Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 25, 21 June 1900, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

THE NEW GOLD-LAND.

Sea, to reach the newly-discovered gold-fields of Cape Nome. Jason, in search of the Golden Fleece of Colchis had only to tame a few bulls that breathed fire (like tavern conjurers or anarchist spouters), to put a few armed men out of action, and to circumvent a clumsy dragon that kept a sleepless watch upon die prize. And the black magic of his ladye-love, Medea, made Jason's contract a bagatelle and his journey to Colchis a picnic long drawn out. But the hardy adventurers who set out in the savage depth of a northern winter to strip the new Alaskan Colchis of its golden treasure, had to face — without the aid of magic, whether black or white — much fiercer enemies in the shape of famine, ice, snow, and a biting cold that shrunk and shrivelled the mercury column in the Fahrenheit thermometer till it stood at the level cross-mark which registered 50 degrees below zero. Fifty-one dog-teams are said to have started from Dawson City in one day, and 10,000 of the less venturesome gold-seekers are ready to set out for Cape Nome as soon as the Arctic winter has relaxed its grip and the ice begins to thaw. • # * The frozen gold-fields that have thus ' broken out ' are described as the richest in the world. At Anvil Creek gold running 20s to the pan was found. But the richest digging is on the seashore. Early arrivals easily raked in £50 a day. Nuggets worth to are said to be gloriously plentiful. A few men are reported to have cradled £8000 to ;£ 12,000 in a few weeks ; and official calculations place the output for four months of last summer at from .£400,000 to £460,000. In the eight months of winter work ib impossible. But returns of several millions are coolly and confidently anticipated within the next two summers, when the inrush of population shall have settled down upon the shores of that bleak northern Eldorado and the promised fleet of 50 suction-dredges shall be in operation among the golden sands beyond the farthest reach of the digger's spade, the price-lists of necessai ies in the rude canvas town of Cape Nome recalls, in a way, the fancy figures paid for cats, dogs, geese, donkey-cutlets, etc., during the siege of Paris: 12s tor a coarse dinner, 14s for something that is T>y courtesy called a cot or bed ; 40s to 50s for a scraggy ham ; 4s for a pound of sugar ; 2s for a pound of flour ; 8s 6d for a pound of beef ; £1$ for a ton of coal ; and £30 per 1000 feet of building timber — such are some of the winter rates that rule on the new gold-field of uttermost Alaska. As usual on gold-fields freshly • broken out,' the grog-shanty and the gambling den have at Cape Nome preceded the regular store, and strong drink was plentiful and comparatively cheap when the solid necessaries of life were procurable only at famine prices. We remember that in the first excitement of the Yukon rush a Liverpool Daily Post man interviewed a representative of the ship Maneneuse, which was on the eve of its departure for Klondike. The following dialogue took place : — 1 Where does the cargo come from ? ' the interviewer queried. ' Principally from Scotland and Ireland.'

After all, the mythical Greek, Jason, was a sorry hero compared with the hundreds of eager prospectors who swarmed up to farthest Alaska, on the frozen shores of the Behring

' Dry poods in cases I ' said the interviewer. ' Very dry — the cases are dry,' he said, drily. ' What do you mean ? ' ' The poods are wet.' ' What ! Whisky ? ' ' Yes, whusky, an' mair whusky, and whusky to that again.' ' Nothing but whisky ? ' ' Not quite. Do you see those red oases down there 1 ' ' Yes. Tinned goods — salmon lobster, and suoh-like, I presume .' ' ' Wrong-,' he said emphatically, striking the taffrail with his brawny fist. ' What, then ' ' ' Gin, sir.' ' All these battalions of boxes ? ' ' Yes.' ' All whisky and gin and gin and whisky ? ' ' Not at all ; some brandy.' But nearly all alcohol .' ' ' Chiefly Scotch,' he replied, with a far-away look. » m m The stories of the new Alaskan goldfields recall the early days of Ballarat. One lucky fellow on the great Victorian goldfield got 321 b weight of the precious metal from a single dish of earth ; another solb from a tub of wash-dirt. The two Kavanagh brothers took £1600 worth of gold in one day from a single shallow sinking. Canadian Gully and the Italians' Claim averaged £iooo to £3000 per man. The rich ' pockets ' known as ' jewellers' shops ' were marvellously rich in nuggets: three of these weighed respectively ioiioz, i6i9oz, and 17770 Z. ( The famous Welcome Nugget, which realised £9325, was not found till 1855.) One party after winning £13,000 in nuggets alone from a claim in Canadian Gully, sold it for 80 guineas. Other lucky diggers are said to have taken from ;£ 10,000 to .£15,000 worth ot gold from a single claim in a few weeks. A number of the lucky wights squandered their easily-won wealth with shameless prodigality in Ballarat and Melbourne. One man — who later on felt the hard pinch of poverty — had his horse shod with gold, in conscious or unconscious imitation of certain of the Spanish Governors of Brazil. Another warmed his limbs and ligthed his pipe with blazing bank-notes. • Old Tom ' and sailors' rum and torch-light whisky usually suited the palate of the arch-revellers. But champagne suited their pur^e. So, in ' heavy-headed revel' they made the sparkling flood flow ; and one rough old fellow took his morning tub in Moet et Chandon. Games of nine-pins were played with bottles of champagne : the player who broke fewest had to pay for all. Dozens of the ' dry imperial ' of those days were frequently emptied into tubs ; spirits and porter were added to give ' body ' to it ; and the revellers sat around and swilled this crambambuli (as German students would call it) with tin pannikins. Many died from the effects of their folly. Others lived to feel the want of even a silver coin. But, happily for the colony, by far the greater part of the diggers usea their wealth wisely and well. We have many a time and oft applied the a journalistic cat-o'-nine-tails to the hide of cable-rigger's the cable fiend for his colossal lying. ' «The story. New York Freeman's Journal of "lay 5 scores the limber-lipped wight in thlr following paragraph, which refers to a silly cable story th^f hid

