GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9635, 6 October 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

A PICTT7BE OF DESOLATION. The terrible earthquakes in Sicilly have had distressing results. At Garbardi (writes a correspondent of the Daily News) we met women and children weeping desperately and corpses were being carried out of the ruins. All at once we heard a horrible noise, the earth trembled, the walls fell and a great cloud of dust enveloped us! Seeing a wall in front of me give way I fled like mad while the shocks continued. We stumbled one against the other in the obscurity, and stones fell all about u?. Then all at once— silence. Then cries of distress arose on all sides, and we rushed to help those who had fallen. Professor Romeo, correspondent of the Corrier di Catania, had been struck down and wounded by a falling wall. We helped him up and put him in a safe place. Then we dragged a poor woman out of some ruins ; she had both legs broken. From another house we took a baby which had been saved by the protection afforded by a , heap of canes standing near its cradle. We found a girl of twelve under the ruing unhurt ; but she had lost her reason through terror. More and more wounded were found ; but there were no medicines, no bandages, no surgical instruments, and no water, and the roads were impassable, so that the victims could not be transported to Aci Reale. THE HEAD-HUNTING NAGA3. The women of the Nagas tribe on the Assam border are responsible, it seems, for the head-hunting proclivities of the men. So at least Professor Peal, the ethnologist, has been telling the Asiatic Society. The young women "chaff" the younj; men who are nob tattooed, and then the young men go out and cut off a few heads and exhibit them to the girls. Bub at least half the heads taken are those of women and children. The area occupied in India by the head-hunters is calculated to be not more than 20 miles square, in which during the past 40 years there have been 12,000 murders for the sake of these ghastly trophies. A group lies slightly to the north of Patkai, between the Disang and Dikhu rivers, and extends through the hill country as far as the confines of Manipur and Cachar. In this group there are some six and forty villages, split up into eight or ten distinct sub-tribes, who are generally at war with each other.

INNOCENT NEGROES LYNCHED. Another terrible lynching affair is reported from Austin, Texas. A mob of armed men visited the gaol and demanded three negroes—two young men and a young woman—who had been arrested charged with the murder of a child. The woman had been the child's nurse, and the two men were alleged to have induced her to murder it. The sheriff made some show of resistance, but without avail, and the three negroes were taken to a field in the neighbourhood, tied to stakes, and shoe. There is every reason to suppose that they were all three quite innocent of the crime charged against them. STRANGE CATASTROPHE IN RUSSIA.

A bathing catastrophe, by which the lives of 500 persons were jeopardised, is reported from Teraspol, in South Russia. The details of the affair present unusual features. On the 13th of July, the report runs, the inhabitants were alarmed to hear at midday loud shouts and screams proceeding from the Dneister, and, rushing to the banks of the river, were confronted with a terrible spectacle—a crowd of men, women, and children, all in a state ot nature, struggling like drowning rats in the water. It transpired that the owner of the local baths, which are situated on the river, neglected during the winter months to repair his establishment, believing that the summer would be a cold one, and that few would wish to bathe. The day mentioned turned out to be particularly warm, and brought an unusually large number of visitors to the baths, and the entire bathing-house, unable in its unprepared state to sustain the great weight upon it, suddenly commenced to capsize, and turned completely over before its human freight " knew where it were." Luckily, owing to the shallow water, no fatalities occurred except among the children ; but the majority of the adults had to make their way home minus clothes of any description.

THE DESPONDING POPE. The Pope is in despair. He complains to his intimates that Vatican affairs were never so bad as now. " All the States," he said (according to the Corriere di Napoli), " are preoccupied with the social question, the populations are surrounded with an unhealthy atmosphere, or are in a condition of alarm and discomfort, and we are in the power of the enemy without a hope in the future." The sums derived from the St. Peter's Pence are very small, in spite of many pilgrimages, and the incomes from the Papal possessions are much diminished. a scene in A church. Happily our funeral customs are different from those of France. There they have a system of graduated fees ; and ,the municipalities, which always conduct.the burials, reap the benefit. Complications occur sometimes, for two, and sometimes three, bodies are in a church at one time. A ghastly incident occurred the other day at the church of St. Bernard la Chapelle, in Paris. Two coffins were in the church, neither having a name-plate. After th« coffins had been placed in the chancel the bearers found they had forgotten which was which. There was nothing for it but to unscrew the coffins and get the relatives in each case to identify the body, and this was accordingly done. The affair caused a very painful sensation among all who were present. It appears that the funeral parties arrived just as a marriage service was going on, and they had to wait, whence, no doubt, the act of forgetfulness that had each unpleasant consequences. ALLEGED FRAUDS BY A SHAM DETECTIVE. Abraham Walter Jarvis, who had beeD arrested at Cardiff, and had variously described himself as detective, lawyer, and private inquiry agent, was charged at Gloucester recently with forging telegrams and obtaining sums of money, amounting to £50, by false pretences. The prosecutor, Henry Boaworth, a coal merchant, of Ledbury, Gloucestershire, said the prisoner called on him in November last, representing himself as a private detective from Scotland Yard, sent by the Government to look up registers and baptisms of claimants in a Scotch succession case, in which £3,000,000 were involved, prosecutor being one of the claimants to a fortune of £1,000,000. Believing prisoner, prosecutor gave him during six months no less than £50, upon his writing that the case was progressing. He also wired from cities and towns all over the country for money by telegraph, which was always sent him. He stated that in the interests of the case he had interviews with Baron Pollock, Jusfe?c« Cave, and the Solicitor to the Treasury. When the prisoner first appeared on the scene he called a meeting of forty or fifty alleged claimants to the Innes estates, and appointed the prosecutor secretary. The claimants were to give the prisoner 2s a week for assistance in forwarding their claims. Other frauds were alleged against the prisoner, who was committed for trial. PERSIAN DECREPITUDE. The "sick man" of Asia is becoming weaker and weaker the very springs of national existence appear to be drying up in Persia. What this unhappy country requires is that which has set Egypt on her legs— a prolonged course of good government. But Dr. Bull cannot attend the poor patient for fear of giving offence to Dr. Sangradofrom Rußsia—who claims that he is the proper medical man to be called in. While those two learned physicians are disputing, the "sick man" is steadily passing from the moribund stage of disease to death itself. Take, for instance, the condition of Azerbaijan, the richest and most populated province of Iran, as described in a lately issued consular report. It contains a population of some two millions, its capital, Tabreez, has 250,000 inhabitants, and ib yields onequarter of the total revenue of the State. Bat, in spite of the lavish prodigality of Nature, prosperity moves farther and farther away from the great garden of Azerbaijan. "Enormous quantities of wheat, barley, raisins, and almonds are harvested annually," we read " bub, owing to the lack of roads and consequent cost) of transport;, much of the cereals is left to rot in the stores." Another striking instance of the decrepitude resulting; from inefficient or corrupt administration occurs in the case of the great salt lake of Uramiah. This fine expanse of water provides ready means of transport between its prolific shores and Tabreez. Bub there are only three twenty-ton boats en it, because the governor of Maragha, who farms the monopoly of transit, pats his loot down on competition.—>Ulobe.