LATEST AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 139, 14 June 1871, Page 2

LATEST AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Melbourne, . June 8. The passengers by the Queen of the Thames have been forwarded to England. The Government at the Cape ordered a new enquiry, as it is alleged that the was lost through recklessness and ignorance. M'Donald refused to give evidence, as he had already been acquitted by a competent tribunal. The fixed light on the shore being taken for the Ajgulhas lighthouse is said to have been the cause of the wreck. The mate admitted in evidence at the enquiry, that he took no part in the navigation of the ship from leaving Melbourne. The Sydney offices lose £1,5,000, and those in Melbourne also a large amount. Eose, a defaulting clerk of the National Bank, has absconded. The Australian journals are causing some excitement by articles exposing the adulteration of food and drink. An attempt to examine the wreck of the s.B. Auckland, with a view to recovering salvage has proved unsuccessful. The mastheads and yardarms alonp»'are visible. The passengers lost all their property. Some of the Somersetshire passengers "Vj who still refuse to submit to re-vaccination are detained at the sanitary station during the pleasure of the Government. The news by the mail of the continued disturbances in France have caused a rise of 20 per cent in brandy. Other articles are unaffected. . The royal birthday ball wag held at Toorak. No Government building being available, the accommodation was limited, only 900 being present. The Rev. Araner Grant, the temperance lecturer who waar charged with, criminal assaults on children, has absconded. Sydney. Ninety pounds worth of gold has been received from New Caledonia. The Government of the Island imposes an export duty of 2s. 6d. per ounce. Sir Henry Barkly, the new Governor, was enthusiastically received at the Cape. The Nebraska has arrived. The hon. — Parkes has gone to Queensland to negociate with the Government as to the Californian mail route. ADELAIDE. The agreement between the Agent-G-eneral and the British Australian Telegraph Company arrived by the mail for the Governor's signature. The intercolonial chess match resulted in a victory for Sydney. For remainder of news see fourth page.

& Her New Character. — Mrs. Malaprop is collecting autocrats, and will be grateful for any specimens of • the handwriting, of extinguished characters. Mb. T. Langton, iron founder of Melbourne, has taken out a patent for an " invention for the manufacture of airtight coffins." '. A Jury has given jfcoO damages against the proprietors of the JVestern Telegraph, a Bristol paper, which had accused a grocer named Edwards of using false weights. J A New Oeleans lawyer told another he lied, in court. Instantly a frescoed optic was given him*, andlie reclined on the floor. The judge fined each of the gentlemen 100 dol. V' The report of the Rio de Janeiro Gas Company shows an available total of £63,636, and recommends a dividend at the rate of 10 per cent, per annum. Three Polish ladies lateley took the veil at the Convent of the Barefoot Carmelite Nuns of Pose?, in Prussia, brine-, ing an endowment; of almost 200,000 dollars to the lucky Convent. Gold in New Caledonia. — Gold has been discovered in New Caledonia. According to a letter of the Master of the Mint at Sydney, out of the 53 cwt. of auriferous quartz forwarded from the Diahot mines, New Caledonian, to Sydney, 43^ozs .of pure gold have been extracted. The Berlin diggings, in Victoria, have already become notorious for the number and monstrous nuggets they have yielded. On May 11th, a nugget woighing 245 oz3. 9 dwts. was got on that field, and about that date, other nuggets, weighing 65 ozs. 2 dwts., 23 ozs.; 7 ozs. and 5 ozs. were obtained at the same place. The Hon. Dillon Bell has received authority from his Excellency to accept any tender or tenders for the construction and completion of sections two and three of the line of railway from Dunedin to Clutha, upon such terms and conditions as to him shall seem meet and-expedient. The Dunedin Evening Star says : — A legislative attempt is to be made during the ensuing session of Parliament to abolish the taking of oaths by plaintiffs, prosecutors, and witnesses in our courts of law. A Nelson member is to take action in the matter. Smart retorts sometimes pass between our worthy City Councillors, and tend to enliven the proceedings at their meetings. Yesterday afternoon Mr. Quin complained that Mr. Borlase tried to take the wind out of his sails, when the latter retorted by saying that he did not know about the sails, but Councillor Quin convinced them on all possible occasions that he had plenty of wind. — Post. The Oamarn correspondent of the Daily Times says we have in the town and immediate neighborhood a milligg power equal to something like 5000 t<Cs of flour per annum, to say nothing of the large mill at Kakanui, and one recently erected at Otepopo, which I shall hereafter notice. The question naturally arises, where can all this flour goto, with so many mills producing in Dunedin and other parts of the Province? Ye merchants, Otago expects you to do your duty— find us markets. Take example by California, and never use the word impossible ! Mr. H. H. Hall's line of Caiifornian does not appear any nearer being broken up than it did some time ago. Both the Otago and Auckland papers contain advertisements announcing that the steam packet City of Adelaide, 1550 tons, will leave Sydney for San Francisco, calling at Fiji and Honolulu, this month, and that a steamer with first- class accomodation will leave Auckland on the Ist of July to meet the City of Adelaide at Fiji, while a steamer will leave Port Chalmers on the 23rd instant for Auckland, calling at intermediate ports, arriving in Auckland in time for the connecting steamer leaving that port for Fiji. It is intended to continue the service by steamers leaving every 28th day succeeding these. The Auckland correspondent of the Otago Times writes :~As the time for the departure of what is 'called the " viceregal party" to Wellington approaches, there is much weeping and wailing here. People want to know who is to fill up the terrible gap, and how are' the archery parties and other small gaieties to be supported in the absence of a social centre, with aides-de-camp whose whole duty it is to see to these important matters. At present we are hopeless, and see no way out of the forlorn prospect. Perhaps to you, not accustomed to the immense advantage of a "social centre," and of some one to " give tone to society," the problem may appear less desperate; but to many of us here its solution is looked upon with great concern. What Is to become of . Government House and its : splendid grounds it is not known ; but some Goth has proposed to turn it into a public school, for which purpose it would not be surpassed in the Colony.

