The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-17 00:00:00

THAMES.

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE BY A MONOMONIAC.—WiIIiam
Chapman, a sailor, who appeared in a very excitable and
re,tless condition, was brought before Mr Paget, charged
with attempting to drown himself in the London Dock.
Mr John Hurley, tobacco List, of High-street, Shadwell,

said that at 9 o'clock on Friday morning he saw the pri-
soner deliberately jump into:the water. Ile gave an alarm
and men put off in boats, and with grapnels and crags took
the poor fellow out of the water. The prisoner appeared
nearly gone when he was recovered from the water, and if
great attention had not been paid to him he would have
perished.
Mr Paget asked the prisoner what he had to say to the
charge T

Prisoner—The Lord ordered me to do it.
Mr Paget—The Lord ordered you to do it I When did
.e order you to do this ? _ .

Prisoner—Yes, Sir, about 9 o'clock in the morning in
the London Dock, while I was standing by the side of the
water.

Mr Paget—Did you see the Lord.
Prisoner—Yes. your Worship, Ho told me to go in the
water. He was standing at the Dock. Ho said ho had a
commission for me.

Mr Paget—How long have you had the commission

Prisoner—Since Saturday night last.
Mr Paget thought the prisoner was suffering from de-
lirium tremens.
A gentleman connected with the ship to which the pri-
soner belongs said there was no doubt the prisoner was
labouring under delirium tremens. He was drunk for
many days in succession, and left off suddenly on Saturday
night last.
Tho prisoner here interposed, and said, " I know what
you are talking about. You think lam mad, but lam not.
I have had a call from God."
Mr Paget remanded the prisoner to the Clerkenwell
House of Detention, and directed that an inquiry should be
made into the state of his mind.
The prisoner, as he was leaving the dock, said, "You
had better mind what you are about, or you will all be
brought up for judgment."

FEDERAL SUBSTITUTES.—A New York paper
publish(s the following extract from a letter written
by a member of the llth New Hampshire Regiment :
Of the 300 that started for our regiment last winter only
175 ever reached it, and these were Italians, Spaniards,
Irishmen, Dutch men, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Australians,
Portuguese, and Hungarians. Do not think this exagger-
ated, for there were mon from all these nations, and pro-
bably some others were represented that I do not think of.
On the way from Tennessee to Annapolis the majority of
the 175 left us, and glad we were to get rid of them. It is
the same all through the army. We have under guard note
six Frenchmen, one Indian, one half.bred, one Spaniard,
five Irishmen, and the remainder I should judge were a
glomeration of all races under the sun. Last week we had
one Turk and a couple of Australians. The next quota I
expect we shall have a coui le of hyenas and a whole
battalion of apes. If the people of the North are not will:ng
to help us to fight the rebellion, but to every call for more
troops they send us nothing but these miserable things, we
shall soon have scarcely any army left, and the war must
cease for that very reason."—

MOUNTAIN SLIDES.—Earth, or rather mountain,
slides, compared to which the catastrophe that buricd
Willey family, in New Hampshire, was but a pinch of dust
have often occurred in the Swiss, Italian, and French Alps.
The land slip tOlich overwhelmed, and coverrd to the
depth of seventy feet, the town of Plurs in the valley of
the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September, 1618,
sparing not a soul of a population of 2,430 inhabitants, is
one of the most memorable of these catastrophes, and
the fall of the Rossberg or Rufiberg, which destroyed
the little town of Guldau, in Switzerland, and 450 of its
people, on the 2nd September, 1806, is almost equally
celebrated, In 1771, accoreing to Wessely, the mountain
peak Piz, near Alleghe, in the province of Belluno, slipped
into the bed of the Cordevole, a tributary of the Piave,
destroying in its fall three hamlets and 60 lives. The
rubbish filled the valley fur a distance of neirly two miles,
and, by damming up the waters of the Cordevole, formed a
lake of about three miles long and 150 ft deep, which still

subsists, though reduced to half its original length by the
wearing down of its outlet. On Feb. 14, 1855, the hill of
Belmonte, a little below the pariah of San Stefano, in Tus-
cany, slid into the valley of the Tiber, which c insequently
'boded the village to the depth of bOft, and was finally
drained off by a tunnel. The masa of debris is stated to have
been about 3,500 feet long, 1,000 wide, and not less :than
600 high. Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise
to the magnitule of geological convulsions, but they are of
so rare occurrence in countries still covered by the primitive
forest, so common where the mountains have been stripped
of their native covering, and in many cases so easily expli-
cable by the drenching of incohesive earth foom rain, or the
free admission of water between the strata of rocks—both of
which a coating of vegetation would have prevented, that we
are justified in ascribing them for the most part to the same
cause as that to which the destructive effects of mountain
torrents are chiefly due—the felling of the woods. In
nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which
are known, the immediate cause of the slip has been either
an earthquake, the imbibition of water in large quantities by
bare earth, or its introduction between or beneath solid
strata. If water insinuates itself between the strata it
creates a sliding surface, or it may, by its expansion in
freezing, separate beds of rock, which had been nearly
continous before, widely enough to allow the gravitation
of the superincumbent mass to overcome the resistance
afforded by inequalities of face and by friction; if it
finds it way beneath hard earth or rock reposing on clay or
other bedding of similar properties, it converts the support-
ing layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes no obstacle
to the sliding of the etrata above,—" Man and Nature," by
0. P. ,harsh,