MISCELLANEOUS.

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 247, 9 December 1873, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Some of the incidents of the struggle of Spain are full of grotesque humour. We are often reminded that w e are in the country of Don Quixote. The Times coriespondent, for example, writes from Caitagena of a patriot lunatic, &c, a postman, in command of Fort G-aleras, who hat constituted himself alone an independent canton, and defies the control of the Junta in that insurgent town. "He cannot on any pretext — not even by invitations todinner —be induced to come down and see them, and they are half afraid to go up and Bee him. 'A project was seiiously discussed in council of disguising some soldiers in the dresses of the convicts whose duty it has been to carry guns and ammunition up to Fort Galeras, and thus surprising and carrying off the old gentleman from the Tery midst of his devoted retainers. But the project was abandoned in consideration of the fact that, though eccentric and troublesome, he was warranted faithful to the cause, and could be confidently counted upon not to betray Ilia fort. The latest eccentricity by which the independent canton had provoked the Junta had been to send down four of his followers to Cartagena, without condescending to consult or even inform the Junta, with orders to arrest a captain who had sent some bad cartridges into Fort Galeras. The wretched captain was dragged up to the old despot's den, and nearly frightened to death by being made to dig his own grave, say his parting prayers, and take his stand at a wall with a shooting party facing him. It was only meant, however, as a grim practical joke and effective warning, for beyond being all but killed with fright, he had no punishment inflicted on him, and was merely detained as a prisoner until a deputation from the Junta courageously ventured up to ask his release. However, the Junta magnanimously pardoned even this freak, on the score of the eccentric old gentleman's loyalty. ' " An amusing story is also told of Senor Galvez, the Minister of the Colonies in Cartagena, one of the boldest members of the Junta, but a man who cannot cren sign his own name. He was bent on a fight, but feared his colleagues would run away, so he contrived to get them all locked into the arsenal, and had sentinels posted at the gates. They were indignant, but Signor Galvez was firm. "Next morning, as soon as the independent canton heard that they were under arrest, he sent down word that if they were not immediately released he would fire on the town. It was known that the patriot lunatic would Tae as good as his word, and even the strong Galvez had to give way before a stronger man, armed with big guns. All this is not wild fiction, but prosaic fact, and perhaps tbe best part of the story is that the Government and Junta, in consideration of the patriotic motives which induced the Minister of the Colonies to lock them up lest they should run away, have magnanimously condoned his conduct on his offering an apology. To the stout old independent canton they sent their thanks, and no doubt on this occasion he deserved them. " A great many curious things happen to babies in this round world of ours, that the readers of Our Young Folk* probiufcr never heard of. One thing is — planting them. This is dora by the dark-skinned women of Guinea, and isn't half set dreadful as it sounds. The mother digs a hole in the ground , stands baby in it, and then packs the warm sand around him to kerp him in place, as you would set out a rose-bush. All day long he stays in this odd crib, and at night, when she is done her work, he is dug out. When this agricultural mother wants to carry baby about, she ties him into a little chair, which she straps to her back. If it is some very grand occasion, he is dressed neatly in stripes of white paint, and ornamented with dozens of brass bracelets and rings on arms and legs. A funny looking baby he must be ' If you don't fancy a crib of sand for a baby, what do you think of a big shoe, stuffed with moss to make it comfortable? The droll little Laplanders cradle their babies in this way. The shoe is large, of course, and made of reindeer skin. It comes up high at the back, like the slippers we wear now-a-days, and is turned up at the toes. The moss with which it is stuffed, is the famous reindeer moss, soft and white ; and the odd little black-eyed baby looks very comfortable hanging from a tree, or thing across his mother's back. Perhaps this baby who lirei in a shoe is no more comical than the baby who lives in a fur bag, another little black eyed baby, away off in th» shivery Esquimaux! huts. Besides being cuddled up in a fur bag at his mother's back, this round-faced little fellow wears a fur-hood, and looks like some strange kind of animal peeping out in the world. You may have seen tbe Indian baby, or papooes, bound flat to a board —poor little creature ! One tribe, the Flatheads, make a rude sort of a box of bark or willow-work, and wrap the baby — " little man," they call lij m — i n a piece of blanket, strap him tightly to the box, and hang it tightly across two sticks. Besides this, the unfortunate little fellow has a board bound over hu forehead to make him a Flathead. Even the Russian peasant mother cradles her baby on a square board, hung from the wall by strings from ea«h corner, like tbe pan in a balance . In India the funny little black babies either sit on their mother's hips and hold on by clasping their hands otct her •houlder, or they take niry rides m a basket on her headr' These babies are elegantly dressed in armlets, bracelets, anklets, and leglets (if one'might make a word), finger-nngi, toe-rings, ear-rings, mnd nose-rings. As to clothes, they don't need many when they wear so much jewellery. China babie3 — not dolls, but babies that live in China — are sadly in the way among the poor. Sometimes they are cradled in a bag on their mother's back, and sometimes they are tied to the backs of elder children, who go about as if they had no such load. Many poor Chinese live in boats on the river, and the baby that comes to such a family is tied by a long rope to the mast. It is long enough to let the child creep around, but not long enongli to let him fall overboard. There is another curious custom regarding babies which prevails in some part* of China. If one dies, it is not buried, as older people are ; it is thrown out carelessly, and crackers are fired off at tha door. Here and there, and the corners of streets, charitß ble people build email houses with opening to drop the neglected little bodies in, and that is all the burial they get. — Young Folks. The Government intend opening a block of land on the deferred payment system, near to Coal Creek. Another block will be opened on Captain Hendersons run, and one on CargilL and Andersons run, opposite Roxburgh, under the agricultural lease system. There is a scarcity of surveyors in the province, and thu cause will delay the opening of the blceks in question ; and the Tuapeka surreys cannot be done sooner than four months. Not more than one block can be legally opened under the deferred payment system, and this impediment has, we Tttapeka Time* believe, Jed the Government to revert to the agricultural leasing system. A Mr James Macintosh, writing to tbe Southland Times about land refdrm, ba3 the following remarks: — "It is surely high time that all who desire light taxation, extended consumption for produce and manufartures, and prosperity for themselves and their children, should unite in forming a Land Eeform League, and agitate from one end of the ofipntry to to the other for one uniform liberal land law for Sew Zealand. Let party strifes be cast aside ! Let Vogelitea| Staffordites, Macandrewites,. and Eeidites forget their feudS and join hand in hand in demanding such a measure from Parliament! Let the watch-word be, 'The lands for the men who are prepared to oocupy and improve them' — to such the lands will be given without money. No Scandinavians! no Belgians! no other ' foreign sinners' shall be brought here at the public expense! Oh for one hour of Wilson Gray to lead the movement ! His liberal and progressive views on th» question ha-ve passed into law in Victoria and New South Wales. From him as President of the Convention hare proceeded' those glorious truths which have since secured for the colonies referred to ' free selection before survey and deferred payments ' ow an area of 200 millions of acres of grazing and agrioultural land«. Could not his Honor Judge Gray some fine afternoon lay aside his robes nnd ' mount the slump ' once more to criticise the foregoing remarks ? I should be delighted to hear him, A many of the residents of the fair Cifcy of Dunedm would ferl pleasure in listening to the generous and noble-hearted Wilson Gray giving expression to his views regarding the most suitable land laws for New Zealand." The New York Herald says :—ln: — In another column will be found the death-warrant of the Modoc murderers, juet issued" from the Secretary of War. Mwe anticipated, Captain Jack and his confederates have been found guilty of murder in violation of the laws of war, and they will be hanged at Fort Klamath on the 3rd of October. The country w ill rejoice at the Consummation, for it is only by hanging the principal Indian murderers that we can expect to deter tribes like tbe Modoos from committing outrages lite thetreacherous assassination of General Canby and Peace Commissioner 'lhomas. Throughout the Modoc war tbe Seiald advocated this policy as the only one applicable to the case of these brutal savages, nnd we expect the best results from its enforcement. It was the only wise course under the circumstances, and we may count upon its having an excellent influence on the savage tribes disposed to linitato the example of Captain Jack and his band. There have been in every age crowds of people who hafß thought that the only reason why governments ever failed was that they did not govern enough, and that religious authorities should seize hold of every man from his ciadle to his grave, and with the aid of the civil authorities working submissively under them, should take care that he did not come to harm, or biing others to harm in this world or the next. What is new, at least in this generation, is the determined and thorough manner in which this view of human life is now asserted in the face of the violent oppo- j sition it excites. In every direction the Absolutist party] takes the ground of rejecting every compromise, and^jtf carrying out its theories without heeding any of the lj^^| which common sense or the sttengthof counter-th^^H might impose.