MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 132, 4 November 1846, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Major Hope's company of Royal Artillery was under orders to proceed to Woolwich to embark for this colony, and it was reported that as soon as the experimental squadron had completed its cruise, the Raleigh, 50 guns, Captain SirT, Herbert, would be sent to Australia with a Commodore's pennant. The Home Government is about to erect fortifications at Freemantle, Western Australia. Peel's Harbour, alongside whose natural wharf vessels of 800 tons can lie in safety, it being perfectly land-locked, is large enough to contain several hundred vessels of the first class ; it is now used as the principal depot for timber, which although cut a distance of twenty miles, is on the whole less expensive to take there than to Perth. The colonial Jarrah mahogany (eucalyptus) is found to withstand the seaworm, under exposure, where English elm and oak were perforated by it. The river

Swan has sunk during the last six years some inches. The inference is, that the sea is receding gradually, or that the land is gradually rising. The writer says the latter is the more probable, as the same effect has been noticed at Port Phillip. A Mr. Jaques, with 500 head of cattle, is anxiously looked for from Adelaide, they having heard of his intention to attempt the journey, If he succeed, he will be the first who has done so ; and the Perth colonists calculate much on the advantages of a cattle route to South Australia being thereby laid open. If successful, it will, ere long, be followed by a monthly mail. A terrible collision between two steamers took place in the Mersey on the 26th May, one was going up and one down the river and met bow to bow ; twenty-four persons were killed, principally Irishmen, who were proceeding to Liverpool to embark for America. Mr. Bianconi, whose successful industry as a car-owner has raised him from the position of a travelling hawker to that of Mayor of Clonmel has lately purchased an estate in Tipperary for £25,000. A French author, M. Dumas, was exhibiting to the curiosity of some visitors a few of his father's manuscripts, when one of them ventured to remark that they were but imperfectly punctuated. " Oh, sir," says the young cicerone, " were my father to punctuate all he writes, he would, in the course of his life, have been minus ten Volumes." One of his best witticisms is well remembered. " Here," said he to one of his friends, " here is a paper worth seven sous," shewing him one of those stamped papers used for endorsing bills ; I can in a few seconds reduce its value to nothing ;" so saying, and to justify his assertion, he put his signature at the bottom.

Two New Bishoprics. — We hear with great satisfaction of another splendid proof of individual solicitude for the spiritual welfare of our distant colonies. One person has come nobly forward to endow two new bishoprics — one for the Cape of Good Hope, and the other for South Australia ; and the matter is in a train of completion. When we reflect that each of these is to be settled with £1200 per annum, it will be seen that a very large sum of money, probably above £40,000 must be sunk in order to accomplish this labour of Christian charity and love. It harmonizes gratefully, too, with the Bornean missionary plan, the result of Mr. Brooke's extraordinary enterprise, and Captain Keppel's publication. — Literary Gazette.

Fighting Men. — An honest farmer, who was at an agricultural show dinner, where the late Duke of Buccleuch was in the chair, and a round of fighting men being toasted, one giving Wellington, another Graham, and a third Hill, and so on, said, when it came to his turn — " I'll gie ye Saunders Pirgivie o' Chrichtondean, for he's had a sair fecht wi' the warld a' his life — an honest man wi' a big family."

Tender Reminiscences. — I have a regard, says Titmarsh, for every man on board that ship from the captain down to the crew — down even to the cook, with tattoed arms, sweating among the saucepans in the galley, who used (with a touching affection) to send us locks of his hair in the soup.

The Ice Trade. — There was shipped and sold in Boston last year one hundred thousand tons> of ice ; fifty thousand by one house alone. Twenty thousand tons were shipped to New Orleans, and two thousand to Mobile.

Cannibal Delicacies. — "Reclining on our mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving audience to successive troops of natives, who introduced themselves to us by pronouncing their respective names, and retired in high good humour on receiving ours in return. During this ceremony the greatest merriment prevailed, nearly every anuouucement on the part of the islanders being followed by a fresh sally of gaiety, which induced me to believe that some of them at least were innocently diverting the company at our expense, by bestowing upon themselves a string of absurd titles, of the humour of which we were of course entirely ignorant. All this occupied about an hour, when the throng having a little diminished, I turned to Mehevi and gave him to understand that we were in need of food and sleep. Immediately the attentive chief addressed a few words to one of the crowd, who disappeared, and returned in a few moments with a calibash of ' poee poee,' and two or three young cocoa-nuts stripped of their husks, and with their shells partly broken. We both of us forthwith placed one of these natural goblets to our lips, and drained it in a moment of the refreshing draught it contained. The poee poee was then placed before us, and even famished as I was, I paused to consider in what manner to convey it to my mouth. This staple article of food among the Marquese* islanders is manufactured from the .produce of the bread; fruit tvee. It; somewhat resembles in its plastic natarecour bookbinders' paste, is

