The Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1874.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 97, 24 April 1874, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1874.

Oddfellows' Hall. — Mr. Chapman and Miss Ida Bonifon, will give their last entertainment at the Odd-Fellows' Hall this evening. A very tempting programme is published for the occasion. Claus-Rekel Concerts. — This Company gave auother excellent entertaiument last night, but the audience, we were sorry to see, was very limited. They will appear again to-night for the last time, and we would strongly advise those who have not yet heard them to pay them a visit. Gas and Waterworks Loan. — The tenders for debentures under the Nelson Cily Loan Act, 1871, were opened yesterday, when it waa found that eligible tenders were received for only £700 out of the £2500 required. Tenders will be invited for tbe balance. Bishop's School. — Mr Edward L. Shaw, BA. 1870, Corpus Christi Cambridge, has been appointed Moster of the Bishop's School, Ne'son. Mr. Shaw was educated at Repton School, one of the most successful of the modern publio schools of England, under Dr. Pears, aud having recently arrived iv Melbourne, is expected y$ reach Nelson by tbe next direct steafaer from Australia. ' Resident Magistrate's Court. — James Dall was charged with vagrancy for the fifth time, but was discharged on bis promising to leave the place at once. Louis Lartignes. of tbe barque Condor, was charged with absenting himself without leave. As the vessel is leaving to-day, be was ordered to be placed on board. Licensing Court. — Licensing Courts were held in the three Waimea districts, when all tbe applications were granted, with the exception of those of William Puinton and Edwin Hooper. These were opposed by 'the police, on the ground tbat the provisions of their present licenses bad been repeatedly infringed. Perseverance Company. — A meetof the shareholders was held last night for the purpose of taking a vote upon the question of winding up tbe Com* pany. Out of 389 shareholders in tbe Company, only 106 voted personally or ~-b$ proxy, they being the holders of 460 paid up and 905 subscribing shares, or 1365 out of 4000, the original number, but 100 of these have been forfeited. As ifc requires the consent of the majority in number an d^Pffife||f the previous meeting was thJMßßßflraihoße says our contemporary, wfmPTong be remembered as a day full "of moving accidents by flood and field.'' As. will be seen by tbe heading of this columnk the day was pregnant of disaster, ana one in which a complete verification was afforded of the old apophthegm, " When sorrows come they come not single foes, but in battalions." And although the disasters to be narrated occurred at different periods of the day, the intelligence of them was all crowded in upon the public about the same hour. It will be seen that, at one o'clock, the residence of Mr Chisholm, situated about a mile this side of the Whau, was razed to the ground by fire, and the intelligence was reported in town about four o'clock. At about six o'clock the news of the destruction of the fine brig Albion, at the Kaipara Heads, came to hand, and at half- past eight £6000 worth of property had been destroyed by fire in Queen-street. The natural craving for sensational items peculiar to newspaper reporters and relished by newspaper readers may therefore be said to have been fully satisfied. — The explanation given by Mr King of the origin of the fire is that he had been preparing some mixtures which necessitated the use Of

