Our Wellington Watchman.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2865, 5 April 1888, Page 2

Our Wellington Watchman.

Another "conflagration pale" has lit Wellington's gloom, and our erstwhile beautiful Opera House keeps our at-one-time grand Post Office in countenance as a scorched andblackenedruin. The origin of the fire is of course veiled in the usual impenetrable mystery. Incendiarism is also, as usual, suspected, and people point meaningly to the fact that the previous Opera House was burned when at about the same age as the present one. For a few days longer we shall wag our heads mysteriously, and then possibly forget all about it until another blaze awakens our interest and our suspicious. While commiserating the shareholders of the Opera House Company, it is impossible not to feel devoutly thankful that the fire did not break out during a performance and when the House was crammed with spectators. Had this happened, I feel convinced that, owing to the bad means of exit, there would have been a terrible tragedy to record. It will now be the duty of the municipal authorities to insist that the House when re-erected shall be so constructed that simultaneous escape from all four sides of the theatre will be possible. If this be done, the destruction of the present building will not be an unmixed calamity. The proverbial illwind has blown the Theatre Royal people good.' Miss Amy Sherwin, who had leased the Opera House, had to be content with the former structure. It is said that, previously to the fire, the Theatre Eoyal had been offered to Miss Sherwin for something like £lO or £l2 per week. After the disaster Wo was asked another proof of the platitude " What's one man's poison, signor, is another's meat or drink."

The hardshell Oahinists rf windy Inyercargill don't seem to mix their philosophy that way, however, as on Sunday last, at the First Presbyterian Church there, several gentlemen engaged In prayer for warmth and sunshine in place of wind or stormserenely or selfishly oblivious to the fact that the dampness so disagreeable to them was possibly a boon to thousands of people in New South Wales or elsewhere. Really, at this time ol day, one would not expect to find persons of any enlightenment desiring Broyidence to alter his immutable natural laws and work miracles in their favor. And what an idea of an Omnipotent and Merciful Being, the local Minister a' Eey.' Mr Strabo must have when he could inform his flock that" God, by such a visitation as they' were experiencing,

chastened communities for their sins." The telegram from which I quote adds with a grim and perhaps unconscious irony, " The weather is still bad!"

Puff, in the Evening Press, is giving us some more fanciful geographical aud metereological information, I perceive. On Monday he told us, •' The Abyssinians would be helpless if they came down from their mountains, and tried to carry on war on the desert plains." Considering that you cannot go ten miles in Abyssinia proper without breaking your shins against a mountain, and when you get to the top of a mountain, you. find a higher mountain m front of you, " desert plains" demonstrates that Puff's brilliant imagination is as hearty and healthy as ever. Abyssinia proper has no desert plains. The only plains she has are the fertile table-lands, magnificently watered—-water-sheds, in fact—lying between sterile mountain ranges. Puff was evidently thinking of the sea coast—the Shoa, not the Abyssinian territory.

Then, on Tuesday, he tells us, " There's not much water anywhere about there (Abyssinia) after the end of March." Would Puff be surprised to learn that the rainy season in Abyssinia commences nominally in June, but practically hi May ? Well, it is so, and the British Expedition of '6B—though the fact was kept remark' ably dark at Home-only got out of the country by the skin of their teeth, On the 24th May, 'GB (Queen's Birthday), Napier held a review on the high lands of Senafe, A few days subsequently, detachments marched down the mountainside to Bay-ray-guddi (I won'tvouchforthe spelling). Hardly were the tents pitched than the wires flashed, "Signs of rain; return to highlands or push on I" And on, through that-gloomy, parched mountain pass, with the black rainclouds flying fleet overhead, but with the torrid sun smiting through them, with sun-stroke and heat-apoplexy, even the heat-accustomed natives of Hindustan, the detachments tramped night and day, hardly halting for a scrambled meal, and with little drinkable water, expecting any moment to view a yellow, foaming torrent behind them. Puff should stick to the Irish question, on which everyone acknowledges he. is an unapproachable authority, aud which permits more play to his imaginative powers. His geographical knowledge is of vast quantity but of uncertain quality.

But Puff is not the only newspaper genius fond of slap-dash assertions. A yarn lias lately been going the round of the papers, the utter humbug of which no one seems to have detected. I allude to that tall old chestnut touching the "proposed" bridge to connect Ambleteuse on the French with Folkestone on the English side of the Channel. Before any of my readers take shares in the British Channel Bridge Company, Limited, they will do well to reflect on certain discrepancies in the project. The bridge, we learn, is to rise "35ft above sea-level," and "Ships provided with the highest masts will be able to sail with ease under the bridge." Now I do. not understand how, even in a smooth sea, a ship with masts, say only 100 ft in height, could crawhmder a bridge of 35ft high. If the sea happened to be tumultuous—and it frequently is just there—the matter would be further complicated. Those tall masts would either knock the bottom out of that short bridge, or the short bridge would knock the bottom out of the tall ship, or the short bridge and tall masts would knock the bottom out of the British Channel. Then we are told;—" The risk of vessels coming into collision with the Piers—6oo yards apart-would be averted by electric'lights, foghorns, bells, and a host of other apparatus." The nautical genius who dashed this ofi was a steamboat genius, accustomed, when his ship was in a tight place, to shove on auother scuttle of coals and tear ahead full speed, But just fancy two or three sailing ships beating up channel close together, with a strong weather tide, and missing stays near those piers while other two _or three sailing ships are also coming booming through the piers with a fair wind, bound down; how in thunder would the bells and what not keep those vessels from getting mixed? and would an English or a French coroner get the job of sitting upon the bodies of the crews? Fancy also a bridge 35 feet high in a situation where the rise of the waves are frequently higher, and, when seas meeting any obstruction, jump 100 feet or so, But the whole thing is an elaborate hoax, and an old and rather stupid one at that.

But perhaps this is what Sir Julius Vogel is really going Home about, and not merely as a book-fiend, Perhaps he is going to float and manage the British Channel Bridge Company, Limited. There is a picturesque gorgeousness about the idea peculiarly. Yogelian. If so, 'tis a pity he did not arrive in England in time to issue his prospectus by first of April. Much as we all yearn for his return, I am sure ,tbat both Sir Julius and New Zealand would be happier if he tookthat Bridge in hand. We may yet hear of him whirling in his go-cart across that 35 foot bridge during an equinoctial gale, with ■95 feet of green sea playing caressingly above his noble brows. I fear he would get damp, though, Truly, "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his'(' infinite variety,"