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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7542, 24 January 1896, Page 3

An amusing phase of the " war spirit " in connection with the Transvaal dispute, is reported from Rotorua, says the Auckland Star. Since the Anglo-German crisis occurred over the invasion of the Transvaal by the Chartered Company's force under Dr Jameson and the defeat of the latter by the Boers, the Natives of Rotorua have been much exercised over the trouble, and daily koreros were held on the question. The other day a notice in Maori was poste< up in Ohinemutu as follows : —" A meeting will take place at Tama-te-Kapua (the Maori meeting house) to-morrow in order to consider the difficulty which has arisen between the Queen of England and other tribes. This is an appeal to the tribe of the Arawa to meet together and discuss this matter." A meeting was accordingly held, and others have been held since, when many speeches were made for England and against all England's enemies. Some of the speakers exhorted the members of the tribe to offer themselves for service in the Transvaal to fight for the cause of "Kuini Wikitoria." The precise locality of the trouble did not seem to be very clearly understood by the Arawa, but they offered to fight all the same, and their " loyalty " was unmistakable. The Rotorua Europeans seem imbued with the same spirit, for at the termination of a concert given at Ohinemutu in aid of the Church of England building fund on Tuesday evening, the superfluous loyalty of the audience found vent in the singing of the National Anthem by the whole gathering standing. A document of astonishing interest has come to light in the Oriental department of the British Museum. It is a small clay tablet, about Bin. by 4in., and containing about 98 lines of very fine cuneiform writing. It is made of Nile mud, and bears upon it the marriage proposal of a Pharaoh for the hand of the daughter of the king of Babylon. It is evidently the duplicate copy of a letter written about B.C. 1630. Tho document admits us into the innermost secrets of ancient palace life in Egypt, with the jealousies and intrigues of the harem.