Sometimes longer messages are sent.  After building a fire and putting green grass upon it, the Indian spread his blanket over it.  He holds down the edges, to shut the smoke in.  After a few moments he takes his blanket off; and when he does this, a great puff of smoke, like a balloon, shoots up into the air.  This the Indian does over and over.  One puff of smoke chases another upward.  By the number of these puffs, and the length of the spaces between them, he makes his meaning understood by his friends many miles away.

At night the Indians smear their arrows with something that will burn easily.  One of them draws his bow.  Just as he is about to let his arrow fly, another one touches it with fire.  The arrow blazes as it shoots through the air, like a fiery dragon fly.  One burning arrow follows another; and those who see them read these telegraph signals, and know what is meant.

TELEGRAPHS IN THE REVOLUTION.

Our forefathers sometimes used fire to telegraph with in the Revolution.  Whenever the British troops started on a raid into New Jersey, the watchmen on the hilltops lighted great beacon fires.  Those who saw the fires lighted other fires farther away.  These fires let the people know that the enemy was coming, for light can travel much faster than men on horseback.

Have you heard the story of Paul Revere?  When the British were about to send troops from Boston to Lexington, Revere and his friends had an understanding with the people in Charlestown.  Revere was to let them know when the troops should march.  They were to watch a certain church steeple.  If one lantern were hung in the steeple, it would mean that the British were marching by land.  If two lanterns were seen, the Charlestown people would know that the troops were leaving Boston by water.  Revere was sent as a messenger to Lexington.  He sent a friend of his to hang up the lanterns in the church steeple.

    “Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
    By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
    To the belfry chamber overhead,
    And startled the pigeons from their perch
    On the somber rafters, that round him made
    Masses and moving shapes of shade,—­
    By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
    To the highest window in the wall,
    Where he paused to listen and look down
    A moment on the roofs of the town,
    And the moonlight flowing over all.”

Long before Paul Revere got across the water in his little boat, the people on the other side had seen the lanterns in the tower.  They knew the British were coming, and were all astir when Paul Revere got over.  Revere rode on to Lexington and beyond, to alarm the people.

The lines above are from a poem of Longfellow’s about this ride.  The poem is very interesting, but it does not tell the story quite correctly.

Paul Revere’s lanterns were used at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  There is a story of a different sort of telegraph used when the war was near its end.  It is told by a British officer who had not the best means of knowing whether it was true or not.  But it shows what kind of telegraphs were used in that day.  This is the story:—­