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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 273, 25 November 1878, Page 2

At the last Wesleyan Conference _in England the Rev. Peter Horton, while speaking ~ of two ministers who had died during; the ! year, fell to the floor, and died Bhortly afterwards. On another day, Mr Allen, a lay representative from Sleaford, uttered a groan as he sat iv his pew, and at once expired. The following is from the Fo« of Tuesday: — The wind blew stiffly at Wellington yester- ; day, but it blew more stiffly at Karori. Two men were there engaged in repairing the roof of a house, each standing on a ladder. One of them saw a gust approaching, and called out to his comrade t to take care. This solicitude for his comrade unfortunately caused him to neglect his own safety, and his ladder was blown down. He caught hold of the roof, and remained hanging, like Mahomet's coffin, " between heaven and earth," for a short time, but eventually he managed to haul himself up into a place of safety. Immediately afterwards a precisely similar accident happened to the second man, but he also managed to save himself by clinging. The men remained prisoners on the roof of the house for over an hour until a settler's wife appeared. With considerable difficulty she placed one of the ladders against the house, and the meu were liberated. Prom our exchanges we learn that last week a man met with a precisely similar adventure at Tapanui when repairing the cross of .All Saints' I Church. He clung to the cross and was saved. * A Wellington paper says:— "We learn that Messrs Gnthrie and Laraach's Company is about to build on a more extensive scale. This company has thrown out its branches over the whole of New Zealand, arid has now establishments in Invercargill, Dunedin, Tiniaru, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, with an agency also in London. Under the able management of Mr Walter Gathrie [ it ha 3 risen to the first place amongst importers to New Zealand aud employers of labor. It possesses seven or eight sawmills, a fleet of about thirty coastiug vessels, and employs, all told, over 1000 persons, and is one of the most extensive and enterprising concerns in the Southern Hemisphere." A Hamilton correspondent writes to the | Auckland Herald : — " A recent visit to the Piako district convinces me that ere many years pass the place will be one of the most prosperous portions of the Colony.- Every-j | thing necessary for complete draining, tillage, fencing, and successful farming has been, undertaken ands carried out,, and the aspect of to-day, as compared with 'the past, is marvellous, and highly creditable to the proprieI tors of this extensive area of country. The Waitoa estate, belonging to the managing director of the Loan Company, Mr Larkworthy, of London, is a magnificent property, and the' judicious outlay, which has taken place upon it must rank it, at no distant date, as one of the best farms which could be met with in any part of New Zealand." ; '"• : A Dunedin telegram to a contemporary says:—Great sympathy is felt with Captain Andrew and the chief officer of the Taupo, but the interests involved are too serious to leave auy room for the indulgence of personal feelings, and public opinion will endorse the verdict of the Court. One writer says:— "Too much is sacrificed to quick passages, with the tacit sanction and even encouragement of the public, and thus the way is being prepared to some terrible disaster before which the colony will some morning stand aghast. This^high pressure system is at fault, and so long as the shortest line between two points, even, though it ba fringed by breakers, is demanded as J a ship's proper course, peril will exist, and it is but scant justice to fling a captain or mate to the public now and then for them to worry him, when he has just by a hair's breadth passed the line which separates absolute peril from this dubious path of safety." A correspondent sends to the Jaffna Catholic Guardiun (Ceylon) the following account of a " miracle " which occurred there on the 4th instant, on the occasion of the Feast of St. Sebastian, which is deserving of mentiou:— "A deaf mute, born of non-Catholics parents at Manippay, a close relative of the Kachcherri shroff, and about twelve years of age, after having been allowed to remain for a couple of hours tied to the cross erected iv front of the celebrated shrine, was able to hear and to repeat the words • father,' < mother,' &c, for the first time in her life. The parents of the girl, overjoyed at the circumstance, begged the Key Father Ghilini to administer to her tiie sacrament of baptism, which, was nerfonned in a most imposing manner. I relate the fact as I saw it. Let sceptics and scoffers sny what they, like. There is no denying a fact attested by hundreds of eyes and ears." A well-informed correspondent writes from Hokitika :— '• Affairs in connection with the llangitoto Mine are progressing satisfactorily. The manager reports ?hat the ore is still of very good quality. Some of it indeed, ! is so good, that it wilt not require to be dressed, but can be sent direct as it comes from the mine. We hope. to have the battery ready before long." A Sydney paper says a new machine has been invented and patented by a , Mr Crockford, to make gas by an entirelynew process: i The gas generators are a little larger thariaij j

ordinary gas meter, «md gasometers for forty lights are each about the siste of a ten-gallop tank, , s ••- , it sedms hajrdly credible (saya the tfellittg-i ton Chronicle) that there should be permitted s tb-e"xist in any civilized Christian coraniiatiifcy such a harbor of refuge for the shipwrecked outcasts of degraded humanity as the Maori Pa in Te Aro. The scenes of riot and infamy witnessed there by the police from time to time ate too shocking to every instinct of delicacy to be hinted at in these columns in even the ttiost gndirded language. All the vices practised by that class of human beings who have sunk far below thd condition of "the beasts that perish," hold devilish carnival there. It would be a burning sbame to allow such a haunt of infamy to continue even if none but men and women who have long been steeped to the lips in vice frequented it. But there is something worse than even thfc't. It was dworn by a constable in the Magistrate's Cotirfc yesterday thafc on . Saturday night he saw abdat fifty boys in this Maori Fa whilst scenes which decency forbids us to mention were being enacted. Things of this atrocious kind are of nightly ; occurrence. How parents with any spark of love in their brea3ts for the children they, have brought into the world can" be so scandalously careless of their duty,"' as "many Wellington parents are, is ;; past comprehension. If children are permitted to frequent such places as the Maori Pa, to behold and to revel in such infamies as are there perpe- ' tr'ated, it is little wonder ..that larrikinism spreads with" alafming rapidity. ,Jn a city which boasts of its literary institutions and; its learned [Societies, which is proud of its; refined civilisation,— is it not a disgrace that! the existence o£ such, a sink of iniquity' should be tolerated year after year? . .-.A Philadelphia telegram dateid^Oetober 27 says:— A tempeatuous gale', unprecedented; iii severity, swept over |hia city early this! morning, commencing $i 2.30. Incalculable! damage was done by the wind which.' Vaged; with the fury of a hurricane. Nofc in many! years, if ever before, has there been so much damage done in the streets,, public squares, and along the river s front. ;> Many public: schools and buildings are damaged, and the public squares devastated; Over forty 1 churches of every denomination were imore or less: damaged. The Walnutt-streeE'Pres-byterian Church spire wa3 badly damaged. In its fall, a portion of the church roof was carried with it, and the vestibule of the church and the organ-lpffc were filled with the debris. The organ "was. completely de-: molished. The damage to this church amounts to 35,000 dollars; A great -many market-houses, and passenger railway depots, ; were badly injured.- Hundreds of dwellings, chiefly in the north-western section of the city were unroofed, some of them being entirely demolished. It is roughly estimated! that seventy-five persons were injured. \ Reports from the petroleum fields of Ruasia indicate that that country, may soon become a formidable rival of the United States in the European oil market. . „'