The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-04-22 00:00:00

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Oux foam eurnsponlatitt.

(We deem it right to state that we do not at all time*
ouraelves with our Correspondent's opinlotui.]

Those who take an interest in financial matters will
not have failed to remark the steady and continued
depreciation of stocks which has been going on during
the past few months. Crises have arisen in the history
of nations in which a sudden and startling announce
'tient of impending danger has sent the markets down
with a run, and scattered widespread disaster. Such
an occasion was the let of January, 1859, when the late
141mperor Napoleon, in receffing the various ambassa-
dors, was nnfierstood to convey that menace of war
which was fulfilled in the course of a few months, and
led to the separation of Lombardy from the dominions
of the House of Hapsburg. The words were very few
in number, but they were quickly transmitted to
London and to Vienna, tv Berlin and to St. Peters.
burg; and the result was a panic upon the various
Stock Exchanges which represented a loss of a hundred
millions sterling. In other words, Europe was at night
that enormous sum poorer than she was in the morn.

lug. Stocks which would have fetched good prices at
noon, were well-nigh worthless and unsaleable when
—the sun went down. Again, there was an abnormal
depression upon the declaration of war by France
against Prussia, on the 15th July, 1870, and this was in-
--irissased by the fear that Great Britain would be drawn
into the conflict through her Treaty obligations to Bel-
gium. Upon the publication of the famous Benedetti
" projected Treaty," on the 18th July, in which the
Enaperor Napoleon's designs upon Belgium were clearly
enough revealed, there was tremendous excitement on
the Stock Exchange. It was assumed then that
ilrance was thoroughly prepared for war, and that she
vas dealing one after another with the Powers which
iad made the Treaty of 1815. Russia had been dealt
with in 1854, Austria in 1859, Prussia's turn had now
come, and after that, England. Down, down, went
,he securities, and even Console, which a short time
before, had steed at 98, were gusted at 88. It was a
terrible time fez investors; but gradually confidence
was restored. Every scrap of information about the
positions of the advancing German armies was eagerly
read; and when, on the 6th of August, the Crown
Prince, at the head of 120,000 men, fell upon the French
at Woerth, and drove them back into the defiles of
the Vosges mountains it was seen that the cause of
France was gone. Stocks went up again, and their
holders breathed more freely. With regard to the
recent depreciation, which has been estimated at
from eighty to a hundred millions, it may be said that
many reasons are assigned for it. Chief amongst
these is the threatening aspect, of the Eastern Question,
and the increasing decrepitude of Turkey.
The alternations of heat and cold which characterise
the climate of the British isles are familiar enough,
but they merely illustrate the uncertainty of tem-
perature inseparable from the zone in which our lot
is cast. The dusky savages who languish upon the
ehrubless sands of the tropics, look out for this and
that particular season; and in India, when the rainy
months have really set in, the people know that they
must expect nothing but rain; the same with the
months of unclouded skies, so they prepare for these
and act accordingly. But the cetat'tainties of the torrid
zone are not possessed by the temperate. In this
month of April a day of splendid summer weather has
been followed within a few hours by frost and snow
and dismal skies; as though Winter, reluctant to be
driven out from our midst, and unwilling to release
,icy grasp upon the land, had returned like a thief
in the night, withering the delicate green of the shoot-
ing trees, and scattering the blossoms which had come
out under the iefluence of the brief and transient sun-
shine. The warm air currents brought to these islands
of the sea were suddenly attacked and driven away by
an icy blast from the north, and conjectures have been
hazarded that a number of icebergs must have got
',se from their frozen home in the Arctic regions, and
,:rifting down towards our own latitudes, tamed the
remarkable change of which I have spoken. An ice-
hag acts in two ways—the part which is visible makes
the atmosphere fearfully cold, and the much larger
portinn of it which ie invisible in the sea turns the
water into so much liquid ice; and this, spread over
an immense area, deadens the air with cold even more
effectually than the iceberg itself. Such visitors are,
however, anything but welcome in our waters, and the
less that navigators and landsmen see of them, the
better they will be pleased.
Easter Monday is always a great day at the Zoologi-
cal Gardens. Indeed, on any Monday there is a goodly
number of visitors, for then the admission is at half-
price, and the junior portion of the population is sure
to be well represented. But a Bank Holiday, such as
that at Easter or Whitsuntide, draws an enormous
eencourse of people to the place, and it is difficult to ,
o ,nceive one of more healthy recreation. Regent's
Park, where these gardens are situated, form one of
the great breathing places of London, aid tie roar of
the traffic of the distant city, resembles the sound of
te hating wave 3 of the ocean. Trees which have
e.d for c,nturies are there, and although the turf has
,t that feeling of soft velvet which we are accustomed
ro associate with a nobleman's park, it is highly appre-
ciated by the immense population of the north-western
districts. The Gardens belong to the Zoological
Society of London, founded in laa, and were opened
in the fellowing year. They have given instruction to
teeny who are now white with age, and the collection
18 about the best of its kind in Europe. The greatest
attraction is always found in the dens of the canaivors,
more especially when the time comes for these gentry
to be fed. Even the knowledge that bars of massive
,itrength divide the spectators from the beasts, does
not always prevent the former from experiencing an
ineoluntary shudder at the roar of the lion, or the
fieice glare of the tiger, when the great masses of flesh
which constitute their food are passed in to them by
ttn wary keepers,
The Act of Parliament passed for the Government
of the Navy declares that, upon this arm of the ser-
vice "under the good providence of God, the wealth,
.-ifety, and strength of the kingdom chiefly depend."
What would the builders of the Great Harry think of
Fe monster which is to be launched at Portsmouth
on the 27th of the present month? The Great Harry,
with a 1,200 ton's measurement, was lucked upon as
a grand triumph of naval architecture—and so the
ship was, considering the times in which her construc-
tors lived. The Captain, now lying peacefully at the
bottom of the Bay of Biscay, was a vessel of 4,272 tons,
and at the time she sailed upon her hest voyage she
was regarded as the most powerful ship in the
world. Yet she was beaten by the winds and the
waves, and it was before no enemy's guns that she
foundered and went down. Next came the Devastation,
oneof the most formidable-looking monsters which ever
sailed the seas, and in a naval engagement we may rely
upon it she would well become her name. This ship
has 'nu properly been considered as a type of our
strongest rronclads ; for she carries armour of fourteen
inches in thickness, and four 38-ton guns. But in the
long and apparently interminable conflict between
guns and armour, the Admiralty have endeavoured
to construct a practically impregnable vessel—
one capable of using the heaviest ordnance, and
of carrying armour impenetrable by that ordnance.
Such a monster appears to be the Inflexible,
which the Press I .ouise will launch at Portsmouth
on the 27th. She will be plated with iron 24 inches in
thickness, will be armed with four 81-ton guns, and
will have a displacement of 11,165 tons—or nearly
three times the tonnage of the Captain. A ship like
this cannot be eorstructed and et napleteli equipped
under the enormous sum of 1;700,000.
The hearty reception of Lieut. Cameron, not only
by the Royal Geographical Society, which conferred
upon him its gold medal, but also by the public wher-
ever he has appeared, testifies to the appreciation
which exists in this country for success in works of
ex dloration and adventure. Africa, called Libyar by
the Greeks, and one of the three parts of the ancient
world, is the greatest peninsular of the universe. From
a time to which the memory of man runneth not even
nntiil now, it has been a favourite field for the intrepid
traveller and discoverer. 'Thousands of years ago the
savage land of to-day was the seat of science, learning,
culture, and civilization. It has given birth to em-
pires and seats of government such as Egypt and
('arthage, Cyrene and Abyssinia, Algiers and
Morocco old Testament story has told us of the
sacred Nile,' and modern enterprise has made us
familiar with ;the route of the lordly Niger. At
one time the popular idea of Africa inseparably
associated it witn the great desert of Sahara,
with its billows of sand, its blinding glare, arid its
. stifling atmotpLexe. But the works of Livingston
and Spoke, Cameron and Stanley, have brought us
acquainted with the existence of vast lakes occupying
the dimensions of inland seas, a magnificent climate,
immense mineral resources, and a luxuriance of
splendid vegetation. Lieutenant Cameron, describing
the basin of the Congo, declares it to contain the most
water communication in the
complete elements of
world. The Tanganyika and the Congo could be
joined for the purposes of navigation by a canal
thirty miles in length. The riches of the country are,
he says, unspeakable; and with an application of
capital there is no doubt that Africa is destined one
day to be the scene of civilization and productive
trade. It possesses not only• mineral wealth. but
agricultural capabilities to a remarkable degree; and
Lieutenant Cameron predicts that it will be one of the
grans ries of the world, and the scene of iron manu-
factures when other parts of the globe have been
Worked out. The colleries of Northumberland and
Durham, and the iron industry of Cyfarthfa were
unknown in the days of Aristides and of Phielisig, of
ero and of Mark Antony; and the gallant naval
officer who has just come home to us, bids the dusky

