OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 914, 6 September 1889, Page 6

OLLA PODRIDA.

A WONDERFUL BRIDGE FOR QUEBECSomething more formidable than would be a bridge across the bay from Oakland to San Francisco is to be undertaken ou the St Lawrence river. That great arm.of the sea is to be crossed at Quebec by a gigantic railroad bridge, which will very materially affect the traffic of the two great railways of Canada —the Grand Trunk aud the Canadian Pacific—as well as an important part of the railway system of the New England States. The great depth of the St Lawrence river opposite Quebec has hitherto bee'n a powerful argument against the construction of a bridge, but engineering skill has overcome this obstacle with a scheme to build a cautilever bridge, which will co-t close upon ten million dollars. The width of the river from *h ie to shore at Quebec is 24,000 feet (about four and two-thirds miles). Two maiu piers are to be constructed of solid granite in forty feet of water, about 500 feet from each shore. These two piers are to support a cantilever bridge of a span of 1442 feet. The" total length of the bridge, with the approaches will be 34,000 feet (nearly 6-1 mile-). The top of the bridge from high water level will be 408 feet, and the hugest ocean steamors will be able to pass under it. The principal object in building the bridge is to connect the Intercolonial Railway From Halifax and St John to Quebec, which is run by the Canadian Government at a great annual loss to the country, with the Canadian Pacific Railway. This is the only link uncompleted necessary to give the Canadian Pacific Railway an un interrupted line from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through Canadian territory.— Iron.

NOTABLE INUNDATIONS. SOME OF THE GREAT FLOODS OF HISTORY. It becomes interesting to note some of the great floods of history. One of the most notable was that which, according to the old historian Camden, washed away -E.irl Godwin’s lands on the coast of Kent, and left only the Godwin Sands. Holland has furnished many a coast flood. At Dort, in 1446, the sea broke in through the dikes and drowned the people of seventy-two villages, in all 100,000 persons. The dikes failed in 1530 and nearly 400,000 people died. The celebrated Ripon flood in Yorkshire was in 1771, and in 1757 over 2000 persons lost their lives by the sudden torrents from the mountains of Navarra. In 1813 the overflow of the Danube drowned 2000 Turkish soldierß on a small island near Widdin, and in Silesia the floods practically ruined the French army under MacDonald. The Vis tula overflowed and broke its dikes in 1829 and swept away 10,000 cattle and 4 'OO houses. • Two famous floods in France were those of 1840 aud 1816. The former was in the southeast, and upward of one thousand houses were swept away by the Rhone. The other was in the central and southwestern part of France, and destroyed 20,000,000d015. worth of property, including numerous costly railroad viaducts. By the bursting of the reservoir at Lorca, in Spain, twenty square leagues were devastated and over one thousand persons drowned, April 14, 1802. The property damage was estimated at 7.000, OOOdols. The giving way of the dam of the Bradford Reservoir near Sheffield, England, on March 11, 1884, let loose a flood which swept fourteen miles of valley in two hours and caused a loss of 1,800,000d015., beside drowning 250 persons. This is the disaster which is made to figure in Charles Reade’s ‘ Put Y ourself in His Place.’ The area of the Bradford Reservoir was seventy-eight acres, and its dam at the highest place was ninety-five feet high. The Williamsburg, Mass., disaster was on May 17, 1874. The dam of a 100 acre reservoir gave way, and 1,000,000d015. worth of property was ruined. One hundred and fifty persons lost their lives. The Johnstown Reservoir accident surpasses all similar casualties in every respect. This reservoir had an area of over twentyeight hundred acres, and its waters when freed from confinement devastated an area of hundreds of square miles. EXTRAORDINARY ARMY OF CATERPILLARS. TRAINS BROUGHT TO A STAND. Mail news from Canada states that a remarkable incident has happened to the Canadian Pacific Railway, near Milo, near the State line, being no less than the blocking of the line on that section by a gigantic army of small grey caterpillars. They first made their appearance at night, and were met by a time-keeper who was hurrying home ou a railway bicycle. The insects were pouring across the line, headed south, in a ■perfect stream a mile wide and an inch deep. They were a squirming, hideous mass, aud emitted an offensive odour. He tried to push bis way through them, but, being crushed, they made the rails so slippery that his wheels slipped, and the machine refused to move. He had to push it over half a mile by hand. The following morniug the down freight train bound for Bangor met the river of insects, They were still marching across the track in still larger numbers, being over two miles wide and from two to four inches thick. ■ The engine and eleven cars came to a sudden standstill, and it took ten hours to get the train across the ppace occupied by the tiny emigrants. Section men undertook to Bweep them off with alder-bushes, bat the slightest touch of the twigs would crush them like dough. Upon the driving-wheels coarso sand was used, bnb it did not avail much, and Supeiintendent Vanzie was wired, and he ordered out another locomotive from Sebois. Ou her arrival there began a series of charges along the sectiun, which had now been liberally sprinkled with sand, but the animal life was so thick that the various attempts were unsuccessful, and it was not until late at night and the sun had gone down that the creeping things desisted in their march. With these there had come clouds of mosquitoes, and they very materially aided the other ginsects by pitching moat

