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King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 369, 14 June 1911, Page 6

Silas Morgan, a farmer, living in Whidby Island, in Puget Sound, recently dug up several quart cans which contained a red, sticky substance, possessing a sweet smell. Thinking the find was paint, the old man painted his three-roomed cottage. That night a shower washed away every trace of the fresh paiut, and Morgan took what remained in one can to his druggist. The pharmacist discovered the substance to be pure opium, worth close on 300dollars—£6o per can. The old farmer nearly collapsed when he thought of the twenty-nina cans of the opium he had daubed upon the rough boards of his shanty. Through his ignorance of the drug, he had wasted near ly 9,000d01. £I,BOO. The opium was probably cached, in years gone by, by smugglers operating between Puget Sound points and Victoria, British Columbia. The smugglers often packed opium in quart cans, and many a smuggler's lighter passe examination by officers on the grouad that the cans contained 'niit. The "Zeit," the most reliable Austrian paper on military matters, states that a prominent engineer, Louis Bertuch, has invented an aerial torpedo which, if it comes up to expectations, can be fired to a height of a thousand meters and destroy the buoyancy of the largest airships. The plans and models are now in possession of the Austrian Minister of War.