MISCELLANEOUS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 414, 25 March 1870, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Religion in the Gold Mining Districts. I fancy Ido not really wrong the honest miner in saying he does not possess much religion. Yet, if a clergyman by any chance come into his camp, he makes a point of attending “ meeting ” on much the same principle, and with feelings of about equal reverence, with which he would go to a dog fight or a tight rope performance, because he looks upon it as the right thing to patronise the affair. If the parson look on as he is washing for gold> he will ask him if he would like to “ wash out a pan ” and as this invitation is usually accepted, the worthy fellow will contrive to slip in among the gravel a tolerable nugget, so that the washer may be nothing the worse for his clerical visit custom in such cases provi ing that the contents of the pan go to the visitor. At one time there was a “ revival of religion ” among the miners. Never was there such a demand for tracts. Indeed, so great was the demand that a special appeal had to be’issued by a certain religious body, whose mission it was to look after such matters, for increased contributions to the “ Dear Golddiggers’ Tract Fund.” To use the words of the appeal, “The cry comes o’er the western wave- More tracts ! More tracts!” At last the painful truth oozed out (though I hardly think it was mentioned at the May meetings) that the miners useil the tracts to paper their shanties. A friend of mine, whose lot it was to officiate as clergyman among them at one time, used often to tell me that he had to ring a bell in the morning all through the apology for a street, inviting his parishioners to divine worship, and that, finding nobody in church when he came in, he first looked into one gambling saloon or tavern and then into another, inviting those assembled there to go to church. “All right, parson,” was the good natured reply ; “we’ll be there as soon as we’ve played out this hand for the whisky. Just be goin’ a-head with the prayers and hings, and we”ll he Ihero for thepreachin.” —“All the Year Round.”

A Murray contemporary mentions that a Chinaman lately fell into the river and was drowned. His countrymen tried to recover the body, but without avail, and applied to a European for assistance. The UtmostJ however, they Would offer him for his services was a shilling, and this, being considered too low an assessment even of tho body of a dead Chinaman, the defunct tv as left undisturbed,’’

The New York papers are great in getting up long accounts of ordinary events. We extract the following from the report of a suicide “The horror of this tale will, for a brief moment, light up in men’s eyes the vast expense of social disease, and disquiet, andinjustice, and seething dim rage which heaves around and beneath our splendid modern civilisation, even as a lightning flash reveals, in the blackness of midnight, tke great wastes of some stormshuken sea. Electric telegraphs were used in France in the year 1744. The first telegraphs used in England were fixed on the Admiralty in 1796. Semaphore telegraphs were erected in England in 1816, and ships using them were able to echange four hundred words. In 1836 Professor Wheatstone made his first experiments with electric telegraphs ; in 1837 the electric needle was patented ; in 1838-9 the first railway telegraph wires were erected for the Great Western ; and in 1840 th“ Blaokwall railway adopted the system. In 1846 the Electric Telegraph Company was formed ; and in 1869 the telegraph wives girdled the globe. The other Sunday a lady preacher in Wisconsin discoursed from the text—“l say unto you, watch ; *’ and the next week the gallant youths of her congregation gave her a nice gold one.