MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1977, 31 October 1863, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

It is stated that an only sister (Miss Campbell) isihe sole surviving member of Lord Clyde's family ; but there are two, if not three, cousins bearing his lather's name of Macliver.

The Florida in the Channel. — Intelligence has been received from Queenstown, to the effect that the Confederate steamer Forida, Captain Maffitt had called off that port at two o'clock on, the 17th, and landed three passengers and some " luggage," which is supposed to be the silver bars taken from the B. J. Hoxie, recently cupiured by the Florida. The ship Bloomer also reports having seen the Florida lying-to in the Channel.

An Italian Duel. — A torrible duel has taken place in Tripani, between M. Malato, ex aid-de-camp of Garibaldi, editor of the Caprera newspaper, and M, Nicolosi. Five officers, who considered themselves insulted by an article which appeared in the Caprern, demanded satisfaction, Malato replied that he was ready to defend in the field a holy and noble cause, that of Aspromonte, and he accordingly accepted the challenges of five officers and five subalterns. The first adversary among the ten was selected by lot, which fell upon M. Nicolosi — curiously enough, once a Garibaldian officer himself. The conditions of the duel were that it should be continued till one of the combatants was mortally wounded, or rendered incapable of continuing the fight. The weapon selected was the sword. In the morning a squadron of cavalry surrounded the place of the cortest. The duel lasted three hours. After 14 assaults Malato slightly wounded his adversary. He then made a terrible cut at the head, which, though parried, fell upon Nicolosi's arm with suoh force that it severed an artery and six tendons. Malato, if the affair is not put a stop to, has yet to meet nine other adversaries.

Loss of the Screw Steamer Georgia. — Intelligence was received in Liverpool on the 21st, per the steamer Scotia, to the effect that the splendid new steamer Georgia, bound from New York for Liverpool, had been lost on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, on or about the sth instant. The Georgia let" New York for Liverpool on the afternoon of the 31st July with a very large and valuable cargo, estimated at about £130,000. It consisted of 69 bales of cotton, 2374 barrels of flour, 44,480 bushels of wheat, 972 gallons sperm oil, 522 hhds. tobacco (valued at about £30,000) 270,000 lbs of bacon, 195,000 lbs of lard, 161 bales of hair, 626 bags of nuts, 39,059 lbs. of cheese, 27,607 lbs of tallow, 25,732 lbs of butter, 6200 staves, besides a large quantity of clay, rags, &c. This was ouly the second return voyage of the Georgia from New York, as she was only launched towards the close of 1862, from the shipbuilding yard of Messrs J. Reid an<? Co, of Port Glasgow. She was a barque-rigged vessel, of 2414 tons burden, and 350 horse-power, commanded by Capt G. Codell, and manned by a crew of 90 men. She was owned in Liverpool by Messrs Fernie Brothers and Co, and was intended to form one of the new line of the Liverpool and New Orleans Steam ■ Ship Company, which intend trading direct between the two ports on the close of the present conflict in America. Several of the new Mercantile Marine Insurance Companies will be heavy losers by this catastrope ; for, being overdue, about three thousand pounds fresh insurances were effected on her yestarday, at 5 and 10 guineas extra premium

The elevation of Mr Monckton Milnes to the peerage by the title of Baron Houhgton will take no one by surprise. His name has more than once been designated for this honour in rumours of that kind which are officially called premature, und has been favorably received by the public. To a high social position and sufficient wealth, he unites an honorable literary reputation, a long political experionce, and a good deal of that prestige which is the joint result of recognised ability and character.

