LITERARY NOTES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Paris, January 9.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2132, 9 March 1886, Page 4

LITERARY NOTES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Paris, January 9.

Baron dr Hubner, wiitiug about the Oceanic Archipelago, stated a trader there may, m a very few yearn, make a fortune relatively considerable, if ho be inner, intelligent, and energetic. Hia living costs next to nothing ; all ho has to guard against and not an unimportant point, is not to he killod. Poultry, yanis uud buiauas form his principal food. Hi'h dress — flannel, a straw hat in hummer, and a sou-wester for the rainy season. He in a Robinson Crusoe. Firearms arc the articles moat in request by the natives. Thu temple of Janus is never shut in the Oceanic region ; happily the aboriginals are not braves. With them war is an affair of ambush and massacre — followed by devouring the conquered. Only the Samoans merit the name of warriors ; they fight in fair battle ; they eschew the general tactics of calling names at the foe and then fleeing. The young women are not bad-looking ; the middle-aged are as corpulent as a Lambert, and the old cronio«, quite unfit for the making ' young again department of Mahomet's paradise. The hair of the fair sex is chiefly blond, shading into red. The inland of A pin ia a success in point of Government ; it is not a " settlement," as that term is understood in China ; there the European consuls, Gorman, English and French administer the power as a triumvirate. The greater portion of the country is owned by two Hamburg houses, who send nearly all the produce in German ships to Euroue. The monopoly is due to the absence of rivals. The German, observes the Baron, remains such in character and habit, but ho loses his native tonguo in the ■econd generation, and adopts many of the manners and customs of the milieu wherein he lives. He is always frugal, sober, patient and persevering, but never rash. He has none of the speculative nature of the Anglo-Saxon. Considering his social state, the German is better instructed, and after a Scotchman has the reputation of being the first colonist in the world. Baron Hubner perceives no difference between English and Germans as colonists ; both have only to desire to succeed, to succeed — neither display the slightest decadence. The Englishman only is richer. The Catholic bishop of Central Oceania, a French clergyman, is doing good proselytizing work on the inland. He never allows tho converts to re-mix with the heathen. The girls have markedly sweet, musical voices, far superior to the native Christianof China and Egypt. Kava is tho favourite beverage ; it is prepared from a root, which has thu t-xste of rhubarb. The loot, having being washed and scraped, young giils of quality and of most correct conduct take seats in the centre of the assembled guests and commence chewing it, and a basin receives the products of mastication. When a sufficient quantity is prepared, the bishop claps hia hands ; next it is served out — the honoured guest being the firet recipient. Europeans like this " bitter " as much as the natives. The young girls never assist at balls, such being obicono as a rule. The king of the Satnoans resides at two miles east of Apia ; his capital consists of a few good cabins in a cocoa-nut forest. The most conspicuous monument in the capital is a "gibbet." His Majesty " Malietoa, " was dressed only in a shirt that was innocent of all acquaintance with a laundry maid ; his pantaloons were in linen but in absolute rags. Only think, if Ludwig of Bavaria should through his debts be reduced to this. When spoken to His Majesty for all reply only indulges in a horso laugh. Hb never speaks in council ; when his ministers address him he sleeps or laughs. It is etiquette aftor a royal reception for tho guests to bolt as rapidly as their legs will carry them, and his majesty iv this respect often merits the blue ribbon by out-dis-tancing the courtiers. Naturally the three consuls do not consider Meliatoa it la hauteur do la situation. The treaty of Utrecht summarily laid down that both banks of the Amazon belonged to Portugal. It remained silent as to details, which is evidenced by the necessity of 23 subsequent treaties. There exists between French Guyana and the province of Para a vast and beautiful belt of territory with an area of 03,000 square miles, which is a bone of contention between France and Brazil. The former requires it for her incorrigible convicts— since Australia will not allow the shun into the Southern Pacific— so that more will soon be heard of the contention. A society is on foot to work that territory, by founding homesteads, stocking same, &c, nnd handing them over in due course at a mere outlay for capital, to be repaid by instalments to such convicts as desire to lead a new life. The success of f »he scheme pivots on tho lesolution of the ome government to compel the convicts } woik nolens volens. It is the absence of ich an energetic resolution that has made ew Caledonia a paradi.se for a veritable mdemoniuni population. There is no country in the woikl, where irnalism has such a power as in France ; . Parliament v liich ever contains more pssnien, as deputies, than the French 'ffibliitui (*• They yeie journalists who bularised and sustained tho Revolution, broached by the Encyclopaedists. They fe not always happy in their mean, nor lent in their aims. In 17!K), deputy proposed that no member of the legislature should either own or contribute to a newspaper. Thurean demanded, that only one journal, the official " Bulletin," be published in all France— an end Napoleon 1. practically achieved by his Moniteur, so economical in its relations with truth. Despite the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1703, no liberty was permitted to journalists ; editors were attacked, printing presses destroyed, and printers had to run for their lives. A few defended themselves and their pioperty with arms. Even such Jacobins as Couthon and Robespierre, joined in the hue and cry against piessinon. The journals were confiscated in the post office, or burned in the market place of the town, as in Marseille. Robespierre in one of his confidential notes wrote : — " It is necessary to prescribe the journalists, as the most dangerous enemies of the country." When the abominable Marat was tried for provoking to murder, pillage, and the overthrow of the constitution, he claimed to bo the friend of the people, and a martyr of liberty. He was acquitted, and the crowd carried him in triumph on their shoulders. A civic crown was even placed on his head, and the maniac was thus carried to the convention. But Marat's journal was only an organ of denunciation, and he continued his abominable pamphlet till Charlotte Corday cut the warp and woof of his infamies, and there were people found to support the resuscitation of that sheet under the repulsive Lebois. There was one old lady, almost clothed in rags, who daily got on to a seat in the Tuileiies Garden, and there read out, in a loud voice, that odious publication to an admiring ring— of the starved and idle. It is not a little curious, that Lebois, after continuing the work of Marat, despite imprisonments and fines, actually crawled to the Directory as a veritable conservative ! And when the Coup d' Etat of the 18 Brumaire was effected, by which Napoleon proscribed sixty editors, Lebois roared as gently as a sucking dove. A frown from Napoleon, and Lebois vanished to join the guenille of Marat. M. G Lehman has founded some colonies in the province of Santa-Fe in the Argentine Republic. One of the most important ia Pilar, situated 32 miles north of SantaFt?. The total of his colonies cover an area of 96 square leagues), a territory which only a few years ago was iv the possession of the Indian". There are 1359 families ; some of which possess as many as thirty concessions. The province of Santa-Fe, typically called "the wheat country," is bisected by two trunk railways. Since 1850, a total of 88 colonies have bean there founded, extending over a surface of 345 square leagues, and containing a population of 110,000 inhabitants. If emigrants, says M. Lehman do not always make, fortunes, they will secure comfort and material wellbeing. M. Paul Coombes examines tho influence of man on the topography of the globe, and concludes that pastoral people, through their flocks and herds, exercise a most marked action. As an example of this action, following the composition of the herds of cattle, he cites the slopes of the Alps. In Switzerland, where the bovine race dominates, the mountain side is green and productive, while in Franco and on the Italian side, where sheep abound, the land is bare and exhausted. The inherent qualities of the two races of animals explain this. The cow feeds, that is, cuts the grass without tearing it up, and its large hoofs, press or weld the soil. The ehcop on the contrary, has a cutting hoof and a tenacious tooth; it does not "crop the flowery mead," but pulh it out, and tears as it were, the soil. The gout i.s the worst of all. One day a deputation of peasants from the Jura, had an interview with Napoleon I; ho asked them tho stereotyped question, what ho could do for them j lf Siro," they replied, " make a law fljpinsl the floats."

