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Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 46, 15 August 1872, Page 2

A remarkable instance of u woman's devotion and heroism lias transpired by the arrival at New York of the brig ' Abbie Clifford,' of Stockton. The brig left Pernambuco on Match 27 y for New York, with a cargo uf sugar. On the second day out Gustave Johnson, a seaman, was taken sick of yellow fever, and died on April 1. Allen Smith, another seaman, died of the same disease on the 9th, and the steward, J. J. Fay, also died of fever. Ciptain Clifford, the officers, and the majority of the crew were prostrated by the fever, and notwithstanding all the devotion and attention of Mrs. Clifford, the wife of the captain, the chief officer succumbed and died. After his death Mrs. Clifford took sde command of the vessel, navigated it, and brought her sick husband and remainder of the crew safe to New York, when the brig was placed in quarantine. Above Cape Hatteras the ' Abbie Clifford encountered a terrific north-east gale of five days' duration, which split the sails into ribbons and carried several spars away, but Mrs. Clifford appears to have been fully equal to the emergency. It appears that she has been at sea several years with her husband, and has made most of the calculations during that time. Had it not been for her attention to duty and her mathematical knowledge there is scarcely a doubt that the AbL>ie Clifford would have been recorded in the list of missing vessels.

Wet nurses should be at a premium in Burmah, to judge from the following account of a visit to the king's palace, brought by a member of the Italian Embassy to Burmah and reported by the Italian correspondent |of the " Swiss Times" "On our taking | leave, His Majesty gave per nission to his I Minister to accompany the embassy to the imperial garden, where they might see a young white elephant which had been recently brought from the teak forests with which the country is covered. Our surprise can be imagined when we saw this young elephant under a pavilion covered with velvet, silk and gold, and surrounded with about thirty young j women, its nurses, whose milk it sucked (going I from one to the other), and this with so much delicacy that it did not hurt them more than if it had been a baby ! Taking the breaßt in its mouth, the sacred animal leaus its trunk ' with the greatest lightness upon the shoulder of its nurses. These women are paid fifty rupees (100s.) a month, and it is said that thousands of pretty Burmese offer themselves as nurses for the adored amimal. The ministers and the women prostrated themselves before this favorite of Buddha. The elephant 1 has since died, although the number of nurses | were increased to above a hundred,"