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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 134, 7 June 1881, Page 3

The first piano imported into New Zealand; was the property of the Rev B. 37 Asbwell, and was landed at Paihia in 1836. It was, as might be' supposed, a source of great, astonishment to the Maoris on the at a 1 ion. The New York Herald of March 31st prints, a long letter from George Kennau recounting the landing effected on Wrangel liand by, Captain Dollmann in 1866. By this narrative it appears that the captain of a schooner trading with the natives of the Siberian and Alaskan shores, having made his way into the Arctic seas in a year when they were un-. usually free from ice, and pushed his advance far westward along the Siberian coast, then, turned to make his way to'the American con-: tinent without following the^coas't line as be had advanced, and, in consequence, found himself sailing in August within ten nautical miles of the region which, from tbe account' of his latitude and longtitude, must have been Wrangel Land. He went ashore, found part of the country free from snow and supplied amply with Arctic vegetation. Saw polar bears and traces' of many other animals, including the musk ox. Altogether this is a remarkable story to be now for the first time made public, and the authorities for it are all given in the letter referred to. The inevitable schooner which is in all seas, in all years, is, often the great pioneer of discovery, and it is not at all unlikely that all this happened precisely as reported by Captain Dollmann. Alluding to the report that Brigham Young tbe son of the mormon prophet had been indicted for bigamy before the Federal Court at . Salt Lake City, a contemporary observes : — Polygamy, from being a cheap arrangement, has become so costly that only J rich men can afford to have a number of wives. These ladies will no longer toil like Indian JSquaws, and fine clpthps are quite as, costly in lUah as they are elsewhere. The Mormon girls now decline to be anybody's second or third wife, and are beginning to, prefer the whole of the humble gentile's heart to the fifteenth part of an elder's jaded affections. Joe Smith's sons have pronounced^ against polygamy, and when the children of the first and only legal marriage claim the sole estate of an intestate Mormon father, the system will receive such a sbock that. its final collapse cannot be far off. Of late, years ib a'ais gained no American recruits,: while the European immigrants are inyari-; ably tbe poorest; most ignorant, and undesir- : able which can be pick up by Bpecious promises'in Scandinavia, Wales, and Lan- ; cashire. It is therefore clear that though; Mor monism may for many years to come, exist as a faith, as a semi-political organisation its day is over. . ;