News of the Day.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1554, 27 February 1874, Page 130

News of the Day.

A tco-enttrprising Publisher. Tli" bargain made l>v Mr Struh*n with the Pim t i<nnr<*ntr has not. tiiniwl mil remunerative to tlie former. £4,000 a-year was a long price to pay for the copyrights even ot the author of "In Memoriatn."* Mr Strahan'B name lias for some time disappeared from thi magazines which he used to publish, and Mr Isbistir's takes its place on " Good Words" and one or two other periodicals. Popular authors must no longer expect the fancy prices which they used to get from the too energetic and venturesome Scot.

Auckland v. Wellington.

The Auckland Evening Star thus com down on the Wellington Post :--The var pires of the Empire City, who have bh the colony for every conceivable purpos want now to saddle the cost of improvir their wharf accommodation on tl colonial revenue, Auckland has late' spent thousands of pounds in extendi r the Queen-street wharf, but Wellingh has a, better way of getting its work don The Post argues the matter in this wise “ A terminal wharf for the Wairaraj railway is not a mere municipal matter, < even one of purely provincial importanci It is almost, if not quite, as much as tl railway itself, a Colonial work. No oi at all acquainted with the subject cr doubt that with the extension of the rai way to Taranaki and Napier this port wi become the outlet for the three provinci —in fact, for fully half the North Islan Why, then, should either the city or pn vince of Wellington have to bear tl wholccost of providing wharf accommodi tion ? . . . We should suggest then fore that while making temporal arrangements to lessen the pressure c the Queen’s Wharf, the City Counc should appoint a deputation to wait c the Provincial Government in referenc to the construction of a railway whar The two bodies combined might then mak such representations to the Governmei as would induce it to undertake, or £ least assist, in the work.” Confoun their impudence, the Colonial Governmer has already been cajoled into working th oracle for Wellington merchants in th matter of the Poverty Bay steam subsidy and now it is coolly proposed to saddle th cost of improving the Wellington whar on the colony in order to rob Napier am New Plymouth of their legitimate trade Can the force of impudence further go ? New Zealand Dogberryism. A contemporary says A brutal fatht in Canterbury, who had hot only beate his little daughter with a stick, bi: allowed her to be tied to a horse's tail an dragged through a river, was simpl ordered to find two sureties of £lO eacl and bind himself in a security bond c £2O for his conduct in future, and ordere to pay 21s costs, although the distric school-master and several neighbors test: fied that the eirild had frequently bee subjected to scandalous ill-usage. Whe such a miscarriage of justice occurs it i time the magisterial roll was levised. A Centenarian. A correspondent of the New Zealam Herald writes as follows from Tapu :—I is not often we have to chronicle the deatl of a centenarian, but on the 22ud January died at Hastings, Tapu Creek, Miss Flor McLeod—who was born in the Isle o Cana, Scotland, about 1773, emigrated t Nova Scotia about 1830, and arrived hen in the barque Ellen Lewis in 1860, wit! the Mclsaac family, of Thames celebrity, with whom she has resided for the las forty years. She retained her facultiei until the last; peculiarly enough, althougl residing among the English for so long i period* she could neither understand oi speak the language, but could only con verse in her mother tongue, Gaelic. Bui what causes me to pen these few lines, h this—the old lady was a staunch supportei of her church, the Roman Catholic, ahc the priests who were applied to to come s few miles to bury one of their flock, coolly turned round and said “We can’t come It’s not in our district. Any one car bury her ; anybody can read the burial service.” When the messenger returned from Grahamstown, he could not get a priest to bury her, although he offered tc provide a horse for him. It was found that a book with the .Catholic burial service could not be got in the township, and the old lady was buried with one short prayer being read by one of the party assembled. And thus was put to rest the remains of an old lady, who, perhaps, had spent hundreds in the support of her Church. Gale in Queensland. A Brisbane telegram, dated 6th February, is as follows From the Peak Downs and Toorila, telegrams have been received to the effect that a gale extend’ng to those localities and Spring-sure, has caused considerable damage to the buildings, some of which are levelled to the ground. At two stations, Oaky Creek and Talgai, the wind was specially violent; buildings were blown down, and trees uprooted and denuded of their leaves. The rainfall at Clermont during the storm was tiiree and a-half inches. At Stallage Bay head station, all the houses for miles round were levelled, and the inhabitants had to throw *hemselves down, and were deluged with water. So far as the particulars are yet known, it is thought that the greater force of the storm was expended there. The ketch Florence was wrecked in sight of Marble, The Hibernian was driven a long way ashore—north-west of the island. Two hundred bales of wool in the A.S.N. Company’s store, Si. Lawrence, were destroyed by the wet. No loss of life has been reported anywhere through the dorm. The Fitzroy River is swollen, and die floods cover the wharf at high water. Fhe s.s. Balclutha arrived at Maryborough m the 2nd instant. She spoke the s.s. doom rung at the wreck of the James Paterson. The s.s. Lord Ashley is lying n Cleveland Bay, dismasted. Her hnlvarks, horses, and deck cargo are all vasln-d away. The sailors are in custody or r ■fusing to proceed in the ship. They ay sin- is not seaworthy. No lives have iCeli lost. Dentil of a Noted Colonist. The Cornu all Chronicle aimnnifes the loath oi Mr T. Oregson, at Richmond, at he age of seventy-five years. Mr Givgon was one of the patriotic six who, with It late Sir Richard Dry and others, sserted the itidepeiid< n;e of the Ans-i-alias from control of the Imperial Parlialeut. Mr Gregson has taken a leading art in the politics of Tasmania, .and was Blebrated for his combativenes.

