The Sketcher.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 319, 23 March 1878, Page 5

The Sketcher.

NEW GUINEA. We (Queenslander) cull the following particulars from a resume of Yule’s observations inserted iu an excellent little work not very familiar to the colonial reader: The Gulf of Papua is an indentation of the coast, expending 196 miles across from Bampton Island to Cape Suckling, and is about eighty miles in width. The shores of this extensive bay are low, and with the exception of Aird Hill and the Albe. t Mountains, the west and northern coasts present no objects of sufficient elevation to serve as marks for making them from seaward. From Hampton Point to Aird Liver not a single eminence could be seen above the level outline of this extensive country. It is wooded to the water’s edge, the tops of the trees is many parts ranging from 100 to 150 ft. in height above the level of the sea. The numerous fresh water openings in this portion of the coast appear to be the delta of some vast river, forming by its deposits a continuation of mud-flats, and banks of hard line black sand extending from 6 to 25 miles off shore ; the latter extent is eastward of Prince Liver, and the former is off Cape Blackwood. A reference to a chart of New Guinea will show that it is quite possible for this river to have a direct course of 350 miles. The population of this great delta appeared to be immense, as villages were seen at every part visited : but it was found impossible to hold friendly communication with the inhabitants, in consequence of their implacable hostility. The vegetation of this country is totally different from that of Australia ; the eocoanut, breadfruit, plantain, sago, palm, and sugarcane growing here in the greatest luxuriance, plainly indicating the richness of the soi 1 . A few pigs resembling the wild boar were seen at one of the villages, but no other quadrupeds. Ely Liver, a broad opening to the low wooded country, is five miles wide at its mouth, where the water was found to be fresh. CaptP.in Blackwood went a short distance up this river, but was obliged to return from the hostility of the numerous natives residing on its banks, Nine miles outside the estuary the water was neirly fresh at the last of the ebb. There are depths of four and five fathoms at the mouth; i ut a bank with 3ft. on it, seven miles eastward of Breakfast Point, and extensive flats to the southward, prevent the river from being available for ships drawing much water. On the shore was a native village, apparently long deserted, one of the huts in

which was 80ft. long and 20tt. broad, raised from the ground on four rows of posts 4ft. high, the roof forming an obtuse angle. This building was divided by partitions into five apartments opening into each other by doors and hinges; entrance was obtained into the two end rooms from the gables, and to the others from the sides. The floor and partitions were made of the exfoliations or peelings of the toddy palm, with the leaves of which the roof was thatched. A river, which has been named the Aird, falls into the sea by a broad estuary between Hislc Point and Cape Blackwood ; but a bar, on which were heavy rollers, extends across. The Aird was examined by Captain Blackwood for twenty miles above Lisle Point, and its average breadth seldom found to exceed a quarter of a mile, with irregular soundings of from Ito 5 fathoms. Although the general course of the river is direct, it is iu some parts tortuous, with numerous creeks miming off in every direction. The banks and adjacent country are flat, scarcely above the sea-level at high water, and covered with dense woods growing on muddy ground. For the first dozen miles above Lisle Point mangroves abound, but above that distance lofty forest trees cover the country. No inhabitants were met with until the furthest point was reached, when a numerous tribe was encountered, and an immense barn-shaped house seen. The natives were so daring and hostile that they openly attacked the Prince George, a cutter of 70 tons, lent by the New South Wales Government to serve as a tender to H.M.S. Fly, and the boats with which Captain Blackwood and his exploring party ascended the river, though the latter were well armed and quite prepared. Should a vessel enter any of the numerous l'ivers which here empty themselves into the sea, for the purpose of watering, refitting, or trading with the natives, she ought to be well-armed and prepared against surprise. Deception Bay, an extensive inlet 20 miles long and 9 broad, received its name from at first presenting every appearance of a good deep entrance to some large navigable river, but after a very careful examination no channel could be found through the shallows into either of the openings, which are evidently the mouths of some considerable river, as several large trees and trunks of the sago palm were seen drifting down. Off McClatchie Point, in 1546, Lieutenant Yule, in command of the Bramble and Castlereagh, fell in with a canoe of extraordinary dimensions and appearance. It was about 60ft. in length and 20ft. in breadth, and appeared to be a treble or quadruple canoe, with a platform covering nearly the whole ; this platform was enclosed by bulwarks of cane 5 or 6ft. high, which supporten another platform or sort of upper deck. It had masts and two large sails, stretched between long poles, spread like the letter V ; there were also several small square sails, some suspended like studding sails. The number of the crew appeared to be between forty and fifty, most of whom were on the upper platform, stringing their bows and preparing for a fight. This part of the coast appeared populous and fertile, from the number of villages and eocoanut groves seen. Freshwater Bay was so named from the Bramble and Oastlereagli having filled their tanks by baling the fresh water up from the surface of the sea where the vessels were at anchor, the body of water running out of this river being so great as to be quite fresh at least two or three miles off shore. It was procured in a perfectly pure state by anchoring the boats a few yards from the vessels, and filling the casks overboard by allowing the water at the surface to run in at the bungholes. For a vessel of weak force in want of water, this will be found a very convenient place to get a supply ; for although there is an abundance of fresh water along the southern coast of New Guinea, no watering party would be secure from the attacks of the natives on shore without the protection of a strong armed force. The country in the neighborhood of Cape Possession was found to be thickly populated, and the inhabitants were apparently far more advanced towards civilisatfou and less hostile than those of the coasts to the westward ; they were well made, active, and intelligent, varying in shades from nearly black to a light copper color ; and they had some regard to decency, being clad with a sort of native cloth. Lieutenant Yale landed at Cape Possession in 1846, for the pui-pose of obtaining surveying observations ; and after having taken possession of the country in the name of Queen Victoria, he attempted to re-embark, but the boat was upset in the surf ; and, being without the means of defence, he and his party were at the mercy of 100 natives, armed with spears, clubs, and hatchets ; but after possessing themselves of everything within their reach, they suffered Yule and his companions to escape. Ati estuary, which was not explored, was seen to retain a considerable breadth a long way inland, and to take a winding course through a low woody country north-eastward, in the direction of the deep valley which divides the Owen Stanley Lange ; it may, therefore, on further examination, prove to be the mouth of a river of some importance.

