LITERARY NOTES. Paris, July, 17.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2212, 11 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES. Paris, July, 17.

M. Baudrillart states the Vondean has neither the tenacity nor the iftVa^e instincts of the Britany peasant. He is quiet, slow, taciturn; a positivist rather than a dreamer. The passions which have provoked tlio civil wars at the period of the Revolution are to-day completely extinguished. Further ; politics are viewed with coldness by the Vendean, who has become connected with the modern society by the possession of land. The peasants are sensitive only on religious questions. Some ancient customs still exist in Vendee, such as presenting the vicar with a bushel of wheat nt harvest time— a traditional tribute. The peasant is honest, economical, hospitable, and occasionally generous ; ho suspects himself rather than others. He i«' extremely temperate : not half a quarter of fermented drink per head is consumed annually by the population. This does not include wine, which is under half a pint daily per inhabitant. Vendee is the most abstemious department in France, and it is a rare sight to witness a woman drunk. The people, however, are not provident. Marriage is honoured, and families are very united ; but the condition of the wife is inferior : she is not viewed higher than a servant, and the hußband calls her familiarly his *' ceature." The number of children per family is small : education is not at all general, due chiefly to the scattered nature of the residences, the bad condition of the roads, and the scarcity of farm hands, which compel children to bo kept at home to labour. This explains why so few boys are to be met with on board the local fishing vessels. The number of conscripts coming from Vendee who can neither read nor write is 40 per cent, In matters of taste, every one has his ideal. Kola in Russian Lapland, is an " Arctic Eden " following M. Rabot, who lived seven years in the region of that capital. Kola contains only 800 inhabitants ; but this is considered quite an urban agglomeration, as you must travel a hundred miles to meet a similar density. The country is a vast desert ; only the coast is occupied, and even this by hamlets at 50 or 75 miles from each other. In the interior of the country only clans or nomadic tribes are to be encountered. Kola is important not alone by its population, but from its situation on the cross roads of Russian Lapland ; these extend to the Frozen Ocean, and the White Sea, over a peninsula equal in area to half the size of France. Round Kola are forests of birch and pine, fringing the fjords ; the latter, sparkling like silver, and receiving streams of water rippling music as they flow. The air is invigorating from the balsamic perfume of the forests and the saline vapours of the sea. The wooden houses are painted coquettishly ; either white with a blue border, or green. Towering above them is the inevitable onion cupola of the Greek church. The houses consist of a cellar and a single story ; the former is the winter, the latter the summer residence, and the apartments have each an independent entrance, so that the corridor is a very respectable labyrinth. The hundred house* composing the Kola capital are distributed over a large area, and the streets have the width of a boulevard. The side- walks consist of planks, and at stated distances there are lamps, each surmounted with the Russian flag in zinc. The police, and they are everywhere in Russia, have nothing to do save to roll their cigarettes, herd the cattle which browse in the streets^ and suppress riots between the dogs. The latter are as numerous as in Constantinople, only in Kola the dogs are not scavengers, and in part replace horses, which are rare in the country, to transport wood and water. No case of hydrophobia has ever occurred among such dogs. M. Pasteur might explain this secret, and perhaps do away with inoculation. There are no roads strictly speaking in Russian Lapland. In summer the rivers and the caravan tracks through the forest do that duty, and in winter the ice and snow. The sparse population tind it difficult to live ; if their scanty harvest fails famine is the consequence. Many people quit the villages in February to return in autumn, and hire themselves out as labourers and fishermen on tho shores of the frozen ocean, and even as far as Norway. This means travelling a distance of 700 miles to gain some 300fr., and wtyh that sum to purchase flour. The flour too has to be carried home on the owner's back if he has no reindeer. The women are better porters than the men. Travelling on the river is effected in the lightest and most primitive of skiffs. Eddies and cataracts are frequent the frail bark, however, is provided with a good keel, to enable voyagers to grip when upset in the river. In passing through the forest | every exposed part of the body must be covered with red cloth, to keep off the mosquitos. In the course of an hour they can disfigure their victim .so as to be completely unrecognisable. But then the insects rarely have the chance of meeting a visitor. The mosquitos are so numerous that one can trace his name on tho cloud-swarm as if they were sand. They will pursue you like death or a constable, and even into the middle of a lake. In winter the soil i« covered wi f ,h snow, and in summer with " white " moss. Game is very plentiful, especially woodcocks. A dog barks at them, when they remain mesmerised till knocked over with a stick like barn door fowl. There are bears, but they avoid man, and the only hunting accidents are those caused by sportsmen firing on each other. The neighbourhood of the White Sea during its summer of eight weeks recalls Italy and the Apennines. Kandalask is the prettiest village, lying on the edsre of tho '" blue " White Sea, in a flood of light, and " with verdure clad." As round Kola, the hamlets are 40 or 50 miles apart, and the people live in underground huts like moles, as in old Bulgaria. No one can stand upright in a hut, and it only accommodates siX persons ; the one entrance serves for chimney, window and door. Inside are branches of birch for furniture ; a few skins thrown across these serve at night for beds. The fireside in the centre is composed of a few rough stones ; close by is a shelf, containing the sacred image of St. Nicholas, before which all the family kneel and bless themselves af*er every meal. Beside the hut is the trunk of an old tiee, twelve feet high, and notched with steps ; on the summit of the stump is a pigeon-house combination, in which the flour, provisi ma, and Sunday apparel of skins are kept as the safest place against vermin. Good fish abounds, to cook which it is cut into small morsels, boiled, then emptied on a plank, when each guest takes up what