Afzicans look forward to a time when coal and iron
shall be produced from their own soil, and their plains
shall be teeming with busy life when our manufac-
turers shall not hold the place amongst the nations
which they occupy to-day.
The Volunteers constitute a body which has always
been regarded with respect. Somehow or other, in
the-spring of 1859, there was a conviction on the minds
of the people of this country that the late Em-
peror Napoleon was not so faithful an ally as we
should wish him to be; Mr. Tennyson sounded the
alarm "Riflemen, form !" and with the encouragement
extended by the War Office, a substantial bcdy of
well-disciplined men was soon got together. At the
first Easter Monday review, held at Brighton in
1860, Lord Clyde took the command, and very proud
the volunteers were to be inspected by such a distin-
guished man—one who, as Sir Colin Campbell, had,
both in India and the Crimea, won an imperishable
fame. In the autumn of 1863 Lord Clyde attended
the funeral of his old friend and companion, Sir James
Oatram, in Westminster Abbey; and, as the veteran
bent over the vault where Ontram slept, people as
theylooked at him asked, "Is he the next to take his
place within the Abbey walls ?" He was the next—

"Another great grey-headed chieftain gone
To join his brethren on the silent shoe."

And the voluntsers may well remember him as one
who, although a etern-faced warrior, had a good and
kindly word to nay of them when many of their most
earnest friends wore accustomed to denounce the
annual Easter Monday review, as an event which
could he of no praotisal use. Of late years, however,
the dieplay ha i not been one of mere show, and a good
many hints have been taken from the succesees of the
German armies in the campaign of 1870.

When the British Government purchased £4,0W,000
worth of ahare s in the Suez Canal, the other pro-
prietors began to look hopefully forward to a time
when this means of inland communication be-
tween the Mediberranean and the Red Sea would
be widened so as to acoommodate the con-
stoutly increasing traffic. All the precliction
of the prophets of evil have been falsified ;
the water-way is not choked with the sands of the
desert, and often there are more than thirty ships in the
Canal at one time. The traffic is worked by a system
of signals similar to that in use upon our English rail-

wain, but it is found that the 72 feet of water are not
sufficient to allow vessels to pass and repass with the
rapidity which the value of time would seem to de-
mand as an indispensable condition of commercial
success. The widening of the Canal, although not
difficult, would be sostly ; but it is clear enough that
to this complexion must it come at last.