The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-04 00:00:00

Miscellaneous American News,

A convention representing the coloured men of
the country met at Washington, on Thursday, Jan.
10, pursuant to a call issued by the National Equal
Suffrage League. John M. Laughton, of Ohio, was
chosen president, and B. M. Arnett secretary.
Delegates from 12 States were present. They will
petition Congress for impartial suffrage in all the
States ; also to remove the tax on raw cotton, or
amend the present law, so that there may be a dis-
tinction of tax for different grades.
General R. R. Scott, Bureau Commissioner for
South Carolina, has issued a circular letter to the
planters and negroes of that State, in which he
urges the former to educate the freedmen, and re-
commends the adoption of the labour system of the
North and West—that is, pay each labourer by the
day, week, or month. The freedmen he exhorts to
honesty, industry, and thrift ; and he declares that,
if a proper course is pursued by the white citizens,
the resources of the State will be more fully de-
veloped than heretofore.
An interesting race has taken place between two
American clipper ships, the Luis Walsh and the
Charlotte W. White, both of Belfast, Maine, from
Callao to Algesiras. These two vessels sailed from
Calloa on the 26th of September last, and kept
company for fifty-four days, passing Cape Horn on
the twenty-sixth day. They parted in lat. 20 S.,
long. 24 W., crossing the line in sixty-five days,
losing the N.E. trades in lat. 28, long. 36 W., after
which time they had light east winds for seventeen
days, and came in company again on the 30th of
December, but parted the same evening. 0 n the
9th of January they met again off Gibraltar, when
the Luis Walsh won the race by twenty-five
minutes, after a passage of 104 days.

The climate has had a sad effect upon the Maine
colonists at Jaffa, and twelve of them have died.
Among the losses at the great fire at Yokohama,
Japan, on the 26th of last November, were the
archives of the United States consulate. These
were first rescued by Consul Fisher from the office
and placed in the bonded warehouse, which was
soon after also destroyed, with all its contents, at a
loss of $160,000. A large portion of the archives
of other consulates were burned, and the French
consul lost his office and all his private property.
A. R. Spofford, the librarian of the congressional
library at Washington, gives the following interest-
ing facts in his annual report :—The extensions of
the library are nearly completed, and the total
length of iron shelving is now 21,360 feet, which
will afford space for about 170,000 volumes.
Adding the shelf accommodations of the law
library room and the attic room, the entire length
of shelving is nearly five miles. The rooms are now
fireproof, being constructed of solid iron through-
out, and future accessions to its stores, as well as
the present accumulation of valuable works, are secure
from a casualty which has twice consumed our
national library. The accessions during the past
year were 7,251 volumes, which bring the aggregate
number of volumes in the library up to 99,650,
exclusive of the 40,000 volumes of the library be-
longing to the Smithsonian Institution, which have
been removed to the Capitol. The union of the
two libraries will prove doubly advantageous to

those heretofore resorting to either, and will insure
the rapid growth of a great and truly national
library, with far greater economy of means than
would attend the duplication, so to speak, of two
large libraries at the seat of Government.
The Massachusetts whaling vessels for 1866 num-
bered 311, an increase of 42 over last year, and re-
gistered a tonnage of 73,289, an increase of 7,018.
The year has been generally successful, and the
price of oil unusually high, having been quoted in
August at $2 75c. per gallon, the highest ever
known. The average price has been $1 24c., and
good oil now sells for $1 10c.

The Boston banks have decided to take no more
trunks or packages of valuables to hold simply for
safe keeping, and have requested the owners to re-
move those uow in their possession. It is an un-
settled legal question whether the banks are respon-
sible for them if they are stolen, or have the right
to deliver them to any other than a legal agent or
heir of the depositor. The practice has been on the
whole of more trouble to the banks than conve-
nience to their patrons, and they have concluded to
discontinue it.

A new wharf, nearly 1,000 feet long, has been
built at Portland since the great fire, almost entirely
of the debris from the ruins of the sugar-house, and
when completed will be one of the most spacious
wharfs in the port. An immense warehouse for
molasses and sugar is being built on the wharf by
Churchill, Browns, an Manson.
The duties assessed at the Portland Custom-house
last year amounted to $7,619,081, or an increase of
82 per eent. over 1865, and the value of the imports
was $14,501,348, an increase in the year of 78 per
cent.

A person can now travel from Denver, under the
Rocky Mountains, to New York city, horn Monday
to Saturday.