currency for a short period in these colonies • — ' The attempt to blow up a lock on t°e Welland Canal, which m ide Canada shiver from Halifax to the Klondike, turns out to be a fish story. It was first thought to be «i Boer plot. Then the Fenians got credit for it, and then the Bult.ilo grain scoopcrs. It now tarns out that two of the three mprt " taken in the act " are native Englishmen andthethird an Irishman; that they were drunk, and that they had been u-,ing d\n unite only to stun and catch fish that are found in the cin.il, whose witers flow from TLake Erie. The Dominion is sate, but it might be well "^"ke'ep a vigilant frtokonr for the Transvaal Navy.' This reminds us that an English ' religious ' weekly published the ' 'alarming, but, of course, quite expected, ' discovery ' that the .Jesuits were at the bottom of the reverses of the British troops in South Africa. Such stories are decidedly suggestive of the strait-waistcoat and the padded cell, and their insane absurdity was happily hit off by • Mr. Doolev ' when he declared that ' Cousin George Dewey ' will learn a v ist deal about his (Dewey's) past iniquities when he putshimseH forward as candidate for the office of President of the L'nited States. Among other things, says ' Mr. Dooley,' ' 'twill be pointed out be careful observers that he was elected presidint of the A. P. A. be the Jesuits.' In war-time and election campaigns cableriggers and * pious editors ' believe more than usual in the prirciple enunciated by one of Kipling's characters, that ' there is no sense in telling too much truth '• — a variation on the lines of Hudibras : — For truth is precious and di\in<\ Too rich a pearl for carnal swine. The Pittsburg CW/zo/u* Obtcrvcr propounds the WE GIVE it i 1 P. following riddle : — ' What becomes of the stranger -faced men who appear at church "to make the mission " and are not seen again ? They appear and then they disappear. They do not join the congregation. They do not rent a seat in a pew. They do not become a member of any Catholic society. They do not seek the acquaintance of the pastor. They do not keep on going to the Sacraments every month. They "make the mission" and then they vanish. What becomes of them ? ' Can any ot our readers solve the riddle. With the 'Frisco Monitor, we ' give it up .' It is an Mlia Lalia Crispin to us.

THE YOUNG MAN.

are peppered over with rubies and a-spark!e with brilliants of this kind, won not alone on their own account, but also in leading others up the heights. Few feel those difficulties more keenly than our hard- wrought clergy who endeavor to guide and guard our youth in the cyclonic period that lies between the close of their school-days and the time when they get settled in life. ' The youth of a nation,' says Beaconsfield, ' are the trustees of posterity.' But in the ' wild freshness ' of the stormy morning of life that trust is too often broken. The youth who has broken free from the neck-halter of the school comes into contact with a thousand and one risks arising from idleness, evil companions, drink, dissipation ; wrong turns are easily taken ; pitfalls are dropped into , faith is sometimes undermined or lost ; promising lives are shaken out of their true centre of gravity. It was, perhaps, the frequency with which young men lapsed into evil ways during this risky period that led Carlyle to cynically remark th.it for six years onward from the age of nineteen they ' attain their maximum of detestability,'that the spoiled 'young boobies' should ' be covered under barrels, or otherwise icndeicd invisible, and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-hve.' m * m One of the chief safeguards of our youth during the perilous years that follow the close ot school-days lies in those Catholic associations that are scattered up and down the Colony. The maintenance of the efficiency of these is a matter of pathetic difficulty — a ' labor dire and heavy woe ' — to many an anxious priest, and many such societies live a pinched and meagre and half-starved existence for want of encouragement from the very class which they are intended to serve. As we have elsewhere said, ' there will usually be among the members a picked body of young Gideon ites who hold fast with the grip of a steel trap to the piinciples of their society or club. Outside these there will ordinarily be a shifting and uncertain fringe of members who take a shy, dainty, spasmodic, halfhearted interest in the working of the society, but who appear in full force, and upholstered in their most expensive drapery, when the circling months bring the annual social or picnic around. Beyond and outside the fringe of Habby, spineless members there lies the mass of youths who are indifierent to the aims Qf Catholic young men's associations, or who shrink from merntj/isrship because of some petty likes or dislikes affecting minor details of organisation. Some will have it all fat ; others all lean. Your fluent young Demosthenes would have the

