Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 144, 18 June 1879, Page 2

Late Fiji news states that the Datives in Nacava and ceifcain other towns in the south endhad been subjected toa singular mortality, which carried them off like a plague. The sickness has the appearance of commencing in fever, then assuming the form of an acute attack of dysentery, which invailably terminates fatally in three or four days. It it supposed that upwards of seventy succumbed during the past month. The white residents attribute this mortality to the late excessive rainfall, and the swampy situation of the tov. as. People almo3fc to a man have been engaged for gome time past in felling and dragging out immense dakana logs, with which to br 'Id canoea for Venu Valu. After ferrying and heating themselves with their labor, they return to wet houses and damp mats; fever then attacks them, dysentery follows, and death ensues. The Home coi respondent of a contemporary writes :—" Nothing short of a sensation has been caused by the wide publication of the New Zealand Goveioment's invitation f » iron-masters in all the techoir-.l papers and leading journals of the country. Iron is at such a low ebb at Home, and the profits to be made so small, that masters with capital turn eagerly to this sudden announcement of a vast new field for their ente prise, and alrer ly I hear of numerous applications to the Agent-General's office for all information and statistics he o-.n supply. Of course it will be a very seiious undertaFng for any adventurous master to establish himself and the necessary extensive plant in New Zea? land ; put there is every probability ttit the invitation v. 11l not be allowed to pass unaccepted." By the San Francisco mail we learn that cholera and typhoid fever are ravaging Morocco. The United States Consul at Tangier, writing on March 19th, draws a terrible picture of the suffering of the people. He says : "At Tangier alone we are having from 30 to 40 cesea of typhus per day, and m the City of Morocco the daily mortality by typhus is f«m 200 to 260. The parents eat their children, and at Mayahar Haff and Gasseblanea starving Arabs eat their dead. The atmosphere was impregnated with deadly poisons emanating from the bodies that are half boned, and many are left exposed to the sun and rain. European residents take every precaution, hut many have already succumbed to the terrible aiseaser The Moslems ridicule all such expedients to avoid .contagion, believing that all ia written by | God, and they must die if so decreed, !

Szegedin contained nearly 10,000 houses. All but 260 were destroyed by the flood. Miss" Amy Sherwin, the Australian pritna donna, was to have made her debut in La Iraviata at Baldwin's Theatre, San Francisco on May 4th, but was prevented by naisposition. We take the following from the LyUdton Times :—" Our national system of education is one of which the Colony may be well proud, and no reason that we know of exists why these should not go hand in hand with the teaching of the three R's. There Is, indeed, every reason why endeavora elloUld be made in our public scbols to smooth down the asperities too often acquired at home. But, as a riile, are siicb. endeavors made ? We think not. There doubtless are masters and mistresses keenly alive to their duty in this respect ; but we fear the majority of them are coo much absorbed in trying to push a large proportion of their pupils through what is known as ' the standards,' to trouble themselves much about anything else. The Education Board of North Canterbury has, in its wisdom, approved of the mixiug of the sexes, believing, doubt: less, that in the school this will stimulate emulation, and in the playground tend to soften the harder nature of the boys. As *o emulation in school the Board is" probably right ; but we question much whether unrestrained and unsupervised association in the playground has the contemplated effect, or that it is in any sense wholesome. So fully is thia recognised in France, that in the national schools of that country the girls are dismissed some short time before the boys, in order to allow them to reach home without molestation. Those who in Christchurch have witnessed— and who has not— the rough horse-play that frequently goes on between boys and girls just out from school, or the absolute persecution to which a modest girl who shrinks from this sort of thing is sometimes subjected, will agree with us that as regards this, at all events, 'they manage, these thibgs better in France.' In responding to the congratulatory address presented to him by his Wanganui constituents on his elevation to the honor of knighthood, Sir W. Fox said:—" In the first place, as a loyal subject, a warm admirer of her Majesty, and an advocate of the unity of the Empire, he felt that the recognition of the services of the prominent public men in these colonies tended to cement the feeling °f unity. Another thing was, that the politicians in the colonies stood in an unfortunate position as compared with public