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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2, 13 November 1878, Page 2

A Dunediu telegram says :— A singular scandal bas been caused by soine thieves breaking into the Temperance Hall and abstracting from the Good Templars' refreshment room a promiscuous assortment of grog, consisting of brandy, Hollands, and champagne. It is astonishing bow rapidly land in New Zealand enhances in value. At Wangaaui a forty-acre paddock formerly leased for about £22 per acre, was subdivided on the expiration of the lease into blocks of four acres. These were sold on Saturday afternoon, and brought in a iotal rent of £245 per annum. A clear gaiu of £823 per year bas thus been made. The Duke of Westminster has hung a peal of twenty-eight silver bells in the tower of the cbapel attached to his seat at Eaton Hallcost, £30,000. About 3G0.000 acres of heavily timbered land in Virginia were recently sold by auction at an average of one per cent per acre. Gold in enormous paying quantities, and diamonds of superlative size, are said to have been discovered in the Transvaal, midway between Patchfstroom and Fuetoria, but the reports are as yet too vague to warrant a new rush from the old world. Mr John Dixon, of Cannon-street London, offers to erect a bronze duplicate of Cleopatra's needle in Melbourne for the sum of £10,000. A number of gentlemen in London have combined, in order to raise a sum of not less than £60,000, to build and endow a. suitable place of worship in London in connection with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. A child aged six months, the daughter of a tailor, of Fansbaw-street, Pitfield-street, London, being placed by her mother at the foot of an iron bedstead, slipped through the ironwork and banged herself, being quite dead when found in that position. Moody, the evangelist, has rented a house in Baltimore, and will remove there, with his family, about Oct. I. He desires to rest and recuperate. He will hold meetings during the winter in churches and public halls. Sankey is going to Europe. Some torpedo boats built for the English Government were recently tried, when the remarkable speed of 21 knots light and 20'H knots loaded with six ton 3 was obtained. An extraordinary story comes from Bengal. A village, about eight miles from Calcutta, has been taken possession of by large monkeys. The inhabitants bad to fiy from the raiders, who attacked women and children viciously, and are now living on the food left behind by the villagers. Referring to the New Britain massacre, and Mr Brown's retaliation, the Fiji Times says .-—Two English ships of war lately visited New Britain, and the captains have rigidly investigated the whole affair in which Brown wtjs engaged. They have met natives and traders, of whom they made the most searching inquiries relative to the matter. One of those gentlemen gave Brown full permission to tell anyone that, in his opinion, he had doDe quite right, and had saved the mission and the lives of traders as well. Brown has suffered considerably from repeated attacks of fever, but a cruise of three weeks in one of the ships of war, which the captain kindly invited him to take, has been beneficial. Mrs Brown, who with three children was left on the mission station, suffered no annoyance from the natives' during Brown's absence, which clearly showed that those prophets who have predicted nothing but evil from Brown's expedition last April, will probably have gome misgivings as to the solidity of the ground upon which they have stood. Eight more native teachers of Fiji have volunteered to go to New Britain, and are probably on their way to join Brown. The Westport Times says :— "Sergeant M'Mahon appeared in Court on Saturday in white gloves and a black waterproof. The gloves were en regie, but the waterproof was decidedly not, and so the Court, aghast at this incongruity of official costume, withdrew into the privacy of chambers until the forgetful representative of law and order had doffed his shiny iniegumentum and displayed his regulation blue jumper and pewter buttons." Father Tevard, Roman Catholic priest at the Thames, writing from China, says:— " The famine is still ravaging west of this large province. I hope they have received my letters aud got some alms for those dyiug of hunger. We have a good deal of alms from the ports of China, from Europe., to relieve the famished, but there are so many that those are far from being sufficient to relieve. Many are dead, and die of hunger. What you say of my poor person I take as a compliment, and thank you for your good-will, and also for the good-will of others; but I think that my superior-general would not send me back alone after I, with my other Franciscan brothers, have been expelled, as you kuow, from your shores in a way that was very far from just or right." In England during King Ethelred's time A.D. 866, the following prices were fixed by I law : a man or slave, £1 ; a horse, £1 10s ; i a mare £1 ; an ass or mule, 12a ; a cow, 5s • i an ox, 6s ; swine, Is 4d each ; sheep Is each; and a goat 2d. An irrepressible American tourist, who I recently visited an Italian convent and was j shown by a monk a consecrated lamp which had never gone out for five centuries, bent over and gave the flame a decisive puff, and remarked with cool complacence, " Well, I guess it's out now " Jacob Webbler, a French soldier, 95 years old, who fought under the first Napoleon, had his medal stolen in New York on Friday, and wont era?!/ of its loss,

