The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-08-30 00:00:00

Cur Funbng Carresponknt.

IWe deem it right to state that we do not at all time
,lentify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

With the opening of September it is felt that the
Autumn has indeed begun, The Spring and the
Summer have both passed away, leaving memories of
disappointment behind them. A more cheerless
Spring, or a more soaking Summer there has not been
for twenty years. For weeks past the heading
"Storms and Floods" has scarcely ever been out of
the papers. Incalculable discomfort in the towns—
incalculable loss so far as the growing crops are con-
cerned—heavy moisture in the atmosphere, even when
it has not been charged with incessant rain—such
have been the conditions of life during a season when
the sun is supposed to be shining high in the heavens,
and the fields are in theory waving with golden grain.
What the autumn may have in store for na time alone
can show. Ordinarily September is one of the most
agreeable months of the year—a month devoted to
holiday excursions at a time when the kindly fruits of
the earth have ripened, and when the tourist escapes
alike the hot sun of July and the darkening evenings
of chill October. It is a time when the. favourite
song "AU among the barley" is heard in many a
cornfield from those who celebrate harvest-tide by the
light of the pale moonbeams.
While the Royal Commission upon Agricultural
Depression is taking evidence in the early stages of its
inquiry, there an gratifying signs that we are about to
emerge from the long season of eclipse that has so
painfully overshadowed our commercial prosperity.
The gloom which has hung over our trade during
nearly half a decade is slowly, but it is hoped surely,
clearing away. Coming after a period of almost un-
exampled brightness, so far as business in the United
kingdom was concerned, the check to the development
of our industry has been all the more severely felt.
It was in the autumn of 1873 that enterprise in the
United States was checked by some very extensive
failures there; and at about the same time the redemp-
tion money of France became exhausted in Germany.
The orders which we had been accustomed to receive
from both countries ceased simultaneously; but, so
far as the United States are concerned, after a lapse
of nearly six years, orders are now again sent to Eng-
land for our iron manufacturers; There is now some
hope that smokeless chimneys and extinguished blast
furnaces will soon again be unknown amongst us, and
that we shall witness a return of that activity in all
departments of industry which more than naval power
or military glory has contributed to give Great Britain
such a position amongst the nations.
Roumania and Bulgaria are sufficiently distant from
us in the south-east of Europe as to be suffering from
precisely opposite atmospheric conditions. While the
British isles have for months been in a perpetual
shower-bath, three inches of rain sometimes falling
within 24 hours, the Indian corn crop in both the
countries mentioned is almost a total failure from
long-continued drought. In Great Britain millions
of tons of surplus water have fallen upon the
land; while in Bulgaria and Roumania the food of the
people has perished through a lack of that moisture of
which we have had such an excess. Here our rivulets
have been converted into rushing torrents, railway
lines have been washed away, the valleys have resem-
bled lakes, and the courses of the rivers have looked
like inland seas. There, on the contrary, the grass
has perished from want of the water which to us has
been a national calamity, and the crops have
been burnt up by a parching sun. According
to the Astronomer-Royal, the duration of regis-
tered bright sunshine in the third week of August
was 33 hours, the sun being above the horizon 102
hours. The recorded amount of sunshine was there-
fore equal to only 37 per cent, of its possible duration.
Foreigners who come up the Thames for the first
time never fail to be impressed with the extraordinary
amount of commercial activity upon the river. Miles
and miles, almost from the Nore to London Bridge,
and more especially along the line of the docks, the
ships may be numbered by hundreds. Americans
coming up the stream mentally contrast the life and
energy of the Thames with the silence, from a busi-
ness point of view, of the mighty sheet of water a few
miles above Niagara Falls. The Buffalo river is there
at least a mile broad—just the width of the Thames at
Gravesend; but there are no ships upon its surface,
and the few boats which are venturesome enough to
appear upon it have to be navigated with extreme
skill and caution, for the water rushes past at the
nvo) of seven or eight miles an hoar, and once
drawn into the current of the rapids, destruction
is inevitable. The amount of water passing over
Niagara Falls has been estimated at 100,000,000 tons
per hour, and its perpendicular descent may be taken
at 150 feet. The force represented by the principal
fall alone amounts to 16,800,C00 horse power; and if
this had to be produced by steam, it would necessitate
an expenditure of 266,000,000 tons of coal per annum,
taking the consumption of coal at four pounds per
horse power per hour. In other words, all the coal
raised throughout the world would barely suffice to
produce the amount of power that annually runs to
waste over that wonderful fall. The proximity of the
rapids renders useless as a commercial highway a
capacious and splendid sheet of water, and
converts into a vast solitude a stream which,
but fpor the Falls, would be a bonne of
life and bustle to an immense population.