A great effort is to be made to induce the Illinois
legislature to authorise the extension and enlarge-
ment of the canals of the state so as to establish
water communication between Chicago and the
Mississippi river. It will cost $4,000,000. Only
sixty miles of new canal are needed to complete the
connection, with a proposed feeder from Rock
Island, from a point near Dixon. When this work
is done, barges can be loaded at any point on the
Mississippi and sent through direct to Chicago,
The following are the yields of the principal mines
on the Comstock (silver) lode in Nevada for 1866:
—Gould and Curry mines $1,600,000, dividends
$150,000 ; Hale and Norcross $1,200,000, dividends
$250,000 ; Yellow Jacket $2,300,000, dividends
$390,000 ; Crown Point $1,273,000, dividends
$234,000 ; Ophir $450,000, no dividends ; Imperial
for the last eighteen mouths $1,252,000, dividends
$376,000 ; Savage for last six months $1,100,000,
dividends $360,000. Some of the gold mines in
California make the following favourable returns :
—The Eureka mine in Grass Valley produced last
year $600,000, and earned $420,000 net profits.
One-fortieth of this mine has been lately sold for
$175,000. The Eureka mines of Almador county
yielded $485,000, with a profit of $310,000. The
North Star mine yielded $922,800, with a profit of
$132,000. The Sierra Buttes claim yielded last
year $225,000, with net earnings of $138,000. For
the last five years this mine has averaged about the
same results, and was recently sold for $575,000 to
'Philip S. Van Renuselaer, of New York.
AN INGENIOUS INVENTION. —The New York Times
says a collection of the sanitary inventions and im-
provements made and used during the rebellion left
New York -a few days ago for the Paris Exposition.
Among the lot is an hospital car, the interior ar-
rangements of which are as follows :—" At one end
is an apparatus for heating tea, coffee, mad water,
and iu the same end is an ice-water tank, opposite
is a lounge, which can be converted into a dissecting
table by removing the top— an apothecary's shop
completes the furniture. At the other end are a wash-
room, closet, and stove. Thirty stretchers, swung
on iudiarubber loops, fill the remainder of the
car, leaving a passage way through the centre.
" A patent stove, with hot air pipes, connected un-
derneath the car with six registers, which can be
opened or shut at will. A Christian Commission
coffee waggon, in use in the field at the time of
Lee's surrender, will probably attract some atten-
tion. One of the most interesting articles in the
collection is a Sanitary Commission tent, furnished
with samples of everything that the Commission
dispensed during the various campaigns. Desic-
cated and preserved food of all kinds, clothing and
cooking apparatus, are among the articles to be found
in the tent. The whole cost of the collection will
probably exceed $25,000.
GOLD FOR TIIE MILLION.—The address of Gov.
Evans, of Colorado, on the mineral resources of
that territory, shows that if we do not have a gold
and silver currency again in a short while, it will
not be because we have not abundance of the pre-
cious metals within easy reach. The metallic sup-
plies from Colorado and Nevada within the last six
years, with all the drawbacks to production, have
been large enough to justify the earlier predictions
regarding that region. Individual failures and
personal disappointments cannot be held to affect
the general result ; and the aggregate returns,
as set forth in official documents, give the
true data by which to fix our measurements.
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But for these we should be compelled to
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reascen
vernors of Colorado—Evans and Gilpin—state-
ments which they declare to be based upon the
explorations and investigations of which they have
been personally cognisant in their official
capacity.
For example, Governor (now Senator) Evans, in
his speech before the Chicago Board of Trade,
uttered the following glittering sentences among
many others of like character :—" But to give
you some idea of its immediate future increase
and importance, I will state a few facts
with which I am personally acquainted as to
the natural resources of the country. Lying
along the great Cordilleras, or snowy range which
divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of the
Pacific Ocean, directly west of Denver City, extend-
ing from near the base of Long's Peak in a southerly
direction for over 200 miles in Colorado, is what I
believe to be the most extensive and richest mineral
belt of country in the world. From five to 15 miles
wide for this vast extent, the mountains are literally
gridiron ed over with gold, silver, copper, lead-bearing
lodes, many of them known to be of great extent
and unsurpassed richness. While many of them,
of course, are too narrow or too poor to pay for
working, I believe that enough that are extensive
and rich have already been discovered to give pro-
fitable employment to a million of men. And the
extensive discoveries that have been made the past
year, assure us of a vast increase in their number in
the future."—Extract from the New York Times.
THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE AT THE LACIIINE
RAPIDS.—The people of Montreal are discussing a
scheme for utilising the immense water power of the
St. Lawrence River at the Lachine Rapids. These
rapids are about one mile in length, and the fall of
water in that distance is about twenty-five feet. The
scources of the water supply are vast and varied)
and subject to so many compensating influences
that the river is not materially affected either by
floods or droughts. The hydraulic power at the
rapids is estimated to be equal to the combined forces
of four million of horses, and various plans to turn
the motive power to account have been suggested,
but not till now has a plan been hit upon that
appears feasible. This plan embodies three prin-
cipal features. First, it is proposed to turn the
stream gliding between the islands in the rapids
into a great continuous mill-stream for the maim-
factot ies to be built on the islands. Secondly, it is
intended to construct a great dam from the islands
to the northern or Montreal bank of the river, two
thousand eight hundred feet in length, wide enough
for a double railway track, a carriage road and foot-
paths, and high enough to retain all the head water
of the north channel, which, by running a pier a
short distance up from the uppermost island, can be
made from sixteen to eighteen feet. Below the
dam, along the rocky bed of the arrested north
channel waters, mills are to be erected. Above the
dam will be an immense and placid mill pond, into
which great rafts of timber from the Ottawa and
elsewhere may be easily floated to be sawn by the
mills below. Thirdly, it is proposed to excavate a
canal three or six hundred feet wide andfourteen feet