NEWS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4143, 1 July 1874, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

INCIDENTS OF THE MIKADO’S VOYAGE. The Mikado reached San Francisco on May 21, at G a.m. Delivered mails nine days late, owing to the detention at Kandavau, and the engines working badly. Landed 187 passengers, including 110 cabin passengers from Australia and New Zealand, who complained loudly of overcrowding and discomfort. When the Mikado arrives at Sydney she will have steamed nearly 25,000 miles without docking or overhauling machinery. Her speed was reduced a knot per hour by her foul bottom. The engines and boiler need repairing, and the steering gear is seriously deranged. It is considered bad management in Sydney to send the Mikado long steaming distances- without an opportunity of. docking and repairs. The Mikado brought 08 passengers from San Francisco—l 9 for Honolulu, 2 for Kandavau, 17 for New Zealand, and 30 for Australia.

Among the passengers for Melbourne is Mr. Fred. Lyster to make arrangements for the appearance of Sothern in Australia ; Williamson and Maggie Moore under engagement to the Theatre Royal; F. W. Hadden, 11. D, Curtis, and James Moore.

The presence of the French war steamer in San Francisco harbor caused Eochcfort to hurry on to New York. He disappointed numerous admirers and reporters by lauding quickly from the Mikado, and registering himself and friends at the hotel in false names. He took the overland train next morning (May 22nd), Benedic and Pain accompanying him. He was intercepted by a reporter between San Francisco and Sacramento, and interviewed in the train. He declared himself a political offender, but his friends were fearful that the commander of the French steamer might demand his surrender for alleged criminal offences during the Commune. He wrote an article for a San Francis, to newspaper, giving his views on the present situation in France. He expressed an opinion that MacMahon would fall within three months. Rochefort and his friends would stay at Salt Lake City and Chicago, then go to New York, and ultimately to Switzerland. THE FLOGGING OF THE BRITISH CONSUL AT GUATEMALA. A long account appears in the Panama Star and Herald of the above transaction. Strong personal dislike is the only excuse alleged for the conduct of the Commandant in this brutal affair. Mr. Magee, as H. B. M.’s Vice-Consul, invoked the protection of his flag, but without effect. Mr. James, the Consular-Agent of the United States, then prepared a protest in the name of his Government, and under the Consular seal, protesting against the proceeding; and at 4 o'clock, just as Magee was about to receive the lashes, he formally presented it; but the Commandant refused to receive it, and announced that he would not only flog Mr. Magee, but would shoot him at 8 a.m. the following day, and that he would then serve the representatives of the United States and every foreigner in like manner. At this point, the surgeon of the port begged that the Commandant would reconsider the matter, as 400 stripes was more than any mortal could bear, and would certainly kill Mr. Magee. His reply, coupled with a vile epithet, was, “ Let him die, then,” and ordered the soldiers to commence. Mr. Magee was then partially stripped and laid on the floor, three men being seated on his head and shoulder, and four men upon his feet, while two held each an arm, and the flogging commenced. It was continued by four soldiers relieving each other at every fifty lashes, the Commandant keeping the tally himself. By the time that 200 were administered, Mr, Magee became insensible. The order was then given to place him on a-bed in an adjoining room, and let him revive, so that the other 200 might bo administered in the morning before shooting him. During the night he was visited repeatedly by the Commandant, who placed the cold muzzle of his revolver, ready to discharge at his temples during each visit, accompanying- the act with such remarks as, “ Don’t you think you have lived long enough 1” “ Wouldn’t you thank me to put you out of your misery ?” “I have ruined myself, and I’ll put you under the sands before I am," &c.. Trior to administering the flogging, the Commandant, fearing that assistance might be brought from the capital through the friends of Mr. Magee, seized upon the telegraph, confined the operator, and placed a guard over the office. During tho night, aided by his soldiers, he broke into the business house of Mr. Magee, and removed all the monies from the safe and other valuables. It will be remembered that the Commandant was afterwards in his turn ordered to be first whipped and then shot.

