WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 148, 10 March 1923, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T. D. H.)

It is to be hoped the summer will stop in time to let us have a little autumn before the winter comes.

Turkey lias rejected the Peace Treaty. —Someone ought to point out to her that Germany has not lost much yet b.y signing up.

From the Press Association’s revised version it seems that King George’s first grandchild is not to be christened “Harry George David” after all, but will be “George Henry Hubert.” In my notes on March 2 I remarked on the absence in the first version of any commemoration of Lord Lascelles’s greatuncle, the late Marquis of Clanricarde, whose two and a half millions (less death duties, etc.) went to make Lord Lascelles a very wealthy young man indeed. The successive Earls of Harewood have been Henrys for generations, bub with the introduction of Royal blood into the lino of inheritance this much favoured family Christian name drops into second place in tho case of this present infantile prospective Earl of Harewood. As “T.D.H-” is pulled up by so many correspondents for his errors. Dr. • Bumpus advises him to point out that his ideas as to the christening of the Royal infant have now been fully confirmed in the very highest quarters.

Russia might rehabilitate her finances by selling advertising space on the roubles shg is printing.

No one so far has come to light to tell us who christened Mount Cook. On looking up Sir Julius von Haast's books and papers I find that he named most of the other prominent features in tho landscape—Mount Tasman, Mount Darwin, the Godley Glacier, in honour of the founder of Canterbury; Mount Sefton and the Moorhouse Range, in honour of tho Superintendent of Canterbury; the Cass River, after its chief surveyor; Mount Elie de Beaumont, etc. etc. Mr. A. P. Harper’s suggestion in his book that the name Aorangi for Mount Cook was a modern innovation is not borne out, for in his paper on the Mount Cook district in the Royal Geographical Society’s Journal, in 1864, Dr. von Haast (as he was then) wrote of “Mount Cook, or AJiraraizi (Piercer of Heaven),” and in his book of 1878 reversed tho order, and revised the spelling in referring to the "magnificent pyramid of Ao-rangi, or Mount Cook.”

It will probably surprise about ninety per cent. of. my readers to know that the highest peak in tho main dividing range in ihe South Island is not Mount Cook, but Mount Tasman, which has a height of 11,475 feet; Mount Cook, with its 12,349 feet, is higher, but it was discovered in 1890 by Mr. Harper and Mr. Blakiston that it is not on the main range, but on an offshoot from it. Up to 1881 tho accepted height of Mount Cook was 13,200 feet. This was based on the Admiralty survey. The figure dia not agree with observations made at different times by Government surveyors. Mr. J. T. Thompson, in 1857, in the Waitaki Valley, had made the height 12,460 feet, and Mr. C. W. Adams, from the Lyttelton hills, in 1877, had made it 12,375 feet. To settle the point, Mr. G. J. Roberts, in his trigonometrical survey of Westland, in 1880, took observations of Mount Cook from twenty-four stations and the mean was found to be 12,349 feet. No observation varied by more than five feet, and the Surveyoi-Gen-eral announced that any error remaining was a matter of inches. And thus fell the monarch of our mountains by nearly a thousand feet in popular estimation.

There seems as much disagreementabout what “Aorangi” means as thsre was about what was on the mummy tablets from which the sanctified Joseph Smith declared he had trans.ated his Mormon "Book of Abraham.” Some people say Aorangi means cloud piercer,” which comes closo to bir Julius von Haast’s “piercer of heaven —particularly in view of the fact that the clouds are all one sees of heaven down that way very often. Other authorities, however, assert that the word means “light of heaven, 5 and Mr. p. Harper, as I recorded yesterday, thirty years back could get no rendering from the Maoris than big white cloud.” Mr. Elsdon Best, while keeping clear of attempting any translation, gives Aorangi in one of his lists of Maori place naces as a “famed mountain name,” and says our Haurangi Mountains in tho M airarapa should really bo spelt “Aorangi Mountains—it is remarkable how the 'h keeps getting in the wrong place-

The savants who were invited by the Mormons to view the mummy tablets from which Joseph Smith declared he translated his "Book of Abraham were unanimous only in agreeing tl*a there was nothing in Tho inscriptions about Abraham. One picture on the tablets showed a man lying on bedt or altar, with another man standing beside him with something uncommonly like a razor ln 13 hand, and at one side a bird with outstretched wings- Joseph this was “the idolatrous priest ILkenah attempting to offer up. Abraham as a sacrifice,” and the bird was Hte ‘‘Angel of the Lord Dr. Flinders Petrie the famous British Egyptologist, said it was “the well-known swne of Anubis preparing the body of a dead man.” Professor Breasted, of the archaelogical department of the Lniversitv of Chicago, however, said it was “Osiris rising from the dead. . the bird was described by Dr. <3tr ' e the “hawk of Horus, by Breasted as “a bird in which form Isis is represented,” and Dr. von Bissing, a celebrated German authority, as the soul leaving the body. No old friend Polonius would liato thought it “very like a whale. A book on funeral management, published ill America, quotes the advertisement of a Boston undertaker which runs as follows :-“For composing the features, one dollar; for giving the features a look of quiet resignation, two dollars; for giving the Matures the rppearance of Christian hope and contentment, five dollars. The author of the book records also tho comment of an American minister, who remarked. “The worst of it is, they can do it. “Coffee.” suggested a generous host after entertaining a high official of a certain Department of the State to luncheon. “Coffee!” maculated the high and mighty one. “bless my soul, no. Coffee would keep me awake all the afternoon." SONO. Look back with lontong eyes and know that I will follow. Lift me up in your love as a figut wind lifts a swallow, . Lot our flight be far m sun or windy Buttohat if I heard mv first loro callinix mo asxfunP Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the bills that hid’ vnur home. Peace shall Hiatoh the roof, and love shall latch the door— But what if I heard my first love calling me once moro? —Sara Teasdalo.