Fighting the Slavers.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6894, 15 June 1892, Page 4

Fighting the Slavers.

HOW A BRAVE OFFI ER LOST HIS LIFE,

There have been some desperate fights in Nyassa land, Central Africa, recently, between British troops and African sliive raiding tribes Unfortunately the British forces, under Mr Johnston, H.M. Com--missioner, uro far too small, and one or two disasters have occurred. In the fight with Makanjila, which occurred on the south- west shore of L;iko Nyassa, Captain Muquire and two other Englishmen lost their lives. The circumstances are narrated in the following letter sent by Mr Johnston to Capt. Mayuire's mother, and published in The Times. Mr Johnston says : — "1 know that nothing I can say or do can in any way diminish the terrible, heart breaking grief you must feel for the loss of your dear son, Cecil Mnguire ; but T thought a few words from me might shew you that if ever a man nobly lost his life to rid tho world of a great evil, it was your son. From the moment he arrived at the south end of Lake Nyassa, in the beginning ef last October, and first beoame acquainted with the horrors of the slave trade, he set himself resolutely te war against it. He became filled with the same enthusiasm which fired Livingstone and Gordon to oppose the slave trade. I even had at times to check his enthusiasm, because I set such store by him that sooner than lose him I would almost have let slavery continue. At the end of last November he told me that he must go back to the south end of Lake Nyassa to reinforce the Indian garrison there. I was loth to let him go, because he was only just recovering from a slight wound he had received in action ; but he promised me he would only be away a couple of weeks, and would be vory careful and undertake no further fighting. We were to spend Christmas together at Zoraba, and he was to spend two or three months here in absolute rest. Nevertheless, when he got to the lake he heard of a grand opportunity of stopping a large slave caravan and destroying the last two dhows (sailing vessels) of a slaving chief called Makanjira, whom we had fought against in October last. Accordingly, after hurriedly sending word of this to me, and without awaiting my answer, he rushed off up the lake in a steamer with thirty sepoys, stopped the caravan, and gave chaße to the dhows, which he finally came up with in a dangerous pkjee full of rocks and sandbanks. He destroyed the dhows, but found he had to meet an attack from over 2000 of the enemy. He kept them at bay in the most skilful manner until the work of destroying the dhows was completed, when he beat a retreat. Even then he would have got off all right but that a violent storm had sprung up, which drove the barge in which he had landed on to some rocka and Bmashed it up ; then he tried wading and shimming out to the steamer. During this terrible period of the retreat three of his men were killed. However, he saw all the others safe on board, and then struck out for the steamer himself. Just as he was within ten yards of it and was Btretching out his hand to seize a rope thrown to him, a bullet struck him and he sank. In trying to get his body, the engineer of the steamer and eight sepoys were so severely wounded that they had to desist."