FEARFUL FLOODS IN MASSACHUSETTS. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE PERSONS DROWNED. ONE MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF PROPERTY DESTROYED.—FOUR HUNDRED FAMILIES HOUSELESS. The floods in Massachusetts, of which only brief mention was made in a recent telegram, have proved to bo most serious. The most terrible disaster in the annals of the history of Massachusetts, says the Alta of May 27, occurred in Hampshire County on Saturday. The Williamsburg reservoir, covering a track of nearly one hundred acres, gave way early in the forenoon, precipitating the vast mass of water it contained three miles down a steep and narrow valley into the thriving manufacturing village of Williamsburg, and thence further down the valley, through the villages of Haydeuville, Leeds, and Florence, into the Northampton Meadows, where the stream empties into the Connecticut River. The huge torrent, dashing into Williamsburg with resistless power, swept away in a moment the manufacturing establishments and numbers of dwellings, causing enormous destruction of property and terrible loss of human life. The lower villages suffered only less awfully. The reservoir which burst wag a wall of masonry five feet at the thickest, backed and faced with fifty feet of earth. It was twenty-five feet in depth and four hundred and fifty feet long. Behind it was a lake of one hundred and four acres, holding three million tong of water. On Friday night last it rained hard. At half-past seven on Saturday morning, Cheney, one of the dam watchers, was in front of his dam when ho saw in the cast branch a spurt of water, near the base. In a moment ho turned to his barn, jumped on his mare, and ran her for dear life down the road to Williamsburg. He looked back once, and saw that out of an enormous breach in the earth and masonry a torrent of water had burst into the air. There was no dam, there was nothing to be seen but the front of a huge, rolling wave, which was carrying on its very crest the great stone blocks of the wall, and dashing them down the steep incline of the valley. The speed of this torrent increased every moment, but Cheney was gone, riding recklessly over the stouey and muddy roads to give the warning where fifty homes were in the direct path of the flood. Ho wont over the terrible two and a-half miles at so rapid a pace that in ten minutes ho was crying and yelling like a madman among the cottages of Williamsburg, “ The dam ! the dam is burst; get up to the high ground, the water is coming.” It had come. Ten minutes was full enough for that mountain of water going down a decline of ouo foot in six to reach the first victims. There they stood, pretty white cottages in rows and rectangles on the flats. The gorge had been narrow above, and a thirty foot moving wall of water and limestone rock undistinguishablo wore upon them, over them, and spread out upon the plain, roaring like the crash of near thunder, and tumbling down the frightened valley at twenty miles an hour. Those who wore safe before the news came escaped ; for the x*eat, they took the chances of the flood. Some clung to their houses, but houses wove mere toys of paper, swept like feathers hero and there, piled one upon the other, upset, spun round, lifted bodily, and broken in twain against the trees, lifted into the air and ground to splinters between the flood, beaten and buffeted and tossed adrift, with all that was human in them, shaken into the terrible railway speed of the deluge of timbers, and quartz rooks, and water. Some

fled, and were overwhelmed before tho eyes of their friends-; some went mad, and rode the deluge down tho valley shrieking. Hero and there one could be seen sitting upon the roof of Inn shaking house, and clinging to it as the billows struck it. Of these last, one or two escaped by tho sudden staying of tho waves. It was all over in a short half hour, and tho waste had gone down the valley not unheralded entirely. An hour from tho alarm at Williamsburg tho waters had done their work, and in half an hour more had lost their power ; 120 buildings are destroyed, hundreds of acres covered with stone and mud. No one has attempted to estimate tho loss in money. As for human life, to-night 90 bodies in all have been found, and squads of men here and there through the valley are looking for the missing. Scarcely a trace has been left of the removed habitations, so completely had the torrent ploughed up the ground in all directions.

One hundred and forty-five persons are believed to have perished, and 10,000,000 dollars of property to have been swept away, and from 300 to 400 families have been rendered homeless. To add to the general confusion and distress, thieves andrough characters from neighbouring cities, and even from New York and Boston, have poured in, eager for plunder. The number of lives lost can now be fixed with practical certainty at 145, and the value of the property destroyed at 1,000,000 dollars. Practically nothing will be saved from tho vast quantities of valuable machinery, costly stores, and manufactured products. All day long this ghastly wound in one of the fairest valley of Massachusetts has been explored and probed by searchers looking for the bodies of the lost and loved. All day the exhumation and interment has been going on. The labours of a large force will bo required for weeks to search thoroughly the debris covering the meadows. Long lists of the dead are published in the New York journals. The more one sees of the scene, the more desolate it appears. Nearly every tree in the course of the torrent is filled with shreds of clothing, which the branches stripped from the helpless people whom the flood swept by, and the trees themselves are stripped by the torrent of their bark, and from trunk to twig are loft as naked and white and scathed as the corpses of those they crushed and bruised. TELEGRAPHING EXTRAORDINARY. At the Telegraph office, Washington, on December 11, 1873, an experiment was carried out in the presence of Mr. Cresswell, the Postmaster-General of the United States, the practical results of which will be of immense importance as regards the future of telegraphy throughout the world. On that occasion the President’s last annual message of 11,500 words was transmitted from Washington to New York, a distance of 290 miles, over a single -wire, in 22-J minutes, the speed obtained being over 2500 letters per minute. At New York the message was delivered from the automatic instrument, printed in bold type, in the presence of the Postmaster of New York. This achievement in telegraphy is the more remarkable as the principle involved is not new, but was well known in 1848. The experiments made at that date were practically without result. By tho new American combination of chemistry and mechanism, the speed is apparently almost unlimited, messages at the rate of 1200 words, or 6000 letters a minute, being afterwards transmitted with equally satisfactory results. Hitherto the speed attainable over circuits of similar length in this country by the Wheatstone automatic system at present in use for the “ high speed ” service by the Postal Telegrapliio Department does not exceed 200 letters a minute.

