THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 196, 19 August 1871, Page 2

THE WEEK.

o I have at least one theme of interest to touch upon this Saturday, that being, of course, the arrival of the gold from Collingwood. Two such rich cakes as those (hat were on view in Mr. Mabin's office on Thursday last are not, I regret to say, an everyday sight in Nelson, and the number of people who went to look at, and to handle them, showed that, even in " Sleepy Hollow" as our neighbors delight in designating our little town, it is quite possible to get up a moderate amouut of enthusiasm. For my own part, I should like to see the advent of these dull-looking yellow lumps of metal of such frequent occurrence that their presence among us ceased lo jrive rise to any excitement, but that goldeu age is I fear a long way off, so that we may well make the most of such angel-like visits as that I have now to record. We have become so accustomed t<> he:»rin£ of enormous yields from the reefs ou the Thames jjoldfiVlds that the modest little ounce and a fifth to the ton that has resulted from the late crushing at the Perseverance mine doee not strike us as being anything: very great, but it should be remembered — although I do not mean to hint in the most distant manner that the Perseverance is anything like equal to the North Island mineri — that our gold is far more valuable than that obtained at the Thames, and consequently that it is not necessary to extract the same number of ounces of gold in order to realise an equivalent amount of money. That taken out of the famous Caledonian mine, which is about the most valuable in the district is worth ooly £2 15s. 9d, per ounce, while what is taken from the Perseverance is readily sold at £3 16s. 9J. showing a difference in favor of the latter of a guinea per ounce. This must be taken into consideration in calculating the yields of the mines in the respective districts. It is greatly to be regretted that a difference of opinion on tbe subject of wages should have arisen between the managers of this and other mines in the district of Collingwood and the laboring men resident there. It is a matter to be deplored, not only on account of the shareholders, but also on that of the working men who are demanding, and holding out for, more than those who have invested their capital in the speculation can afford to give, although at the same time reports occasionally reach us of the difficulty experienced by some of the residents iv that locality in obtaining a living. It is a great pity that, any such difficulty should have arisen, as it must tend to retard the progress of a district that is possessed of resources of no ordinary character, and it is to be hoped that it may soon he got over to the. satisfaction of all parlies concerned. Captain Hutton, the Government geologist, returned on Thursday from a visitr to , Golden Bay, and it is said that he is most favorably impressed with the appearance of the district generally. He will, no doubt, furnish a report to the General Government which will possess considerable interest for the people of Nelson. .t 7 ..,.,. „7 ..,...',',, . A .most, agreeable;, change, has'" takeoi place in the weather of late; knd, with the exception of a brief passing shower, we have actually been without rain for a [whole'- we.ekv Sunshine ! and 'wid'd hay liad their :e^ct 4 :upo"n 'th^M^ZiM'.M: town, and Country, which are, once again

assuming that hard, dry appearance to which, thanks to our climate, we are so accustomed in Nelson. The incessant rain that fell for four or five weeks has taught us at least one lesson, namely, that if we wish for passable roads, we roust take the necessary precautions to obtain them. Good metal will make good roads, soft mud won't. This would bean excellent motto to be engraved on the seal of some of our country Road Boards. While on the subject of the weather, I may mention that while we were enjoying the most lovely sunshine and soft balmy breeze yesterday, in Wellington it was blowing so furious a southerly gale that tbe steamer Wellington, which is shortly expected here, could not face it. I would suggest this fact to the Independent as a strong argument in favor of "Port Nic" being made the colonial depot for the Grey coal. In Blind -Bay, so gentle a breeze was blowing that a coal barge bound for Nelson would with difficulty have attained a speed of four knots an hour, whereas, had she once been fortunate enough to make Pencarrow Heads, she would have had a gale behind her that would have taken her along at such a pace as she bad never travelled before. It is true that if she had been between Stephen's Island and Terawiti she would have had to run elsewhere for shelter, but this is not to the pomt — when you are arguing in favor of any particular side of a question, never look on the opposite side lest you should meet with facts that are opposed to the views you have determined to entertain. This is a piece of advice that -I would venture to tender to the Independent but that it appears to be quite unnecessary. With marvellous precision, the result no doubt of long practice, the postal authorities have this month made an excellent shot at the date of arrival of the mail steamer at Auckland, which event took place within 24 hours of the time predicted. The Hon Julius Yogel has returned, and twenty-eight other passengers shared the spacious saloon of the good ship Nevada with him. I wonder whether the experience of his two voyages has convinced him of the folly of New Zealand attempting to maintain so expensive a line. As a taxpayer, I sincerly hope that it has. Parliament has been opened during the week with all the customary formalities, and the Governor has told us a great many things that we all knew before, among others, that there has been a material falling off in the revenue. The ability to write a " speech from the throne " seems to be a special gift with which men are endowed on assuming the office of Ministers of State, for in no other document comprising so many words would be found information of so limited a character. On the present occasion the members of the Government have shown a very large amount of this peculiar description of ability, the conventional phrase "There is nothing in it," which is the form of criticism ordinarily used in referenoe to this particular style of composition, being specially applicable tp the speech which was, right royally no doubt, delivered by Sir George Bowen on Tuesday last. The blank charges of empty compliment have been fired by way of salute to his Excellency and his advisers ; before long we may hear the angry whistle that follows the discharge of shotted guns. On which side will the artillery be most efficiently served ? 'F. For remainder of news see fourth page. j

