ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 220, 8 September 1847, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

At the annual election of a Lord Rector for Mdrischal College, Aberdeen, the candidates proposed were the Earl of Ross and the Right Hon. T. B. Macauley. The men. of Mar and Buchan voted for .the former candidate, and those of Angus and Mearns for the latter. In these circumstances the casting vote rests with the retiring Lord Rector : but it appeared that Mr. Sheriff Alison, who was elected the previous year, had not been installed, and it was not known how the matter would be settled. The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and the Pacific Steam Navigation Company have not only completed the arrangements between themselves, but secured a safe and speedy transit for passengers and property across the Isthmus of Panama. A quarter of a million in specie, and twenty steam passengers from the Pacific, had lately arrived in England by the Panama route. A submarine electric telegraph had been tried in the Isle of Wight with complete success. A single wire was immersed to the extent of half a mile, and drawn acioss the channel between East and West Cowes, when the te egraphs being attached, and one placed in the Medina Hotel, 'ahile the other was placed in the Fountain Hotel, the signal bells were rung, and questions or answers were instanta- , neously communicated with the greatest pre-i cision and certainty ; in short the success of the attempt was such as to justify the most sanguine expectations as to similar attempts upon a grand scale-. Professor Schonbein,the.inven tor of the guncotton, has discovered a composition which has all the desirable' effects of Ether, without any of the danger ; but although its efficacy in removing the sense of pain was proved, the nature of the discovery had not been suffered to transpire. A new college, on a large scale, is about to be established at Leamington. The progress of improvement in London will involve, it is said, the pulling down of several churches. This is much regretted' by the London press, on account of the Deauty of the build'ngs and the sacred associations which are connected with them. A project was on foot for lighting all the lamps in London by means of galvanism^

Lola Montes. — Lola Monies is, we beJieve, an Englishwoman. Married at a veryearly age to a Lieutenant James in the Indian army, she proceeded with him to Bengal, where his regiment was stationed. Her beauty soon attracted great attention,* and she became the idol of the soirees. Sorae circumstances) and an infirmity of temper on her part, however, ere long led to separation between her husband and Mrs. James,, and. she embanked for England; On her way home Mrs. Janie*

became tbe object of the very particular attentions of an officer of the Madras army, a fellow passenger ; and the result was, an intimacy which led to an action at law, Lieutenant James ultimately obtaining a divorce. Her performances in London as a ballet dancer d. la mode JEspagnotte, under the name of Lola Montes, are fresh in the recollection of most of the habitues and critics of the opera ; and her doings at Paris, when in a fit of rage, she took off her garter on the stage, and flung it contemptuously into the pit, are matters of history. Nothing is heard of her until we find her in the Bavarian capital, inviting marked public attention. We need not repeat the anecdotes of her pugnacity, with which the papers have lately teemed ; they may be true, they may be exaggerations. She has lately been materially instrumental in overthrowing the influence of the Jesuists in the Bavarian cabinet. Austrian influence in Bavaria, headed by one of the old enslavers of Greece, has been put to the rout ; " and the court of Munich, freed from Austrian influence, may unite in political sympathies with Prussia, and give impulse and extension to the new current of German feeling." The people are evidently with the Lola in this struggle, for it appears that when the King visited the Munich theatre on the 7th instant, he was "received with the most enthusiastic applause." Lola Montes is now six or seven and twenty years of age. In form and complexion she is entirely Spanish ; in her general habit she is a thorough lionne.

Habits and Statistics of the South American Indians. — The Indians are, on the average, remarkable for longevity, though they frequently shorten their lives by the intemperate use of strong drinks. Instances are not rare of Indians living to be 120 or 130 years of age, and retaining full possession of their bodily and mental powers. Stevenson mentions that on examining the church registers of Barranca, he found that w'.thin an interval of seven years eleven Indians had been interred whose united ages amounted to 1207, being an average of 109 years to each. In the year 1839, there was living in the valley of Jauja, an Indian, who according to the baptismal register shown to me by the priest, was lorn in the year 1697. He himself declared that he had not, for the space of ninety years, tasted a drop of water, having drunk nothing but chicha. Since he was eleven years of age, he alleged that he had masticated coca at least three times a-day, and that he had eaten animal food only on Sundays ; on all the other days of the week, he had lived on maize, quinua, and barley. The Indians retain their teeth and hair in extreme old age ; and it is remarkable that their hair never becomes white, and very seldom even grey. Those individuals whose advanced ages have been mentioned above, had all fine black hair. Since j the Spanish conquest, the population of Peru has diminished in an almost incredible degree. "When we read the accounts given by the old historiogiaphers of the vast armies which the Incas had at their command ; when we behold the ruins of the gigantic buildings, and of the numerous towns and villages scattered over Peru, it is difficult to conceive how the land j could have been so depopulated in the lapse of three centuries. At the time of the conquest it was easy, in a short space of time, to raise an army of 300,000 men, and, moreover, to form an important reserved force ; whilst now 1 ) the government, even with the utmost efforts j can scarcely assemble 10,000 or 12,000 men. According to the census drawn up in 1836, Peru did not contain more than 1,400 3 000 men being not quite so many as were contained at an earlier period in the department of Guzco alone. — Yon Tschudi's Travels in Peru.