The late Canterbury papers contain long accounts of a nice little disagreement between the Superintendent, Executive, and Council of Canterbury. For some months matters have not been going very smoothly between them, and have at j ,last culminated in a petition from 21 members of the Council to his Honor Mr. Rolleston; The petition commences as follows : — That your petitioners are informed and believe that your Honor has been advised by the members of your Executive Council to call the Provincial Council together at as early a date as practicable for the dispatch of busines, and that your Honor has declined to act upon such advice. That your petitioners respectively and earnestly beg that your Honor willl be pleased to re-consider your decision for the following reasons : — [Here follow eight reasons, which occupy i a column in the Christchurch papers. His Honor's reply is almost as lengthy, he says : — " I can see no reason now to alter the decision which I have already given."] We learn from a recent Otago paper that "At a meeting of Catholic residents at Naseby on the 21st ult. — the Rev/ Father Norris presiding — the following, resolutions were adopted : — ' Resolved — That this meeting views with horror and indignation the pillage of the property of Christendom, at the instance of the King of Italy, in the City of the Popes; protesting, in its humble way, against such robbery in the name of religion as against wanton sacrilege, and in that of order, as opposed to revolution and the invasion of the most ancient right of Europe; and appealing to the nations against the indignity offered to the Holy See.' ' Resolved — That we express our warmest and deepest sympathy with his Holiness, who i 3 now a prisoner in his own capital, and that we proclaim our voice against those who persecute thus lowly the sovereign of two hundred millions of souls.' ' That our revered Bishop be requested to convey to the Holy See this expression of our heartfelt sympathy.' " A monster beehive is reported by the Wagga Advertiser, of the 6th ult., to have been discovered on the previous Thursday evening at Sandy Creek. A tree was felled for. the purpose of procuring honey, which it was known had been collected there by a rather large swarm of bees. When the tree was cut down there was found in the hollow, one of the most astonishing collections of honey ever known, probably, to have been gathered by one swarm of bees. There were several immense layers of comb ten feet in length, and of great density, extending^ along the inside of the trunk, and alnrast clothing the hollow of the tree entirely. After it had been carried home (hajnng been wasted considerably by the fjjr of the tree, and the primitive mode ip^which it was collected,) the comb yi^fdea over two hundred pounds of hone^/of nhe purest quality. Could Canaan beat this ,? Voltaire's definition of a Frenchman as an animal who is "half tiger, half monkey, '' and Bismarck's sarcastic description of Paris as "a madhouse full of monkeys," although malicious, are not without a substratum of truth. Witness the grotesquely brutal conduct of the Parisian populace during the German occupation of the capital. What a singular admixture ifc presented of ferocity and cowardice. The moblets who had been so prompt to turn their backs upon the enemy, were equally prompt to seize upon a suspected agent of the police, to fling him into the Seine, and to pelt him with stones until he sank. Those brave Gauls cou"18 not keep the Prussians out of Paris, but their valor was quite equal to the task of mobbing an English gentleman, who had been guilty of the high crime and misdemeanor of speaking to a German Prince, and whom they punished — i.e., the gentleman — by knocking him down arid jumping on his body. But the crowning feat of these Parisians, these men of gallantry, who pique themselves on the chivalrous homage which they pay to women, was their behavior to certain Jilles de Paris, who were supposed to have believed, like their predecessors in 1815, that their compatriots, > _V " N'sont pas aussi bons Chretiens Qu' les Prussiens," and to hove exclaimed in their hearts, as Ces Pemoisellespi Becanger did, — " Viv' nos amis, . : Nbs amis les enn'mis ! .'■ These way ward s \^men were stripped naked by the mob, painted with the German colors, and\ turned loose amidst the gibes andjeere of their " manly " persecutors. BFivej^heless, Paris is the centre ofNyviiißafjon, and all; Europe is expected to^huader because the "sacred city "-was Entered by " the Goths," whose own capital H$ previously been occupied by a French Emperor, while the nephew of that Emperor expected to have dated a series of bulletiDS,from;!B,erlia'or/Pbtsdiam about $c .$nd r . pjl^ugijst : . ' l^i-^-'Aus^,