South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5016, 25 May 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1889.

It is not an uninteresting fact that the volunteers of New Zealand were yesterday the first section of the citizen soldiery of the empire to salute the Queen with salvoes of artillery and fenx de joic in honor of Her Majesty’s Birthday. It would not be safe to say that they were absolutely the first British subjects to do so, because there are a few islands in the Pacific, the Ohathams, and others to the northward, where loyal civilian subjects and meno’-war’s men may have burned powder for that purpose a few minutes earlier than the New Zealand volunteers. Boom and rattle probably commenced with the British war ship or ships now at Samoa We refer to the volunteers, because New Zealand is the most easterly section of the empire, reading from the almanac to the compass, in which a volunteer force exists. After New Zealanders had had their bang, big gun and rifle and brass band roared and rattled and more musically uttered all round the world, not continuously but by fits and starts, now weakly now with a massive strength, “ God save the Queen.” Brisbane’s volunteers followed ours, Sydney’s joined in almost immediately, Melbourne’s before the Brisbane men were done, and those of Adelaide took up and continued the salute. A pause, and then (if she has a volunteer corps) the guns of West Australia were heard, and Britishers at Hong-Kong chimed in. Pour hours or so after New Zealand had testified her loyalty Singapore would declare that “ Britons never shall be slaves,” and ere long the huge Himalayah would feebly echo the thunder of a thousand guns in India, Mauritius and Aden would feebly fill the gaps in longitude in the empire, till the troops in Egypt the volunteers in the Cape Colonies, and the warships in the Mediterranean, took up the cheerful noise,and these, with Malta and the Guinea Coast, passed it on to our Queen, around whom, as we sat before our fires last night after the children had been put to bed, arose the most ponderous boom and rattle of all. Then came a pause while the morning stole across the Atlantic, when the sacrifice of “ villainous saltpetre ” was celebrated across the Do minion ofOanada,the West Indies joining in the early stages of the five-hour celebration, and Van* couver declared for Pederation and Fortification only five hours short of a full-day behind New Zealand.