"Religious" Outrage in Spain.

3 In the town of Zaragoza (a city of • Spain, the capital of the kingdom of 1 Arragon) there has been committed one of , those crimes at which civilized society ' trembles with indignation. On the 6th of 3 August last, says La Vox Publica of r Matamoras, about thirty Protestants of J both sexes were engaged in worship on i the streets of San Pedro. Suddenly they . were called to the door of their church. - The citizen Julian Hernandez went forth i and opened the 'door to those who were • calling, when a band of assassins fell upon him with their daggers, leaving him dead in the act. They mortally wounded the « citizens Pablo Apolonio Cortes and Frani. cisco Carvajal. They then beat all the rest and broke up all the furniture there was in the church. They put out the i lights "and maltreated and outraged the , women. This iniquitous crime, without example in our religious history, has res mained without punishment by the • Government of Puebla. The Protestant citizens petitioned for protection from the police, and this was denied, and they were left in the hands of a furious band of fanatics, frantic in their barbarity to add another crime to their actions. Many suppose that this crime has been permitted by the Government of Puebla, and the traitors who form its support, because justice has been denied to the citizens who were assaulted, while the bandits and redhanded assassins have been left free. „ Preparing for Cholera. A French prefect recently wrote to one of the mayors of his department advising him, as the cholera had broken out in the district, to take all the necessary precautions. After some time the mayor wrote to say that he had taken all the proper steps, and upon the prefect sending to see that they were effectual, he found that the only preparation the. mayor had made consisted in having a larger number of graves dug in the churchyard. Dublin Milk. A milkman has been fined £ls at Dublin for selling as milk a mixture consisting of 90 per cent, of water and 10 per cent, of milk; the magistrate remarking that he had not imposed the full penalty of £2O because he wished to leave a margin of £6 to meet the case of any enterprising trader who might carry adulteration to a yet further pitch ! Painful Result of a Dream, It may be remembered (says the Aberdeen Free Press), that towards the end of 1871 it came to light that a person named Muir, then grieve at the farm of Upper Dellachy, in the parish of Boyndie, had, about the Whitsunday previous, dreamed a dream of seeing a dead body besmeared with blood, lying on a raised mound by the seashore, at a point opposite the farm, and about a mile to the west of the village

of Whitehills. The dream haunted him so much that, after resisting the impulse for a long time, he went to the spot indicated with a spade, and, on turning over the turf he came upon a human skullContinuing the search, he uncovered the complete skeleton of a man lying at full length. The matter was fully investigated at the time, and no clue could be found leading to the discovery of who the person was, but the matter seems to have since preyed very much upon Muir, as he could not find peace about it, nor forget thinking of it, till at last he succumbed to the effects and died on Wednesday last, and has since been buried in his native parish (we believe of Insch). The investigation at the time went clearly to show that Muir could not possibly have anything whatever to do with the mysterious affair, and he was comparatively a young man at the time, and could not have been in the district—if in existence at all, and for a period of fifty years the place where the body was found had not been used. Muir has left a young wife, for whom much sympathy is felt under the melancholy circumstances. An Intelligent Bridegroom. On the 24th November, at the Preston parish church, two couples presented themselves to be married, but seem to have been of opinion that it was only necessary that one couple should be married to ensure the marriage of all. Accordingly, only one couple gave in their names to the clerk before the ceremony; the whole then proceeded to the altar, and the couple referred to were married by Dr. Lee, the curate. The rev. gentleman then left the church, and the wedding parties returned to the vestry, where the man who had not been married slapped down his money to pay the fees, following the example of him who had been married. The clerk asked what the money was for, “ Why, for being wed,” he replied. “ But you are not married.” said the clerk;“if you wished to he married you should have given in your pames." The would-be Benedict replied that he “ did’nt loike,” and he “ thowt it would be aw reet if t’other couple geet wed, an it’ would do for tioath.” The clerk convinced him to the contrary ; and the party were leaving the church in dudgeon, when the rev. J. P. Murphy, chaplain to the Preston gaol, who happened to he passing, was made acquainted with the circumstances, and lie married the unwed couple.

The projected Tunnel through the Rooky Mountains, already begun. pro. tnisus to be >he chi f of all ihe engineering wond-rs of the .vorhl. I'h - Box Tunnel astonish, d people i.. .ts lav. but in fmute the Mount Oenis Tu 1 i self, the leng'h of which is more than s.v n miles, is «t he looked upon us a mere a thing The if-.cky Mountains Tunnel is :■» be twelve uni ; lung, and (here will be tiu.JO feet of earth anil rock, or considerably more th.ui a mile, over its greatest depth. The expense will naturally be enormous, but it is hoped that pot only will most of the western railway traffic be drawn through this “short cut,” but that large mining profits will accrue incidentally, The bore is to be effected by diamondpointed drills, driven by powerful machinery, and it is reckoned that the tunnel will bo finished at the rate of sixty feet a working iay. The Mount Cenis work was fourteen years in construction. This, it is hoped, will take no more than four,