Shocking Murder at Sea. — On the

11th, at the Southampton Guildhall, PeterDeane and Edward Lewis, negroes, two of the crew of the English ship EJmond, trading from Liverpool, were charged with having murdered John Williams, the second mate of that vessel, whilst on the voyage from Sunderland to Vera Cruz. On the night of the 291h of j April, when between Madeira and the I West Indies, the deceased ordered Lewis to assist in hauling down the studding sail. Lewis made use of some bad language, upon which the deceased struck him in the face. Lewis directly exclaimed ' I will fix you,' and pulling out his sheath knife, stabbed the deceased in the stomach aud in (he cbest. He fell on the deck, and some of the crew, by the Captain's orders, conveyed him to the cabin. A surgeon from a passing vessel came aboard, but his services were of no avail, and the man died in the course of the day. Lewis was taken into custody and placed in irons, when he made some statement with respect to the prisoner Deane, who was at the wheel when the occurrence took place, which induced the Captaiu to place the latter in confinement also. On the vessel's arrival the matier was inquired into, and the two prisoners sent over to England by the Seine. The prisoner Lewis made a statement to the effect that he killed Williams in self-defence, aud also that while in confinement the saptain used him in a very cruel manner. He acquitted Deane of any guilty knowledge. — Both prisoners were remanded, in order that the Home Office might be commuI nicated with.

An Eastern Romance.- " Died, on the first instant, at Abingdon House, Kensington, the widow of the late Maharajah Runjeet Singh of the Sikhs, and mother of the present Maharajah Dhuleep Singh." In these few aud moral words the death of a Princess has been chronicled whose words once shook kingdoms and made war or peace. Chunda Kour, the wife of the Maharajah of the Punjaub, was not, if report speaks true, very nobly born. One version of her biith makes her father a dog-keeper id! the service of Runjeet ; but at any rate she was selected as one of his Harem, aud canoe to be its mistress. From that I time, if she could have written the history of her marvellous life, blood, and not ink, would have been the fitting medium to have used. Kurruck Singh succeeded Runjeet, and he was despatched with acetate of iead and corrosive sublimate mingled in a curry. Nao Nehal Singh followed Kurruck on the throne ; but as he passed upon his elephaat under an arch, after his coronation, it was contrived that the masonry should fall and crush him. The widow of Kurruck still stood in the way, and her chamber women were bribed to beat her brains out with a stone as they stood behind her braiding and perfuming her hair. Shere Singh, a son of the murdered princess yet blocked the path to the throne against Chunda Kour's child, and he too was despatched by an adroit treachety. An English rifle was shewn to him as he sate upon the ' gadi,' and when its muzzle was turned to his breast in the course of examiniug it, the trigger was pressed, and four slugs were discharged into his heart. Thus at last the crown of the Punjaub was won, and placed upon the infant head of Dhuleep Singh ; his mother, the Princess now dead, employing the influence thus obtained to revel in license. Sometimes, however, she was obliged to be the spectatress ol murder, and not its accomplice, as when the troops at Lahore bayoneted her brother, the Prince Jewshir, as he reviewed them, sprinkliug her robe and that of her son with his blood. But she replaced her brother with a lover, Lall Singh, and in conjunction with him, declared war upon the British by marching her Sikhs across the Sutlej. Moodkee, Aliwal, and Ferozeshah ended the first Sikh war, and reduced her to the mere guardiauship of a protected Prince. Then she commenced the net-work of intrigue with Moolraj of Mooltan, Golab Singh of Cashmere, and Dost Mahomed of Affghanistan, which led to the murder of the English officers at the first named place, and to the second Sikh war. Her emissaries, under pretence of fetching drugs from various cities, carried on correspondence for her with all the discontented in India. Confined to fortresses, she bribed the guards with costly necklaces, of pearl and gold; her money and messages circulated in every Sikh barrack and village. So well was she served, too that when one of her messages was executed at Lahore, his wife begged his armlet as a relic of love at the scaffold, and instantly took out of it one of the Maharanee's letters, tore it into a hundred pieces, and swallowed them to save detection. She was removed to Benares too late to avert the great war which she had fomented. Far away from the Punjab, pacing her prison in the " holy city ' like a caged tigress, she heard the echoes of the cannon at Goojerat, which deposed Runjeet Singh's dynasty for ever, and made the Five Waters a province of the victorious English. Thenceforward she passed from the eyes of men, a pensioner of the British power — her hundred lovers dead or degraded — her influence gone with her beauty and her youth — the son, for whom she had sinned and plotted, dethroned, an exile, and a renegade from the grand and conquering creed of the Khalsa. Before har swimming eyes, at she lately sank in death, iv the country whether she had followed her son, these scenes, and a thousand as full of eastern splendour and crime, mast have passed.

