INDIA.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 59, 24 July 1869, Page 3

INDIA.

We take the following from our files of the Calcutta JEiu/lishnan, for the latter part of May and beginning of June : — The return from the Central Provinces shows that although cholera and small-pox were decreasing in some districts, in others they still continued to an alarming extent. In Nagpore, Hurdah, Saugur, Dumob, Seonee, Cliindwara, Nursingpore, Niinar and Belaspore, the deaths from both diseases had been on an average nearly thirty per cent, of those attacked, whilst in some of them the per centage of deaths was fifty. In the other districts both diseases were said to be dying out, or were appearing in a' modified form. The weather had been uuusually hot and eultry. The Englishman, of the 4th June, says : — We regret to say that fears are entertained that the Cheduba has met with the fate of the Thunder. The Cheduba was bouud to Rangoon and carried the following passengers : — Major-General Faunce, Lieutenant J. Ferguson, 21st Fusiliers ; Mrs. Bainbridge, P. Dwyer, a Mahomedan lady, twenty natives aud two children. She left the Sand Heads on the morning of Saturday, the 15th ultimo, for Rangoon. At midnight on Saturday, the cyclone, which passed over Jessore on the 16th, made itself felt at the Sand Heads. It appears to have arisen far to the south, and very probably the Chedubar felt its full force. The steamer has not since been heard of, and heyce it is feared that she succumbed to the .violence of the tempest. A shooting-party in Central India havo bagged I twelve tigers since the end of April. A railway employe, named Daley, having been committed to the Allahabad sessions on a charge of j drunkenness while on duty, was confined in the Mirzapore gaol, while awaiting trial, for fifty days. The cell was six paces long by six wide. Sir Walter Morgan has drawn the attention of Government to the subject. The question of the destruction of fish in Indian waters is attracting considerable attention. The processes adopted by the natives for catching fish, are fast exterminating a valuable source of food. Wo hear from Sarawak that the celebrated Lanun pirates have again made their appearance after a suspension of several years. They have already succeeded in capturing ten trading prahus, and killing eight men, besides wounding several others. The Assistant Resident at Bintulu h»d succeeded in capturing one of the pirate vessels, aud had killed the whole of the crew with the exception of two boys. We hear from China of the commencement of operations by the ludo-Chinese Telegraph Company. This company intends to connect Hong-kong byway j of Bankok and Saigon with British India, either by a line through Burmah to tho Siamese frontier, or by a line to some selected point on the coast of Tenasserim. A Mahommedan labourer ran amok, the other day, in a narrow lane at Howrah — the South wark of Calcutta — and, before he could he arrested, had cut down four men, three women, and two children. Two of the children died almost immediately. Ono was an infant of six months.

" Contempoeaex Waes " (1853 to 1866).— The London Peace Society, 19, New Broad-street, E.C., have just issued a very striking pamphlet with tho above title, translated from a French brochure, by M. Leroy Beaulieu, which has excited great interest on the Continent. It contains in small compass a largo amount of authentic information illustrative of the lamentable sacrifice of life and property involved by the conflicts amongst the Christian nations of Europe and America in the short space of fourteen years — from 1853 to 1866 — inclusive, and, in particular, by the wars in the Crimea, Germany, Italy (Magenta and Solferino), the United States, Schles-wig-Holstein, and Mexico. The writer derives his facts and statistics from the official returns of the nations concerned, and from the valuable researches, of Baron Moltke, Dr. Chenu, Baron d'Haxthansen, Dr. Lceffleur, of Berlin; M. Michel Chevalier, MajorGeneral Barnes (Surgeon-General of tho United States' Army), M. Vigo Roussillon, and other wellknown statisticians. It is proved that 1,743,491 men perished in wars of those fourteen recent years, a number exceeding the whole combined population of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, and Oxford. The cost of these wars, since 1853, was, on a very moderate calculation, £1,913,000,000, an amount which would pay for the construction of railways to an extent equal to the circuit of the globe— 23,ooo miles— at £80,000 per mile; or it would build and fill with objects of art and intereat 1,530 such magniQcent institutions as the Crystal Palace at Sydenham at £1,250,000 each, or would erect and endow 382,600 schools at £5,000 eaoh.