THE END OF THE WORLD. (From the JYew York IT orld.) Humanity knows no more of the probable duration of its existence than does any one of us of the number of yeax-s he has yet to live. Are wc at the soup or at the nuts ? Who can assure us that the coffee is not soon to be served ? The world has had a beginning, therefore it will come to an end. When ? That is the question. And above all, will the world finish by an accident, by a perturbation of existing laws ? No, it will come to an end through the action of laws already ascertained, and will die, as one says, of her own death. But of what sort of death ? Age ? Illness ? Yes, of illness, of illness induced hv excess. When we compare the world with what it used to be, we at once see thatthe most extraordinary development is that of organic life upon the globe.

From the highest summits of the mountains to the profoundest depths of the valleys, millions upon billions of animalcules, of animals, of superior plants, have been toiling for centuries, even as toiled the foraminiferce which have built up half of the continents. The work was pushed with sufficient l-apidity before man appeared on the earth. While the human race remained grouped around two or three points little attention was paid to the subject. The world gradually entered upon its industrial phase. The tendency of men and of beasts has been towards an alarming increase ; after a century the world will remain to put on flesh. Then will begin that formidable period when excessive production will lead to excessive consumption ; the excess of consumption to an excess of heat, and the latter to the spontaneous combustion of the earth and of its inhabitants. For about 1000 yeai’s all will go well. Industry will advance with giant strides. The coal beds will first be xxsed; then the oil wells, then the forests; then people will take to burning the oxygen of the atmosphere and the hydrogen of the sea. Thex-e will then be upon the surface of the earth about 1,000,000,000 of steam-engines, each on an average of 1000 horse-power. And while the machines are incessantly vomiting forth torrents of manufactured goods, from the agricultural shops press forth a throng of sheep, oxen, turkeys, swine, ducks, calves and geese, all choking with their own fat. With a more abundant and nutritious aliment the fecundity of the human races and of the inferior races may naturally be expected to increase. Houses rise story upon stoi’y ; now the gardens are suppressed, and now the towns begin to run to each other. At the same time the population springs forward. All useless animals have disappeared, and nothing is left but oxeu, sheep, cattle, horses and fowls, without horns, hides, tails, or hoofs, reduced by the art of their feeders to a stage where each becomes a gigantic beefsteak fed by four internal stomachs. Barely a hundred and fifty thousand yeax-s have gone by and it is done. America, Europe aud Africa, thanks to the coral-worker’s assiduous toil, have disappeared, nothing remaining but a few islands formed by the last surviving summits of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians, &c. The human race, retreating slowly before the sea, spreads itself over the vast plains just abandoned by the ocean. There the human race is destined to perish. It lives upon a calcareous soil ; it turns constantly into lime an enormous mass of animal matters. The px-oduction of animals continues to grow till at last production exceeds and baffles consumption. Then begins the foi-mation upon the bark of the earth, as one might say, of a pellucle—of an appi-eciable body of detriti that cannot be removed. In fine, the world is saturated with life, and fei'mentation begins. The thermometer goes up—the barometer goes down. Flowers fade, leaves turn yellow, parchments crackle, and all turns old and brittle. Animals are thinned out iu the pi'ocess of