The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-07-24 00:00:00

Our foOnn enrreSPOtni.
[We deem it right to state that we do not at all tiZsi
Mentll7 ourselves with our Correspondent's opinion

The floods which marked the middle of July will
cause the month long to be remembered with sadness
in many parts of our islands. Succeeding so quickly
the disastrous inundations in France, these sweeping
deluges have directed attention to a problem which
thus far man has seemed incapable of solving—how to
combat successfully with the active forces of Nature.
He may call the aid of electricity to the spread of
civilisation ; he may descend deep into the recesses of
the earth, and bring to the surface her inexhaustible
stores of mineral wealth; he may bridge the seas by
steam; and he may carry the locomotive through the
everlasting hills, and in all these cases he finds quiescent
instruments, willing to bend to his sway. But he is
as powerless now as in the earliest ages of the world's
history, to prevent the mountain torrent from rushing
down upon the fertile valley, and from turning peaceful
villages and pleasant farmsteads into a wide-spread
area of desolation. Those innocent looking rain-drops
which come patteringtdown hour after hour so steadily,
so persistently, and so pitilessly, represent a
mighty agency with which no power on earth
has yet been able to grapple. The strength
of a huge mass of moving water is so irre-
sistible that man's supremest effort gives way
before it like matchwood. The solid embank-
ment, constructed at so much ccat, and in
appearance speaking of an immense amount of strength
and skill, is rent asunder with a roar, and the waters,
now unloosed, seem to set about the work of havoc
with a will, all the more furious, because of their long
imprisonment. There is scarcely a river of any size in
England, or indeed in the United Kingdom, of which
either history does not record disasters during some
period of Its existence. The Mersey, tho Clyde, the
Tweed, the Thames, the Severn, the Ouse, the Liffey, the
Trent, and other well-known streams have often enough
burst their natural barriers, and carried death and de-
struction along the villages. Curiously enough the
day on which there was the heaviest rain was the 13th
—the festival of St. Swithin. This divine, as many of
your readers know, lived in the ninth century, and
having been the perceptor to King Ethelwulf, was
made Bishop of Winchester in 852. The tradition
that if it rained ufion this day, there would be rain daring
forty clays following, is supposed to have a shadow of
reason only from the circumstances of some con-
stellations, which have the character of portending
rain, rising cosmically about the time of St.
Swithin's festival. There is another saying in
connection with this date which is not so
generally known. It is that if the rain begins on the
day before St. Swithin, it coiatinues for forty-eight
hours. This has, for once, been verified in a most re-
markable way; and meteorologists would find an in-
teresting study in ascertaining how many million tons
of water fell upon our lands from the 14th to the 16th
of this month inclusive.