vigorously into the men, seemingly drawing blood from all nationalities alike.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF NATURE. A time may come when this ultra-scien-tific region, by which We are nbw enfolded, may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human investigation. TwO-thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organs requisite for their translation into light do nob exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds us rays may be darting, which require hut the development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them into knowledge, as far surpassing ours as ours surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Meanwhile, the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a power which has feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and will be, and I hope, is turned to account, both in steadying and -strengthening the intellect, and in rescuing man from the littleness to which, in the struggle for existence or for precedence in the world, he is continually prone.—Professor Tyndall, STORAGE OF RAIN WATER. The value of rain water as a source of supply for washing purposes has long been recognised. Its natural purity, its com parative freedom from the hardening lime salts, and the convenient ease with which it can be collected and stored, combine to render it desirable not only for this, but in some.degree for drinking purposes also. At the same time it must not be forgotten that these very advantages are themselves qualified by the possible drawbacks which they entail. Thus the' maintenance of a. rainwater service even in temperate countries is necessarily uncertain. Storage is wholesome cnly under suitable conditions. One of these is the discontinuance of .lead and even of zinc m the structure of the pipes and cisterns used. Another difficulty is the risk of contamination by organic imparity' derived either from the atmosphere or from surfaces traversed by rain water in its descent. A special storing apparatus other than the antiquated and unwholesome butt—such, for example, as a reservoir of glazed earthenware—is therefore needful , and a suitable filter would also in any case be advisable. Given these requisites, a second supply of atmospheric origin would form a useful means of supplementing the daily contribution of household water derived from springs and rivers.—Lancet.

PICTURESQUE AFRICAN WOMENThe explorer, Von Francois, was engaged, awhile ago, sketching an African village, which was a little out of the common, because all the houses ware built on platforms which kept them out of reach of high water when the river overflows its banks. While engaged with this sketch, he says, his attention was suddenly riveted by ‘a black beauty.’ Many Caucasian ladies, he thinks, could well envy this primitive maiden for her skill in the art 3 of coquetry as she poised her head now on this side, now on that and paced daiuti y to and fro along the shore, using her big black eyes ail the while to the best advantage. One would hardly notice the fast, he says, that she was scantily attired, so well was the lack of clothing supplied by elaborate and beautiful tafcooing and long strings of cowrie shells, which she wore around her tieclc and body', while a girdle encircled her waist. Altogether, he thought she was one of the most picturesque objects he had ever seen in Africa'. Several recent travellers have spoken in’ quite complimentary and appreciative language of some of the ladies they have mot in Africa. Becker had not gone inland 100 miles from Zanzibar before he was expres-ing his admiration for the ‘ young and pretty negresses and their attractive form3.’ Of course he had plenty of opportunity to observe that ‘ their shoulders are round and elegant, their arms are exquisitely moulded, and their forms are quite perfect.’ * Our brown beauties,’ he adds, * were not particularly shy, but at the same time they were quite reserved.’ They would ask us timidly for permission to pass their hands over our skin, whose whiteness astonished them, but they retired in good order' whenever we offered reciprocally to pat their shoulders or cheeks. Another traveller, who has just written a description of several African tribes, thinks that the poorest taste in the way of ornaments he has seen is among the Bayansi women, who wear brass rings around their necks weighing twenty-five to thirty pounds. The flesh under these rings, he says, is in many cases continually chafed and raw, and for hours at a time the women support their rings on their hands in order to relieve the pressure upon their necks. And yet no well-to-do married woman would think that she could exist without her neck ring ; and when they are asked if this ornament is not an uncomfortable thing to wear, they always pretend that thev do not understand. Brass is money among the Bayansi, and the men, in having it forged in big lumps around ‘he necks of their wives, have found a safe but rather cruel method of moneykeeping. SKIM MILK AS FOOD. Nothing more clearly shows the injury done to the whole population of the country by the separation of the people from the soil than the complete ignorance which almost universally prevails in towns as to the certain value of certain foodstuffs. A discussion, says the Hospital, has been carried on for some time in the columns of a morning contemporary about ‘skim milk.’ A correspondent, who professed to know the trade, boldly affirmed that skim milk was of little or no vaine as a foodstuff for human beings. If he had made such a statement at many a village pomp in an evening after work hours, a score of FARM LABOURERS AN© THEIR ROSY-FACED SONS iwouhl have laughed him to scorn. Chemists give the results of their analyses, and these are entirely in favour of the popular opinion, that skim milk, with plenty of bread, constitutes an almost sufficient diet 1 in itself for boys and girls. The popular

