AND WESTLAND OBSERVER. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1872.

West Coast Times, Issue 1971, 24 January 1872, Page 2

AND WESTLAND OBSERVER. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1872.

We learn with regret that the Australasian Steam Navigation Company have given up, for the present, the idea of re-opening steam communication between Sydney and the Southern Ports of New Zealand. The Company desire to enter upon this trade, and will do so the moment a reasonable amount of encouragement offers; but at present the inducement is insufficient to justify the Company iv incurring the large expense involved in placing one of their first-class steamers on the line. Our informant is Mr John White, who will be glad to communicate with perions iv this district who desire to eec the Sydney line of nteainera re-opened, and are prepared to give it encouragement. A special general meeting of the merabere of the Literary Society will be held, this evening, in the library of the institute. The object of the meeting is to consider the expediency of reducing the rate of subscription to one guinea per annum. The honorarium paid for the General' Assembly session of 1866 was £7,346; in 1867, £6,141; in 1868, £7,339; and in 1869, ,£6,949. The return of 1870 has not been made public, but the cost of the past session, each member receiving £105 will be £12,915. " The Chinese miners working about five miles down the Tuapeka Creek," says the Tuapeka Times," pursue their usual avocations every Sunday. They have refused lo desist from work although repeatedly requested to do so by parties whose religious sensibilities are outraged by such Sabbath desecration. Perhaps a visit from the police might induce these obstinate Celestials to pay some respect to the religious observances of the country they are permitted to reside in. The first Lodge of Freemasons in the Polynesian Archipelago was opened in due form on December 28. The Lodge was opened by permission of the King, and Brother H. O. Paton was installed W.M. A serious accident happened at the Thames, on the 11th inst., to a man named Andrew Kiley, one of the employees of the lessee of the Moauataia'ri tramway. He was waiting to receive a truck loaded with quartz, which was eomicg down, when suddenly the hook attaching the truck to the wire rope gave way, and the truck rushed down the line with great velocity. Seeing this liiley seized a long piece of wood, and tried to check the truck; but when the latter met the impediment, instead of stopping, it turned right over, caught Riley in its course, and knocked him into one of the tailing pits of the Moanataiari Company's battery. He was speedily rescued, but his knee-cap was dislocated, his back badly hurt, and hjs arm sprained. There were also several minor contusions on various parts of his person. A large number of men Btarted to work on the Waikato railway on the 16th inst. At the District Court, Auckland, on the 16th inst., an order was made for winding up the Cock-a-doodle Gold Mining Company. The judge blamed the directors for getting so much into debt. Counsel said that there had been much crowing by the " Cock-a-doodle," but there was no money forthcoming. The General Government have arranged to take over the land and plant of the Auck- ' land and Drury Railway for the sum of £26,000, or a little more than one half the original cost, which was £50,000. The military display at Levuka on the occasion of the prorogation of Parliament by King Cakabou, was, we should think, from the acGouut given of it by a local journal, a very imposing one. The Fiji Gazette furnishes a very graphic description in which it is related that Maafu's fine army comprising 300 men marched along the beach to Parliament House " to the tap of a drum improvised from a kerosene tin." Charley Maafu was dressed in white drill trousers, with a purple and green jacket, bound with gold velvet, and a crimson foraging cap. He wore a steel scabbarded sword, and white leather sword belt. The men were dressed in white shirts and sulus of native grass '.curiously wreathed around them. The £nv«rary correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, speaking of the ball, says; —" There was no mamasivt honte about the tenantry, and no condescension about the landowners, for at last all were on a footing of perfect equality. As if to give the very note to the evening's music, the Princess danced in the first set of quadrilles with the Provost; while Lord Lome handed Mrs M'Arthur to the floor. Later the Princesß descended still lower in the social scale, and

with even happier effect/ for in a reel she took (he hand of an old ,man — a small farmer 'and th^ojdesjs -tepant 911 the estate. With j "him she turned, auii twitted, and' jerked, aud trotted, and hopped, and went through the wonderful eccentricities of activity that make up this frenzied Highland dance. It was right pleasant to watch her genial manuer and very amusing to see how the tenant? who throughout the dance had been as selfpossessed as Lord Chesterfield could ' have desired, made at his conclusion his salaam, and pulled aa imaginary lock on his bald brow. The Princess's next ,-parfcner was tho Duke's agent or steward, who was taken up, to the Princess by her husband. The damsels whom Lord Lome danced with need not be particularised, for I do not know that a man deserves much special credit for flirting with a number of pretty girls, and the young bridegroom certa'nly did not throw his handkerchief to the ugliest. The greatest delight to the people was when the Princess joined in a country dance, for then everybody in the room had an opportunity of holding for a moment the tips of her fingers; aud what country dances they were ! At leasta hundred couples stood close packed in a single line of the run f torn the top to bottom. It would have knocked all the life out of a London exquisite to have seen the Highlanders revealing in activity; and when the mere exorcise of their legs was insufficient to express their delight, they shouted with all the power of their healthy lungs. The tramp ■ ing, shrieking couples made the flooring re_ bound again; and when the quickstep began in the 'Heel of Tulloch' the rafters rang again with the echoes of weighty footsteps and emphatic shouts. At this moment the aspect of the ball-room, *£ by no means so splendidly dazzling as last week, was even more characteristic. Kilts there were enough. Besides those of the Inverary Volunteers, whose brilliant martial appearance I have several times alluded to, there was a good many military uniforms; and at the last moment the Duke sent invitations to the crews of the ' Columbia ' and ' Northumbria.'" It would seem as though there were already a multiplicity of methods of taxation, but an ingenious Beleian has invented a new one for all kinds of manufactured fabrics. It consists of narrow little bands of thingummed paper, marked ofE into metres and centimetres, which should be fastened all along the edge of every piece of cloth. The material would thus measure itself as it were, without the aid of a yardstick, and the quantity sold would be 1 elf-registered. These bands furnished by Government, would cost the State fifteen con times per hundred metres. It Government should soil them at one franc a hundred metres, it would erei'T year make a very respectable number of millions. On a silk dress worth two hundred francs the tax Would be only from twelve to fifteen centimes, with the advantage of perfect accuracy of measurement without the possibility of mistake or cheating.