— Saturday Hevirm. A papyrus manuscript found in an Egypt im^^^^^H lately boer. translated by a scholnr of Heidelberg^^^^^^H nounoed bv the Hndclberger, says the Jra^J^^^^^^^^H an address of Kumeses 111. to all the na^^^^^^^^^^H in "Inch the ltin£ dt tails nnitutoh ul^^^^^^^^^^^^^H to the exodus of the Jena from the j^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H

The spirits, tired mo suppose of purposeless table-tippiu»9 mid iap,nng a , li.nc betakm thc^whos to more Uselul and .Uieiuble OLciip.it'. )ii». The Mcdiinn and Vai/bnaL gnc.3 an account of a, nil— little te i party which took place a lew il lys ag" at tin- !>■ .!-•■ .>t the eJJuated Mis (hippy, at lii"hbuty. Tiie guest-, w i> li id no idea of tlie tieai in btoTe foi them, alter sittin., s>oine tiuu m daikness, Ike.ime aware that c ip», s>uueis>, &c , we;e being &puited about the room, and wieu ,\ kettle ct hoilm.; water w i. tin ust into the hind of a m p.e-v'.it, it u .is thought about tune to suike a light Tin-, bein^ .1 >nc, the table appealed loaded vith buad and buttc, < ike, grapes, milk, and all things needed for a hearty tea, w mch the company at onw proceeded to do justice to. The meal over, the lights v.eie again put out, and the spniuial servitors cleared away the things. We shall bo glad to hear again of these good-natured and obliging spirits, to ■whom, if it be not presumptuous, we would suggest that futuie visits of 1 his kind should be made, not to the houses of the well-to-do, who can afford to pay for material food, ami to employ embodied servants, but to the hovels and cottages of the starving poor, to whom their gifts and ministrations would be doublj welcome. " Consider," says Professor lluxlcj, , " the great historical fact that, for three centuries, the Bible has been woter into the life of all that is best and noblest m English history j that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to noble and simple, from John o' Groat's House to land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians ; that it is written in the noblest and purest 3iiiglish, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form ; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who had never left his village to ba ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of a great past stretching back to the furthercst limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanised, and made to feel th.it each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all tune, according to its elfort to do good and hate e\ il, e\en as thej also are earning their payment lor their woik ?" A curious incident is reported by the Melbourne Arqui, m connection with the late races on Flemington course there Our contemporary sa^s:— "The meeting concluded with the Free for which 20 horses started. The winner was Sunlight, who started at the short odds of 2 to 1 against bun. Planter, who ran extremely well, secured second place. In coming into the weighing yard, Planter seized the jockey of Kite with his teeth, dragged him out of the saddle, and ilung him to the ground, breaking the boy's arm and injuring his leg. A woman named Parnall is in custody of the Plymouth police charged w ith destroying her child under circumstances ofare\oltmg character. It appears that the prisoner cut up the body in about twenty pieces, and in attempting to conceal her crime burnt some, boiled others in a stew pan, whilst portions of the trunk she threw down a sewer. The horrible mutilation was discovered by the neighbours, whoso attention was drawn to the prisoner's room by a peculiarly disagreeable smell proceeding from the boiling. Ihe Nihon Examiner says :— " We mentioned a few days rfigo that a challenge had been telegraphed to the West Coast on the subject of the election for the Superintendency. It was a bet of £300 to £200 on the success ol Mr Curtis, and addressed to a leading member of Mr O'Conor's committee |in Westport, who had been talking very loudly on tho subject. Tho answer came yesterday, in a chaffing vein : — ' Have not washed up yet ?' We should think not ! The joke is that the Westport gentleman had been offering, till brought to book, any odds on Mr O'uonor. Logs and planks split at the ends because the exposed sui face dries faster than the inside. Saturate niunatio atid with lime, and apply like whitewash to the ends. The chloride of calcium formed attracts moisture from the an , and ,pie\ cuts the splitting.