Sheep and goats scarify the soil where they graze, thus permitting the rain to enter, and make fissures, which cut down to tho bare rock. They were the cause of the ruin of Sicily, by transforming fertile chiunpaigim into denuded rock, grilled by the bud. This in the scientific conclusion of the idyilo of Theocritus and Virgil. The notion of man through agiiculture, provoke* n change of matter on the surface of the globe, amounting to millioriH of tons annually. l)oes thi-> affect the cosmic forces of our planet ? Ih tho weight of the globe altered thereby ? Will the centre «f gr.ivifcy in the long run be influenced, or the nHtrnnonuc movements of the earth be deranged. A alight augmentation of m.itter about the region of the equator m.iy, under the influence of the sun and moon, affect the direction of the earth's axis of rotation, causing a deviation in the form of the carth — making it more spherical than round. M. Vtes (iuyot's " Letters on Colonial Politics," continue to be the vade inecum on the \exed question of French colonial expansion. Another edition has been called j for. The author hits no faith in official colonization ; he believes only in the emigrant who nets out at his own risk and peril to found a new home. Such are the inhabitants of Brittany, the Basque districts, and the uouthern region of France, who shun Senegal, Guyana and even Algeria, but who go unaided by any subvention, or encouragement on the part of the Government spontaneously to the Argentine Republic— where they numberlOO.OOOor to Monte* ideo; these aro the real emigrants. Some go to the United States, a few alio to Canada. The official colonies are insalubrious and Tonkin is the acme in this respect. No Euiopean, says Guyot, can reside in Tonkin beyond three years. The usual mortality of the French soldiers there is ten per cent, and three-fifths of the deaths, result from sdysentery. European mothers too, invariably die in their accouchement. At Saigon, which is accepted as healthier, there were in 1880 only seven European marriages, 46 births, but there were 142 deaths, and this is a sample of the other colonies. The military and civil agents return from Indo-China, wrecks full of envy at those whom they have left behind. In Algeria there is an army of 50,000 men, kept up at a cost of SOOfr. millions yearly. The imports to Algeria are but 154 millions. In Cochin Chinn, the colony buys t-'fr. of foreign against lfr. of French goods. Eighteen months after the signing of the tie.ity of commerce with Ann.uu, 31ht August, 1873, not a single French hhip had entered tho Ked river, while that new route to Western China had in the meantime become a monopoly in the hands of the English, Chinese and Germ his. The only clients in Tonkin nro France's own soldiers, functionaries and their followers ; the only commerce on which she counts to obtain Custom revenue ii opium— the drug with which she accuses England of poisoning tho Celestials. In Algeria, pertinently remarks M. Guyot, tho European colonist i»:i partisan of universal suffrage, but on condition that he and his 194,000 co-colonists possess all the votes, and that tho 3,000,000 Arabs have only the right to obey, pay taxes, and hold their tongues. That colonist is a partisan of liberty, but demands nn iron hand as necessary to keep the Arabs in check. He is an advocate of equality, but on the condition that the Arabs must alone pay the expenses and be submissive to exceptional lawi, while lie hinibelf can eject them when it suits his personal convenience. This is the Irishman's reciprocity— all on one side.

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