evaporation. Alan, in his turn, grows lean and dx-ied up, and all temperaments finally abut one—the bilious—the last lymphatic having offered his daughter and 20,000,000 dols. to the latest heir of a series of an unblemished scrofulous subject, who felt himself bound through family pride to reject the offer. The heat incx-eases, and the watersupply decreases. The water-carriers by degrees raise themselves to the rank of chief iced-cup bearers. The office of holding a glass of water to the sovereign’s lips becomes one of the greatest chai-ges of the State, and all the littleness, all the infamies that to-day we see committed for a golden jewel are done then for a tumbler of water. Ice becomes worth twenty times its weight in diamonds. The Emperor of Australia, in an excess of mental malady, orders an ice, which devoui-s his civil list for a year. A scientist amasses a gigantic fortune by attaining, through chemical processes, a gallon of fresh water. The streams dry tip, and the crabs come tumbling after the threads of the vanquishing wafcercourses. Strange passions, ualxeard-of wraths, murdei'ous loves, mad sensations, turn all life into an irregular series of furious detonations, or rather a continued explosion beginning at birth and only ending with death. The rivers and sti-eams begin to disappeai-, seas turn, lukewarm and at last simmer. The fishes, asphyxiated, first turn up their bellies ; then come the algm, detached from the bottom by the heat ; then come half-cooked, wholiy-coolced, and ovei--done whales, sea-serpents, devil-fish, till the smoking ocean is turned into one enormous chowder. For barely a century a fearful smell of cooking permeates the earth ; then the ocean has passed away, and only left a deposit of fish scales in the midst of a torrid desert. Then cometh the end. Under the triple influence of heat, asphyxia, dessication, little by little the human race disappears ; man dries up, and scales away, and upon the slightest shock resolves into fragments. The only vegetables which survive are metalliferous plants, only coaxed to blossom by daily sprinkling with viti-iol. To quench his devouring thirst, to reanimate his calcined neruous system, to liquefy his coagulating albumen, man can only resort to sulphuric acid or acquafortis. At each breath of a breeze that agitates this anhydrous at-mosphei-e thousands of human creatures are instantaneously dessicated, and the knight on his steed, the lawyer at the bai-, the aci'obat on his rope, the workman at his window, are converted into mummies. Then dawns the Last Day. There are only thirty-seven of them, spectres wandei’ing among a world of mummies. Joining hands, they begin a furious reel, aud at each turn a dancer falls dead with a dry rattle. The last man is left, facing this wretched heap where lies all that is left of the human race. He casts a single glance upon the eai-tli, bids it farewell in the name of all, and from his poor scorched eyes falls a teaithe latest tear of the world. Pouff! A trembling blue flame rises ; two, three, a thousand. The whole world flares up for a moment and goes out. All is over. The world is dead. Sad, icy, cold, it rolls through the silent de-

sei'ts of infinity ; and of all the beauty, glory, joy, tears, loves, there remains but a wretched little calcined stone, wandering athwart the luminoxis spheres of new worlds. Farewell, earth. Farewell, touching memories of our histox*y, of our genius, of our sorrow, of our love. Farewell, nature, whose sweet and serene majesty consoled us for so many sufferings. Farewell, fresh and sombre woods, where of lovely summer nights, beneath the silvei" moon, we heard the nighingale sing. Farewell, terrible and charming creatures, who led the universe with a teai- or a smile, and whom we addressed by names so dear ! Ah, since nothing of you remains, all is indeed ovex-. The world is dead.