of a yellow colour, and somewhat tart to the taste. Such was the dish, the merits o( which I was now eager to discuss. 1 eyed it wistfully for a moment, and then unable any longer to stand on ceremony, pknged my hand into the yielding mass, and to the boisterous mirth of the natives, drew it forth laden with poee poee, which adhered in lengthy strings to every finger. So stubborn was its consistency, that in conveying my heavily freighted hand to my mouth, the connecting links almost raised the calibash from the mats on which it had been placed. This display of awkwardness — in which, by the bye, Toby kept me company — convulsed the bystanders with uncontrolable laughter. As soon as their merriment had somewhat subsided,- Mehevi, motioning us to be attentive, dipping the fore finger of his right hand in the dish, and giving it a rapid and scientific twirl, drew it out coated smoothly with the preparation, With a second peculiar' flourish he prevented the poee poee from dropping to the ground as he raised it to his mouth, into which the finger was inserted and drawn forth perfectly free from any adhesive matter. This performance was evidently intended fcr our instruction ; so I again essayed the feat on the principles inculcated, but with very ill success. A starving man, however, little heeds conventional proprieties, especially on a South Sea Island, aud accordingly Toby and I partook of the dish after our clumsy fashion, beplastering our faces all over with the glutinous compound, and daubing our hands nearly to the wrist. This kind of food is by no means disagreeable to the palate of a European, though at first the mode of eating it may be. For my own part, after tbe lapse of a few days I became accustomed to ita singular flavour, and grew remarkably fond of it. So much for the first course ; several other dishes followed it, some of which were positively delicious. We concluded our banquet by tossing off the contents of two more young cocoa-nuts, after which we regaled ourselves with the soothing fumes of tobacco, inhaled from a quaintly carved pipe which passed round the circle. During the repast, the natives eyed us with intense curiosity, observing our minutest motions, and appearing to discover abundant matter for commentary in the most trifling 1 occurrence. Their surprise mounted the highset, when we began to remove our uncomfortable garments, which were saturated with rain. They scanned the whiteness of our* limbs, and seemed utterly unable to account for the contrast they presented to the swarthy hue of our faces, embrowned by a six months' exposure to the scorching sun of the Line, They felt our skin, much in the same way that a silk mercer would handle a remarkable fine piece of satin ; and some of them went so far in their investigation asto apply tbe olfactory organ."

Irish Marriages. — The Irish do not hold it strictly right for either man or woman to marry again -, and, if a woman does so, she prefaces it with an apology : — " It's a father I was forced to put over his children, because I had no way for them, God help them ! and this man, ye see, says, ' Mary/ he says, ' I have full and plenty for them/ and the Lord above he knows its justice I'll do them, and never hinder your prayers for the man ye lost, or anything in rason, or out of rason either ;' and troth he kept his word wonderful." They are more angry with a woman for a second marriage than a man, and certainly never consider a second union as holy as a first. — Mrs. Hall.

The Tortoise and his Foes. — Every animal has its enemies ; the land tortoise has two — man and the boa-constrictor. Man takes him home and roasts him ; and the boa-constrictor swallows him whole, shell and all, and consumes him slowly in the interior, as the Court of Chancery does a great estate. It was pleasantly said of a man who Was unable to surmount the difficulties of the French grammar, that, like Napoleon in Russia, he had been stopped by the elements.

A Short time since, under the head of "Scenes in the American Congress,'* vre extracted from a London Journal an account of a Mr. Sawyer's mode of dining. The following remarks, referring to the same subject, are taken from an American Paper : —

Mr. Sawyer's Bread and Pork. — Our readers are aware that the popular branch of Congress expelled the reporters of one of the New York papers from its Hall, for the crim& of telling how one of the members munched his bread and cheese in his place in the house. Truly, it was no crime for Mr. Sawyer to eat bread and cheese, or even cold potatoes iv Congress. It was on the other hand, truly Democratic, and showed his close attention to the people's business, and was in fact, perhaps his only road to immortality. The only wonder is that he should have complained of the foretastes and first fruits of that immortality, I as kindly plucked for him by The Tribune., 1 We should have supposed that he would feel proud of it. In fact, the only way in which we can account for the Tindictheness of a

Democratic House for such a cime is, that it is only used as a cover for another. The Tribune letter writers have not been backward to the rowdies of the M'Connell school we suspect they have all reserved their wrath for an occasion of attack upon J- he Tribune^ in which they might command more of the sympathy of the House than they could for themselves. " Query — What sort of a House is it which resents a charge of vulgarity sooner than it does one of vice,