An Irishman, hearing the sunset gun at Portsmouth, asked a sailor, ' What's that V ' Why, that's sunset/ was the reply. ' Sunset ! ' exclaimed Pat ; ' and does the sun go down in this country with such a bang as that.' Those who look rather coldly upon Canada will be perhaps astonished to hear that she is the fourth maritime power in the world, and, according to tbe Year Book of 1870, has 7,591 ships, with a tonnage of 889,090. She stands ahead of every Dation except Great Britain, the United States, and France.— Court Journal. In connection with tbe murder of the Archbishop of Paris, it is singular that he is the third prelate holding that office who has met with a violent death since 1848. In that year, Archbishop Affre was shot by the insurgents while addressing them from the top of a barricade. His successor, Mgr. Sibour, was assassinated in 1857 by an insane priest. The Archbishop who has just been shot, Mgr. Darhoy, was appointed to the Episcopal see of Nancy in 1859, and in January 1863 was promoted to the Archiepiscopate. An Active Governor. — A writer in the Australasian makes the following remarks about "the Governor of South Australia : — Whilst in aristocratic company, let me note that the Governor ot South Australia sterns to take more than an appearance of interest in furthering the producing interests of the colouy he rules. At oue time he sends South Australian wines to the Governor-General of India, and uses his influence to secure a fair test of their suitability for that climate. Again, he is endeavoring to expand the lodian trade in South Australian horses. He. lately stated that he had directed the use of Australian dried fruits iv his own household. Yet, again, he is permanent chairman at the meetinus of the Adelaide Chamber of Manufactures, and makes sensible practical speeches thereat. These things are not so much in themselves, but they show, I think, a reality of sympathy with colonial affairs worthy of imitation. An ingenious mechanic in New Orleans has constructed a safe wliich he declared to he absolutely burglar- proof. To convince the incredulous of the fart, he placed a 1000 dol. bill in his pocket, had himself locked in the safe, with a liberal supply of provisions, and the key cast into tbe river, declaring that he would give the money to the man that unfastened the door. All the blacksmiths, and carpenters, and burglars in the State of Louisiana have been boring, and blasting, and beating at that safe for a week %ith every kind of tool and explosive mixture kuown to science, and the man is in there yet ! He has whispered through the keyhole that he will make the reward 10,000 dol. if somebody will only let him out. He has convinced everybody that it is the safest safe ever invented. Fears are entertained that tbe whole concern will have to be melted down in the blast furnace before he is released, and efforts are to be made to pass iv through the keyhole a fireproof jacket to protect the inventor while the safe is melting. The Sydney Mail says that an agent of the Queensland Government who has travelled with a vessel recruiting for labor amongst the islands, has published a report, which does not seem to favor the prospect of a continuation cf Polynesian importations. The men, as a fule, clearly do not like the plantation work, and the ship returned with only half a cargo. Can it be doubted that if there had been no Government agent on board to see fair play, a smart skipper would have filled his hold? Acted upon, partly by public opinion in the Colonies, and partly by stringent representations from England, tbe Queensland Government is laudably exerting itself to correct aud to prevent the abuse of the system. But precisely as it succeeds in doing this, the system itself seems likely to disappear. Eliminate all that is inhuman, all that has a pro-slavery taint, all that looks like taking advantage of the ignorance and helplessness of the natives, and what i 9 left does not pay except under very special circumstances. Under the present regulations anything like an extensive importation of Polynesian labor is not to be looked for. Intercourse between Queensland and the Islands there will continue to be, and to an increasing extent, but the time has gone by when " darkies" can be hired by the dozen for next to nothing. An ■ extraordinary phenomenon is reported as occurring at Napier on the morning of the 21st ultimo, in the shape of a thunderbolt, aerolite, or some other meteorological wanderer, which, after the occurrence of a heavy peal of thunder and a vivid flash of lightning, fell into the harbour. The concussion was so great, that the water rose on each side to the freight of the top of a cutter's mast, and a large volume of spray, or ashes, or steam, for it has been described aa having the