The terrible weather has ruined the last flickering
energies of the London season, which has not been a
satisfactory one. In its early days its life wa.s parched
and shrivelled by a succession of east winds which
kept back the Spring, retarded vegetation, and crippled
trade. The month of May, however, restored to it
some of its old reputation, for undoubtedly the weather
was upon the whole of the most brilliant character. But
June and July have been anything like what people
are accustomed to associate with their nparees, and
throughout the whole timetthe Sultan of Zanzibar was '
here, gloomy skies and broken weather prevailed. His
Highness departed from us in the midst of a downpour
just like that which greeted the Shah of Persia when
he arrived at Charing-cross on the 18th of June, 1873.
The Sultan is said to have declared his firm belief that
the most prosperous business in this country was the
manufacture of umbrellas and waterproof coats.
London is intersected by such a network of railways
—in some cases carried over the houses, and in others
burrowing beneath the streets—that it must be difficult
for many of its people to imagine the existence of a
land beyond the limits of the locomotive. Yet there
are considerable numbers of residents in the great
town who, with time and means in their favour, delight
in putting themselves beyond the frontiers of what is
called civilized life. They glory in seeking the very
extremities of our railway system. A tourist on such
an expedition as this arrives at a structure of a primi-
tive type, and is informed that it is the terminus of the
line. He may ride, he may walk, he may get a lift in
a gig or cart, but he can do nothing more. The iron
horse has found his final stable, at all events in that
particular direction. And there is an old-world cha-
racter about the secluded districts altogether aloof
from the rail which, to those acquainted with the life
of cities, has something calm and strange about it.
How sociable the people seem after the distance which
one dweller keeps from another in a big town! Yet
the telegraph wires and the railway are alike pene-
trating into theserural retreats, and with the extension
of these two agencies, country solitude must inevit-
ably become fewer, to the great regret of many who,
accustomed to the bustle of a populous city know how
to enjoy the quietude which such places give.
The intelligence that Sir Arthur Gordon, the new
Governor of Fiji, has arrived out there, reminds me of
the proposed annexation of new Guinea, which is now
under consideration by Lord Carnarvon. It so happens
that the Challenger has been cruising along that coast,
and a very singular place they found it. When the
ship anchored, she was surrounded by about 80 canoes,
each from 15 to 20 feet long, the crews representing
one of the lowest types of the human race. At first
they exhibited great jealousy of the foreigners; and,
on a boat's company attempting to land at one of the
villages, the spot seemed to bristle with bows and
arrows. In a day or two, however, a better feeling
was cultivated, and the white men were permitted to
land away from the villages, gather plants, and shoot
birds. It is conjectured that the evident distrust
manifested by the natives was due to the predatory
Incursions of white kidnappers ; and there is no doubt
that the more we hear of out-of-the-way places in the
Pacific, the more reason there is to suspect the exis-
tence of a very extensive slave trade. Such facts as
those gathered by the Challenger show us how little,
after all, we know of the conditions of life over no
inconsiderable portion of the earth's surface.
When the Council of the National Rifle Association
decided to abolish off-shoulder shooting at the annual
prize competition, it gave rise to a good deal of dis-
euseion. There is no doubt that the practice of lying
down to shoot assists correctness of aim and steadiness
of fire, especially as a rug is allowed, which really acts
as a rest. But a recumbent position is scarcely the
attitude which would be assumed in actual warfare;
for although a rifleman might crawl from place to
place unobserved, and do a good deal of execution,
while he himself afforded no mark to the enemy,
usually the Volunteers would have to fire from behind
walla and trees, and consequently in a standing posi-
tion. This, it is argued, would. test the strength of
his nerves much more effectually than if he threw
himself flat upon the ground to take aim. The satu-
rated nature of the earth at the present Wimbledon
meeting has rendered the recumbent plan of shooting
intensely disagreeable, to say the least; and it is
probable that the new rule of the Council will be
reconsidered.
More than half a century ago, Mehemet Ali, the
ruler of Egypt, presented to the British Government
a monolithic obelisk of vast size, known as Cleopatra's
Needle, which for centuries had lain imbedded in the
sands at Alexandria. Mehemet thought it would be
a convenient little memorial of Lord Nelson's victory
at the Nile, one of those great maritime struggles which
have shed an imperishable lustre upon our naval
annals. But from 1820, when this gift was made, to
the present day, no government, of whatever shade of
politics, has cared to incur the enormous cost of raising
the moaument and transporting it -to our shores. There
it still lies, upon Egyptian soil. But at the last meet-
ing of the Metropolitan Board of Works a resolution
waS unanimously passed, in which that body offered
to provide a site for the monolith if her Majesty's
Mini-sters would cause it to be brought to this country.
It is no secret that the proposed site is the western
end of the Thames Embankment, and the idea is that
while the Nelson Column in Trafalgar-scpaare would
stand just at the top of the new street no*
making between Charing-cross and the Embankment,
Cleopatra,'e Needle, coramemorating the triumph of
the Nile, would be an equally conspicuous object at
the other end of the thoroughfare. The notion is a
patriotic one, and whether it will be carried out
depends entirely upon the probable expense. The
Trafalgar-square column cost £lB,OOO, a sum which
nobody begrudged, for you will find an Englishman
proud enough of the reputation of the navy; and if
this Egyptian obelisk, which is composed of granite,
could be brought here for anything like a reasonable
sum, there would be no grumbling.
One of the most curious ceremonies which has come
down to us undimmed by time is the installation of
the Constable of the Tower. This has just been gone
through in the case of General Sir Charles Yorke, a
gallant officer eighty-five years of age, who entered
the army when the present century was in its infancy,
and fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. In
former times, when the Tower was a prison as well
as a palace and a fortress, the office of Governor
was invested with heavy responsibilities. The escape
of such a captive as, for instance, Anne Boleyn, Lady
Jane Grey, or Sir Walter Raleigh, might have cost
the Constable his head on a charge o f treason. In our
own days the care of the Tower does not involve such
unpleasant duties; still the office of Constable is one of
great dignity and importance. The keys of the fortress
are handed to the new Governor by the Lord High
Chamberlain, the immediate ?presentative of Her
Majesty; the troops in the garrison wear their medals

and clasps; suid the Tower Warders, better known as
" beefeater's," appear in all
.the glory of that singular
costume which reminds us of the time of Henry VIII.,
and of days when the frowning battlements of this his-
toric building looked down upon a very different Lon-
don from 0-. At which now stretches away from its base.
The roll of its Constables is an illustrious one, as your
readers will see when I mention the Duke of Welling-
ton's name in connection with it.
How many people knew that there was a Relief
Fund open at the Mansion House to mitigate the dis-
tress caused by the recent eruption in Iceland? Not
many, because only about £240 has been subscribed.
Yet the devastation in that land of perpetual snow
and of hot water springs, has been really terrible.
Masses of granulated scorn and volcanic ashes have
been shot up from the mountain group south-west of
the Lake of Myvaten, and about 3,000 square miles of
country have been covered with cinders several inches
in thickness. Portions of this extraordinary discharge
actually reached the coast of Norway. The popula-
tion immediately affected amounts to 4,000 persons,
amongst the most prosperous in Iceland, which has no
resources for self-help in a calamity of this magnitude.
Denmark and Norway have sent assistance to the
extent.of about £3OO, and it has been resolved to devote
the money raised in London to the purchase of grain.
This, it appears, is as good a way of helping the poor
Icelanders as any. They see nothing of the great world
which is so busy far beyond the range of their icy
mountains, and necessarily hear very little about it;
but this little will, in this respect, be favourable, and
will tell them that e vim in distant London there are
kind pPopll who can show substantial sympathy with
an honest, .simple race, threatened with starvation as a
result of one of the convulsions of nature.