CALAMO CURRENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6667, 31 March 1883, Page 1 (Supplement)

CALAMO CURRENTS.

I <!> The charge of meanness is onn to -which arerage human nature lias considerable repugnance, and it has been i rutty freely flung against certain persons v. ho have presumed to enter the Domain during recent saines. A portion of th'S public reserve having beea divided oil fir the occasion, all visitors were bailed u;> on their appro.ich. anil called to pay gate mouty. The great bulk of such visitors fro ly paid the lmpo-t, as no doubt they bail comc expressly to view the contest, and lenitim.it- ly paid for the amusement. Several, however, objected to pay on the grounds,tha'. the Domain is public property, and that the ( oiuluctora of the games, or any others, had 110 right to exclude the public or ik-numl at y pawnent. These were mean people, and they were duly hiwed by the intelligent -:ro\vd ; i-.n i, although it is scarcely to be believed, the aid of a peliet-ivian wa.s iulU.il 111, :i .il t!i . names or the moneys of vhe were peremptorily demamb. d. The threats and the moral iHlucneo «.f this public • ieapproval, and poi'il'ty tie stately pu-jenc.- of Kuk rt, appe.ii' to have hud am rl.eas ertors ot public rights succumbed. rtis jedle.ss t,i> say * ~it the pr.nciple lure contended for is . »;:;i!iar to readers of r« cent ami C-v?.. r.]« t cvonts in En laud, • p.-rh-p* some of tii'.s nn-vit H'irring /.lbbc movements VaV»> h»:trll m C-'.n.eCt'Oil V.ith the del. nee of tne o£ t.'.o peop e to hiV'i access t • their own c mens, ami reserves, ami parka. Tu those casts, howcrer, the public have stood by protectors of their nghts. and have cheer* u them on. In ti.e c.ii-ro *■! the Auckland Pom*..ll, on the other hand, tticiv b*'<jn a tnovr of chf:ap magnanimity 011 the part cf oulo-.-k r?, anil those who have presumed ' o j?tate tho-e rights hare been baited as pitiful le.lovvs. Oi course th< re ar - th-e-e uiv em nev: r see In such small high mn_:s ~i*y euci\ uchiuoi-t on public liberties, at.it. lucking ■ nly to the etui of their -wii nasal pruho cu, cm ti< e :n such 3 matter nothing but a mean di.-?i:v to save a shilling, and th- refo e talk gbMy of the propriety uf e 'cour.; .big nundy c:'. :c s. lii.re *re many ways .:im ni:ii»y other lo alitß'S in ■which the admirt'is of mu-enl • r Christia ity can gracifv their d«-rare to enconrj.. c siien health', al and pta-ant p 'sttmcs : b yono (faction, iho»e who assertea the cl:ii:r.s -J the p opic to enter this public re serr- -v r/ and the ignorant, sponta-r* of lib.-:. li:y c!:»;-t:Mp w:\.ng. A pn'.-lic rese;vi» i> fa. the pabhc fre.ly, :»ml 1:') on--, r.ot even the c; c»r aduv.n: '• r.-rs i-f it, unbv-s . pr- vitb.-.l f r 1:1 their' dee : t f .st, h rve n iy t rail oIT a p ir'ion and hive it let hire. The :t.eai;i-s- w ov.tirely on the -iV- si--. Crick ling tours have unfortui at !y in lho?e deg<. uci ate r ays sr.uk into a rt;af.er of gate - -id if there

