NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 945, 7 August 1871, Page 2

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

The Mersey Dock Board have decided to proceed with a plan for the improved river approaches at an estimated cost of L 145,000. A number of Durham and Northumberland miners have been engaged to proceed to China to open pits in the newly-dis-covered coal fields there. The sixth report on the gold yield of Nova Scotia, for the years from 1862 to 1870, shows that during that period the annual produce of the fields has increased from 72750z to 19,8660z. By telegrams received from the China Telegraph Expedition, it had reached lat. 18.33 N., long. 111.28 E. The cable is in perfect condition, all going well. The expedition was, therefore, only 280 miles from Hong Kong, and had reached the edge of the great bank with soft bottom which extends southwards from China. The Toronto Globe says that a sailor named William M'Kenzie, of the ship Roseneath, gave himself up to the authorities at Halifax, Nova Scotia, alleging that, seven and a half years ago, he had stabbed a man in Argyle street, Glasgow, whom he had mistaken for a shipmate who had threatened his life, and that he had escaped by going to sea two days afterwards. The Glasgow police authorities state that, with the exception of the Stockwell street case, no murder has been committed in Glasgow within the last thirty or forty years which has not been traced. M'Kenzie had been confined for. some months in a lunatic asylum in ' New Zealand. A negro girl, named Millie Christine, nineteen years of age, is now holding levees in London. This anomalous being is as to her bust two, but as to her torso one ; and she has also four legs. She is thus a far more remarkable person than the Siamese twins. She is of low stature, but not ill-looking, and she has been very car-efully educated. She sings, duets very fairly, and dances, waltzes, or schottisches with remarkable grace. If her lower

limbs are touched both brains \are conscious of the fact, but each sectuA is only aware of sensations communicated to its own arms. She is very cheerful and intelligent ; and her case will no doubt be regarded with, great interest by students of physiology in this country. With her are shown an enormous pair of giants. One of them is Miss Anna Swamp a native of Novia Scotia, who has reached the height of eight feet. She is about twenty-three years of age, and weighs, yearly thirty stone. Her companion is Captain Martin Van Buren Bates, who served in the Confederate Army, and fought in six engagements. He is stbout the same age as Miss Swarm, and a trifle less tall, but he weighs more than fortytwo stone. They are both exceedingly well proportioned.— Daily News. - , Three thousand Orsini bombs, of two kinds, were found in Paris — one is cir r ■ cular, flat, and hollow, about six inches in diameter and an inch and a half thick, and fitted all round its edge with little hammers, which play upon a glass case l inside filled with nitro-glycerine. Whichever way the bomb f alls it is sure to strike one of these hammers, which explodes the nitro-glocerine. The other is a zinc > ball, rather smaller than a cricket ball, filled with powder and covered with nipples, upon which are percussion caps. It cannot fall without striking a cap and exploding. It is natural that the dia- . covery ofsuch objects should exasperate the soldiery, for whom they were intended, and who cannot yet walk With any feeling of security along streets filled* with a population who employ such diabolical engines of destruction. Hitherto,, inmost of the instances in which i;hey" have been used, the culprit has been a woman ; more reckless and vindictive' than the men, they have, in many instances, literally courted death, forcing their fate by acts of violence when escape was evidently impossible. Some time ago the London Cloth-? Workers' Company entered into arrangements to sell their Derry estates to Sir H. H. Bruce for L 120,000. On this being known the tenants appointed a deputation to wait on the company, asking that each <*. should have an opportunity of purchasing his own holding, and offering to pay LI 65,000 for the whole property. The company, however, have decided that the arrangements with Sir H. H. Bruce are so far advanced as to preclude all other- j negotiations for the sale of the estates, i The Committee on Baby-farming met. in London, to take evidence for the first time— Mr Walpole in the chair. Mr Ernest Hart detailed the result of investigations, commenced by an advertisement in the Clerkenwell News. 333 letters were :; received, of which 330 contained offers to ; take charge of a child for LlO for Mfel He was satisfied that two-thirds of these women were carrying on a nefarious trade. In some houses the deaths averaged seven a quarter. , „^ «^ The Registrar-General reports that bn| the night of the 2nd April the number of persons who slept within the limits of London and Westminster was 3,251,804; This result agrees remarkably with the estimate of the registrar on which the deathrate reported from week to week has been founded, and which was 3,247,631, varying only 4173 from the actual count. It should be mentioned that these»calculations were made on. the hypothesis that the population of London is increasing at a decreasing rate ; such rate having been? deduced from the numbers returned at the £ three previous enumerations. . The three-and-a-quarter millions of people living on both sides of the Thames, from Woolwich : to Hammersmith, and from Norwood to Hampstead, cover upward of 122 square' miles, an area rather greater than a square of eleven miles to the side. The increaseof the population in the ten years 1861-71 was 447,815. :* The Paris correspondent of the London | Times writes : — "It will be interesting. | some day to learn how many innocent people guilty of no worse crime than curiosity have met their death in this : strangely horrible storming of Paris, either by shells or bullets, or, worse still, executed ignominiously as spies, amid the, hootings of the crowd, by Communists or VersaUlais. You have probably already the story of a well-known English noble* man, who, first made prisoner by the? j Communists, was found in their keeping by the Versaillais and actually put up against a wall to be shot by the soldiers,when a superior officer accidentally passing by saved him. The day before yesterday, when the Belleville prisoners were marched through the streets an English officer somehow got mixed Up in the proT. cession, and was forced to - keep in it by the escort, who, out of V 5000 prisoners, could not, of course, bf '•/ expected, to recognise one innocent man. However,' so far, his mischance involved nothing more serious than a long walk under a hot sun in the midst of a gang of ruffians, at whom the people yelled and hooted. But it so happened that some of the prisoners tried to escape, and to make an example the leader of the cavalry^, § escort, the Marquis de Gallifet,a man who / is not prone to err on the side of mercy, had then and there 81 Bhot, and the English officer was all but one of them, his explanations being at first refused the slightest attention. Human life has, in fact, become so cheap that a man is Bhot more readily than a dog. I hear the sum- I * mary executions by court-martial are still going on wholesale. If so, surely it is i time for M. Thiers to stop them, and even if severity be continued as the best policy, ■', let it be accompanied by the usual forms of judicial procedure, which diminish the chance of what an officer the other day politely described to me as "crrewra re- „ * grettables." The return of the French prisoner^ is being resumed } but the process is going I on slowly, and some care is exercised mXi the selection of the troops conveyed across the frontier. It is asserted that many of ! the imprisoned linesmen still cherish strongly marked Napoleonic sympathies ; and it is also very generally believed here - that a vigorous effort is being, made to reinstate the fallen dynasty. Wonderful stories reach Paris : how the late Emperor ! has offered to M. Veuillot, of the Umvers, !*>^ and to other Ultramontane organs, to reinstate the temporal power of the Pope/ and establish a new Concordat, should his. , dynasty again rise to the surface ; how ' Napoleon 111. is already da his way to Corsica, where all are pledged to him, and whence he is to make, like his uncle,- - ; $ a second return from exile, #c. Of all - • this English people must know more than can reach Parisian ears ; but they may not know that, in the opinion of the best- * informed persons in Berlin, a Napoleonio regime would under no circumstances be, agreeable to Prussia. : . r