A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S EXPLOIT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1047, 23 December 1882, Page 3

A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S EXPLOIT.

Tho special correspondent of the Glasgow Daily Mail, Mr Bennett Burleigh, gives the following account of his ride to Tel-el-Keibr *. —After writing my description of the city, I was at a lo?s to send off my despatches. I could send through a brief telegram in Arab : c, but nothing further. The longer telegrams from Cario were first sent to Zagaz'g for the censor'e inspection, and then on to Ismaijia. Knowing this would caus=> endless delay, md a locomotive which the Egyptians readily granted being required by our own commanders, nothing was left but to ride back to Tel-el-Kebir; and with this view I started alone from Cairo with afresh steed at 8 o'clock on Friday morning. For the whole distance I met rebel stragglers making for Cario, both of the cavalry and infantry. The fugitives, I noticed, kept out in the desert eom«wbat

jir m i,,re r-gular route, aud were so beate I and demoralised that a dozen cf them would ; start off on noticing n single ctrunger apI preaching. At'tee B my hors<gave out, and the Inst, ten mile* I tru ged oi foot. Ocf'a«ionaliy a fugitive w.ulol fly our l of my p'lth and into tho desert, but no attsmpt was made to molest me until after dark, when the crack of a rifle and a whist'ing bullet, followed by another at a short interval, warned me that I was being stalked. A little subterfuge threw the Bedouins off my trail and although two more shot* were fired, thej were equally harmless. I was by this time in oloee proximity to *.he battlefield of Wednesday, and son»« of the wounded were moaning even then in a pitiful war, having lain twe days on the field. Nearer the Tel-el-Kebir camp the number of wounded were leia having evidently been attended to and taken care of by our people, but the number of dead bod es was infinitely greater. It seemed impossible to take half-a-dozen stepi without stumbling over a corpse. The stench from the battlefield after two days' hot sun wa* almost unbearable. It was with feelings of the greateit relief that I at lust reached camp at half pa?t ten at night, having covered the distance from Cairo in f'ourtern hours.

PREHISTORIC FOOTPRINTS IN

NEVADA.

The recent discovery of human footprints at Carson, Nevada, has created great interest in American fcientific circles. At a meeting of the Californian Academy of Sciences, Pro fessor Joseph Lecoute detailed the results of a careful examination which he had made of this locality. The Professor arrived at the conclusion that if the footprints were not in a quaternary formation they were not likely to be older than the upper pliocene passing into quaternary. Ho observed that no one who studied the tracks could fail to note their remarkable general resemblance to human footprints, both in their form and iu the ap parent singleness of each impresssion Their size called for explanation; for, although well defined as rights and lefts, their straddle was unusually wide. They might have been made by a human foot enclosed in a raw hide sandal, much larger externally than the foot. The bear and mylodon, or gigantic ground sloth, could alone make a

track at all resembling the footprints in size and form, and they wore not tlfc tracks of either of these ; they were those of a biped, more likely man ov the authropoid ape, familiarly known as the missing link in the chain of human evolution. The track was too much curved for any bear. Professor Lecoute said he knew of no animal but a biped which could make such tracks, but this was possible for a jnan with sandals on to do. However, as a judicial mind, he desired to hold his final scientifically j expressed opinion in reserve, awaiting further testimony.