The Evening Star TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1874

Evening Star, Issue 3470, 7 April 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1874

Among . the literary curiosities of Dunedin must be regarded an article that appeared this morning in the columns of the ‘ Daily Times.’ We were amazed at the news it contained and imagined that either we must have been asleep and dreaming of peace when there was no peace, or that we and other journalists had neglected the plainest duty of warning our fellowcolonists of the beginning of the end of the British Empire—the defection of the British Army from the Crown. The story told by the ‘ Daily Times’

begins with a sort of nursery tion like Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of Englishmen. as witness the following alarming announcement;— The few terrible words contained in the meagre telegrams published in one of our last week’s issues, relating to a mutiny of British troops, tell a tale, the fearful import of which it is hard to calculate. A mutiny of British troops! We never heard of it. The horrible announcement was read to us at breakfast, and it gave us such a shock, that it was a marvel we did not choke ourselves with unswallowable morsels of beef, grease our waistcoat with butter, or scald our tongues with hot tea, so

great was our astonishment and terror. Then came the doleful intelligence of 13 killed and 130 wounded, through the loyalty of the, guard. At first we thought it meant Her Majesty’s splendid household troops “ The Guards and we were inclined to bo somewhat boisterous. Probably had not our knees been tucked under a heavy table, not easily upset, we might have jumped upon our chair in ecstacy, and given a cheer for the bravery and in honor of the British Guards. But the cool manner iu which our contemporary set to, to find out why there were not more killed and fewer wounded calmed our excitement. We began to reflect, and our thoughts took this turn: Is this a mare’s nest, or is it tni3? We

certainly read of some mutiny somewhere, but it was not of British troops or anywhere in the British Empire. Our contemporary must have been smoking backshish or opium, or forgotten his geography or his orthography, and fancied L-I-M-A spelled London. Then we remembered that it was not absolutely necessary to smoke either the one or the other to be led into hallucinations, and that an extra dose of whisky, brandy, or blue, ruin would be equally efficacious; so our alarm gradually subsided until at length we became sufficiently calm to investigate the matter, and lo! it proved even as we had surmised. Ou the 2nd of April—not the first, or we> might have imagined our contemporary! was only correcting a first of April ! joke—the telegraphic news from Auckland contained the following :

The soldiers in the barracks at Lima mutinied in of excessive drill. The guard, fired bn them, killing thirteen and wounding 130.

, On reading that confirmation of onr doubt our breath came freely, our pulse beat regularly, the blood returned to its natural course, and we went about our work content. The closing of the Church in Poland, and the greased cartridges that fired the Indian mutiny, resumed their places in the niches of our memory, and we felt the British Empire was safe. ’