MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 384, 7 April 1849, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

Negotiations have been entered into between the United States and Spain, for the annexation of Cuba to the Republic. The Rt. Rev. Bishop Mant (of Down, Connor, and Dromore), died on the sth November, in the 73d year .of his age. Doheny and Stephens, two fugitives from Ireland, bad arrived at Paris, and entered the National Guard. Lord Viscount Middleton, at Pepper Harrow, the seat of that nobleman, has'committed suicide. He had closed himself in a small room, and burned charcoal, the fumes of which suffocated him.

Naval Commander-in-Chiee. —We understand that Sir Henry Gage, G.C.8., &c, has been appointed naval Commander-in-Chief in India and China, in succession to Rear-Admiral Inglefield, C.B. The great merits of Sir Henry Gage are so well known as to afford the best guarantee for his becoming a general favourite. Sir Henry Gage will hoist his flag in the Southampton, 50 guns. —Hongkong Register, June 13. Tipperary will pay heavily for the late commission. There were two hundred witnesses summoned by the Crown, many of whom were paid five guineas a day, all of which must be levied off Tipperary. It cost at least £500 a day \

I In Windsor Park there are now between 200 and 300 beautiful milk-white goats; all descended from a pair presented to the Queen, in 1843, by the Shah of Persia. A singular but painful accident lately happened to a gentleman connected with the Russian Consulate : he was descending from the outside of an omnibus when his ring caught by the hook of the side bar of the box seat as he was in the act of jumping off, and the sudden wrench that ensued actually tore off his little finger. According to a new ukase, Jews are now permitted to carry on trade throughout the whole of Russia. The ship Alexander, of Dundee, left Calcutta in April last for London. When about a month at sea, Mr. Latta, the chief officer, caught an eagle one evening while on his watch, and after being secured, kept the bird two days, when he proposed to Captain Inglis, the commander of the ship, that the bird should be despatched. This was accordingly done ; and in lat. 10 S., long. 70, the bird was let loose from his prison, and an address put on it upon leather tied round his neck, with the name of the ship, sender, &c, and, strange to say, the same bird was caught, with the address quite entire, 2,200 miles from the place it left the ship Alexander, by an American whaler, in whose possession it was when the ship Bellevue, from Ceylon, spoke the whaler, and saw the bird. It was intended to be shipped for the Museum, London. ~ Several immense masses of ice are now drifting in the Atlantic Ocean, in the direct ] course of the shipping between England and America. One of them was noticed 600 feet high, and a mile in length. There died lately, at Macclesfield, a woman named Sophia Locke, who had for many years wandered about the country in male attire, professing the trade of a tinker and scissors grinder, under the name of John Smith. "Onre, when he was staying with Mr. Coke at Holkham, a well-known professor was also one of the visitors. The venerable historian bad never had a gun in his hand, but on this occasion Mr. Coke persuaded him to accompany the shooting party ; care, however, was taken to place him at the corner of a covert, where it was thought the other sportsmen would be out of his reach. When the rest of the party came up to the spot where be was standing, Mr. Coke said to him, * Well, what sport 1 You have been firing pretty often !' ' Hush !' said the professor, * there it goes again ;' and he was just raising his gun to bis shoulder, when a man walked tfery quietly from the bushes about seventy yards in front of him. It was one of the beaters who had been set to stop the pheasants, and his leather gaiters, dimly seen through the bushes, had been mistaken for a hare by the professor, who, much surprised by its tenacity of life, had been firing at it whenever he saw it move. " But," said Mr. Buxton, " the man had never discovered that the professor was shooting at him !" — Memoirs of Sir F. Buxton.

Anecdote of Rothschild. — " We yesterday dined at Ham House ; and very amusing it was. Rothschild told us his life and adventures. He was the third son of the banker at Frankfort. * There was not/ he said, ' room enough for us all in that city. I dealt in English goods. One great trader came there, who had the market to himself : he was quite the great man and did us a favour if he sold us goods. Somehow I offended him and he refused to show me his patterns. This was on a Tuesday ; I said to my father, * I will go to England.' I could speak nothing but German. On the Thursday I started ; the nearer I got to England the cheaper goods were. As soon as I got to Manchester I laid out all my money, things were so cheap ; and I made good profit. I soon found that there were three profits — the raw material, the dyeing, and the manufacturing. I said to the manufacturer, ( I will supply you with the material and dye, and you supply me with manufactured goods.' So I got three profits instead of one, and I could sell goods cheaper than anybody. In a short time I made my £20,000 into £60,000. My success all turned on one maxim. I said, I can do what another man can, and so I am a match for the - man with the patterns, and for all the rest of them ! Another advantage I had. I was an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When I was settled in London the East India Company had 800,000lbs. of gold to sell. I went to the sale and'bought it all. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a discount. The government sent for me and said they must have it. When they had got it they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I undertook all that, and I sent it through France ; and that was the best business I ever did." " Another maxim, on which he seemed to place great reliance, was, never to have anything to do with an unlucfy place or an un-