The following is from the i)uuedin Age, or" the 6th instant, in reference to the Princess Alice disaster :— Mr Edwin H. Freeman; son of the steward and stewardess of the Princess Alice: is at present in Dunedin, and by the last Iloiile mail hk received from his brother in-law a letter, which we have been permitted to peruse. Jt is so wel! written, and forma such a memorial of this dreadful catastrophe, that we toke the liberty of printing a portion of it. It reads as follows :— " London, Sept. 12, 1878.— " My Deaf Edward,— Possibly ere this reaches you, yoii nlay have been advised of the frightful calamity that ban plunged the few members of your family that now remain to j'oii into the deepest unhappiness. The steamer Princess Alice, on her return trip from Sheernees on Tuesday last, the 3rd instant, came into collision with the .liywell Castle, an outward-bound steamer, foundered, and, with some comparatively few exceptions, all on board perished. This criiel loss has been so sweeping that, I shrink from the painful task of acqiiaintiatf you with the death of your poor mother, your father, poof Rebecca and her infant child, and even the .Litter's nurse — all, all swept away by one of the saddest accidents within the memory of the preseui generation. To say that I feel for you, heart and soul, is but a 1 feeble expression. I grieve indeed for you, and lam deeply pained at having to impart such dire news. I cannot find language to describe the anguish all that are dear to you endure. Your poor sister Ellen has displayed an amount of fortitude that falls to 'the lot of but vety few of her sex to possess, and apparently forei&ti to sa'ch, an affectionate, tender nature as hers. Iforfciinately, your brother John was at home, and, assisted by Mr Greenfield, has done all that could be done, but poor Xell has been the ' moving spirit ' throughout; Day and night, in conjunction 1 with your brother in-law, has she toiled to discover the fertfains of those she loved. AM have at last been found, afid will be buried this day at Leytonstone — Rebecca, with her infant in the same coffin, the latter resting on the arm that had so often encircled it in life. I will not here enter into a relation of the fearful catastrophe, but will forward you 1 same newspapers, and you will then know the full extent of the accident that has plunged so many hundreds, not only into the greatest sorrow, but alas, in many instances, into sudden poverty, for the majority of those lost were indeed ' breadwinners,' and Ido hope that a large sum may be collected towards such a great national d'aister. ****** "My sad task is completed. May the Great Ruler in His great mercy soften this great blow to you, my poor Edward, is the prayer of yours, very sincerely and affectionately, — Lawrence Ormehob." Speaking of Mr Shrimslri's motion for holding the next session of Parliament in Christchurcb, the Timarn Herald concludes a long leader thus :— "As to the effect of the resolution for holding the session at Christchurch, we may say that no mere resolution of the House is binding on Ministers; but one of this character, involving a very large expenditure, is necessarily futile unless followed by an adequate appropriation. No such appropriation could be made, so that the Government could not, if they would, carry out the terms of the resolution. Wellington will certainly get its usual harvest next year, and probably for several succeeding years, unless the Assembly are fairly driven out of the place by stenches, disease, discomfort, and extortion. Almost everybody out of Wellington now admits that, on public grounds, it would be much better for Parliament to meet at some place within the radius of railway communication, and perhaps Christchurch would be as good a place as any. The cost of migration, however, is so heavy, and the inconveniences of the Legislature being away from the departments are so great, that no change is likely to take place for a considerable time to come." t Mr Buck, of Meriden, Connecticut, has made of fifteen grains of gold and silver a perfect steam engine, which will run for twenty minutes with the steam generated from three drops of water In that portion of the Palmerston district (Otago) known as Inch Valley, partridges, starlings, Californian quail, and laverocks, abound. Forty-two vessels, aggregating nearly 50,000 tons, were lying in San Francisco harbor on the 27th July under charter to carry wheat to the United Kingdom.

t An English parer says :— No gold diggings in California could possibly have afforded greater excitement than the garden of fhe convict Gray, in Isle of Man, did last week, when the manager of the bank he had defrauded took a short lease al It with the view of a thorough search. It turned out U be a veritable Tom Tiddler^, ground. £2000 in gold was found in the shrubbery another £2000 "under the raspberry bushes," and all the rest of the missing money beneath the lawn. After he was found " guilty," Gray protested his innocence in the most solemn manner. To one not accustomed to Courts of justice and the habits of the criminal classes, tlii3 is alway a striking incident, and to those who have been on the jury an appalling one. In cases of life and death it is extraordinary what a punishment the felon has in this way the power to inflict upon the twelve persons who have differed from him in his view of his own case, if they have tender consciences. If it were generally known, more murderers would probably 4i c without confessing their «j_uilt than at present. An English paper gives the following account of a novel steam piunance : — " At the visit a short time back of the Speaker of the House of Commons to Portsmouth Dockyard, a steam pinnace was exhibited which, without having a man on board, could do everything but stoke and keep its own fires alight. Its engines were worked, and its movements controlled, wholly by electricity, the cable which supplied it with its mysterious power being unwound from winches as the pinnace sailed on its mission. Its principal use is to drop and explore counter mines in the neighborhood of" an enemy's mines, and by destroying them clear a harbor for the approach of a fleet, it performed its work on the above occasion to the amazement of the beholders. The counter-mines were represented by a couple of barrels containing small charges of gun-cotton, and with these slang over the sides it took its departure from the boat containing the battery, and dropped the casks at a distance of about 200 yards, igniting at the same time the fuses which blew the barrels into matchwood, and returned obediently, like a ' thing of life,' to the controlling haud after accomplishing its duty." It is a good thing to learn the reasonableness of walking when you cannot run. Many sick parsons retard their progress towards restoration to health by being unduly impatient, and regardless of the dictates of common sence. "Gollah's Great Indian Cures " when patiently used, are |equal to the correction of every evil influence at work in the system. They are the most reliable and safe means of ultimate recovery that have ever been presented to the public. The cures affected by them are something marvellous. The many testimonials received "by the proprietor, copies of which may be seen at any chemist's, fully prove the assertion.

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