THE ENGLISH APRIL MAIL.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1832, 19 June 1874, Page 2

THE ENGLISH APRIL MAIL.

From the English journals of the 17th of April, to hand by the Suez mail, we make the following extracts : — ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN ITEMS. No official news has been received in London from Fiji as to the cession to [ England of that group of islands. It is stated that the supplies of tin-ore from- Australia have so cheapened the article in the English market, that a number of the Cornish mines will be , closed. The traffic receipts of the Eastern Ex- i tension, Australasia, and China Telegraph Company (Limited), for the month of March, amounted to L 19,530, against L 17.988 for the corresponding period of 1873. The several emigration agents have been active in procuring emigrants. Dv Featherston (says the European Mail) finds the work increasing to such an extent, that he has been obliged to take extra rooms' at Westminister Chambersi and employ a much larger staff. Since March 20, nine vessels have left the country for New Zealand, freighted with emigrants. [ Lady Barker, author of "Station Lifo iii New Zealand," and othor charming

works, has been appointed superintendent of the new National School of Cookery, South Kensington. She is the wife of Mr Frederick Napier Broome, one of the principal descriptive writers on the staff of the Times, One of Mr Broome'a latest achievements was the graphic account of the wedding festivities at St. Petersburg, telegraphed at length to the Tims. MISCELLANEOUS. With a' wholesome fear of being denied intercourse with the traders of the coast before his eyes, King Koffee, has at last signed the treaty of peace which has fceen drawn up by Sir Garnet Wolseley. His ambassadors have carried it to Government House at Cape Coast Castle where they affixed their signatures to it. Thus the last act of a war, which it is hoped may not be without some beneficial results to the tribes upon the coast, has at length been completed. The members of the embassy were all leading chiefs. Two clasps will be given with the Abliantee War medal, one bearing the word " Amoaful," and the other " Coomassie." The medal riband will be black and yellow, striped. , •. ■ , Mr McMahon has made application to Mr Justice Lush, in chambers, for an order on the prosecution to produce the roll of all the proceedings in the late Tichborne trial, with a view of commencing proceedings on a writ of error for a reversal of judgment. Tichborniana is rampant just now, and the friends of , the Claimant have had a meeting atSouthampton. Among those present were Mr Guildford Onslow, Mr Skipworth, the gentleman who went to prison for contempt of court, and Mr Councillor Purkees. Much sympathy was expressed for the wife and children of the Ute Claimant, who were also present. The total uumber of idiots or imbeciles in England and Wales is 29,452, the equality of the sexes being : remarkable — namely, 14,728, males and 14,724 females. Compared with the entire population, the ratio is 1 idiot or imbecile in 761 persons, or 13 per 10,000 / persons r living. The number of the insane in England and Wales is 39,567—18,146 males and 21,521 females — being in the proportion of I in every 574 of the general population. A handsome gift has been presented by the laiies of Christchurch to the Prince Imperial. It is an inkstand in the shaped of a beehive. The hive is gold, and rests W on a silver base, richly gilt and' enamelled. Ten bees, most artistically constructed, are placed at suitable intervals^ on the hive or base. Valuable jewels add to the beauty of the object/; = : At the Liverpool Assizes on April 9, before Mr Justica Dehinan, an action was brought by Miss Mary Matbeson, daughter of a Glasgow merchant, to' recover damages for a breach of promise of marriage. The defendant was Mr Eccles Shorrock Eccle3, a cotton broker, of. Liverpool, and the damages were kid. at LBOOO. The courtship had lasted only two months, and at the end of that time the defendant wrote to the young lady's father, breaking off the match ; bis reasons . being that she did not take sufficient interest in his pursuits and her disregard fjr the game of cricket, of which he. WAS passionately fond. The jury awitrded L2OOO damages. Through the use of naked lights in one of the deepest mines in the world— the Astley Deep Pit, at Dukinfield, near Manchester— a fearful explosion has been caused, attended with 'great sacrifice of life. On April 14, about 160 men were at work in the mine. 'Six or seven of them were repairing a tunnel that had been damaged by fire a few days, ago, when part <if the roof fell in, and the liberated gas coming in contact with the naked lights they were using, blew up all the workings in the vicinity. Ninety-one men, who were fortunately near the foot of the shaft, were at once rescued. Relief parties worked all night in the desperate hope of Ba ying others. lir the morning, one man was brought up alive ; and afterwards ten men and boys were discovered in a tunnel uninjured. Previously, three brothers had saved themselves by making a circuit of the return air- way. Qn April 15,, thirty dead bodies were recovered, and the total number of the killed is supposed to be about forty. A women's whisky war has been commenced in Manchester. The fair ground at Knott Mill, which during the Easter week had been given up to the annual fair, was on Sunday the scene of a very different gathering. From a temporary platform, consisting of a lorry, about a doyen working men's wives addressed an attentive crowd on the evils of intemperance. The chairwoman said she had been a teetotaller twenty-seven years, and had never regretted it. Some of the speakers were members of Good Templar lodges, and styled " alters,," and all had, in some way or other, been brought over to total abstinence through the terrible examples of drunken husbands or fathers. One woman introduced herself as "no far ' away bird, but the daughter of old Joe Blank, the drunkennest man in Deansgate ;" another speaker, also locally connected, said she " had been twehty-bne years drink-cursed, having for a husb.a.nd, the greatest drunkard th.a.t ever- walked th,e streets, of Manchester." This woman's husband, who was at one time never without an excuse to thrash her, was now a reformed character. At the close of the speeches a number of persons took the temperance pledge. A story is, going the rounds o,f the Press, relative to the Premier and his recent visit to Bretby Park. This fiction is based upon idle and foolish surmise, and is as ridiculous as it is unfounded. It is that Mr Disraeli was going to marry 'the Dowager-Countess of Chesterfield, who was born in 1802. Recently, the Scotsman mentioned that a- bible bound in calf, and bearing the name of <' William Sim,' v a Dundee man, and the date 1830, had been discovered in the stomach of a codfish. The fact alone was remarkaWe enough, but still more extraordinary is another circumstance connected with the affair, also reported by the Scotsman. On the very same day on which the strange discoverywas made known to the public through its columns, the heirs of the deceased Me Sim succeeded iv obtaining a warrant in the outer House of the Court of Session (from the Lord Ordinary Mure) to uplift several hundreds of pounds belonging to the said William Sim, who was described in the legal proceedings as a sailoi*, a native of Dundee,^ who had gone to sea about 1834, and had not since been heard of. There can belittle doubt that the Bible thus preserved in the codfish's stomach belonged to the lost William Sun? of Qundee. "