CALIFORNIAN NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 918, 3 July 1869, Page 3

CALIFORNIAN NOTES.

Not the least of th 4 problems to be solved in constructing the great Pacific railroad, was that of protecting the track from the heavy falls of snow which were to be anticipated during the winter months. To obviate this difficulty, as far as possible, the company erected a building to protect the road over the snow-line, on the Sierra Mountains, whibh is twenty-two miles in length, sixteen feet in width, and sixteen feet in height, not including the pitch of the roof. It is put up in a most substantial manner, the sides are enclosed, and were it not for the fact that daylight penetrates through the interstices between the boards, the whole affair would be very like a huge tunnel. More than 40 million feet of lumbar have been used in its construction.

The Rev. L. Hamilton, minister of the Presbyterian Church in San Jose, has caused no little sensation by the publication of a pamphlet, entitled, " The Future State, or Free Disoussion." He holds that there will be a day of grace, or probation, after this life, in which there will be an opportunity to accept offers of mercy through Christ, and be saved ; that the climax of positive suffering for Bin, and the beginning of its abatement, is reached either in this life or early in the next ; and that " the standard confession of the Presbyterian Church is fossilized, fixed, rigid, etiff, and stony, and changeless in its superannuated decrees." He has been deposed by the Presbybery, and having organised a new " Independent Presbyterian " Church, a large number of his former congregation applied to the session for letters of dismissal. These applications were denied, and fit is expected that they must be excommunicate. The Alta California gives an outline of the results obtained at Quail Hill, where auriferous quartz, in which sulpbxrota abound, and which paid only four dollars per ton by amalgamation in the battery and on copper ripples, had been made to yield thirty-five dollars of silver and gold, in the pan, by the use of quioklime and common salt—thirty pounds of each to the ton of ore. The Courrier de San Francisco, a daily French paper, ia printed by a press driven by a gas engine imported from France. Small quantities of common coal gas and air are thrown alternately into the two ends of a cylinder, and kindled with an electric spark. Every oharge makes a little explosion, and drivestho piston to the other end of the oylinder, and by this alternate action a 4-horse power engine, without fire, boiler, condenser, or any heavy or complex machinery, is driven, using per hour twenty-five cubio feet of gas, which cost fifteen] cents in San Francisco. For ten hours the coat would be one dollar and fifty cents. The Alt* says : "Unless there is some objection which we could not discover in seeing the machine work for an hour, there will soon be a> number of gas engines in San. Fr&noisca with a deoided saving to the establishments which use the power."

A considerable amount of money appears to have been spent by the late Government in an attempt to bring about an interview between the Duke of Edinburgh and King T&whftio. A correspondent of an Auckland piper, writing on this subject, remarks :— I do not think the friendly natives will object to attending one or two more such meetings under similar circumstances ; upwards of five hundred of them have been living here for the last fortnight at the expense of the Government, the chiefs, to tho number of about thirty, being boardod at the hotels, and living in firat-cUts style. These natives have generally conducted themselves very well considering the facilities they have had for obtaining liquor, and tho amount of money they have apparently spent in this way; tho hotels have generally been orowded from morning till night, yot there has been no crime, although a deal of riot and drunkenness. I understand that a large quantity of dried shark, brought up from the Wwkftto Heads for tho bon«nt of tho expected visitors, !■ now to be aont on to Tokwigamutu, *s * present to hi* Maori msjostr.ji

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