was any really manly ;-juri the }).itro::s of tae n 'h:e K izlr- game they vroaM p.U their hand.- nianf .i ' ia the.r own biveeh*. •; p, v kd ; ■ r.l pa. fo a :o;caf ;:auu! for their ii-.iiji-s, instead of U < h::g a portion of ,i pub.lo ri'j'j ve, to winch t ij. * * luimb;er jiiemli-: s lite eommumty wh ; ' hive not shilling to ttr'ow away, are eqa dly entitled *v;ta their rcher and moic sn tVil.w Townsman io i'iivc ni.vess. Cricketing is becoming neai'iv us ms: ep'aiaido as uorse racing, ami is > developing the meannesses ana the -elliainess, and x*. ant of principle. that the greit sport has so conspicuouss }* displayed." But the fun y thing i-i to see lt.i p;!t:uus. Jn this late business in the L>o:n:.in pp«ing ;is the generous-min'ed and liberahspi&ted, while those venturing on the as-ei ti-.-h o: rignts m winch the h.uubier Cla.-SL-S «'I the ur.ty are mainly iuitcrestod. v~.ro duohed ;ittte-miiided a .d iinan ; .Skid *.hev arc ii'.sieii and hooted by the • ra ob. There are relations in life tliat are absolutely ineomprehens: nle. Inat betwt-en t'iro Ir.stiranj-' Compann-s and fir - men is (jne ; that between d-ct rs and Boards of Ileal.h i, another. Nobo-iy but has had his soul sth'reu within him by an overpowering lore:- u: in »g; aninnty, ab we ;~ear the protest or some m-dical man aga.nstth-* neof Frfiiitary ». omlitiOns. eam ot understand it. It is to paradoxical. It is 50 utterly besale the ordinary ways of busings. The man lives by sickne-s, and t'ne muie people are laid up, tne in;.-re his b-aj-;y Hies and the dollars come in. \ 'jlfol l '' P rotes^s with u. vehemence that nppa.. , . ..'-mist open gutters, uu>.l closed drams ainl \ag.«nond sewage, and yet he knows -very wei: and everybody knows too, that th f advent oi a good plague, some outbreak. of a good aristocratic disease like t'.piioid fever, would make lit-? fortune. We don't und-rstand it, and it is folly therefore to attempt to explain. We can only attribute it to tne overpow.-ri.*.g influence of humane and generous leehug over the natural aeltish impulses of human nature, just a3 an undertaker who has imported or bo.ilt a n?;\v hearse, *.vouid at an inaugural <iinner generously liope that he may never have occasion to use it. *Vt ths present \UQir.(-i.Z there is a mi.-:uiide;?>taudiijg between the Fire Insurance Conipaziied and the li'rigade. The eompanit-d are showing a rehrctance to contribute to the =upp -rt ot the men who extinguish nr<;s. It i- not tnis that bottlers us but the wonder is that they ever did contribute. Fire Icsu-auee Co:n--paoies and li-ernen are natural enemies, each existing for th-i rain of the other. iho companies intura bui'ding- j . Xlus s pefo.e careless or wilful, and tire happen 3 . Then in corner the brigade and stops its spread,

11l come-i U..C ic aim o.upp and in .liimnishuig the r.sk makes people in- . ditr.-reut in paying premiums. A decent householder or s'-orekee; er sprb.klcs bis floors with kerosene. and the rats nmbiea match, wta in maits the brittle and stops . the blaz-.-, just like the st-rvice of the big iiewfouii.llau.l who, when he saw a man aini snouting in the oilier; in the tcsta'.y •* •"■ 4. rious t'ip, t piungocl in an 1 h;iu ed the m-- out by the hair 0i his head. Taen why should brigades be tucour-.yed There is no use in blinking thiegs. V» e shoii'd look at r.hem fairly and in the face. Wild siioul i support Fire Bricaiei ? Surely , not insurers, for ihey already contribute for protection, or reimbursement in their premiums. Surely n'it ti:e City Council, whose care is the irriprowcinent of the city, '.vhijh all lip-rieuce tells, is most advauc-d by yood, eeping tires converting , lines of :iekety siianti s u;t > noble piles of building. C-rtaiuiy not Insurance Coin- ; panies, for if there are no iiris ••■rill bo 110 premiums and no dividends, and one , mignc as well expect tile doctors to givo ; portions of their incomes to cleinae sewers 1 and prevent typhoid as expect, th- companies ! to make people safe f:..m Truth to say it is only trie aou-insu'ers, who I in their greedin' ss w nt pay tile fire rate, 1 and calculate on the eeif-iiic; ific-ing help of the generous ti'rem- n, or the contributions of j their neighbours, 10" lnimun'ty from less. j In a bur-t of geutruiity the companies have ! tided iu the prevention of tires, as til'! j doctors mayiianiinoiioly dec'.aim against j SCWagC, but people look into tneir ledgers j sometimes, and other and more practical | thoughts supervene. There are two ways of j looking at a thiuy, aud this id ODO. |

The memory of the mj.ii \yho first aa: 1 "All work and no play mail • * J -ok a dull boy, 1 ' is blessed—with boya; but that all play and no work inakea Jack, a nuisance and a bore in holiday time, ia the burthen of the parental groan. The old controversy as to the length and frequency of holidays js be : n" re^ashed, and there can be little doubt thatTif the true secret of the parental expostulation wore known, it is because children are a bother. An obstreporous boy m i house in the holidays id a perpetual reminder, and people sigh fur the time when not only is he removed for a certain number of hoars sure, but his exuberant spirits are crushed by the force of Btudy. Yet it is *ns natural for boys to make a row, ami lor girls to romp, an it is for kitten to hp milk, and if there were any one plea for ' J ood long holidays, before all others cotieluEive, it is in thi:; evidence of the return of the natural elasticity _ o. their aniri's There is too much apposition with some to make people old before their years, and one oi the suresUays to jrive the ui.natu.al bend to the growing twig isto weigh it well down with hard, grin. • iug study. The Saturday -oliday it good, and enables the younj,' slave of the hornbook to bear up, with the prospect of fun at the <nd '.J the week; but the total unfitness oi ; boy to apply Himself to study at the end of r, ion;; vacation is the surest proof that his system is ihoroug 1 > recuperated, in fact, that he has had a thorough blow cat oi his wliolo nature, and that recovering from the long and unnatural boudage he is a boy again. And what though it require two or three weeks more to rcduce hia intellectual faculties into slavery, and to ttake bis body Bit still on a bench, the o.i£»