lucky nun, ( I have seen/ said^he, 1 'mtny^ clever men, i very clever men, wiro htdcnott shoes to their feet; I never, act with thettnThefcadviw sounds very well ;. but fttenis; against them ; .they cannot get on themselves;and if they- cannot do good to themselves, how 7 can they do good to me?' By ai& of these/ maxims he has acquired three millions of money. " * I hope,' said: > * that your children are not too fond of money and business, to the' exclusion of more important things. I am sure you would not wish that.' Rothschild. — 'J am sure I should wish that. I wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business ; that is the way to be happy. Stick to one business, young man,' ssid he to Edward; * stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette. — One of my neighbours is a very ill-tempered man ; he tries to vex me, and has built a great place for swine close to my walk. So, when Igo out, I hear first, grunt, grunt, squeak, squeak; but this does me no harm. lam always in good humour. Sometimes to amuse myself I give a beggar a guinea. He thinks if is a mistake, and for fear I should find it out, off be runs as hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar a guinea sometimes — it is very amusing. " — Ibid. Marshall Btjgeatjd's Razzia. — " It' being out of the question for the cavalry to mount the height, and the attempt being moreover perfectly unnecessary, they remained where they were, and three small columns of infantry, composed of the Zouaves, the Chasseurs d'Orleans, and the ' Tirailleurs Indigenes,' were led to the attack. The defence made here was more obstinate than in the former villages ; for this was the forlorn hope of the enemy; this was the point whither the fugitives had fled, and the only place of refuge left for their wives and families. Congreves hissed through the air, and burst over the doomed stronghold, doing considerable execution ; yet did the defenders pour down from the terraces of their houses an incessant fire upon the ascending troops, who advanced, however, with the utmost intrepidity, throwing forward clouds of skirmishers, firiog in return as they best could, and toiling onward preservingly towards the summit, though frequently obliged to use both hand and knees in their progress. " Finding their enemies rapidly gaining the height, and that one detachment was upon the point of taking them in the flank, the Kabailes might now be seen retreating in stern despair from the village, turning and firing at intervals as they retired to the heights beyond. Two or three of the soldiers, mounting to this attack, fell dead struck by no ball. Desperate exertion and intense heat had killed them. The summit once attained, however, the lust of plunder gave strength to the troops ; and dashing over the wall and through the gateways, the scenes which had taken place in the villages below were again acted over, but with increased attendant horrors ; for was it not the refuge of the women and the aged ? Ravished, murdered, burnt, hardly a child escaped to tell the tale. A few of the women fled to the ravines around the village ; but troops swept the brushwood ; and the stripped and mangled bodies of women might there be seen. " An instance of feminine daring worthy of record was reported to have taken place in this village. A soldier entering a house for plunder found there a Kabyle ; rushing on to cut him down, a woman came forth and shot the soldier dead with a pistol. A curious instance of sangfroid on the part of an aged woman, during these scenes of blood, is also remarkable. Massacring, burning, and plundering going on around her, she still sat coolly in her dwelling hard at work, making cous-coussou, and paying no sort of attention to anything but her seethiug-pot. Most fortunately for this old hag, an officer was the first that came upon her ; and struck with her extraordinary conduct, made prisoner of her as a curiosity ; yet was she very savage at being disturbed during her culinary operations; and it required considerable effort to tear her from her pots and pans to save her life. Some Israelitisji artisans, workers in silver and in iron, trusting to their black turbans and their unwaxlike character for mercy, fled not upon the taking of this village. It was false confidence ; for the soldiers, neither distinguished nor wishing to distinguish them from Moslems, fell upon and slew them/,— Ifymr's Campaign against the Kabailes. *