COLONIAL RAW RECRUITS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 482, 25 March 1869, Page 3

COLONIAL RAW RECRUITS.

" Pilgarlic Patience " writes to the Haivke's Bay Herald thus :—" I have the honour to belong to her Majesty's Bth company of the Napier Militia. lam what people here somewhat flippantly call a new chum, and have only recently been enrolled in the abovenamed distinguished portion of her Majesty's forces. I have, unhappily for my own peace of mind, little of the dare-devil in me, but have a considerable regard for my own personal safety. " Hinc ills lacrymse." After about two drillings, I was, with the whole Napier force, marched to the top of a hill with a band of music playing. Before this I must tell you I had on a previous drill been ordered to ' form fours.' I leave your readers to judge of the absurdity of a command of this kind without a word of previous explanation. We were ordered to ' Shoulder arms,' and—now mark the next command—' Fix bayonets.' Tes, sir, ' Fix bayonets' at ' shouldered arms'! Shade of Wellington, have pity on us! Now, sir, I'm coming to my troubles. Let us return to the hill were we are formed in line. ' With blank cartridge, load.' I must here remark that my rear rank man was private Muzzle. Muzzle informed me in confidence over a pint of beer, that he had never fired off a piece before. Of course every man loaded any way he could—some right, but, alas! the far greater portion any way but according to rule. Muzzle, with an obstinacy worthy a better cause, would cap with his rifle's point just behind my right ear. The angle was a peculiar one, inclining a little upwards and towards the left. The consequences of an explosion (by no means improbable) would have been the loss of the writer's right ear, the abrasion of the skull, the right lobe of the brain would have been entirely shattered, the dexter eye would have seen no more, and seven orphans would have been left to the apocryphal guardianship of the state!"

STATISTICS OF LONDON

Some three hundred thousand human souls have been added to the population of London since the census of 1861. Within the border of that metropolis are gathered one-tenth part of the population of Scotland, England, and Ireland. It is five times more populous than New York, four times more populous than St. Petersburg, twice as populous as Constantinople, with two-thirds more people in it than in Paris, and one-fourth more

than the population of Pekin. Every eight minutes of every day of every year one per cent dies, and every five minutes of every day of every sear one is born. The extent of its territory is never the same. Measuring within its girdle 90 square miles, every year some green fields are built over, and some new suburb arises with five or six hundred houses, and three or four thousand inhabitants. It is at once the Court, the seat of Government, the centre of fashion, 'the home of all the charities, and a general rendezvous for most of the criminal and desperate classes of the kingdom. It contains one hundred thousand winter tramps, forty thousand costers, thirty thousand paupers in the Union, more Jews than are to be found in all Palestine, as many Asiatics and other heathens as are to be found in Poona, with a criminal class, of whom 66,000 were committed last year (50,000 males and 16,000 females), of which number only 7000 could read and write.