cipline will do him good, and 'the amount of I real "boy" which he has taken into ilia I nature in the holidays, will, undor restraint | like stoam in the cylinder, bo the motive pow>-r ihat will make him go. No, let the children be merry while they're young ; they will have care ami trouble upon enough ; and it, is the very essence of parental selfish* Des- rind far more for the Pake of comfort than a real desire for their children's pood, that these growlers draire to curtail ilieyoung iolka liberty and keep them on the perpetual grind. Taking one consideration with ano'her a newspaper's is not a happy Int. At one time it is abu-ed for cutting short a man's remarks, and this is attributed to envy, hatred, or uncharitableness in some form or alio;her ; but let it ;>ive a speaker's words in full, and it is tqually chargeable as the "malevolent" or "malignant Press." The .Sydney Morning Herald is usually regarded as unique among cdcnial journals, for being all things to all men and all parties of men, but just now it has come in for rough 01 the most .-avage kind, for mi rely presenting a man to the public as he preßent.d himself, in s> far as the print'd page can be the r.'llex of a speaker and his surroundings. The Minister of Public Works of Now South Wales in his cups is ecriainly not an j edifv ing spectacle, a-» reported verbatim, hiccups and all. But the question is whether ' wou.d ssU'ticc in such circumstances be wisI doin, or i..ight the picture to have been reproduced iu all'its absurdity. Had the speaker been a man of no prominence, no one will deny tlii-t he deserved a caatigatioa and would have got it from any journal, but the , outburst of denunciation which the Herald lias evoked shows that it is not expected that . public men of New South Wales should be i put in the pillory whatever their offending. ; it is not too much to say that the Sydney ; | Morning Herald has contributed to this sense f . f iii.u.'nuity, and that had Sydney journalism , manifest', din the past the spirit c.-f fearless , ccit L-ism which, for example, the Argus or | Age exhibits towards public men iuM el bourne, , ' :.nd ueariy every journal would show, to tho i ! disur-cefui laches of public men, in New Zealand, there would not be found so many ; exhibitions of the more degrading forms of , misbehaviour, for which the Syil:>ey • ture has been for a long time notorious.

•(""'""in last Wednesday's llkkai.d a Keuter's ■ Loud n telegram announced tb.it "intellii cienee is to nam! that a series of avalanches have oeeuried at Mount Ararat, in Armenia. A number of villages have been completely destroyed. anil hundreds of people have been killed." It is surprising that 110 reference •vas mads to a r mirkable alleged discovery in connection with one of these storms of avalanehcs, and v.'liieh is referred to in the fidlowiiii; extract from the Levant Herald, just received, beiti<j; nothing less that of the -.imnnut.l -pin.iins nf Noah's Ark. 'l'he conv

Mijipostii remains ot -Noau s avk, ine copy of our Oricn'al contemporary must have joined the mail from Constantinople at Alexandria, which 'nay account for its anticipating our receipt of the Knglish journals commenting on this most remarkable item of mtc!lii;ence. Our contemporary s:iys : — "We have "received from our correspondent at TreViiaond intelligence of the return of the Commissioners appointed by the Turkish <TOvernmeut to inquire into the reported detraction of Moshul, Ashak and Bayazid by and to render relief to the distress d rillagt-rs in the glens of the Ararat ranges, who had suffered so severely from the unu;ii-.l inclemency of theseas'iu. They found the destruction to have not been ex-a.-'.erated, and the distress very great. But the expedition was fortunate in u.aking a di-covery that caunot f.il to be of tile deepest" interest to the whole civilised world, for amid the fastnesses of one of the ide a ot Mount Ararat they came upon a 'isiautie st'iieture of some very dark wood, i mbedde l at tl«2 foot of one of the glaciers, with one t-ud protruding, and which they i.ebeved to be nonu oti.er than the old Ark in w: ieh Noah, with his family, navigated the waters of ti'.c deluge. The place where the lii-covery wis made is a 'O'jt tive days journey from Tivhizond, in ri.e department ot Y..n, in Arm-ilia, and alx.ut four leagues from the Persian frontier. '1 he izl-ju is on-i of the sources ot a tributary 1 of t'.'e liver Aras, which 11 jWS into the Caspian. The villagers of Bayazid, which ; was situated about a league off, had seen this ' str inge object; for nearly six years, but were 1 deterred by a strong superstitious fear, from approaching i , as there was a rumour very ; generally believed that strange voices were heard within ir, and it was said that some men more daring than the others who " ha 1 approached, had seen a spirit of tierce i aspect gazing out of a hole or door in the • upper portion of the structure. Nothing " deterred bj the lears of the villagers, the ' Coramis-ioners, accompanied by theirpersonai f att-ndants, proceeded to examine it, the 1 villajers positively refu-ing to approach 1 even the neighbourhood ot the glacier in which it was imbedded. The way led 1 thro gh a dense forest, and the travellers r w. re "obliged to follow the course of the 1 stream, wading sometimes up to the waist ill 1 wat r. which uas ii.t-nsc-ly colli, being from e the m.'lting glacier After a toilsome journey i 0 f three or four hours, during whicli they 1 inclined considei able danger from the masses 3 of sno.v impending frem the heights above, f they were rewarded by the sight of a huge d.'.rk mass projecting twenty or thirty feet J from the glacier, o:i the loft band side of the ' ravine. They found that it was formed of a c wood not grown in these elevated districts Q nor nearer than in the low hot valleys of the > Knnhrati B. where it is known by the natives

