. Review of reviews and world's work. ling was greatly ex-tended. The long and sliort Hashes of light canbe seen more than 100 miles in tlie clear atmos- 472 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY REI/IEIV OF REyiEWS. phere of South Africa. News from Ladysmithlias thus been coming regularly, in spite of thecomplete encircling of the city by the Boers. Several observation balloons were taken toSouth Africa by the British signal balloon will be used for studying the the country, as well as for observing theenemy and signaling. It would seem that Buli-ers men profited little from any topo
. Review of reviews and world's work. ling was greatly ex-tended. The long and sliort Hashes of light canbe seen more than 100 miles in tlie clear atmos- 472 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY REI/IEIV OF REyiEWS. phere of South Africa. News from Ladysmithlias thus been coming regularly, in spite of thecomplete encircling of the city by the Boers. Several observation balloons were taken toSouth Africa by the British signal balloon will be used for studying the the country, as well as for observing theenemy and signaling. It would seem that Buli-ers men profited little from any topographicalinformation derived from balloon or other Roberts will do better. The advantageof balloon surveying over other methods em-ployed by army engineers is that the region maybe mapped far beyond tlie line of skirmishersand outposts, instead of merely in their rear. THE HELIOGRAPH. Still another signaling apparatus, the helio-graph, has proved particularly serviceable inSouth Africa and has been used in the present. THE USE OF THE HELIOGUAPH IN SOUTH AFRICA. war bv both Boers and British. In the SouthAfrican campaign of 1883-85 the Britisli estal)-lished a. heliograph line of 429 miles, from theOrange River to Molopole, with 29 stations be-tween the two points. Messages could be sentalong the entire line witliiu lialf an hour, andover 3,000 words were sent in a single day. The Britisli army then depended almost en-tirely upon the heliograpli for its communications,as the Boers have done in the present war, andin such a rugged, mountainous country as SouthAfrica it is a most successful method of newstransmission. Tlie range of the heliograph isenormous, and in the clear South African atmos- phere the distance is greater than in most othercountries. In the 1883-85 campaign one of thestations was located 42 miles away from the oth-ers, but no difficulty was experienced in com-municating between them. The heliograph hasnot been improved much since that campaign,a
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