NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3449, 14 January 1880, Page 2

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

A telegram from Cabul announces that Yakoob Khan left the Afghan capital for India on Monday. Oa Wednesday General Baker's cavalry came into collision with a tribal force, and several of the enemy were killed. A number of Afghan villages, the inhabitants of which were malcontents, have been burnt by General Baker's orders. It is rumored that it is the intention of the English. Government to occupy Herat next spring, in alliance with Persia, and although the report has not been confirmed, it is quite in keeping with the foreign policy ot the Government, and may therefore be true. The rumour has caused some angry feeling in Russia, and should it be confirmed a manifestation of hostility is looked for. calculated to endanger the relations between England and .Russia. Advices have been received from the Cape up to the 11th November, and the state of affairs in the Transvaal is very unsatisfactory. Ifc was reported that the Boers bad seized B,Ooolbs. of powder at Lake Chrissia, and to the number of 600 had risen, and were waiting to march on Middleburg. The report, however, was not confirmed, and little credence was attached to it at Capetown. "It is«also said that the Boers, if they do not offer any resistance to British rule, may decide to " trek "—to leave their possessions within the limits of the late Republic, and settle with their families and their goods elsewhere.

Several members of Parliament have addressed their constituents during the ' past fortnight, but their speeches have been lost in the attention given to those made by Mr Gladstone last week in Midlothian, for which constituency he is a candidate at the next general election, in opposition to the Earl of Dalkeith, the heir to the Buccleugh estates. Mr Gladstone commenced the campaign in Edinburgh on Tuesday week, and on Wednesday and Thursday following he a addressed the electors respectively at Dalkeith and West Calder, his reception everywhere being of the most enthusiastic character, a warmer greeting having never been accorded any statesman in the history of England. The sentence of suspension of the Rev. A. H. Machonichie was affixed to St. Alban's Church door on Sunday week by an officer of the Court of Arches, but was soon afterwards torn down. The 'Rev. Mr Sinclair, who bad been licensed by the Bishop of London to act a.s curate in charge during his suspension, was received in the vestry by Mr Machonichie, who, however, declined to give up his charge. Mr Maehonichie. celebrated the midday communion, and preached at the evening service. . The Toronto Grand Opera House is burned. The janitor, his wife and daughter, were burned. The building was one of the finest in North America. The loss is £20,000. Herr Bandmann lost his wardrobe and effects, valued at £5000. The building was insured for £8000. Yakoob Khan's buried treasure, recently recovered at Cabul, was all in Russian gold. Some of the Afghan regulators were dressed in Russian uniforms. The Russian Press is very violent in its criticism on affairs in Afghanistan. The Gazette de St Petersburg says:— "We must candidly confess that Russia would not break her heart in the probable event of General Robert's column sharing the fate of Cavagnari's Embassy." v In the course of his speech at. the banquet given by the Fishmongers' Company, Sir Evelyn Wood said:—" I am aware it has been said we ' lifted', many cattle and committed much arson. I plead guilty. As regards cattle, they are in Africa the sinews of war. Some uninformed people have not only blamed us for destroying the enemy's military kraals, but have asserted that such a proceeding was useless, as the kraals were of no practical importance. The fact is that the military kraal to the Zulu is as much a rallying point—a badge of honor if retained, or a symbol of disgrace if lost—as the colours are for which men in Europe give and take hetacombs of lives. From the days of the 'Battle of the Standard' to the late sorrowful hour when Coghill, of the 24th, leaving his vantage point, swam back to bear company in death with Melville, gong down under the bloody waters of the Buffalo, honorably encumbered with the Queen's colors, there has always been what some call a fictitious, but what I call an ideal, value attached to certain objects in war. We have been accused of inhumanity. I have denied this charge officially for my troops and for myself. I can assure you the only Zulu I personally chastised was one who declined to help us to carry a decrepit woman from the mountain where she must have starred. When I tell you it was the man's mother, you will pardon the practical effort to induce the heathen to honottk his mother." - .f. The Mexican volcano of Orizaba, 5295 | metres above, the sea level,, has been j ascended by M. Athalza, a resident in Peubla. Thirteen persons accompanied him, one of whom died at the top from rarefaction of the air, and another a few days afterwards from erysipelas, caused by the reflection of the sun on the snow. Seven thousand steps had to be cat in the snow to gain the summit, and the expedition occupied four days, one of which was a blank, owiDg to rain and snow. Baron Muller, in 1859, was the first to §make the ascent, and he has had a very few successors. * Commenting recently on the probability of a dissolution of tße^lmperial Parliament, the London Daily Telegraph observed: "There -iM: quite enough in existing- affairs, whether European or Asiatic, to engage the undivided solicitude of the Cabinet, and to occupy the undisturbed of the country. We may even venture to express a firm belief that all excited anticipations of an immediate dissolution of Parliament have no foundation whatev# except in surmise, and that public attention may continue without much fjsar of interruption to follow the importlP developments of the Außtro-German alliance, and that effective series of military measures which has given the destinies, of Afghanistan into the control of Lord Lytton." The White river murderers consis ting of hostile Ute Indians of Colorado, will be surrendered for trial at Washington; Congress has resolved to remove the Utes from their present reservation further south. Their reservation is very valuable as a mineral and pastoral country. Details are received from Panama concerning the engagement at Tarapaea, where 2500 Chilians were routed and 1000 killed, and 115 Krupp guns and 1 mitrailleuses captured.