iLUJ' lint D. «m:ic lb ia -J as "izim," said to be the ancient gopher wood of scripture. It was in a 1500 1 state of pre*ervati being punted or stained on the oit.-ide with a dark brown pigment, and constructed of great strength. It was a ! "r.o'l deal b olien at the angles, from being subjected "t-> somewhat rough usage by the n:0r;ii!)r:--, during the Blow descent of the glacier from the lofty peaks towering away b'-vond t! e head of the valley to a height «<f over H£vente«-n thousand feet, a process which, considering the niturd of the country and the alow pace at which these snow livers travel, especial y in the higher altitudes, must have vequired'tliousanda of years. The projecting portion seemed about forty or fifty feet in hei"-it, but to what bngth it penetrated into th>- glacier they could form no estimate. Kti'ecting an entrance through one of the broken corners, the explorers louu i it lilled for the greater part with ice, the interior beinjr partlt'.one i oH into compartments of about twelve or fifteen feet high, into three of which alone, they were able to make their i way, owing to the mass of frozen tubstances ! -with which these were filled, and also because I of their fear of the structure collapsing with ' tiicMiperu'Cumbeut and overhanging mass of ■"TTie hu_'C gl.icier. The ComraissioDurs, oae of ; ho 111 is an Englishman, Captain Gascoyne, I formerly- attached to the British Embassy in this city, and Well known as a scientific inj veatigati'r, are fully confident that it is the I Ark of Xoali, and they support the position ' by mai-j-i-ininy that having been enveloped ill i snow ami frozen, it has been kept in a state of I "perfect preservation ; that having rested on j OUM 01 the peaks of the Ararat range, as deI scribed in Scripture, the Ark must have been lying on the soil, for the waters had coverod the whole earth, and the tops of thcliighestmonntains," and allthe hi^hbills that were under thewbole heavens were covered ; fifteen cubits upward, did the water prevail, and the mountains were covered." In these circumstances the snow that ordinarily covers thiß lofty mountain, for it is 17,200 feet in height would have been all melted away by the waters of the flood when Noah first grounded on the peak. But as the waters were slowly receding for some five months, and Noah and his family following the receding waters gradually made their way towards the lowlands, the mountain wonld of course resume its great height over sea-level, and, in consequence, be again covered with Know, which must at. once Lave en.'cloped tiyji Ark aa it lay—it may be supposed— slope, near the summit of the poals^As perpetual snow now covers fjjr more than half-way down, it is manifest : ■ that the Ark must have been kept in a perfect state of preservation, while slowly, during the silent lap3e of four or live ■ thousand years, creeping down, after the manner of the glaciers, into the valley : below, there to appear in these later ages to 1 discomfit the scoffer, and confirm the sure ; word of revelation, The Commissioners ■ had already reported the discovery to His , Majesty, and at the instance of the German I Ambassador, prompt steps had been taken ; to protect from destruction, and to preserve : | ii relic so interesting to the whole world ; as ) it was rumoured that an enterprising ; Anifiricnii travelled had opened Hoi£otia- ? "tump, in the hope of purchasing the Ark 1 from the Pasha of the district, in I oidcr to have it removed to the United 1 Statea for exhibition. It is hoped that 1 this most interesting relio may be pre--2 served to the world, and as the surrounding > country ia of an exceedingly mountaincut • , character, and the defiles leading toward*

cither Trebizond or Batonm both narrow and , intricate, that no attempt will be made to | remove it out of the district, where there is | no <ioubt overy Government in tho civilired j world would contiibute to its careful protec- ' tion and preservation, as the most ancient and remarkable monument of antiquity to be found in any part of the world." Pollkx.