POPE PIUS IX.’S LOYE STORY. From the manuscript of a forthcoming volume, the work of a pious Catholic lady, the daughter of one of the oldest Catholic citizens of Baltimore, the late David Williamson, of Lexington Manor, the London correspondent of the Cincinatti Inquirer relates the only true love stoi-y of Pius IN., as related by the Baroness de Kinsky, the Holy Father’s intimate friend. The young Count Giovanni Mastai Feretti, the story says, a native of Senigaglia, met and loved at Lome Camilla-Devoti, the lovely and accomplished daughter of a widow lady, and to whom he had been especially drawn by her marvellous singing. They read the poets together, and it came to pass that the young nobleman desix-ed to be a soldier to be more worthy of his pi-omised bride. He applied to Prince Barberini, Commander of the Papal Body-Guard, and was repulsed somewhat rudely with the remark that his slender frame was better fitted for a priest’s gai-b than a dragoon’s. The young Count appealed to the Pope, Pius VII., was promised his commission, and spent a happy evening with Camilla. The next day he did not visit hex', nor the next. Weeks passed, and he seemed to have disappeared fx-om the city. She fell sick of fever at last, and on that same day the Count knelt before the Pope and told his story. He had been stricken with epilepsy in the sti'eet. With this disease hanging over him he dared not marry. The Holy Father bade him interpret the affliction as a token of the will of God directing his thoughts heavenward and his life to the Church. He sent the young Count a pilgrim to the shrine of Lorefcto to learn God’s will. No tidings came to Camilla, and after some little time, knowing that a hidden yet good and proper reason for this seeming desertion must exist, and yielding to the earnest persuasions of her mother, she consented to listen to the solicitations of the Bai-on Canxucini, who sought her hand in marriage. It strangely happened on that same evening, while Camilla and her mother were sitting together in their quiet and comfortable home, talking over the past and the future events, the door was suddenly opened and the figui’e of a young man clad in black stood before them. The mother of Camilla, looking up, immediately recognised the face as that of Count Mastai, and gave a cxy of joy, but he remained perfectly silent and motionless. Camilla’s heart at once sank, for she quickly discei'ned that he was dx'essed in the gai'b of a priest. She now saw that all was ended between them. The Signora Devoti, not noticing in the darkness of the evening the pi'iestly l-obes he wore, asked quickly, “ Whex'e have you been all this time, and why have you so deserted us ?” “ I have been on a pilgrimage to Loretto,” he quietly l'eplied, “ and subsequently to the Convent of St. Ag'nes, where I was anointed a pi’iest.” The Signoi-a Devoti nearly fainted on hearing these words, so unexpectedly by her ; but Camilla l'emained perfectly calm ; and, forcing a smile, said, in her gentle voice : “ It is well that you have come to me ; Heaven has sent you in my hour of need to give me counsel and suppoi't. My brother is absent, and 1 have none other ; will you take his place, as his old friend and companion, and advise me ? The Baron Camucini seeks my hand in marriage ; my mother earnestly wishes it ; what shall I do ? Will you now coxxnsel me how to act ?” “ I would strongly advise you to accept him as your husband,” said the young priest, “ for I know him well as being the moat amiable and honorable, having every quality to ensui'e your future happiness. I will xiuite you iu holy wedlock to the man you will love and who will px-ove a true and tender husband to you, but let it be soon, for I cannot tarry long ; I have my mission to accomplish, and have come but to say farewell. In a few days I leave for the Convent of Senigaglia, the city of my early childhood, there to prepare myself before leaving Italy on a long joui-ney, as I intend to pi'epare for aud devote myself to a monastic life.” A few days later Camilla Devoti knelt before the altar by the side of the Baron Camucini, and the holy rites were performed by the young priest, Mastai Feretti, who, after joining their hands, fervently prayed that God would blesa them and theii's for ever. Yeax-s after, when time in its many changes had placed Count Mastai on the Papal throne as Pius IX., at one of the usual Thursday receptions at the Vatican, when ladies of rank are presented to his Holiness, the Baroness de Kinsky, an old friend of Cardinal Antonelli’s, presented a plain aiid venerable-looking mati'on, whose features still bore traces of great beauty. She happened to be among the last presented, and on her name being mentioned an emotion was visible in the expressive face of the Pope. The lady bent her knee for his benediction, aud, looking quietly iu his face, said, iu a voice full of sweetness and melody of other days, “Holy Fathei', I have come to beg of you a great favor—that yoxx receive my grandson into your Garde d’Elite. They hesitate to receive him because of his delicate appearance ; but he is well aud strong, aud most eager to devote liis life to the Holy Fathei'.” Having thus expressed her desire she showed a slight emotion, but casting her eyes upon the ground she awaited quietly his reply. Pius IX. well understood how she felt from his own past experience, so kindly

laying his hand upon her white head in benediction, he said in gentle tones : “I know too well the pain and mortification of such a refusal, having once experienced it. Your wish shall be fulfilled, and your grandson shall at once enter into my Garde d’Elite.” After speaking he then walked quickly to one of the sidewalks, and intimated to one of the Cnmerieri, who prepared to follow me, that he wished to be alone. The following day, meeting the Baroness de Kiuksy, he said to her, “I know that you are an old and dear friend of the Baroness Camueini, and that she has spoken to you of the days gone by ; and I will also tell you, my daughter, of a secret that until now has long lain hidden in my heart, but which now the old man may release from its prison, and consecrate as a last salute to his early friend.” ITe then recounted the reason why he had left Camilla so suddenly at the time, and why he had taken the priestly vows, following, as he believed, a direct call from God. “ Tell her now,” he said, “it was a trial the Holy Bather imposed upon me that I was to keep silence, and give no explanation of my actions ; that at the time I suffered, but God, in His great mercy, ordained it all wisely and well for our good, and that Pius IX., who no longer indulges in earthly illusions, sends her this last message as a memory of the happy evenings spent with Camilla Devoti.”