The successful laying of the first stone of the new
Eddystone lighthouse by the Prince of Wales and the
Duke of Edinburgh has raised the question what is to
be done with the present structure when its suc-
cessor is completed. Shall Smeaton's famous tower,
which has weathered the blasts of ninety years, be
allowed to stand upon the undermined rock
until the hungry sea, which has so long
hissed and foamed and surged around it, swallows
it up; or shall it be taken down—a marvellous monu-
ment of engineering skill as it is—and set up on the
Thames Embankment? Cleopatra's Needle is there;
it has been brought from the sands of Alexandria; and
now, as a memorial of modern enterprise, as well as of
ancient art, it stands on the margin of our great me-
tropolitan river. The chief interest in the Needle is its
enormous antiquity; for it carries history back to a
period anterior to the giving forth of the Ten
Commandments; but if usefulness could put in
a claim to a place on the Thames Embank-
ment, such a claim would certainly be possessed
by the Eddystone Lighthouse. To this dg firmer
than the rock upon which it stands, its warning
beacon, flung out nightly upon the troubled waters,
has saved many a gallant ship from destruction; and
although it has not the historic associations of the
Egyptian monolith, the interest which surrounds it
would ever remain fresh in the memories of a
maritime nation to which it has rendered such service.
Nearly ten years ago the Empress Eugenie made a
triumphal progress through the East, when her
Imperial Majesty went to open the Suez Canal. It
was in the autumn of 1869, and great were the re-
joicings in Egypt over the completion of a
triumph of engineering which had been characterised
in this country as hopeless and impracticable. So great
has been the success of the Suez Canal in shortening
the passage to India, that it is all the more to be
hoped that Count Ferdinand de Lesseps will be able to
accomplish his project to cut a ship canal across the
Isthmus of Panama, so as to shorten the voyage
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is evident
that it would be a gain to the commerce of the world to
abolish the long and tedious voyage round Cape Horn.
It has been calculated that the saving of time and
distance would be equal to about £3 4s, a ton. It
would shorten the distance between London and
Sydney by about 6,600 miles, between London and
San Francisco by 10,500 miles, and from London to
the Sandwich Islands by 8,400 miles. There appear
to be no grave engineering difficulties in the way,
for several commissions have reported favourably
on the scheme. Should Count de Lesseps succeed in
carrying his plan into execution, it will connect his
name with another of those grand works which have
done so much to bring the ends of the world together
for the advantage of its ever-expanding commerce.
The British Association for the Advancement of
Sci,ncte has been holding its annual gathering at
Sheffield, in continuation of its useful practice hi
meeting
familiarisingi ix some great centre of industry by way of
the populations of our large towns with
the scientific problems that yet demand solution,
One of the most interesting of the many discussions was
that showing the results of recent explorations in
Afr;ca, and bearing on the prospects of civilizing that
dark continent. It seems strange that three thousand
years after Egypt was the cradle of civilisation there'
we should be debating to-day the best means of rescuing
from barbarism the savage tribes who roam over its
surface. The descriptions which have been published
respecting the condition of the Zulus bear ample testi-
mony to the need which exists for enlightened nations
to put forth efforts in the direction of humanity. It is
true that the Zulus are not cannibals; but even these
exist on the same continent, which now contains
the flourishing English colony of Natal, and 2,000
years ago witnessed the prosperity of proud Carthage,
The accounts which come to us showing the exquisite
tortures practised by the Zulus upon the prisoners
who are unfortunate enough to be taken by them in
battle, show what needthere is for the exertions of
Christian philanthropists, and for the work of those
who seek to spread amongst this low type of the
human race the beneficent effects of civilization and
the Gospel.

A COUNTRY SELL. —Native Joker (dissembling).
It's been very fine here for the last week—Tourist
(who haR been kept in by the showers, indignantly).
What's been very fine here ?—Native. The rain, Very
fine rain. Lgtzit Native Joke; hurrriedlyj—Punch.