COLONIAL TOPICS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3536, 7 November 1882, Page 3

COLONIAL TOPICS.

(From Home papers.)

According to the Standard Lord GiffordV.C., has decided to attach himself permanently to the colonial service, and it is understood that he will be transferred, before long, from the Colonial Secretaryship of Western Australia to a higher appointment under the Colonial Office.

Lord Kimberley has received the memorial from Jamaica praying for an extension of tbo present term of office of Sir Anthony Miisgrave. The general opinion here is, however, that in deference to Sir Anthony's own wishes he will be removed to some other portion of the British Empire, and it is not unlikely thai he may go to Ceylon or the Cape. Another gold fever has set in in South Africa. The new fields in the Transvaal are causing great excitement in all the colonies, and numbers are leaving Natal, Kimberley and Cape Town to join the diggers. The farmers in the neighborhood are throwing open their farms for prospecting, and one report speaks in glowing terms of the richness of the district in the previous metal, which, it is stated, is found everywhere and with little trouble. Other accounts, however, announce that many have returned disappointed. The new Keeper of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London is Mnjor-General Dean-Pitt, C.8., who spent his early life in Victoria and New Zealand, in which latter colony he distinguished himself greatly during the Maori Wars of 1863-66. He it was who raised, organised and trained the Victorian Volunteer Force. On the renewal of the war in New Zealand in 1863 lie was commissioned by the Colonial GoTernment to raise local corps to aid the troops, He was assistant military secretary to the Governor of Victoria, Vicount Canterbury, from 1866 to 1872.

The goldfiolds of India have attracted many miners and not a few managers of colonial mines from Australia, but if report be true they bave not bettered their condition by tho change. A financial contemporary, in giving the analysis of the balance sheets of some of the Indian gold mines, Btates that out of 37 companies which issued prospectuses from 1879 to the latter part of 1881, half-a-dozen were unable to obtain the capital required, another half-a-dozen are now being wound up, and about the same number are in such a state (hat their liquidation cannot long be delayed ; and of the rest of the companies 10 of them have not issued balance sheets at all.

Lord Kimberley has sent to the Q,uecn the presents which the Maori chiefs brought over here, and her Majesty has acknowledged them. They are great curiosities. The Maori mats are especially line specimens of workmanship. The most curious presents of all, however, ai'e the greenstones axes, which the Messrs Parori and Te Whangi have sent. They are beautifully polished and ought to belong to a brave nation, if it is true that the shorter the weapons of a people the braver they are. One blow upon the head with either of these 'greenstones ' would destroy a man's life. There would be no need to knock again at his door ; and he would have the satisfaction of understanding that he was killed by as 'illigant' a weapon as ever was wielded by a sarage.