mind does not readily pin its faith to chemical analyses, but in the present Case, the chemists, in seeking proof, h&ve perforated a work of siipererdgatiOn. The ‘proof of the pudding is ifi the eating/ and 6f the skim milk in the drinking. The present writer has had a long familiarity with agri- ' culture inalmost all its branches, in addition to his medical training and experience. He has seen over and over again PIGS AND CALVE 3 REARED ENTIRELY ON SKIM MILK, or as nearly so as possible. These animals, although they will not become so fat on skimmed milk as on whole milk, will yet grow and thrive remarkably well. Similarly, he has seen the boys and girls of labourers, whose parents could have unlimited supplies of skim milk from a neighbouring farm, and other boys and girls whose parents were deprived of any suoh supply. The contrast between the children who had abundance of skim, milk with their bread and potatoes, and those who had only water or • sloppy ’ tea, was most marked and unquestionable. In the one case, the milk seemed to be all that was required as an addition to bread and potatoes, with occasionally a little moat, to produce perfect health. Even the MEN IN THE NORTHERN FARM HOUSES, who feed in their masters’ kitchen, and at his cost, and whose supplies of beef, mutton, and bacon are practically unlimited, would feel it a great deprivation to be robbed of their skim milk. It does not - seem to be known at all, that a little suet, cut fine and boiled well in ekim milk, makes a most palatable food, and gives to the skim milk all ihe fat it requires. It would be an incalculable advantage to the poor of large fciwns if each child could have at least a quart of sweet skimmed milk every day, either with or without; the added suet boiled into it. The man who, by any means, deprives the mass of the people of the use of a cheap and ahundant article of food does more harm than a pestilence or a despotic ruler.—Glasgow Herald. JAY GOULD’S DAUGHTER NELLIE. Miss Nellie Gould, the great financier’s eldest daughter, probably has more independent property than any other unmarried woman in America. She is her father’s favourite, and every year, he gives her presents of stocks and bonds which amount up into the hundred thousands. He takes great pains with her investments also, with the result that her fortune grows apaoe every year. Added to this, her mother, who had a fortune of forty millions, left the greater share of her property to Nellie ; so that shs is estimated to be worth over six million dollars. Her life has been passed in the quietest way, and though she is but twenty years of age her mode of existence is as quiet and humdrum as though she were forty. The big Gould mansion rarely sees any festivity, and an awning up in front of their door would throw the neighbourhood into a panic of excitement. Her mother’s failing health has been partly the cause for this, for Miss Gould was not only her devoted attendant and companion, but was also the head of the household and bore its whole responsibility. They have a box at the opera, but they are not very regular attendants, and the only place in which she is frequently seen .is the Presbyterian Church, of which she is a member. She interests herself in charities also, and in half a dozen summer homes for sick babies and poor women.—N.Y. Letter. A CURE FOR SNAKE-BITE. The Hospital states that an unexpected testimony to the value of inocnlation comes from South Africa. Mr G. A. Farini, the explorer of the Kalahari desert, had some oxen bitten by poisonous snakes, and one of his bushmeu, it is said,. cured them by making incisions round the btte, and rubbing into these a powder mace from the dried poison sacs of other snakes. In a few hours the inflammation caused "by the bite disappeared, and the oxen were quite well. A few days afterwards the busbman himself was bitten. He at once inoculated himself in a similar way with, the powder, and hiving extracted from the wound the fangs of the snake that had bitten him, he drank a drop of poison from the viru3-sac. He immediately fell into a stupor that lasted "some hours. At first the swelling of the , wound increased, but it soon subsided. Next morning he inoculated himself again. By the evening of that day the swelling disappeared, and. two days he was as well as ever. The favourite antidote is a little lizard of very deadly power, called. N’auboo, which is so valued that a native will give an ox for the dead body of one, to dryland reduce to powder for this purpose ; but if he has no N’auboo, he uses the poison of any snake he can get. MALARIA AND RATTLESNAKES. * You won’t find malaria .where there are rattlesnakes, but you will always find the home of this snake where there are the purest water, the freshest air, and the driest, highest land. That is why you al ways find trout-streams and trout where there are raltl.esuake3. Such was the rather startling declaration of a gentleman from Clinton county. He did not attempt to give any scientific explanation of the fact, but affirmed that it was a fact all the same.— Philadelphia Press. At a recent New York Institute, State Entomologist Dr Lintner surprised many of his hearers by his statements of the amount of annual losses by insect pests, which, he said, has been estimated for the whole country at 300,000,000d015. The damage done by the chinch bug alone is estimated at 15,000,000d015. Entomology has received comparatively little attention until recent years. The. practical importance of a bettor knowledge of our insect enemies is now felt hy all interested in the cultivation of plant life.—Rural Californian.