DR. LIVINGSTONE’S LATEST LETTERS.

Mr. Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, has sent to the papers the concluding portion of Dr. Livingstone’s letter. The following finely-written passage, which receives fresh interest from Dr. Livingstone’s death, closes the correspondence :— “Having now been some six years out of the world, and most of my friends having apparently determined by their silence to impress upon me the truth of the adage “ out of sight out of mind,” the dark suns of the slave trade had a most distressing and depressing influence. The power of the Prince of Darkness seemed enormous. It was only with a heavy heart I said, “ Thy kingdom come.” In one point of view the evils that brood over this beautiful country are insuperable. When I dropped among the Makololo and others in the cental region I saw a fair prospect of regenerating Africa. More could have been done in the Makololo country than was done by St. Patrick in Ireland. But I did not know that I was surrounded by the Portugese slave trade—a blight like a curse from heaven that proved a barrier to all improvement. Now I am not so hopeful. I don’t know how the wrong will become right, but the great and loving Father of all knows, and He will do according to His infinite wisdom. Commercial enterprise, it seems, is daily bringing people geographically remote into close connection. The tendency of heathenism is towards isolation. When we got a guide to conduct us through the dense dark forests that often lie between districts he and others went on cheerily enough till within a few miles of the next human habitations, and nothing could induce them to go further, for fear, they said, of being killed and eaten. Kindly inviting us to lodge at their villages, on our return, they departed homewards. Are there not vestiges of similar heathenism that linger in the passport system, in certain tariffs, and even in religious sectarian differences ? Crotchety Christians seem not to know that the followers of Jesus, of whatever name, are incomparably superior in morality to Moslems, Buddhists, Brahmins, or any other pagans. Morbid zeal to appear impartial sometimes leads to the assertion that the morality of the Koran is nearly equal to that of the Gospel. It is conceded that at one time Musadad acted as a reformer in relation to idolatry, but his orders to murder Christians are the “ dead flies in the apothecaries’ ointment and even the prophet was so ashamed of the immoral injunction that he put the blame on tho angel Gabriel, and his followers continue to do the same. Wc are enjoined to bo humble, and without doubt there is r'easou for a sober estimate of ourselves. Yet look at tho Suez Canal, the Pacific Kailroad, the railways in India and Western Asia, tho Mont Ceuis Tunnel, the proposed Euphrates Railway, and Canal of Panama ; telegraph lines everywhere, and steamships on every sea—all the work of Christians, and all combining to make the world one. The descendants of the Galileans are breaking down national prejudice faster than could St. Francis Xavier or the most devoted professional missionaries. The influences brought to hear by one nation on another, though sometimes for evil, are mainly for good. I look towards benevolent statesmen and the public Press as more likely to stop this East Coast slave trade than any other agency. Statesmen have for many years appeared to me as missionaries of tho first water. Formerly I took them to be what some still consider them,. as anxious only for place and power—gentlemen, perhaps, but not over scrupulous as to tho means employed to gain their own selfish ends. I forbear mentioning the names of the living, hut circumstances led to a more accurate knowledge of several—tho good Lord Palmerston, for instance, who gave me a widely different impression. For fourteen years he laboured unweariedly at what was really doing good on a largo scale—tho suppression of the slave trade on tho West Coast of Africa. This climate deprived mo completely of all taste for politics, so I think I can give an unbiassed opinion that tho great English statesmen of my time at least have followed as their chief aim the doing good on a largo scale. Their unwearied toil and apparently sincere desire to do only what was right inspired me with profound respect, and I shall revere Lords Palmerston and Clarendon and President Lincoln for their goodness as long as I live. Tho work of the Joint High Commission shows that America has statesmen of the same noble character. Let oor race continue to pursue tho wise Christian course now so fairly begun, and let,