spirits of turpontine. He hail finished gumming several labels, and was in the act of replacing the bottle containing "tfrex turpentine when in so doing ha accidentally struck it against another; the spirit spread, and the vapor being ignited by the gaslight the fire was the result. i Mr Calcutt, the gentleman whose services as an inspector of land are hiahjy valued by the Government, has arrived in town. His errand this time wasto inspect lhe country about Juck'£onV\Bay in relation to Mr Vogel's pet idea of special forest settlements in Westland. Mr Calcutt, however, did not get there owiog to the absence of the Waipara, and he now proceeds to Canterbury via the Amuri track. We take this opportunity of agaiD denouncing the special settlements scheme as applied to Westland as impracticable, illusive, and utterly unsuited to the of the Province-— besides toeiDg a delusion lo the unfortunate Bmmigrautß who may be brought under 'its provisions. Wo have a paragraph now before us, in an Otago paper, which slates that of the cumber of special settlers placed upon Stewart's Island only one family remains — the others having all left for the mainland and gone ii,to ordinary occupations. Now it was expected that the settlement at Port William would be very successful. The land was good, excellent timber abounded, and facilities for. shipbuilding were great, the adjoining seas teemed with fish of all kinds — - and it was considered in fact a Paradise for the poor Shetlanders who were brought out and placed upon the settlement. They fished, and cured their fish, but had no market, and finding that good wages aud easier living were obtainable in Otago, they gave up their land and emigrated. And a similar fjite will assuredly attend any scheme of settling families in isolated places in the West Coast forests. They will not —they cannot remain in them, and tbe attempt to artificially settle the desert regions of Westland will prove a certain failure. The scheme is the outcome of an ingenious man utterly inexperienced in the actual work of colonisation, and is backed up apparently by one who ought to know better, if he does not, than to countenance such a mad and really ridiculous idea. Would the' Superintendent care to live in one of these projected settlements himEelf, or would be advise any of his friends to do co? We trow not. — G. li. Argus. It is wonderful to see the immense alteration the regular running of tbe railway trains has effected in Onehunga already. Just before the line was opened the town was in a sleepy condition, and empty houses were scattered thickly in every street. Now the place ■ presents a business-like aspect, anjd houses are not to be got for love or money. A good many have recently been elected, and have been occupied as soon as finished. Others are going up, and are already being treated for.-— Herald. The Auckland Herald says : — The Good Templars' objection's to the granting of licenses to ten existing hotels, upon the ground that there was no necessity for tbem, has been overruled by the Licensing Bench at Grabamstown. The Bench appeared to consider that tbe hotelkeepers who had applied for the Hcenseß were themselves the best judges as to whether their houses were a necessity. If they were not wanted, landlords would soon make the discovery, or their creditors would, which generally amounts to the same thing, and so the houses would close owing to the want of sufficient support. Landlords of hotels are generally better judges of what concerns their interests than mere outsiders. Referring to the proposed erection of a lighthouse at Cape Foulwind, the special correspondent of the Wellington Independent says : — There is a capital site, and with a low tower the lantern will be 250 feet above the level of tbe sea. This will warn vessels of the danger caused by the rocks known as the Steeples, and will also lead the way to shelter formed by the Steeples and tbe cape. This work may be pronounced to be absolutely necessary, because the best and almost the only shelter for hundreds of miles along the coast from south-westers is obtainable here. The apparatus has been ordered from England. Many ingenious ways of evading the Land Act have been noticed, but the following caße, reported by the Geelong Advertiser, is the neatest on record : — " The Land Act provides that every applicant for land shall peg out the allotment required, himself or herself. A woman be'ug desirous of pegging out laud in a certain locality, but unable to spare time to visit it, got some friends to bring down a easeful of soil taken from the four corners of the allotment she wished to obtain. In this soil she placed her four pegs which were taken back and placed in the ground, care it is said being taken to keep thorn well surrounded by the earth when it was placed in tbe position it was believed formerly to occupy in terra firma. A remarkable addition has jußt been made to the collection in the Government Museum at Brisbane, in the shape of a genuine Queensland mummy, which was obtained in the neighborhood of Johnston River by the exploring expedition, under the command of Mr Dalrymple. The mummy, says the Courier, which presents a most hideous appearance, is tbat of an old black gin. The knees and arms have been bent up to tbe chin, the lower part of the legs beiDg bent, and the whoj^^H^W^

tightly bound with cord, and then smoke-dried — a means of preserving tho human body supposed to be employed by the poorer kind of Egyptians. This mummy, which was found in a hi How tree, is supposed to have been deposited there by one of the tribes ol tho north, whose habit it is to carry the bodies of their dead about with them — other tribes carrying the ashes only. A Bengal famine relief fund has be< n instituted at the Mansion-house, in nid of tbe fund in Calcutta. £10,000 will be sent out this week as a first subscription. Lord Lawrence was among the speakers at iho public meeting, and in the course of his speech expressed his own personal opinion, based on experience, that the labor test, judiciously worked, was the proper test. Apart from such small help— infinitesimal Ly comparison with the need — ss may be expected from voluntary sources, tbe Times" Calcutta correspondent estimates that the famine wi 1 impose an addition outlay of £10,000,000 sterling on tho Indian Govern meut. The Pall Mall Gazette \ stiongly condemns the judgment of the limes in advocating the prohibition of exports, and declares tbat that course can be shown to be equivaleut to an expenditure of £100,000,000 sterling. Mark Twaiu once bought a horse by auction. "In tho afternoon," be Buys, " I brought the creature into the Plazs, and certain citizens held him by the boad, and others by tho tail, while I mounted bim. As soon as tbey let go, be placed all his feet in a bunch together, lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me straight into the air, a matter of three or four feet ! I came as stra'ght down again, lit io the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost on the high pommel, shot up again, nnd came down on the horse's neck — all in the space of some three or four seconds. Then he rose up, and stood almost straight up on his hind feet ; and I, clasping his lean neck desperately, slid bark into the saddle and held on. He come down and immediately hoisted his i heels into the air, delivering a vicious kiik at the sky, and stood en his fore feet; and then down be came once more, and began the original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I went up, I heard a stranger cry, 'Oh, don't he buck, though!' •While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a leather stray, and when I arrived again ' the hoT.e' was not there," An extensive and interesting Roman cemetery has been discovered outside York, on the outside bank of the Ouse. Great coffins of Knaresborough ttone, headstones of the same material, large quantities of pottery fragments, and boneß innumerable havebeen unearthed. Amongst other relics is the skull of a young woman with a gold palate, thus proving that the old Romans must have been skilful dentists. Among tbe treasures to be found in the Khedive's Museum (says the Art Journal) is a necklace worn by Queen Anh-hept, mother of King Aames, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, who was not only coeval with Abr'am and Sarai, but the identical Pharoah who was "plagued with great plagues" because of Sarai, Abraai's wife.