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

THAMES.

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE EY A MONOMONIAC.—WiIIiam
Chapman, a sailor, who appeared in a very excitable and
restless condition, was brought before Mr Paget, charged
with attempting to drown himself in the London Dock.
Mr Juhn Hurley, tobacconist, of High-street, Shadwell,
said that at 9 o'clock on Friday morning he saw the pri-
soner deliberately jump into:the water. He gave an alarm
and men put off in boats, and with grapnels and drags took
the poor fellow out of the water. The prisoner appealed
nearly gone when he was recovered from the water, and it
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 ?

Prisoner—The Lord ordered me to do it,
Mr Paget—The Lord ordered you to do it I When did
He order you to do this l
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, He told me to go in the
water. He was standing at the Dock. He said he had a

commission for me.

Mr Paget How long have yon had the commission ?

Prisoner—Since Saturday night last.
Mr Paget thought the prisoner was suffering from de
[ilium 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.
The 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 Datention, 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.—/V New York paper
publishes the following extract from a letter written
by a member of the 11th New Hampshire Regiment :
Of the 300 that started for our regiment last winter only
175 ever reached it, and these were Italians, Spaniards,
Irishmen, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Australians,
Portuguese, and Hungarians. Do not think this exagger-
ated, for there were men 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 now
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 coul 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 Bond 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 bilricd
Willey family, in New Hanipshife, Was but a pinch of dust
have of ten occurred in the Swiss, Italian, and French Alps.
The land slip which overwhelmed, and covered to the
depth of seventy feet, the town of nuts 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 Gcldau, in Switzerland, and 450 of its
pimple, 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 00 lives. The
rubbish filled the valley Jrf a dist Ince of nearly two miles,
and, by darnm'ag 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, 1635, the hill of
Belmonte, a little below the parish of Ban Stefano, in Tus-
cany, slid into the valley of the Tiber, which e nese esently
flooded the Village to the depth of 60ft, and was finally
drained off by a tunnel. The mass 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
io the magnitule of geological convulsions, but they are of
o 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 incoheeive earth foam rain, or the
:re() admission of water between the strata of rocks—both of
which a coating of vegetation would have prevented, that we
ire justified in ascribing them for the most part to the same
cause as that to which the destructive effects of mountain
torrents aro chit fly 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
:reefing, 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 strata above,—" Alan analfature," by
_ G. P. MOM.

Salmon, is Od to is 6d ; trout, Od to Od ; eels, 8d to is ;
prawns, Os; pike, skate, sturgeon, and halibut, 6d per
lb ; turbots, 9s 6d to 30s ; cod, 2s Od to 102 Od ; brills, is Od
to 7s Od ; doreys, is Od to 3s Od ; mullets, Os Gd to is Od ;
lobsters, is 6d to 4s ; crabs, is to 4s Od ; plaice and gurnets,
Od to Os Od each; soles, is to 2s 6d per pair; common
oysters, 18s to 40s ; natives, 65s to 84s per bush. ; whitings,
3s Od to 10s; haddocks, Gs to 40s ; smelts, Os Od to Os Od;
flounders, Os Od per dozen; mackerel, 40s to —s per 120 ;
fresh herrings, 8s to Os per 100; bloaters, Os to Os per 100;
carp and tench, Os Od to Os per brace.