the low cunning, the smartness to hoodwink each other, in which old diplomatists gloried, go to the dogs. It is refreshing to hear of the Royal honours showered down on Mr. Seward in recognition of his great work in connection with Mr. Lincoln. Dare we call to remembrance that when English statesmen laboured hard for tho suppression of the slave trade on the West Coast of Africa they were often sorely thwarted by Southern pro-slavery men in possession of your Government. The Western slave trade is happily finished, and now that you have got rid of the incubus of slavery it is confidently hoped that the present holders of office will aid in suppressing the infamous breaches of the common law of mankind that still annually darken this eastern coast. If the Khedive, with his lieutenant, Baker, stops the Nile slave trade, he will have fairly earned the title of a benefactor of humanity. All I can add in my loneliness is, may heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one—American, English, or Turk—who will help to heal the open sore of the world.

PARIS UNDER A REPUBLIC. In spite of the deplorable and almost unparalleled distress which exists in Paris in the lower classes, the devotees of pleasure and fashion are carrying extravagance, under the Republic, to even a higher pitch, if possible, than was ever the case under the Empire. The accounts of balls and parties, each of which costs thousands, nay tens of thousands of pounds, fill the columns of the journals devoted to such matters, and the contest between the would-be leaders in high life, foreigners as well as Parisians, as to who should show the greatest and most costly novelties, and indulge in the most unlimited expenditure, daily becomes more extravagant. “ I was present,” says a Paris correspondent of the Queen, “at a ball of exceptional magnificence,” given by the wealthy Russian banker, M. Gnnzbourg. The guests appeared to be sitting in groves of white lilac and camelias. The orchestra had the effect of a large bouquet, so completely was it covered with flowers ; Strauss’s waltzes were played almost uninterruptedly during the evening, and the stringed instruments were accompanied by a chorus of voices in perfect harmony with the enchanting strains. The supper was served to four hundred guests at a time, and they were seated round small tables arranged in a temporary gallery, hung with Gobelins and other rich tapestries. The remarkable dishes on the supper tables were some famous Siberian fish, truffles cooked in champagne, game of excellent quality, and a profusion of strawberries. The Paris papers announced the following morning, with perhaps questionable taste, that the strawberries alone cost 10,000 f. But the gayest entertainment of the past week was a ball given by M. Perdinand Duval, the Prefect of the Seine. Since the Hotel de Ville was burnt down, the Prefect has lived at the small Luxembourg Palace. The arrangements for the ball in question were charming ; the best artist decorators in Paris had been employed, and the result showed marvellous taste and ingenuity. A gallery had been constructed to conuect the smaller with the larger palace; a trellis-work of gold covered the walls of the gallery, and a row of windows was simulated down the entire length with flowers. These floral decorations were so managed that each compartment not only gave the effect of a window without glass, but of a balcony beyond. The conservatories attached to the Luxembourg Palace are magnificent, and they were all illuminated with electric lights for this civic entertainment; the thousands of camellia trees in full bloom and rare exotics showed to full advantage under the dazzling light. Mme. MacMahon was present at the ball, and likewise all the Orleans Princes. Mme. Ferdinand Duval, who did the honors according to municipal tradition, wore a very pretty white tulle dress, looped up and otherwise trimmed with silver wheat ears; a coronet of silver ornaments formed the head-dress. The hostess promenaded about the rooms frequently, leaning on the Duke de Nemours’ arm. The Countess de Raiimcville, who ranked amongst the most beautiful women in the room, wore a white tulle dress striped with perpendicular lines of silver foliage; the chatelaine or corset bodice was white satin, the basque being bordered with silver leaves. The hair, which was arranged very high, and of which there was an enormous quantity, was ornamented with a cornet-wreath of silver leaves. Certainly, head-dresses increase in height; when or where their ascent will stop, it is at present impossible to say. We shall, no doubt, soon witness the complete return of the fashion of Louis XVl.’s reign, when the elegantes were compelled to kneel in their carriages, on account of the superstructure on their heads. A beautiful foreigner appeared in perhaps the most remarkable dress in tho room. The material was mouse-colored satin, and the faille train to match was ornamented with drop-buttons of gimp and the composition called white jet. The tablier was embroidered all over with these milky-white bugles, and the effect was extremely rich and stylish.”

AMERICAN ITEMS. A third term of office for Grant is now considered likely. There is no prominent opposition candidate. Senator Morton’s chance has been extinguished by the advocacy of the Inflation Bill. Congress decided that the expenses of the United States Geneva arbitration shall form a first claim on the indemnity money. The claims of the insurance companies will likely not be recognised.