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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 1007, 3 May 1871, Page 2

A fish-preserving establishment has been started at Pelorus Sound. It is estimated that there are now over 400 oh (lets in the "Province of Otago,

The Alexandra Times of a recent date gives the following painful incident:— About a year ago, a man named "William Russell, a carpenter by trade, who used to be an industrious man in our township, had £750 left him by a lelative in the old country. Since he re« ceived that money neither he nor his wife have been sober for a single day. For several months past Russell, although only 45 years of age, has been barely able" to walk a-hundred yards within an hour, purely from the effects of drink. On the Sunday-befbie last Mis Russell and whilst a few neighbors were in the act of burying the unfortunate woman, Russell also died.

An English paper thus describes the career of Prim, the Spanish King maker, whose recent assassination disgraced the Republican cause :—Scarcely fifty-five years of age, he filled a conspicuous place in Spanish history for five andthirty years—a man of action, doubtless, if ever one existed. :We h&\ e all heard of a certain Vicar of Bray who was Popish at first, then. Protestant, then Popish again ; everything, in fact, by turns, as interest dictated. When reproached with his turncoatish propensities, he told his collocutor-that .he had always, remained faithful to his creed, and that was, whatever might betide, to live and die Vicar of Bray. And Prim was in some sort a political vicar of Bray. If he did not find out that all was vanity, at any rate he met with assassination as the-, actual goal and end of all his manifold efforts. But he lived in the land of loaded pistols and gleaming poniards. His political tergiversations were, indeed, if we may be allowed to adopt a phrase so familiar, " too numerous to mention," and he became, in a strictly literal sense, " all things to all men." 1834 the young soldier of fortune was an ardent Christino, subsequently an equally ardent Progresista, a member of what we should call the advanced party, in which character he actively opposed the regency ot the Duke of Victory. So early as 1843 he distinguished himself, as an insutgent, raising the standard of rebellion in his native province of-Reus. Very .shortly afterwards we find him acting against his old friends, and engaged in putting down, by military force, an insurrection at Barcelona. In 1844 he left the army, was accused of a conspiracy against Naryaez, and .sentenced to six years' imprisonment, which the very next vear was oddlv enough converted into the Governorship of Porto Rico„ In 1853 he was again at home, and again an " advanced '' man, and for his bustling activity was banished into France. After this he turns up on the banks of the Danube, fighting in the Crimean war under Omar Pacha. In 1858 he was once more in Spain, fighting also in Barbary, and in 1861 in Mexico. On'his own responsibility he returned with his troops from Mexico, when the Napoleonic policy of annexation had become evident, and justified his conduct by a speech in the Senate, which vis said'to have lasted three whole days. But Spaniards, we know, a»'e proverbially patient. In 1864 he was banished to" oviedo for alleged complicity in a conspiracy, but was speedily recalled, and with ?ready speed' %\as banished anew. In- 1866 he headed an unsuccessful military insurrection, and, when that turned out a failure, was obliged to fly into Portugal. But he was expelled from Portugal, and then came over to.the consee rated home of the exile —to our own England, to London-.—where, .by the way, he resided for some time, and was well known to many. In 1868 he returned to Spain, and, with jSerano and Topete, struck a blow decisive and successful. He drove the Queen from her throne, and henceforth, till his melancholy death, remained the virtual dictator of the country. Here, is a career as strange as any set forth in wildest fiction.

Tn referring to the project of the Darien Canal, the San Francisco Bui-, letin says :—The late surveys of the Parien Isthmus, by officers of tjie United States, lasting from . February to July of 1870, failed to 'discover a single pass low enough for ship canal purposes. A .second expedition has gone to exploie the southern part of the I-tbmu>, and particularly the Atrato route, from the Gulf of Darien

up the Atrato river to the " divide," thence down tho Tuyra river to the Gulf off San Miguel on the Pacific side. The channels of the rivers named are wide and deep enough for ship navigation at all seasons, to a considerable distance from their mouths, at which excellent harbors exist. The only ques-

tion is whether theie is a sufficient de-

pression in the mountain range between v the rivers to permit of the construction of a canal. In reference to this question Mr Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, writing to the New York

Tribune, assumes that it is not necessary to dig a canal on a level with the 'two oceans, and that the '* divide" can be more cheaply surmounted by a canal over a surface route, supplied with a system of locks and levels, filled by steam power, streams, and reservoirs. He makes an elaborate attempt to show the practicability of the scheme, and declares that the annual expense of supplying the locks and upper levels by t-team power over a summit of 500 feet for as many vessels as could be crowded through the locks, which is probably 50 or 60 per day each way, would hardly -equal 1 per cent on the capital required to construct a ship canal v ithout locks across the Isthmus on any route yet discovered or ever likely to be disco vered.

M. Felix Pyat, in a Paris newspaper, gives tlie following account of (Jh ristjnas in England ; —" Christmas is the great English fete— the Protestant Car nival —an Anglo Saxon gala —a gross, pagan, monstrous orgie a Koman feast, in which the vomitorium is not wanting. And the eaters of'bif laugh at us for eating frogs ! Singular nation ! the most Biblical and the most material of Europe—the best Christians and the greatest gluttons. They cannot celebrate a religious file without eating. On Holy Friday they eat bums, and for this reason they call it Good Friday, Good, indeeed, for them, if not foi God.. They -pronounce messc ' mass,' ai>d boudin 'pudding.' This pudding is Iliads of suet, sugar, currants, and tea. The mess is boiled for 1-5 days, sometimes for six months; then it is conhidered delicious, No pudding no ■ Christmas. The repast i-, sacred, and the English meditate over it for six months in advance—they are the only people who put money in a savings Dank foi a dinner. Each poor family economist's for and takes a shilling to a publican every Saturday of the year, in return for which, on Christmas Day, they gorge themselves, and are sick for a week after. This is their religion. Thus they adore their god." M. Pvat goes on to describe the buloners' shojjs before Christmas. One of them he says, is kept by a butcher clergyman, and over his door is a text.

" Atticus," in the Melbourne Leader, writes thus of the Cerberus : —There is no danger of any ol her crew being shot, but they run a terrible ri>k of smothered. Suppose that the hostile fleet which she is some day to repulse, should send a boat's crew of boarders armed, not with cutlasses and revolvers, but with tarpaulins, and that gome two 01 three should effect a landing upon her decks and quietly cover over the ventilators. I am afraid the Cerberus would be pretty much in the position of the Jcnighte of old when their horses were killed under them, unable to do anything because of the weight cf their armor, and hors de combat because of the very means which they had adopted for their better security.