THE VICTORIA CROSS.

Evening Post, Issue 185, 11 September 1865, Page 2

THE VICTORIA CROSS.

In our allusion to the Wairai skirmish in our last, an error has occurred, which we hasten to correct. We there stated that Major Heapby carried out a wounded man ; this he did not do. The facts, we find on reference to the official paper, are these : — A soldier lay severely wounded in a pit, and Was liable to be dispatched by the Maoris, who were in the scrub close to him. Major Heaphy offered to go and dress his wound, and, if men would accompany him, to get him out of the ditch and brought up to the parapet, where he would be safe. Four men of the 40th immediately volunteered and followed Major Ileaphy down ; of these, two fell immediately, mortally wounded ; and one Patrick Cooney, now in Auckland, succeeded, with Major Henphy, in reaching the man. Here they received another discharge from the Maoris. The two of them .were quite unable to get the man out of the hollow. They, however, covered him with their rifles until hospital sergeant Hollett, 40th, came with a stretcher party, when lie was carried off ; one man of I hat party, M'Doale, 40th, being killed while moving him.— Auckland Ilorald.

Lord Stanley, of Alderley, does not seem to have benefited much by the retirement of Sir Rowland Hill. The merchants of London want the present system of dispatching the India mail changed for a weekly mail, leaving on a fixed day in the week, and it appears from a reply given by.> Mr. Frederick Peel, that the arrangement can be effected As, however, it must be extended to China and Australia, it will cost about £35,000 a year, and the department proposes to reimburse itself by raising the postage via Southampton from sixpence to a shilling, and via Marseilles from tenpence to sixteenpence The proposition is monstrous. The way to increase postal receipts ia to reduce charges not increase them, and the addition proposed would involve an unknown amount ot oppression. There are thousands of families in India ami China, hundreds of thousands in Australia, in which even the present rates are felt ns burdensome, and to double them would reduce their communications one half. Reduce the Marseilles rate to sixpence, and the Southampton rate to fourpence, and the Postmaster-General would soon find that the improvement had cost him nothing —Press. As a proof ot the progress which local in dustries of an important class are making in the colonies, it may be stated that the Fitzroy Piii Ironworks in New South Wales are now prepared to turn out pig iron in any quantity. The iron is stated also to bo of superior quality. Don Pedro Caudamo, the richest capitalist in South America, has just died at Lima, leaving a fortune which, it is asserted, exceeds the sum of sixteen millions sterling. Advices have been received by the last overland mail of the discovery, about eighty miles, from Sydney, near a line of railway now in course of construction, of a workable seam of cannel coal, which surpasses the hitherto unrivalled Boghead in richness. Its yield per ton is reported to be 17,500 cubic feet of gas of 31-camllc illuminating power, and '745 specific gravity. The discovery must exercise great influence on gas-lighting iv Australia, the Last Indies, China, California, and South America, by enabling the gasworks of those countries to use their inferior local coals, and bring up the quality of their giis to a satisfactory illuminating power by the addition of a small quantity of Australian cannel. — Journal of Gas Lighting. A bust of the late Mr. Richard Hcales has been placed in the public garden on Flagstaff Hill, Melbourne. A Modest Riscokd. — Charles Lannmn, compiler of the " Dictionary ot Congress," when he commenced his labours upon that work, seat to all the ex-members whose residences were known to him a circular, asking each one for information as to the date and place of his birth, the character of his odu* cation, his profession or his occupation, and a list of any public positions he might have filler 1 Looking over, since the late terrible tragedy, the answers to this circulars he found the following modest record in the handwriting of Abraham Lincoln. It is a valuable autograph : — "Born 12th February, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession a lawyer. Has been a captain of volunteers in the B.ack Hawk War. Postmaster at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature. And was a member of the Lower House of Congress. Yours, &c, A. Lincoln."— Anti-Slavery Standard.