Rudyard Kipling (says the Young Man) owes everything to work. He has led one of the hardest and most strenuous of lives. Of course, he has genius, imaginative power, observation, but they have been trained and developed in the school of hard work. Ab sixteen he had written reams of tales and» verse. It was at this mature epoch that he met at dinner the proprietor of a great Indian newspaper, who was struck with the old-fashioned cocksuredness of the boy. He asked him if he had written anything, and finally engaged him at L3OO per annum to go out to India as sub-editor of its most influential paper. Add to the work of a sub-editor the debilitating climate of India, and think of -what the life of this youth of sixteen must have beun. He can "toil horribly," as Queen Elizabeth said of Ealeigh. Last year, when he was the lion of the London drawing-rooms, he suddenly disappeared. He left no address ; his own relatives called at his chambers in vain. He had gone into the hsart of the country with a man and a type-writer. There he worked steadily for ten hours a day till he had produced his last book. When the task was finished he was almost speechless and paralysed with the tremendous nerveus strain. A remarkable article on the formation of the skull in relation to crime, and especially to the crime of murder, appears in the Globe. In it we are told that the study of the formation of the skulls of murderers has been diligently pursued by scientists until they are now able to make some remarkable disclosures. They that atavism, that is the reversion of type in the elementary series, is almost certain to produce the criminal, who had an apparently instiable thirst for murder, the skull was of a lower type than that of a monkey. The brain, it is said, was so depressed in the fore part as to render the man devoid of all intellectual qualities. It is stated that almost without exception wilful, deliberate murderers are possessed of heads of such apparently peculiar formation that they would at once be stamped as dangerous and vicious men by anyone familiar with the subject of skull formations. These instances, and many similar ones in the same article, must offer subjects for the reflection of those interested in the doctrine of responsibility. A London contemporary says that the newest horror is nob Deeming nor the Paris Anarchists. It is considerably worse than either. An esteemed scientific contemporary says that genuine sky signs can now be installed for the enterprising advertiser. By a simple arrangement of mirrors, reflecting glasses, and lights, a sort of gigantic magic lantern can be set up, by which images can be thrown upon the clouds. You will be able to advertise your wares, in letters 100 feet long, on the skies, so that they will be visible over a duzen counties. As if this truly awful prospect were not enough, we are told that these sky signs can be made luminous,, so that they will blaze away all night! Heine, in one of his rhapsodies, said that lie would like to snatch a burning pine from its Norway mountains and write with it the name of " Agnes " in letters of fire on the skies. But he would probably not have cared to adorn the firmament with blazing descriptions of somebody's patent trousers stretcher, or a globing picture, as large as Bradford square, of a lady wearing the latest thing in hygienic corsets. While two men named Geo. Flint and Wm. Webb were engaged in making repairs to a meter at the Newcastle Gas Works, a serious explosion occurred. Flint was killed on the spot, and Webb was very severely injured, his head, face, and parts of his body beine charred. A man named David Rose was fined LIOO and costs, in default two months' eno\, at tne Water Police Court, Sydney, for smuggling jewellery. A three-year old youngster, seeing a drunken fellow, said : " Mother, did God make that man ?" " Yes," she replied. " I wouldn't have done it," said the infant. The railway returns for Queen's Birthday tell iv a striking manner of the depression in Melbourne. Although the day was beautifully fine the number of passengers was less by over 10,400 than in the previous year. The racecourse traffic fell from 9600 to 3934, and there was a large decrease in every other direction. By the collapse of a crane at Melbourne three persons were seriously injured,

When he was a young man Bismarck was for some time an official reporter for j one of th» courts of justice" Once when questioning a witness, the latter made an impudent retort, whereupon Bismarck exclaimed angrily, "If nro not more respectful I shall kick you out of the room." " Young ra»n," said the judge, interrupting the proceedings, "I would have you understand thnt this is a dignified Court of Justice, and that, if there is any kicking to be done, the Court will do it." "Aha, you see," said Bismarck to the witness ; "if you are rjot more respectful to me the Court will kick you out of the room ; so be careful — very careful, sir." "I see," says Mr Ruskit), "what the world ia coming to. We shall put it into a chain-armour of railroad, aud then everybody will go everywhere every day until every place is like every other place ; and then, when they are tired of changing stations and police, they will congregate in great cities, which will consist of clubhouses, coffee-houses, and newspaper offices ; the churches will be turned into assembly rooms ; the people will eat, sleep, and gamble to their graves." «*;The World says :— lt seems a pity that Captain Kane could not Accept the offer made him to take out his old ship, the Calliope, of Apia renown, to the NorthWest Coast of Africa station, just newly constituted, and fly his broad pennant as firsfc commodore there. He has never, however, quite recovered from his accident on board the Inflexible in the Mediterranean, and the doctors consider that it would be imprudent for him to go abroad again at present. His appointment to the Victory as flag captain to Lord Clanwilliam is a sufficiently comfortable one, though there is, of course, a vast difference between the pay and that of a commodore.