he pleases ; the water in which it was cooked washes all down. The flesh of the reindeer is only eaten in winter. A poor person can have 50 deer, and a rich man 1000. They graze at large, and when one is wanted they are caught with a lasso. A reindeer is yoked and saddled like a horse, and will carry one hundred weight at the rate of three miles an hour. Those nomadic Laplanders who live in the forests make all their implements out of the horn nnd bone of the reindeer, and in their mode of life correspond to the peoples of the epoch of the reindeer in more southern climes. The bark of the birch is made into buckets, bottles and boots. It serves as a capital oil-cloth and match wood. Similar to the natives of Africa these wandering Laps prize highly and have a weakness for gaudy colours and iron knick knacks. A proverb says : " A Spaniard would sell his shirt to preserve his sword." This may explain why Spain possesses 520 generals — sufficient not only to maintain an armed peace, but to command all the 1 armies of Europe. Then everybody is a chevalier in the Peninsula. In reference to the Spanish Parliament or Cortes, M. Vasile asserts that the more it is changed the more it remains the same. This is due to the elector being simply a voting machine, hired according to the necessities of the situation, and paid for on the ordinary principle of supply and demand. Every Government can thus obtain its desired majority. In point of stability the finances are about as stable as the Cortes ; there is no money, nothing is permanent — but the deficit, nothing more constantly promised—than the balancing of the budget. No country, pave Spain, has so many newspaper readers. The Press there resembles a good deal that of France —a hundred years behind the age. Every public man has his own journal or hornblower. The papers are sold throughout the night as well as during the day. The only paying journals are those patronised by the clergy— that is to say, the Carlist org.tns. When the Due d' Aujou arrived in Spain as Philip Y. he wished naturally to imitate hin grandfather, Louis XIV., by founding an academy similar to that of France. The consequences were nearly alike too; the best men were not elected "Immortals,"

nnd those so honoured duly waned in talent. Tho Spanish, as the French Academy, has not yet completed its dictionary. Happily, this does not prevent private individuals from bringing national works to a successful ending. As in China and other countries, tho ordinary theatres are patronised like cabs ; that is, bo much per hour, halfa-franc. A play lasts for a fixed number of minutes, so during an ovoning the spectators aro novoriil timos renewed. Spain, it is alleged, would be tho happiest country in the world were politicians and functionaries but abolished — other countries, if similarly troated, might also bo convorted into paradises. In Spain, howover, theso governing classes are manufactured in tho Universities, and are turned out half foves and half wolvos. Spanish ladies adore courage, and the soldier who gaily exposes his life every day finds great favour in their eyes. In France tho fair sex now adore an official with a fat sinecure. This Bhows the Pyronoes still exist. Whether tho Panama Canal Company will ever find tho necessary money to sink in its venture, since it shirked the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, solicited by M. de Lesseps himself, to examine its books, &c, M. Boell is of opinion that the route can never be regarded aa safe for travellers' health, till Colon and Panama are sanitarily ameliorated. M. Christian after his vote thirty years ago, wrote, that the climate of Colon secured the unenviable name of "the grave of the Spaniards," who morn than once had to there abandon their galleons, the sailors having been killed off by fevers. In 1726, when tho English blockaded the place, they had to raise the blockade and fly to Jamaica, fearing they would have no men left to work the vessels. Today, only negroes, mulattoes— chiefly officials — and a few whites, stand the climate of Colon. The small garrison has to be changed every three months for health's sake. No women can there survive an accouchement. Imported European domestic animals lose their power of reproduction. The heat, humidity, and miasma, kill all new plants introduced. Matters are about as bad to-day according to M. de Molinari, who has just visited the spot ; for him, Colon is a cesspool, a hot-bed of contagion, compared with which the Jews' dens of White Russia, Toulon, Genoa, Naples, and old Stamboul, are hygiene itself. Fire purities all thincrs, but in Colon after a conflagration, the ruins become filth in tho midst of a morass. The sideways left free on the rail line from Colon to Panama, are a long ditch, filled with mud, through which the laden mules plod, up to their middle. Some shanties built on piles, and in lively colours— painted sepulchres, seem to attract the eye. They are sirens, covering open receptacles for night-soil, every kind of household garbage, and detritus. Waterclosets are as unknown as drains. Panama is not quite so bad as Colon, especially the new city, save when the vaults are full, and relatives do not pay for the lodgings of their dead. The latter are ejected into the marshes. There is no sweet water in either Colon or Panama. Yellow fever rules the isthmus, and sanitary engineering ought to precede the isthmus piercing. The population is left free to indulge in all filthy habits, which of course contribute to augment the fetid atmosphere hanging its dead weight over the canal worka and railway. The drinking water supplied both to Colon and Panama has to be brought by rail from the interior. Not the least of the blunders of the Canal Company was to commence the venture before having secured a supply of sweet water. M. Simonin condemns tho proposed universal language Volapuk. Doubtless it would be useful to repair tho calamity of the Tower of Babel. Descartes, Leibnitz, the Abbo Sicard, &c, have tried thniy hands on a uniform tongue, but only they themselves were able to comprehend their systems. M. Schleyer, of Constance, brifigs out Volapuk. " Vola " is the genitive of the German velt, universe ; and " puk " is a philological alchemy from the English to spoak— hence, the language of the universe. Max Muller applauds the system. "Paul and Virginia" and Dickens' " Christmas Carol " have been put into a Volapuk dress. Volapuk is destined for the commercial world, an international medium of communication, as is tho Marino Signal Code for sailors. Tho commercial language of the world is English, and is destined to so continue. There are 17,000 newspapers in the world published in English, 7000 in German, and 3500 in French. These are the best watermarks for measuring the tide of language.