By this time, however, an important dispatch was flying east, bearing
four different addresses: To the Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Washington;
To Colonel Joseph Wilcox, Vice-President _pro tem._, Baltimore Gun Club,
Md; To J.T. Marston, Esq. Long's Peak, Grand County, Colorado; and To
Professor Wenlock, Sub-Director of the Cambridge Observatory, Mass.
This dispatch read as follows:
"In latitude twenty-seven degrees seven minutes north and longitude
forty-one degrees thirty-seven minutes west shortly after one
o'clock on the morning of twelfth instant Columbiad Projectile fell
in Pacific--send instructions--
BLOOMSBURY,
_Captain_, SUSQUEHANNA."
In five minutes more all San Francisco had the news. An hour later, the
newspaper boys were shrieking it through the great cities of the
States. Before bed-time every man, woman, and child in the country had
heard it and gone into ecstasies over it. Owing to the difference in
longitude, the people of Europe could not hear it till after midnight.
But next morning the astounding issue of the great American enterprise
fell on them like a thunder clap.
We must, of course, decline all attempts at describing the effects of
this most unexpected intelligence on the world at large.
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