Rider Haggard's Shipwreck.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 304, 3 October 1888, Page 6

Rider Haggard's Shipwreck.

Mr Rider Haggard's Tvish shipwreck narrowly missed being a very tragic experience. The following particulars of the catastrophe were related by one of the sufferers : — ' Mr Haggard and his companions, Mr Ross, General Beavan Edwards, C.8., Iho Master of the Qnorn Hounds, his brother, the Master of the South Devon Hounds, and two servants, left Reykjavick on Friday for Leith, and ought to have made the passage in five days. However, it came on to blow, and as there were nearly five hundred ponies on board, the hatches had to bo kept open, and they had to make their way carefully. On Wednesday they got to the entrance of Pentland Firth. The sea had gone down, but a dense fog came on. Being, short of fodder for the ponies, the skipper risked the passage. On Wednesday, after breakfast, tho whole party were on deck smoking their pipes, when the engine-bell rang . an alarm. The instant after^ the Ifog.. lifted slightly, and showed that right ahead, and only a few yards distant, were the frowning cliffs of the Island of Stroma. A second or two after this the ship was jammed as far as her mainmast on a ledge of rock, the stern still swinging in forty fathoms of water. As the tide went down she broke her back. Four days out of five the sea runs* high on this coast. Fortunately it was a dead calm, so the passengers with their crew and kit were got ashore, in boats. They found comfortable quarters in the inn at .John o' Groat's and drove into Wick.'

Fiction v. Politics. — For the writer of fiction in France the groat and most immediate source of income is the feuilloton which is so important a feature in French newspapers and magazines. Every year the demand for fiction increases, and every, year the space devoted by the newspapers to politics diminishes, except at rare intervals when 'some grave crisis" occurs ; but even then the feuilleton can never . be sacrificed \to poli'ical matter. During, the last-Presi-dential excitement, for "instance, the circulation*'of the ' Petit Journal ran- up j beyond round, "million • but its political 'articles 4 were .neither longer' nor more than usualjfand^its'two feuilleton ,noVel8 t occupied 'ftheir^allotted with - single' -;line. 1 -*- Atlantic 'Monthly.^ 4KV^\4'.->V, ; <-'