’Frisco Mail News.

Patea Mail, 18 September 1882, Page 3

’Frisco Mail News.

Auckland.—The City of Sydney arrived at 5 p.m. last evening. There are 254 tons of freight for Auckland, 250 cases onions, 502 cases of salmon, 2000 sacks of barley ; 909 tons freight for Sydney, Business failures throughout the United States for the seven days ending August 26th number 109, A company has been organised in New York under the name of the Great American and European Short Line Railroad Company, with a view to shortening the sea trip between the United States and Europe. The plan is to convey passengers to a point on the extreme coast of Newfoundland. The steamers will be taken to a point on the eastern coast of Iceland, a distance of only 1640 miles. It is thought three or four days will be saved by this route. Ficklin Town, in Texas, was swept awaj' by floods on the 26th, Forty lives were lost. Mr Gajq correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, who sent a false account of the behavior of the 60th Rifles on the outskirts of Alexandria, accusing them of rank cowardice, has been recalled. The Queen will open the new London Law Courts in November. About 4000 Bonapartists met in Paris on the 15th, and a resolution was passed favoring the placing of Prince Victor Napoleon on the throne of France. Dean Gowbot, an Englishman, and two guides fell from a precipice while attempting the ascent of Mont Blanc. All three were shattered to pieces. The palace of Count Andrassy, Vienna, has been burglarised. All his diplomas, orders, and many objects of art and antiquity were stolen. For the first time since 1878, the farmers of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent are radiant at the harvest prospects. Pollock Castle, Renfrewshire, the most ancient family seat in West Scotland, has been burned ; loss £300,000. The Russian steamer Maseava exploded her boilers off Roshofim ; 200 persons lost ; 120 saved. The Czar has grown bold enough to dispense with an escort in riding or walking. News from Peru shows that war with Chili is becoming one of extermination. A Negro conspiracy to massacre the white inhabitants of Chatham county, Alabama, was detected by the discovery of certain papers. The whites armed and seized the leader, Jack Turner, who was hanged at once.' Famine threatens Nicuragua from a failure of the maize crop. Messrs Wright and Sons, worsted spinners, of Bradford, England, have failed for £170,000. The stoppage of the mills has been advised by the Oldham spinners, as trade was at such a low ebb. Certain Senators and Congressmen having opposed the admission of female clerks into the departments at Washington) the women have formed themselves into a secret society to collect and publish to the world damaging- facte in the private lives and habits of their opponents, M, De Lesseps waited upon the Duke of Edinburgh and assured him that he (De Lesseps) feels friendly towards the British Government. It is asserted that a mining locator napied Chaspin has discovered in Lake Erie, by means of a magnetic rod, the whereabouts of a schooner sunk fifty years ago with a cargo of copper ingots valued »t 150,000 dollars. The wreck was irifi fty feet of water. A fifty pound ingot was brought to the surface. In the West Indies, (August 9th) yellow fever was ravaging at San Domingo. Over one hundred women are on trial at Gross Beccecrey, in Hungary, charged with poisoning their husbands. The guilt of thirty-five of the accused has been proved.

PLAGUES OF EGYPT. The Delta of the Nile cannot be a pleasant battle-grouncf just now, the heat, flies, and sand being almost unbearable, and there were doubtless many a torrent of British expletives before the troops had done one day’s inarch out of Alexandria. A writer in the New York Times , who evidently knows whereof he speaks, gives such a description of the country that one is compelled to wonder how the incontestible richness of soil produced by irrigation can make life bearable anywhere where nature has been left undisturbed. He says, among other things, that the dreariness of the country between Alexandria and Cairo is such that even Arabi Pasha’s soldiers can hardly increase it, though they certainly appear to have done their best toward that end. From the magnificant cathedral-like depot at Alexandria right onward to the gates of Cairo the whole country is one unbroken flat, scorched by the vertical sun, and presenting eveywhere the glaring contrast of a riotous luxuriance of vegetation wherever water runs, and a barrenness like that of the Sahara wherever it does not. The dust is simply indescribable. Despite the Venetian blinds with which all the cars are provided, floor, walls and roof are literally gritty before Alexandria is out of sight; and when the passengers begin to shake and brush their clothes toward the end of the journey, every car is a scene of a kind of miniature sandstorm. Add to this the assiduities of innumerable flies and mosquitoes, and the fact that the ordinary trains take four and a half hours to cover a distance of less than 100 miles, and it will be seen that the journey is more of a toil than a pleasure.