EXTRACTS FROM LAST MAIL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 237, 6 October 1868, Page 2

EXTRACTS FROM LAST MAIL.

Mr Effingham Wilson, of the Royal Exchange, recently died, aged 85. He was the well-known publisher for upwards of 50 years of works on reform, commerce, and banking. Sir James Brooke, K.C.8., late Rajah of Sarawak, died on the llth June, at Barrator, Devonshire. Probably no Englishman in the present century has had a more varied and eventful career. Sir James sprang from a family long seated in the county of Somerset, and was born in 1803. He received hia education at the Norwich Grammar school, and afterwards entered the Indian army. After somo active service, during which he waa seriously wounded in Burmah, he abandoned a military career, and purchasing a yacht, sailed for Sarawak, in Borneo, in 1838, with the intention of endeavoring to put an end to piracy in the Eastern Archipeligo. Having ingratiated himself with the Sultan of Borneo, he was raised to a high post in the Government, and commenced with great vigor the work of civilisation. His measures for the suppression of piracy were, however, so severe as to cause considerable outcry in England ; his conduct was discussed in parliament with much acrimony on both sides, and the question brought prominently under the attention of the government |by Mr Hume* Eventually Sir James succeeded in completely clearing himself from the imputations which had been cast upon him. On his return to England he became the hero of the hour, and, on being created an honorary D.C.L. at Oxford, received in the Sheldoniaa Theatre quite an ovation. Not long after, when the isle of Labuan was purchased by the British Government, he was selected as governor, with a salary of £2000 a year. But his strange and eventful public career was not destined to end here. After the expiration of hia government at Labuan, having remained in the service of the Sultan of Borneo as Rajah of Sarawak, he adopted a policy which gave great offence to the Chinese, who destroyed his property, and whose vengeance nearly cost him his life. Sir James, however, was not the man to submit to humiliation at their hands. Having collected a small force, he reduced his enemies to the most desperate straits, put to death hundreds of them, aud desolated their settlements. When he again returned to England, it was with the especial object of persuading the British Government to take Sarawak under its protection. He pointed out the importance of the position, and commercial advantages which might be expected from it, and the probability that it would otherwise become a possession of the Dutch ; but Lord Derby, then Prime Minister, failed to feel the cogency of these arguments, and declined to take action in the matter. Whether the motives which prompted Rajah Brooke in his

I advocacy of this scheme were or were | not disinterested was at the time much I questioned, but all must agree in admitting I that he rendered immense services to the country with which his name will be indelibly associated. The death is announced of Mr Robert Sullivan, LL.D., for so many years closely identified with the National System of Education in Ireland. Mr Sullivan was born in Hollywood, iu the county Down, and was called to the bar after leaving Trinity College ; but he never practised, having got an appointment under the National Board. Mr Sullivan's works are now not only in use in every national school in the country, but in the colonies and elsewhere. Some years since he gave £2000 for the building and endowing of a national school in his native village. Miss B. H. Bennett, daughter of a solicitor at Plymouth, was listening to the band playiug on the Hoe, when a boy in turning a summersault struck her with one of his feet, occasioning a wound which has had a fatal result. Another life has been sacrificed at a railway level crossing. Robert Stephenson, aged 82, was crossing between the two Bridlingtons on the North Eastern line, when the mail train came up and hurled him several yards. He was picked up dead. A platform, upon which about 500 persons had gathered to witness tbe laying of the foundation-stone of the Gateshead Town hall, gave way. 20 persons were injured, some of them sustaining fractures of the legs and arms. A painter named Lawrence, aged 40, rushed into a Londou cookshop the other day, and seizing a knife, cut his throat, inflicting a wound which caused his death. He was under the impressiou that the Fenians had a special animosity against him. Mr William Morton died at Sheffield a short time ago, aged 100. He entered the Royal Horse Artillery in 1795, and served in that corps under the Duke of Wellington through all the engagements in the Peninsular war and at Waterloo. Dynamite is the name of a new explosive agent, consisting of porous silica, saturated with nitroglycerine, which is just now attracting the attention of those who are interested in quarrying and mining operations. A series of experiments, which took place the other day in Lanarkshire, is said to have proved that the force of exploding dynamite is about three times greater than that of gun cotton, or some 12 times greater than that of gunpowder. A couple of tablespbonfuls laid quite loose on a thick beam proved sufficient, when fired, to break the timber right across, and project one of the fragments to a considerable distance. A charge of six pounds exploded in a horizontal bore brought down about 4,000 cubic feet of whinstone rock. In another experiment a block of wrought iron, measuring nine inches by eight, was placed vertically in the ground, ahd a quantity of dynamite, covered only with loose rubbish, exploded on its upper surface. The result was to convert what had been a convex surface into a concave one, the mass ot iron being at the same time split in eeveral places. Although dynamite contains 76 per cent, of nitroglycerine, it is said to be as safe as gunpowder against explosion by concussion. • ' « ■