men in the Old World. There, there was a continuous public feeling with regard to public men, From Jtheir first entry upon public life, and all through their career their actions were narrowly noted and scrutinised, and the people were thereby in a position to form an accurate estimate of the value of their services. In the colonies this was not so. People changed about so much, and the influx of population kept so continually altering the condition of things, that the public men who bore the heat and burden of the day in the earlier years of the colony might be altogether unknown and forgotten to-day. That being so, it was gratifyiug to fiud that such services were noted and recognised by the authorities at Home." The Wellington coriespondent of a c untry paper writes:— Carpenters, particularly, who have had a splendid run of luck here for the lasc nine years past, earning wages from 10s to 14s per day, are now content to offer their services for half the amount hitherto ruling. The building mania, as well as the land purchase madness, has come to a jsudden pull np wiih^ a jerk,— staggering hundreds of improvident individuals who never thought the future worth a moment's consideration. As an instance in this department of trade I may mention that (although three months ago contractors would have jumped at the chance of employing any " duffer" at the then ruling rate) really good men are offering their services for 6s and 7s per day. With unreasonably high rents for small cottages, and equally exorbitant charges for the necessaries of life, it falls like « hard lines " upon "new chums" who, having got married within the last twelve months, find that they have to fall back upon the industry of their colonial wives to assist them to keep their heads above water. It is at a time like the present that a quiet observer can discern the difference between the crest-fallen, brokenhearted " new chum" and the disappointed, careless, though not chicken hearted, old colonial. The worst of it is that married mechanics for the most part cannot clear out even if they desired to do so; while single men who can " raise the wind " for a passage • to Sydney or other favorite spots, are sliding rapidly away with hearts too much overwhelmed with grief to even say the last fond word " good bye" to their creditors. In the course of an address delivered to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Mr Firth, the chairman, said that during the last fifteen years Auckland had paid away not less than three millions sterling for cattle and corn alone. Their curses were three :— viz., (1) The native difficulty ; (2) the fern difficulty ; (3) misdirected industry or innocence. If in place of dancing attendance on Tawhiao with proposals to make a real king, our politicians would give the natives open courts and open markets for the island, a peaceful and permanent settlement of the native difficulty would eventually be sacured. The fern difficulty, which had been almost as costly as the native difficulty, was disappearing. With regard to the exhaustive system of agriculture followed in the South, Mr Firth said that with continuous crops of wheat on the land without any attempt to restore the elements of fertility, it would ultimately, under such a system, refuse to grow wheat at all He hoped the good sense of the community would resist any attempt to re-impose protective duties. • There are many means for obtaining money (saya the Sydney Ecfw), but one which the Queensland Government have permitted themselves to take advantage of seems so discreditable, tbst we hope it will never be resorted to again. It appears that the police of Brisbane recently took possession of large quantities of materials purport* ing to be wines and spirits, which were found on premises belonging to a man named Spriggs, who lived in the district in which they were stationed. It transpired also that the police, from a perusal of Sprigga' books, elicited the fact that materials similar to those they seized had been purchased in considerable quantities by Brisbane merchants, and it may be presumed, inflicted upon a confiding but . not overwise community. But mark what the Queensland Government did in the matter. They instructed their analyst, Mr Karl Staiger, : to ascertain what the materials were composed of, and iu a very- short time that gentleman did so. Mr Staiger'a analyses proved to the Government that some of the stuff seized by the police arid labelled Hennesay's brandy was spirits of wine, and essence of prunes; that some other liquid ' was spirit of wine and cognac oil; that some ' called gin consisted of sugar and bad juniper . oil ; that some called champagne consisted i of ginger and water; with 25. per cent, iof sugar and 15 per cent, of spirits; and that the quality of a lot of " stout " was, so bad ] that he could not say what it consisted of. 1 The authorities then sold this rubbish on l their own behalf, instead of destroying it as J they ought to have done, and it has since J been taken to Northern Queensland 'to ! astomshor destroy ihe icitals of > people there. If an Adulteration of Food Act is eVer ' incorporated in the statute book of Queens- 8 land, it is, to be hop^d thae amongst tne persons punishable under it n'Al be those gouty of actions as iniouitoua aa that we feave described, j 1