A Royal Cannibal — A few days ago the celecrated Fren<:h traveller aud lionhunter, M. Jules Gerard, addressed a letter to the Dnke of Wellington, giving his Grace a very graphic sketch of the King of Dahomey and his human sacrifices. His description of this sable sovereign is brief but expressive " Phy sically, he is similar to the other blacks of his country — tall, well built, with a head like a bull-dog. His moral qualities are in perfect keeping with his phy- j sical conformation ; but he is more gracious than the king who preceded him, anatical for old traditions and customs." The traveller then proceeds to relate what he saw at the King's "Court." "On the day of my presentation I was conducted across the market-place, where twelve corpses were exposed to view. Six were hung up by the feet, the six others were upright like men about to walk." The traveller further states that the entrance to the palace gates was flooded by a pool of blood tv?o yards in width, and on each side a column of recently decapitated heads, formed what the writer calls " two immense chaplets." At another festival — for the scene described was a festival — the King, we are told commanded on foot his Amazons ; and M. Gerard adds, "On the marketplace already mentioned each step was ornamented by a dead body; and the King came and went in the midst of i pools of blood and fragments of human flesh in a state of putrefaction.' The whole details are shockingly disgusting; and the French traveller brings them before the English public to show what savage ceremonies these black kings indulge in, and in the hope, no doubt, that the efforts of our Government would be used to put down, as far at least as moral influence goes, such a wanton aud barbarous sacrifice of human life. But in the London Times of the 2 1st this black assassin positively finds an advocate and apologist in the the person of a writer who signs himself "An African," and who, if the communication be his own composition, must be a person of some education: The letter is very appropriately headed " A Friend of the King of Dahomey." The African picture stands out in strong contrast to the French one. " Permit me," says the writer, " to state, in contradiction of M. Jules Gerard, that the King of Dahomey is a man of superior intellect, and endowed with extraOrdinary capacity for government. Receiving unsought the adulation of his people, he maintains a degree of modesty in his deportment, and of equanimity in his language, which is, indeed, astonishing. His arrangements in regird to his police and in regard to his finances and laws would excite the admiration of every unprejudiced person. With power in his hands verging on despotism, he is yet served more from love than ' from fear. To strangers he is hospitable, to his subjects generous. Impressed with the dignity of his regal position, he never separates his habits from frugality and temperance, nor does he ever give way to sudden ebullitions of temper." This and much more in favour of a man whose chief amusement is chopping off the the heads of his people, reads so satiri cal that we should regard it as a hoax, if a writer, a few days preceding, in the same columns, under the same signature, had not given his views respecting an English penal settlement on the coast of Africa, in terms so clear and sensible as to show that he knew what he was writing about. But the strangest part of this strange business is the defence which is set up for this amiable and in- ■ jured King of Dahomey. He, poor niau, is not to blame ; all his follies are the promptings of his aristocracy ! On this point the writer says, " Believe me — aud I write from ocular testimony — that African kings are in advance of their subjects. The King is unable to do what he likes ; he must secure the consent of his chiefs. The whole catalogue of atrocities imputed to the King's insulated depravity must meet with the concurrence of the chiefs, or the King would not dare to lend his countenance to offences which are so flagrant in our English estimation." A King thus led by the nose by his chiefs cannot be what the writer previously described him — despotic ; but the whole affair is an illustration of the old proverb, that a nameless personage is not so black as he is sometimes paiuted. -—European Times, August 26th. The Use of the Pbkt. — The Latin rhetorician, Quintilian, declares that the pen. is the best instructor in the art of speaking, Not less true is it lhat the use of the pen conduces most effectually to the . general cultue of his mind. There is more real exercise of thought in one hour's composing than in a day's reading. Besides, the pen compels you to understand what you study, for you catmot express what is not intelligible to yourself. The pen also exacts arrangement and introduces order. Indeed, what we read is hardly our own until we have given it utterance in our own language. To utter in writing what we have read is the only sure way of appropriating it.

