A BLOODY STORY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 59, 10 March 1871, Page 2

A BLOODY STORY.

No sound was heard but a horrible hum As around our chamber we hurried, In search ot the insect whose trumpet and drum Our delectable slumbers had worried. We thought as we rose from our restless bed, And relinquished our pleasant pillow, That we'd not get it again till he was dead, And we were secured from his bill 0 ! But half an hour had seemed to elapse, Ere wo met with the wretch that bit us, And, raising our boots, gave some terrible slaps, That made the mosquito's quietus. Quickly and cladly we turned from the dead, And left him all smashed and gory; We blew out the candle, and popp'd into bed, Determined to tell you the story.

The New York Herald is altogether hopeful on the subject of the Russian difficulty. If certain London rumors, it observes, in a high direction, be true, the Queen lias shown very emphatic signs of life and vigor by sending the Prince of Wales to the Cabinet Council with a very explicit notification of her dissent from Lord Granville's "peppery " despatch in reply to Prince G-ortsehakoff's circular. Should the Cabinet, observes the Herald, vote uuauimously for war, her Majesty's opinion will be overborne, but as matters stood at the date when the Herald was writing, the vote was divided and the Queen positive. In giving its readers this intelligence, the Herald pays a graceful compliment to her Majesty, who, it says, crowus the record of a well-spent life by uplifting her hand in protest against what would be but a needless and unjust couflict, from which all enlightened souls shrink back with horror. Iu the meantime a correspondent of the Herald, evidently an unenlightened soul,, suggests that is order to show the appreciation of the United States of the respective attitudes of Russia and England towards the Americans in their hour of trouble, the mercantile community of that country, especially shipowners, searaeu, and insurance companies, shall contribute towards building and arming a privateer, to be known as the " Russian American," and then presenting her to the Emperor Alexander as a testimony of good will. This may be a glorious retalliation, but it hardly comes up to the idea of " shrinking back with horror " from " a needless and unjust conflict." The Mont Cenis Tunnel. — The greatest engineering work of the century of engineering has at last been accomplished. The Mont Cenis Tunnel is perhaps a more wonderful triumph of genius and perseverance than the Atlantic Telegraph or the Suez Canal. Its length is seven miles and three-fifths, it is twentysix feet and a quarter in width, and nineteen feet eight inches in height, and will carry a doubla line of rails from France, under the Alps, to Italy. The tunnel, which is of cajdree unfinished as yet, has been cu4r by atmospheric machinery througil the solid rock, schist, limestone, and' quartz, the air which moved the chisels escaping from its compression to the lungs of the workmen. The work has been fifteen years in progress, without reckoning the time spent in preliminary investigations ; it has been carried on continuously from 1861 till now. The railway up the Sion Valley, will now, before long, carry its passengers straight through from Fourneaux to Bardoneche, and it will be possible to go from Paris to Milan without climbing an Alpine pass, or even changing the railway carriage. So far as railway transit is concerned, there are, therefore, no more Alps. The great mountaiu chain has been finally removed. This immense work has been carried out under vast difficulties. There could be no shafts as in the short tunnels which pierce our little English hills, and all the debris had to be carried back to the entrance. Ifc was begun at both ends, and the workmen who thus started seven miles apart, with a mountain chain between them, havs met as accurately as though there had been but a hill to pierce. As a triumph of engineering skill, we must mark this work as one of the new wonders of the world. The Australasian gives the following as an extract from a report furnished ia one of the provincial papers of the speech of a Dr. Rowe, one of the candidates for Parliamentary honors : — The doctor said the £300 per annum was nothing to him, he would pay that (o an overseer on his station to overlook when he was transacting our business in Parliament. He had no homo but Australia, rendered holy by the graves of his children, and also where he would sleep himself near Mount Battery, if he lived long enough, he considered it only his duty to come forward, and for the good of his country to extend the liberal principles that had ever been his principle. Not unnaturally, the doctor complains that he was misreported. Duty on Malt in England. — The excise duty oa malt for the year ended March 1870, amounted to £6,874,468, 50,697,459 bushels.

A visit was lately made to Lake Taupo by a correspondent ot one of the Hawke's Bay journals. In the description yiven, be says : — A short distance to the right is one of the branches through which the Waikato River debouches into the lake. Beside the bank of this stream the natives showed us a spring, boiling and bubbling with great activity. They told us that when they killed a pig they brought it here, scalded the hair off in the boiling water, then washed it in the cold. A few yards higher up the stream we came to the great geyser Te Ariki (The Lord), otherwise called Big Beu. This geyser is very often to be seen sending up a column of water, to two feet in diameter, ten or twelve feet into the air, :uid uow and then, with a thundrous roar, it sends up fifty or a hundred feet ; while we were there it was quite quiescent. The moon was up by this time, otherwise we should" have been left in darkness. Before we went home, however, we bathed in one of the large circular basins of hot water, of which there are several scattered here and there. The basin was about twenty feet in diameter, and the water in it was as hot as could be comfortably endured ; it was too hotf indeed, for some of our party. One end of the basin had to be c.irefully avoided, as there was deep mud there which was actually boiling. In the report of the Whitworth aud Armstrong Committee we find the following : — "lt further appears from the table of ranges, combined with an .inspection of the probable rectangles, that the Whitworth gun made good practice up to a range of 8000 yards, which is about 2000 yards in excess of the ranges attained by either of the Armstrong guns at the same elevation of 21 degrees." Some idea of the distance these modern rifled caunou can throw a shot will be formed by the general reader when he reflects that 8000 yards represent a distance of more thun four miles anda-half; that is, a Whitworth shot might be well aimed from the southern slope of Highgatq. hill at an object on the further side of jbbe Thames. Thi3, however, does not represent the carrying distance of the9-iuch Whitworth. On the 20th of November, a range of 10*300 yards (more than five miles and thr^e quarters) was attained. The shot on this occasion weighed 2501b5., charge of powder oOlbs., and the elevation 33 deg. Tbe very next day the same gun beat its previous performance. With 33'5 deg. elevation it threw a shell weighing 3101b5., with oOlbs. of powder, 11,127 yards, " to the first grave," being upwards of six miles aud a quarter! This is stated to be 1000 yards further than the flight of any projectile from any gun in this or foreign countries. — -Mechanics 1 Magazine.