on cold winter mornings, that he might get his work done before school hours. He himself tells how he earned his first dollar. "I was about six years old," he said. "Two of my brothers and I gathered a lot of horseradish from the garden, washed it clean, took it to Schenectady, and sold it. I got two of the six shillings received. I was very proud of my money. My next financial venture was two years later. Our hired man came from Albany, and told us chestnuts were high. The boys had a lot of them on hand which we had gathered in the fall. We hurried off to market with them, and sold them for twenty-five dollars. That was a good deal of money when grown men were getting only two shillings a day."

Perhaps the boy felt that he should not always like to work on the farm, for he had made up his mind to get an education if possible. When he was eighteen his father bought a piece of woodland, and told him if he would cut off the timber he might have the money received for it. He immediately hired several persons to help him, and together they cut and piled 2,600 cords of wood, which Leland sold to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a profit of $2,600.

After using some of this money to pay for his schooling at an academy at Clinton, N.Y., he went to Albany, and for three years studied law with the firm of Wheaton, Doolittle, & Hadley. He disliked Greek and Latin, but was fond of science, particularly geology and chemistry, and was a great reader, especially of the newspapers. He attended all the lectures attainable, and was fond of discussion upon all progressive topics. Later in life he studied sociological matters, and read John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.

Young Stanford determined to try his fortune in the West. He went as far as Chicago, and found it low, marshy, and unattractive. This was in 1848, when he was twenty-four years old. The town had been organized but fifteen years, and did not have much to boast of. There were only twenty-eight voters in Chicago in 1833. In 1837 the entire population was 4,470. Chicago had grown rapidly by 1848; but mosquitoes were abundant, and towns farther up Lake Michigan gave better promise for the future. Mr. Stanford finally settled at Port Washington, Wis., above Milwaukee, which place it was thought would prove a rival of Chicago. Forty years later, in 1890, Port Washington had a population of 1,659, while Chicago had increased to 1,099,850.

Mr. Stanford did well the first year at Port Washington, earning $1,260. He remained another year, and then, at twenty-six, went back to Albany to marry Miss Jane Lathrop, daughter of Mr. Dyer Lathrop, a respected merchant. They returned to Port Washington, but Mr. Stanford did not find the work of a country lawyer congenial. He had chosen his profession, however, and would have gone on to a measure of success in it, probably, had not an accident opened up a new field.

He had been back from his wedding journey but a year or more, when a fire swept away all his possessions, including a quite valuable law library. The young couple were really bankrupt, but they determined not to return to Albany for a home.

Several of Mr. Stanford's brothers had gone to California in 1849, after the gold-fields were discovered, and had opened stores near the mining-camps. If Leland were to join them, it would give him at least more variety than the quiet life at Port Washington. The young wife went back to Albany to care for three years for her invalid father, who died in April, 1855. The husband sailed from New York, spending twelve days in crossing the isthmus, and in thirty-eight days reached San Francisco, July 12, 1852. For four years he had charge of a branch store at Michigan Bluffs, Placer County, among the miners.

He engaged also in mining, and was not afraid of the labor and privations of the camp. He said some years later, "The true history of the Argonauts of the nineteenth century has to be written. They had no Jason to lead them, no oracles to prophesy success nor enchantments to avert dangers; but, like self-reliant Americans, they pressed forward to the land of promise, and travelled thousands of miles, when the Greek heroes travelled hundreds. They went by ship and by wagon, on horseback and on foot; a mighty army, passing over mountains and deserts, enduring privations and sickness; they were the creators of a commonwealth, the builders of states."

Mr. Stanford had the energy of his father; he had learned how to work while on the farm, and he had a pleasant and kindly manner to all. Said a friend of his, after Mr. Stanford had become the governor of a great State, and the possessor of many millions, "The man who held the throttle of the locomotive, he who handled the train, worked the brake, laid the rail, or shovelled the sand, was his comrade, friend, and equal. His life was one of tender, thoughtful compassion for the man less fortunate in life than himself."

The young lawyer was making money, and a good reputation as well, in the mining-camps. Says an old associate, "Mr. Stanford in an unusual degree commanded the respect of the heterogeneous lot of men who composed the mining classes, and was frequently referred to by them as a sort of arbitrator in settling their disputes for them. While at Michigan Bluffs he was elected a justice of the peace, which office was the court before which all disputes and contentions of the miners and their claims were settled. It is a singular fact, with all the questions that came before him for settlement, not one of them was appealed to a higher court.

"Leland Stanford was at this time just as gentle in his manner and as cordial and respectful to all as in his later years. Yet he was possessed of a courage which, when tested, as occasion sometimes required, satisfied the rough element that he was not a man who could be imposed upon. His principle seemed to be to stand up for the right at all times. He never indulged in profanity or coarse words of any kind, and was as considerate in his conduct when holding intercourse with the rough element as though in the midst of the highest refinement."

Mr. Stanford had prospered so well that in 1855 he purchased the business of his brothers in Sacramento, and went East to bring his wife to the Pacific Coast. He studied his business carefully. He made himself conversant with the statistics of trade, the tariff laws, the best markets and means of transportation. He read and thought, while some others idled away their hours. He was deeply interested in the new Republican party, which was then in the minority in California. He believed in it, and worked earnestly for it. When the party was organized in the State in 1856, he was one of the founders of it. He became a candidate for State treasurer, and was defeated. Three years later he was nominated for governor; "but the party was too small to have any chance, and the contest lay between opposing Democratic factions." Mr. Stanford was to learn how to win success against fires and political defeats.

A year later he was a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention; and instead of supporting Mr. Seward, who was from his own State of New York, he worked earnestly for Abraham Lincoln, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. After Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, Mr. Stanford remained in Washington several weeks, at the request of the president and Secretary Seward, to confer with them about the surest means of keeping California loyal to the Union.