The Confederate war steamer Florida, says the Cork Herald, is a sorew steamer of extraordinary swiftness, and is disguised in such a manner as to puzzle the keenest observer, Her hull is long and low; her sails look old and patched, and no external trace is visible of her real strength and power. Three hands have been seen, in one instance, struggling aloft to take in a sail, to master which efficiently 10 would be necessary $ while a visit to the deck would disolose to view a body of at least 200 men, scattered about iv groups.

A somewhat unpleasant incident preceded the Queen's departure froai VVoolwich. One of the officials, who must be known and should be dismissed, in a transport of flunkeyistn issued au order which for 24 hours threatened even her Majesty's popularity. Not only were the police ordered to " arrest" all " loiterers" who might wish to look at the Queen* but all officials who might chance to approach their own office windows were threatened with instant dismissal. The decree read, in fact, like one from the " Arabian Nights," and the public only wondered that the cats were not officially warned against exercising their proverbial privilege. The order, has, we are happy to see, been pointedly repudiated on the part both of the Queen and of the Secretary at War; but the precautions taken, though not quite so despotic, must have been most offensive to ehr Majesty.

The Time to plan a Venture.— In a recently published volume, entitled " The Model Preacher," the Rot, R. Taylor writes: — "Frank Dodge once said in the hearing, • The best time I can get for maturing a commercial scheme^ or planning a sea voyage, is at church, while the preacher is preachiug; ' Av?ay~ from the care and bustle of business,, under the soothing sounds of the gospel, I have nothing to disturb my meditations.' "

We take the following canard from the Paris 'Presse'; — "There is serious talk of a marriage which will greatly astonish those who have not yet heard it. This murriage is to be between the Queen of England and the ex-King of Portugal, the same who refused the Greek throne. The explanation of this marriage with King Ferdinand is that he was uncle of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's late husband.

There is, we are told, now living in; abject penury, a woman aged 80 years, who is described as the sister and only surviving relative of a man whose name and whose deeds were on every one's lips in the early part of this century. The woman is a lady — she is in beggary, subsisting on casual charity, and so saved from dying in the pauper's ward of the workhouse. There are doubtless many poor ladies living in indigence, but the sister and sole surviving relative of •' Sidney Smith, the hero of Acre" — a British admiral, a Grand Cross of the Bathhas sure some special claims on the consideiation of those who are able to spare her the last degradation from which the Government and the country are apparently unable to rescue the few remaining hours of life.

Under the epigrammatic title of "The American Iliad in a Nutshell," there appears in Maomillan's Magazine for this month a little article by Mr Carlyle. It is about the smallest magazine artiole ever published. Here is the whole of it :— " Peter of the North (to Paul of the South.) — Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year as I do. You are going straight to hell you — ! Paul — Good words, Peter ! The risk is my own ; I am willing to take the risk. Hire your own servants by the month or the day, and get straight to Heaven ; leave me to my own method. Peter—— No, I won't. I will beat your brains out first ! (And is trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot yet manage it.)— T. C, May, 1863.

The Queen has been graciously pleased to give orders for the appointment of Charles St. John Septimus Her* bert, Esq., some time commanding itia militia and volunteers in New Zealand, to be au ordiuary member of the . civil division of the third class, or Companion of the Most Honorable Order of the Batb.