EUROPEAN NEWS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1360, 25 September 1883, Page 2

EUROPEAN NEWS.

We gather the following from our European exchanges Pope Leo XIII. continues to maintain the most absolute reserve with respect to his views re the political parties in France. Excavations have been continued at Rome upon the spot where the obelisk and others were recently found, and behind the apse of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a large granite column has been discovered, with full length figures of Egyptian divinities, each about four feet in length, and sculptured in bas-relief around the lower portion of it.

Recently the cashier of the Orange (New Jersey) National Bank, who was accustomed to take every week from New York the balance due on the weeks clearance, was attacked in a railway carriage on his way back with the money. He entered a car at Hoboken, in which there were three other passengers. One of these struck him on the head with a lead pipe wrapped in paper, while two others grasped the satchel in which he carried the money. The cashier resisted and called out, and the passengers from an adjoining car rallied to his aid. The robbers reteated to a buggy which was in waiting. • An exciting chase followed and the men were arrested. They were recognised as professional thieves. Further particulars have been received in Paris with regard to the death of Commandant Riviere in Tonquin. The “Figaro,” gives an account of the occurrence, which will be a relief to those friends who feared that the gallant officer had fallen living into the hands of the enemy, and probably suffered terrible tortures. When Riviere fell wounded he begged his officers to abandon him, and join the retreating troops. The Captain Jacquin, of the infantry of marines, refused to do. Riviere then turned to him and requested him to render him the last service of blowing his brains out, that he might not be taken alive by the barbarous foe. Jacquin complied with his request, and both he and Midshipman Moulin, seeing no escape from capture, shot themselves dead. Several of the wounded were carried off with the dead by the Anamites, and the heads of all were ultimately carried on pikes in triumph. The combatants in this and other affairs contradict the report that the corpses of Chinese soldiers had been found among the enemy’s dead.

A novel experiment was made at Dover on July 28th. A seafaring man named Terry, who is said to have been a coxswain in the Navy, conceived the idea of travelling from London to Paris on a tricycle. He left London on July 25th, and arrived at Dover on the following day on a tricyole which is an invention of his own, and which is so constructed as to be capable of forming the framework of a boat. The boat is 12ft long, about 3ft 9in wide, and 2ft deep, and is formed of a simple covering of tarpaulin. The owner is furnished with a pair of sculls, all of which gear he carries by road. There being a slight north-easterly wind on the morning of July 28th, Mr Terry prepared his boat and left the harbor at nine o’clock for Calais, taking a course direct for that place. The voyage was continued in safety, and Mr Terry arrived at Calais at five o’clock the same afternoon.

From New York comes a story which might well serve as the material for a melodrama, or at least for a sensational scene in one. It is as follows :—As the steamer Egypt made her slow and stately way into the harbor the other day, a tall and wellclad gentleman stepped on her deck from the putiiing tug which had gone down the bay to meet her. Scarcely had his polished boots come in contact with the deck when the assembled passengers were startled by a piercing shriek, and a lady fell heavily forward. It was the work of but an instant to lift her. Was she dead ?No; it was merely a swoon. Wherefore this sudden collapse? Her nostrils having been duly tickled with a feather, the lady recovered and embraced the mysterious visitor. And then the quick display of strong emotion was explained. The visitor was her husband. He had travelled with her from Liverpool; but when the vessel touched at Queenstown, he went ashore to make some purchases, and was left behind. While debating what he should do, the spoke spirals of the City of Rome darkened the horizon by Spike Island. She, too, was going to America, and he took passage by her. The favoring billows bore her to her destination a few hours before the arrival of the Egypt, and he quietly left to meet his wife. The lady, fancying him thousands of miles away, took him for the ghost of her lord and master, and did what ladies always do in moments of crisis—fainted.

Certain continental people look with anything but approval on the exploits of Stanley in Africa. Not satisfied with his fame as an explorer, and the money he receives as an agent of the International Committee, he is setting up as a monarch. He has already signed treaties with King Jongo de Selo and the Sovereign of Manganya. In exchange fur the promise of uu annual pension in the shape of sundry pieces of cloth he has obtained the right to trade aud settle in the country, and to demand the services of any laborers he may require. The privilege of framing such contracts is restricted to governing powers alone, and thus, by a stroke of his pen, the ex correspondent of a New York paper constitutes himself a monarch. Stanley the First conducts himself as if “native and to the manner born;” has his body - guard of Zanzibarians armed with breech-loaders, and sways it autocratically over the Natives, The italic is witty at the expense of the new dynasty, but there is a lurking annoyance beneath the jocularity. Bernadotte was the son of an advocate, and Murat of an innkeeper, while Bonaparte was a subaltern of artillery ; but it has been reserved for the last quarter of the nineteenth century to constitute the Press a Royal nursery. We trust that from his place or palace on the banks of the Congo the ruler who has exchanged the pencil for the sceptre will exhibit a pattern of mildness and justice. This is what comes of pioneering and opening up new trading routes. in reply to Lord Emiy, the Earl of Derby, on July 31st. stated that a proposal fur an advance by the British Government of L 1,000,000 for ten years without interest for the purpose of promoting the emigration from Ireland of 10,000 families, each of which would be settled in Canada on IGO acres of land, and provided with a house and other necessaries, had been assented to m principle by Her Majesty’s Government, but they required that the money should be advanced to t.he Canadian Government, which should hold itself responsible for the repayment, and not to the various companies which would undertake to curry out the scheme. Up to the present time, however, the Canadian Govarnmnet had refused to incur an responsibility, but the negotiations were by no means at an end, and the hope of arriving at a successful result had not been abandoned.

An English correspondent of the “ Soleil ” tells the following anecdote of the recent visit of the Prince of Wales to Prince Bismarck at Berlin. The Chancellor asked him point blank why England did nor once for all annex Egypt. “ We and our friends would not only,” he added, ” not oppose, but we should approve and even abet it, if needful.” The Prince of Wales replied that Mr Gladstone was the proper person to speak to on the subject, whereupon Prince Bismarck expressed himself so disrespectfully on the sub-

ject of the English Premier’* want of patriotism and juriument that the Prince of Wales abstained from repeating the Chancellor’s words.

Mrs Check was the only lady saved from the wreck of the New Zealand clipper Waitara that went down in the British Channel. Her husband had been for some time in England for his health, and she herself had just arrived from the Antipodes, and was accompanying him on the return voyage. The pair were escorting two young ladies out to New Zealand, one of whom was going to be married to their eldest son. When all were struggling in the water, Mrs Check caught hold of this girl, and with the assistance of the life-buoy would have succeeded in saving her, but for a heavy wave which washed her from the kind and motherly grasp. The poor lady now lies in London, heart-broken by her own bereavement, and full of fear for her son, who is in delicate health, and she fears cannot survive the blow which the news of the disaster will be to him.