A Wellington paper aayg :— It may be taken as a sign of increafilflg distress that the City Council last night voted a •1 irther sum of £75 in aid of the Benevolent Society. Having been requested to give an "opinion" on the merits, validity, and so forth, of the Hokifciki Borough Council by-Jaws, a local lawyer, according to a West Coast paper, pave it as follows :—" Borough by-laws-Rot I Thundering Hot ! ! Intolerable Rot ! ! ! Unpardonable Rot 1 1 ! Fearful Stuff! Frightful Muddle I ! Dangerous Ignorance 1 1 ! " . Writing on the Native difficulty the New Zealander says .<— Taking one thing with the other, it seems as if the Maoris would have a pretty livfeiy time of it if they once started hostilities, for the Constabulary and Volunteer forces now ia the neighborhood are at present in sut'h a 1 position that they could hold their ground with comfort aud, at the same time, send out attacking padjed. We (New Zeulander) have it oil good authority that one of the banks, doing business in a certain country district, has been served with notice that unless a claim for £2000 damages is satisfied within two or three days, a writ will be served for its recovery: The damages arise out of the alleged fact that the bant dishonored a number of promissory notes when there were ample funds in hand to meet theft. The ease, if tried, is likely fa prove interesting to the mercantile community, as it will throw a good deal of light on the question as to how far the banks are responsible for the existing commercial depression. A country paper in New South Wales records the disappearance and supposed drowning in the Murrumbidgee, of a mining character well-kuown in New Zealand; Victoria, and New Sooth Wales goldfield3 ; one " Tip " McGrafh, miner, chiropodist, student, and practiaer of herbal iara, local preacher, a Recbabitc lecturer on intemperance, and alas J poor fellow, a steady devotee of the bottle. He was a volunteer in New Zealand during the war, saw a good deal of service, in which be was severely wounded, and was promoted to the post of sergeant-major for his gallantry. . Iu his speech to his constituents at Kumara last week Mr Barff announced the following startling scheme:— He thought that a State Bank should be established in tne colony, as the profits of the Bauks at the present day J amounted to a large sum, and if that revenue were paid into the Treasury it would partly reduce taxation. It would be better for the Government to take this matter boldly in hand, for if such a Bank was in existence the miners would get a fair pilce for thefr j gold. He intended moving in thia matter next session if it was not taken up by the Government. This is the latest story that is being told of Mr Sothern's " playful eccentricity." He objects to his dog forming new acquaintances, so he fastens two very sharp needles to his nose, leaving the ends to project about an inch. When a strange dog rushes uo to " shake noses " with him, he gets a thrust that sends him off howling, and the effect is such that Mr Sothern'a dog cannot get within gunshot of any other that knows how the trick works. The London Times of November 25th last, contains the report of a root show held at Reading. Nearly 1300 entries were in competition for the prizes, amounting to £300, including specimens contributed by the Queen, Prince of Wales, and several of the nobility and gentry. The report of the event is chiefly notable for the following obse rvations which occur therein :— One of the most remarkable exhibits is a collection of several hundred roots grown on the Reading Sewage Farm this year, and drawn from a crop of 50 acres. Finer specimens have seldom been seen, and the whole crop is the heaviest fie'd crop on record, as the following rates will show : Sutton's mammoth long red, 1 10 tons per acre on seven acres ; Sutton's golden tankard, 88 tons per acre ; Sutton's Berks | prize yeliow globe, 77 tons per acre ; nd Sutton'a yellow intermediate, 77 tons." It is proposed :to raise a memor <*! fund to perpetuate the memory of the late Princess Alice, and which will be applied to the " Alice Hospital " in Darmstadt. To this hospital is attached a trair'ng school for nurses. . A series of experiments has established the^ fact that chloroform neutralises the action of strychnine upon the human system Coming events cast their shadows before them—those who. remain too long hesitating get overtaken by the event as well as the shadow. How many a valuable life would • have been saved, if the premonitory symptoms of coming disease had beeu regarded ? «• Ghollah's Great Indian Cores," if taken in time, are the most certain preventatives of serious disease ever yet discovered: They are infallible remedies, and sold by all Chemists.