A STEAMBOAT RACE AGAINST TIME.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3102, 19 January 1871, Page 2

A STEAMBOAT RACE AGAINST TIME.

The " New York Tribune" eayß of the late race by the steamer Natchez against time : — Captain Tom Leathers of the steamboat Natchez, has been trying the little experiment ' of annihilating time and spaoe by running his craft from New Orleans to St. Louis ( in three daya twenty-one hourß and fifty-eight minutes. It seems that in 1844 tbe steamboat J. M. White made the Bame trip in three days twenty-three hours and nine minutes — a fact i which filled the soul of Captain Tom Leathers with jealousy, and inspired him with a noble ambition to beat this superb time or blow up in the attempt. To a plain, prosaic Eastern 1 man, unaccustomed to the nautical contest of the great river, a difference of one or two hours in the run from New Orleans to St. Louis does not seem to be of any vital consequence ; but in St. Louis the exploit of Captain Tom Leathers was-thougnt to be one of the historic incidents of the century. Of course the trial afforded a noble opportunity for betting, whioh was by. no meanß left unimproved ; and probably Oaptain Tom Leathers himself had part of hia little pile, if not his bottom dollar, staked on the event. When he steamed up to the pier at St. Louis he was a' hero indeed. A crowd of excited citizens rushed on board to proffer to the great Leathers an ovatiou. There was as much joy on every countenance as if intelligence had been received that tho capitol was to be removed from Washington, to St. Louis this very autumn. Probably it cost Leathers very little upon that happy occasion for liquid refreshment. And yet it might have been otherwise. Ab the Natchez rushed up the 1 river with the speed of a comet, with the tarbarrels blazing in her furnaces, and her engine pufling as if it had five hundred concentrated ' asthmas, a bad attaok of collapse might then and there have overtaken her, to the great corporal disintegration of % Captain Leathers, whoae fragments we can fanoy shooting through indefinite space—his right leg reaching one bank of the river, with its fellow flying to the other, his head soaring to the stars, and the rest of him sinking ignominiously in the mud of the turbid stream. But Leathers was in luck. Fortune favors the bravo, aud the great time of tbe J. M. White has been beaten. It is all very gratifying j only if we have oooasion to voyage frnm New Orleans to St. Louis, we shall, at any coat, avoid embarking with Captain Tom. We like to have our limbs as nature arranged them. Scalding oannot be pleasant, even in the very midst of a viotory over tho other boat. Leathers is no Palinurus for üb.

Death ob the Widow oj? thb " Ettriok Shepherd." — Our. obituary contains the name of Mrß Jamea BCogg, widow of the " Ettriok Shepherd." Her death took place on Wednesday at Linlithgow, in presence of her only son, who returned about two years ago from India, and by her three surviving daughters, two of whom are married— one of these being Mrs Robert Gilkison, of this oity. The venerable lady was in the 81st year of her age, and she retained, we understand, to the last complete possession of all her faculties. She was an excellent and in some respects a remarkable character. Her memory was extraordinary, and she delighted to entertain her friends with reminiscences of Scott, Allan Cunningham, Wilson, and other distinguished associates of the " Shepherd." During the last seventeen years of her life she enjoyed a pension from Government in consideration' of the literary meritß of her husband ; while the Duke of Buccleuoh had proved himself iv many ways a stanch and considerate friend. After leaving Altrive Lake, Mrs Hogg lived chiefly in Edinburgh, respected and beloved by a numerous circle. The mortal remains of this ■ admirable and high-principled woman are to be interred, we learn, on Monday next, in Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh.—" Glasgow Herald." " AU the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," but, alas, how ■ many aro there who fail to play the parts , allotted to them, thereby missing happiness in ■• thie and in the world to come.