Moliere was often witty. He was not always wise. But there is a flash of illuminated genius in his saying that difficulties are the gems that adorn virtue. Which of us does not know some who

society a debating club pure and simple. Your budding Beau Brummel! would practically turn it into a quadrille assembly. Between the two extremes of all work of one kind and, all p'fay of another kind you have a range of tastes Sufficient to make the successful conducting of such a society a sufficiently tick'^sh task— comparable in a microscopic vvav to, tli.it of etfjting a Catholic newspaper.' The American Catholic Record has the following remarks in point : — Admitting 1 the fact that lukewarmness o r Catholic* maJkeß the way HV>ny for oar soeierie*, yv.'< w<* must nut aw-tigii tliu,t aS ,the chief and only cause of thefr slow advancement-. In every society there are liable to b<>. elements such a-* the kicker the orator ami deadhead , who are as drags on the wtaejls of itft progress. I he'kiclrer,' with his continual 'Mr. Chairman,' the orator with his ever"! acting harangues, and the deadhead, who contributes nothing- but criticism, are not only a nuisance but a menace also to the stability of any organization. Organization means business, and business does not thrive on rhetoric. Another difficulty to contend with is the apathy of the average member. Keen in athletics and past master in billiards, he is a veritable ' sleepy hollow ' when anything- demanding mental exertion is thrust before him. The red blood is drained from his brains— and he becomes a milk-sop — a thing destitute of ambition, and craving for nothing pave sleep and provender You meet him e\ery where. He has no backbone and he doesn't want any. That is what makes his disease a very difficult one to grapple ■with. * • » We have an impression that much of the apa'.hv in this matter is traceable to causes that he outside both the aims and management of Catholic )Oung men's societies. Defective school-training (we refer especially to State schools), undesirable home associations or companionships, and, to some extent, the character of pursuits or amusements — frequently evolve tastes and feelings which are incompatible with a practical interest in the work of mutual improvement societies and highly ' proper ' social unions such as we contemplate. Hence a lack of appreciation of their benefits, and an idea that the gains are not worth the pains. And hence, again, so many of our youth drone and dawdle and laze their evenings away propping up verandah-posts and house-corners, and, in by no means rare instances, cultivating a too close acquaintance with the garish surroundings of the bar and looking more frequently than is either necessary or judicious upon the beer when it sparkleth in the glass. Lazy-minded youths of this stamp need a course of tonics — something to brace up and raise the tone of their mental and moral system. But who is to bring them within the good influence of the young men's associations ? Who can be better apostles to them than their fellow-youths who are day by day marching with them shoulder to shoulder along the road of life? In willing and constant co-operation of this kind there lies a vast power of good, the resources of which are practically inexhaustible. We sorely need an apostolate of young men to young men. He that sets it well upon its beneficent way will be a greater benefactor to his kind than that vastly over-rated individual who made two blades of grass spring up where only one had sprouted before. Some time ago we dealt at some length with thr miv \rt the controversy which wagged its noisy tongue i \sk : a hnu so volubly over the attitude assumed by the word. late Mr. St. George Mivart towards the Catholic Church at a time when, it is asserted by his friends, his bodily and mental powers were enfeebled by the final assaults of the distressing disease (diabetes) which soon afterwards carried him away. Amidst the ' froth of vocables and attorney-logic ' that was so plentifully blown in our faces at the time by a class of journalistic hodmen, several leading secular and Protestant newspapers were conspicuous for their strong and able presentment of the real issues that lay between the deceased biologist and the Church in whose bosom he had sought, and tor so long obtained, rest. The controversy has been neatly nut-shelled in the columns of the May Bookman — a publication which certainly does not lie open to any suspicion of partiality towards the Catholic Church. It sa) s : — A very different type of man from Archibald Forbes was Dr. St. George Mivart, whose death would probably have passed unnoticed by the majority of educated men had it not been for the interest lately excited in him by his controversial correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan. Dr. Mivart can hardly be rated as a really eminent man of science, for his modified evolutionary theories were acceptable neither to Darwinians nor to the opposing school : so that as an evolutionist he was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. His letter-", however, to Cardinal Vaughan drew forth an immenee amount of discussion, more particularly in thi-t country. Their theological interest to us, at least, was nil, for Mivart's po-ition was one that seems utterly untenable, in that he appeared to wish to remain within the Catholic Church while refusing to accept its discipline. He claimed, indeed, the privileges of a spoiled child, and we cannot feel any sympathy with him whatsoever. He was perfectly free to have left the Church, if he found its restrictions galling, and he was equally free to have remained in it and to have submitted his individual opinions to the ruling of those who-offi-cially interpret its fundamental dogmas. But what he seemed to wish was to remain a Catholic and at the same time to promulgate

