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Southland Times, Issue 1714, 14 March 1873, Page 3

A Cape paper states that tbe demand for books in the Kaffir language has increased bo much lately that the mission presses cannot supply them quickly enough. Orders are on hand waiting execution. Books cannot be printed or bound fast enough. It would appear irom this that the Kaffir is more adranced in his ideas than the Maori.

American papers say that the English mail, due at San Francisco on 29th January, was kept back for sevon days, although the trains were arriving daily with the utmost regularity. The railway authorities, who are hostile to Webb's line, are suspected. The final defeat of the Webb Subsidy Bill in the Senate was effected, after a hot debate, in a full house, by 33 to 31. It would have passed but for the formation of the Burnside-Scott organisation, formed of influential railway men, who propose to run a line with English steamers, in connection with railway lines in which they are interested. The idea of English steamers at first raised much opposition, but it was shown that no American steamer afloat would fulfil the requirements of the route. It is thought in America that the present is the last steamer of the Webb line, and' that if satisfactory advicea are received by telegraph of the action of the New South Wales Government, the first steamer of the new line will leave England in three months from this date.