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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 291, 9 December 1871, Page 2

A Cobrespondent to a Wellington paper suggests that ships going to India misjbt take a loading of birch sleepers at a very moderate freight, and to England the wool ships might take them as ballast. Would if. not be well, be says, to send a few hundred birch sleepers to England the coming season to test the suitability and their market probability. Should they be adopted, then a timber that not only now is profitless, but costly to destroy, would be found clothing our hills with the best crops they will ever sustain, and to yield j an important addition to our export trade. Cool Conduct. — One of the seamen of the Eliza Firth committed suicide lately at Suva, Fiji, by shooting himself through the head with a pistol. The following letter which he left will fully explain the case : — " — Sir, These few lines is to let you know the seriousuess of my disease. I have had it on me fourteen months, have been in several hospitals in New Zealand and in Melbourne, besides 311 the private advMce that I have bad from other doctors; none of them could dojne any good. Now as the last request I wish you to bury me on stjore here quietly. \ Tfhere is a sovereign in the corner of my box which the hands may spend for the extra trouble I have given them. I am in debt to Sailors' Home £4 17s. I hope that you will pay what is due to me from this vessel as wages to Superintendent of Sailors' Home, Melbourne ; and be so good as to post two letters that are in my note-book, when you get to Australia. I wish you all well.-JosEPH C. Scholley." Eie'LE Match. — Speaking of the late rifle match between Captain Walker of Auckland and Ensign Christie of Otago, the Dunedin Echo says: — It must be evident that the victory, virtually if not actually, lay with Christie, Christie depended on the natural powers of his eye , and nerve, whereas Walker brought to thei aid of these natural powers all the aids of/ modern science ; and yet, notwithstanding! all his scientific minutias — his spirit-level, 1 his lying on his back, his querulousness about position — he only won by five points. We don't approve of depreciating a man because he happens to be an Aucklander, but we do say that Christie has proved himself a born rifle shot, whereas science, not nature only, is at the bottom of Walker's success. No doubt the Aucklauders will receive a most unqualified version of the contest; but we think time will prove that our remarks are correct. We have been told that Christie, with foolish generosity, gave Walker some of his better powder, although Walker had powder of his own. The fact is, Christie is an honest man and a good shot, and Walker is a man of science and a Highlander, who has travelled amongst a class of people usually called " Yankees."

■ " Fellow Tkaveller," said a colored preacher, "ef I had been eatin' dried apples for a week, an' den took to drinkin' ginger-beer for a monf, I couldn't feel more swelled dan I am dis minnit wid pride and wanity at seein' such full 'tendance bar dis eveninV