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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 177, 26 August 1878, Page 4

A Cincinnatian named Danford, claiming to be a returned missionary, has invented a "fluid resisting naturaliser," by the use of which he expects to drive a steamer across the Atlantic at the rate of 140 miles an hour. 8 1 At the Paris Exhibition Norway has fish skins tanned for gloves, eel skin3 tanned for harness, shark skins, ten feet long by three feet wide, for various purposes, and whale skins, sixty feet long, for driving bands for machinery. The "Fiji Argus of the 14th June gives the following account of a religious fight between two sections of the natives of the island of Kotumah. It says :— A very determined war is raging on the island between the Wesleyan and Koman Catholic natives, a great number on both sides are being killed. I hey have very good firearms, though not much powder, and are cutting down large numbers of cocoanut trees for the purpose of forming forts, barricades, & c . The fighting, we are told, is being carried on in regular civilised fashion, the men being well drilled, and executing various military manoeuvres' in orthodox style, which many of the natives being fond of roaming about the world, have* evidently picked up in their travels. Most of the men only wounded, die, as they have no doctors' instruments or persons capable of dressing gun-shot wounds. A correspondent informs us that just shortly before the Menschikoff sailed for Fiji, he saw twelve men lying in a house horribly wouuded, who had been shot in a fight the day before. There Avere no means of alleviating their sufferings. The whites on the island, who number about seven, have been told that- if they interfere in any way with either side they will be shot. It is said that the Wesleyan side must ultimately get the best of it, as they far outnumber their oppononts. We clip tho following from the London Spectator: — A curious suicide has taken place at Windsor. Count Aubriet de Pevy, who drowned himself there in the Thames on Wednesday, left a document, to be placed "at the disposal of any inquest and the Press, ' in which he states that the sudden death of his wife, " who was only twentyeight, handsome, beloved by all, in France

and here," had broken his heart, and that he agreed, with Montaigne, that he had nothing to complain of, since though there was but one -way ot coming into the world, there were a hundred of getting out of it, of which he chose the cleanest, — death by water. He hoped to find his wife in the more ethereal body in which lie expected at once to find himself. This body ".has our shape and form, is like us, but is beautiful less or more, according to what we are worth." This life he regarded as " but a kind of experimental hell, where had and good are mixed in disorder." lie believed iu an immediate judgment after death, and in the subjection of the. wicked then to very severe laws, though a door was always left open for their repentance. For. himself, he held himself " safe— not saved, which is ridiculous." and not the less safe apparently for takiug the time of his exit from this "experimental hell" into his own hands. But one would have liked to ask him — who believed apparently in a real judgment, and subjection to spiritual authority — why people were ever placed in an " experimental hell," i£ they were to leave it as soon as they were tired of it. The authority who placed them there must surely be as competent to decide the time of exit as the time of -enteraucc.