views which were antagonistic to true Catholicism. Furthermore, when he found that this was impossible, instead of withdrawing from the Church in a quiet, self-respecting way, he felt bound to make an absurd fuss about the matter and to do a little public posing as a modern Galileo. What interests us in the correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan is the perfect way in which the letters of each of the two men reflect and reveal their personality. Those of the Cardinal are so genial, so urbane, and so full of personal kindliness and consideration aa to be among the most charming that we have ever read. On the other hand, Mivart's replies were bumpHnin, pragmatical, and aggressive to the verge of actual discourtesy, and in this way they form an effective contrast and a foil to the Cardinal's replies. The whole correspondence is worthy to be preserved and read as illustrating the difference in tone and temper between a cultivated and polished gentleman and a pugnacious pedant. » • * Probably not one person in ten thousand who read and passed judgment on the controversies that raged for a brief space around the late Mr. Mivart could point to any original investigations of his in the field of his favorite science, biology. In evidence, however, of the perfect accord between Catholic belief and true science, James j. Walsh, M.1)., Ph.D., points, in the Catholic World, to the signal fact that three of the most prominent men who have made the biology of the nineteenth century were Catholics. ' They are noted,' he says, ' not for their controversial writing on mooted points, but for ground-breaking, original work of the highest scientific import. Their discoveries will preserve their memories for posterity long after the names of many of those to whom the glare of controversial publicity lent an ephemeral brightness for their own generation shall have been forgotten. They are Theodor Schwann, the anatomist, to whom modern biology owes its foundation in the establishment of the cell theory ; Claude Bernard, the physiologist, to whom we are indebted for the great biological ideas of nervous inhibition and internal glandular secretion ; finally Louis Pasteur, the chemist bacteriologist, to whom is due the refutation of the annihilatory abiologic doctrine of spontaneous generation and the discoveries that have revolutionised modern medicine, and promise to accomplish as great a revolution in modern manufactures and industries.' He then continues :—: — It has been often «aid that the Catholic Church is opposed to scientific advance. It has especially insisted that in what concerns biological science the Church's attitude has been distinctly discouraging. Recently the definite assertion has been made that no original thinker in science could continue in hia profession of faith. Now it co happens that all three of these men were born in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and were educated from their earliest years to maturity under her watchful care Schwann and Pasteur remained in the midst of their great scientific triumphs her faithful sons. For years Bernard withdrew from all his old religious associations and became indifferent as to the spiritual side of life, but before the end he came back to th*» knees of the Mother whose fostering care meant so much to him in early life. Certain critics who Bay that science is opposed to the Church, because they have little real knowledge of either, must be astonished to learn that Catholics have done more for the development of the latest phases of scientific thought than any other group of men ; that for instance a true eon of the Church, Theoior Sohwann, the enunciator of the cell theory—/.^ ., of the teachings that all living tissues, whether plant or animal, are composel of a number of minute elements that under all circumstances are biologically equivalent— is the father of modern biology. His cell theory has now become the cell doctrine, the teaching of all the schools of biology, • • * The fourth chapter of the Vatican Council briefly sums up the attitude of the Church towards scientific research. It declares that 'the Church, far from being opposed to the progress of human arts and sciences, assists and encourages them in many ways ' ; that she is deeply conscious of ' the advantages which accrue from them to the life of mankind'; and that 'she does more, and recognises that, coming from God, the Author of science, their proper use should, with the assistance of His grace, lead to God.' ' To tell what the Church has done [for the advancement of knowledge],' says Professor Zahm, ' would be to write the history of every branch of science — to follow each branch from its first beginnings to the highly developed state to which it has attained. It would prove, and prove beyond quirk or quibble, the beautiful statement of the Count de Maistre, that " the sceptre of science belongs to Christian Europe.'" The late Mr. Gladstone summed up the Church's position with regard to science in the following words : 'Since the first three hundred years of persecution the Roman Catholic Church has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilisation, and has driven, harnessed to its chariot, as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of the world : its art, the art of the world ; its genius, the genius of the world ; its 'greatness, glory, grandeur, and majesty have been almost, though not absolutely, all that, in these respects, the world has had to boast of.'