closest resemblance to the latter two substances, was borne for a long distance down the harbor. The appearance presented in the effects, as described by spectators, was as if a mass of burning log and cinders falling into the water bad produced the ashe3 and steam borne away so far to leeward. A British Weakness. — The following is from the Pall Mall Gazette :— lt is stated that on Good Friday the police found it necessary to direct the removal of a " grand stand " erected at Chislrhurst to enable excursionists at a small charge to witness the Emperor Louis Napoleon proceeding to church. With every respect for excursionists, whose refinement of manners is beyond dispute, we must say that this is going a little too far. Fallen greatness is not a thing to be inspected by flourishing smaliness frojn the top of a van improvised into a grand stand, and greeted with the popping of gingerbeer bottles. It would have served these people perfectly right if they had all been captured, placed in a large cage, and themselves inspected by the ex-Emperor as specimens of British excursionists. To have his footsteps dogged and all his movements watcbed by a parcel of inquisitive persons who will not eveu let him perform his devotions in peace, must ba extremely painful to one who above all others yearns for rest. His bitterest enemies will, at nil events, admit that in the treatment he receives from his admirers, "his punishment exceeds his offence." His Majesty wishes for seclusion," remarked a gentleman the other day to an excursionist, at < liislehursr, whose gaudy u^fk<rloth formed a pleasing contrast to his-tu-w.-she'l afafie. " Seclusion be !" t-ej >i(,ed ilirt HXfMirsionisf ; " Honr >y ! vive Luioperer ! " While this uood feeling. In -Mf", ternonstrance is of course useless, j hut it U evidently no joke for greatness to fall into tbe hands -f a " larsre- hearted und generous people " like the British. Once in a wliUh a paragraph or an advertisement appears in some out-of-the-way newspaper that somehow or other seems to tickle the American journalist, who sets it agoing in such a way that it speedily travels all over the country. For example : Some li'tle time since a " broken-hearted woman," as she calls herself, Mrs. Laura Hunt, of Brondalhin, Fulton County, New York, notified to the public through the Amsterdam Intelligencer that her dear husband, Josiah Hunt, had left her bed and hoard, and strayed to parts unknown ; and she forbade all girls, old maids, and widows to meddle | with or marry him under the penalty of the law. She earnestly entreated all editors "throughout the world" to lay this information before their readers. "Mrs. Hunt will please to perceive that wr have complied with her request." — Courier. "And we (two) too." — Transcript. tl And we three." — Cincinnati Mirror. "And we four." — Standard. "And we five." — Western Methodist. " And we six." — ZiorCs Herald. " And we seven." — Maine Free Press. "And we eight." — Mobile Free Press. "And we nine." — Woodstock Whig. "Leave her bed and hoard, the villiau ; And we ten," — National Eagle. "And strayed to parts unknown, the vagabond ! And we eleven." — Daily Advertiser. "He left her bed and board, the vagrum ! " — Statesman. " And we start him again." — Miner's Journal. " Break a woman, s heart, the fiend! Take that!"— Telegraph. "Go ahead, and haunt him, Laura." — Sentinel. " Pass him around, and start him again." — "Ever-so-many 'ibids.'" The following extract from a private letter, written at a camp on theWoodforde, and dated April 30, by a member of one of the Port Darwin telegraph construction parties, will (says the South Australian Advertiser), be of interest, now that the fate of the long-lost explorer Lpichhurdt is again occupying attention ia these colonies: — "At the north-east end of Lake Eyre there is a very large creek coming in from the north, named the Jarvis, after its discoverer, and Tireawa hy the natives. Well, on this creek, a long way to the north, eight white men were killed by the natives a great many years ago. They were cutting their way through dense jungle and scrub from the east to the north bank of the creek, when the natives who had followed them for days, watching an op- - portunity, fell upon them and killed them all. Now, as -tliis must have hnpnened very close to the place where M'Kialay found traces of Leicbhardt, is it nor, probahle that these unforfunn'ps must, have been members «f his party ? There is nlso another thing which seems to confirm this supposition. At the time Sir R. Macilonnellw«B in the North, ah old grey Jioree with a Government b^and, and.' hoofs of great length, turned .arifl grpwing upwagijj&.was. found to the south of thejunction of this same creek with Lake Eyre. Now, as this ht>rae did'inot".Kel6ng' ; to tlie South Aus.txa]i»inuGp„vemtaifint, and Lichhardt had horses so branded, it is |

very likely that it belonged to him. This is old news in tbe north-west to come, but I doubt whether the fact of white men having been killed on this creek has ever been known to_ you. Jarvis, who told me of it, heard it from a native now at the Peake, who said he was on the creek, quite a boy, when the murders took place. He cannot fix the time, but says it was a long time ago."