The Sun.
London, England, 1857-09-22 00:00:00

THE RAIL WA

THE LATE MURDER IN LEIGH WOODS, NEAR BRISTOL
—lt having been pretty clearly ascertained that a pair
of stays similar to those worn by the deceased were pur-
chased on the Saturday before the murder at the shop of
Mr. Goodman, Stall-street, Bath, by a person corres-
ponding in dress, stature, and appearance with the de-
ceased, who represented that she was living at Keynsham
and SaMord, on the road between Bath and Bristol, and
that she was about to be married and emigrate to Aus-
tralia, the police are actively exerting themselves in
endeavouring to trace out whether such a person has
left the neighbourhood, and if so, whether she can he
identified as the murdered woman. Yesterday morning
Mr. Handcock, chief of the Bristol police, received a
communication from the master of the union workhouse
at Nottingham stating that a short time since a young
woman named Cordelia Parker was received into the
house, not as a pauper, but as suffering under mental
aberration. She had at that time 71. in her possession,
which she took with her on leaving the house. After
quitting she resided for a short period in the family of
Mr. Renshaw, of No. 2, Lenton Sands, near Notting-
ham, in the capacity of under-governess. While there
she received a further sum of about 381. from the sale of
some furniture. She left Mr. Henshaw's family and
proceeded to Hull for the purpose of endeavouring to
obtain employment as a teacher of music, failing which
she expressed her intention of going direct to Bristol.
The master and mistress of the union both state that the
printed description of deceased exactly corresponds with
the young woman in question, and the latter had an
of seeing that all Cordelia Parker's linen,
was marked in a manner similar to that of the deceased.
This information has been communicated to the chiefs
of police at Nottingham and Hull, by whom furth(l in-
quiries are being made.
The Court of Assizes of the
ATTEMPT TO NIURDER.—
Isere three dors ago tried a man amed Jardi
hawker
n for an
attempt at murder. The prisoners who wa s a ,
conceived a violent passion for a young woman in the
same business, named Didier. He proposed that they
should live together, or even marry, but she declined.
Ue subsequently persecuted her incessantly with his ad•
dresses, following her from town to town. To get rid
of him, she one day announced she was going to Lyons,
but instead of doing so
[4.vine
theweenntto Vienne. He set out
.triTckherwehhiechsoushghethheady
fpolaryeLd)ohnimo,, bhuutrrileedarrtioin
out, and, to make her join him, carried off her pack ;
she followed him to a public-house, and he insisted that
she should breakfast with him. She said that she
had no wish to eat, and on her reiterated refusal he be-
came irritated. At length, after some squabbling, he
seized a knife, and plunged it into her breast. She fell
bathed in blood, and was conveyed to the hospital ; but
though ;he wound was very serious, she after a while
recovered. When before the court the man said that he
meant to murder the woman because she had rejected
him, and had carried on intrigues with other men. The
jury declared him guilty, and the court sentenced him to
20 years' hard labour.

FROM

ED

ALEXANDRIA, Sept. 11.—The periodic rise of the
Nile, to which this country owes its fertility, is
always watched withanxious eyes by its inhabitants
during this month, towards the middle of which it
usually attains its greatest height. The public Crier
in Cairo proclaims aloud each day the number of
cubits to which the river has risen, as indicated by
the Nilometer in the Island. of Rhoda. During
the last few days it has been found to remain nearly
stationary, at about the height of 21 cubits, this
being a very slow rise at this date ; and as it ap-
pears to be already receding, instead of rising two
to three cubits above that height, it has already
caused some anxiety for the next year's crops of
grain and cotton, which depend on the extent and
continuance of the inundation of the land by
the Nile at this season ; for according to its abun-
dance or deficiency will the productiveness of the
land be increased or diminished—a greatly defi-
cient rise of the river causing a great scarcity of
produce, and, as has occurred at stated periods,
bringing a famine on the " Land of Egypt." The
Viceroy has already manifested some anxiety on this
head, and has intimated the possibility, at an early
period of the present year, of his being obliged to
prohibit the export of grain, as a precautionary
measure, to obviate the consequences of a scarcity
during the next year. There appears to be, how-
ever, no positive grounds as yet fqr such a proceed-
ing.
The construction of the railway from Cairo to
Suez to complete the line from the Mediterranean
to the Red Sea is advancing very slowly, only about
50 miles having been made since it was begun nearly
two years ago. It were to be wished that 'a certain
powerful and friendly influence had been used with
the Viceroy, Said Pasha, to hasten the completion
of this work of real and practical utility to Egypt,
instead of wasting his resources by the enormous
expenses he has been incurring in forwarding M.
Lesseps' utopian project of tha Suez Ship Canal,
from which Egypt can never derive any benefit
whatever, but on the contrary, will be greatly in-
jured immediately, by the way in which it is pro-
posed to carry it out, in having fully one-third of
her already too scanty agricultural labourers taken
away into the Suez desert to workat this monstrous
project, and remotely, if it ever should be finished,
by its directing the present transit trade to Egypt—
which passes through and benefits the country—
into the Suez desert, removed so many miles from
its habitable confines. It is however, pretty well
known now here that Said Pasha has altered his
views as regards this famous project of M. Lesseps;
and reports says that he is thoroughly disgusted
with it, both on account of the heavy expense it
entails !upon him, and the complications it has
given rise to with the British Minister, whose op-
position to it he was never led to anticipate !
Said Pasha certainly deserves credit from over-
land passengers for having, of his own free will,
very shortly after his accession to the Viceroyalty,
ordeeed that this railway from Cairo to Suez should
be made forthwith, and from his own resources,
which at time were very limited. Had the making
of it been committed to Mr. Stephenson, and
carried in the direction he pointed out, continuing
the Alexandria line direct from near Beneh through
the Wadi Turnala.h to Suez, being nearly a perfect
level, it would have been finished long since, and at
considerably less expense than the present line,
which it is feared will eventually have to be aban-
doned on account of its running through shifting
sands in some I arts, and chiefly from the want of
having a supply of water at any part of the line.
Said Pasha, with his own ingenieur-en-chef
(Mougelet Bey), would make a railroad. and would
make it in their own selected direction, and there
it is (surely enough 0, on the Suez desert, half
finished, dragging "its long length slowly along"
towards Suez.
But it is n I presume generally known in Eng-
land that in making this railway to Suez he had.
a political object in view • nor would it ba sup-
posed that in taking up M. Lesseps' project, the
most persuasive arguments used with him were
political. It was perhaps the instinct of self-pre-
servation at the time to place himself in a suffi-
ciently independent position to be able to resist the
cabals or conspiracies, as he imagined, formed
against him at Constantinople ; and so Egypt was
to be isolated from the Turkish territories by the
broad and deep ship canal across the Isthmus of
Suez, and the Iledggas (Arabias), reeonquered for
the Sultan by his father, Mohamed Ali, was to be
placed within his grasp by a railway to Suez, and
by a fleet of screw steamers in the Red Sea, for
which he had formed a nominally trading company
with his own paid directors, and for which M.
Lesseps got au order to purchase three or four of
those large screw steamers built for a French Atlantic
company at Havre. There is no doubt that such ideas
were put into his head by parties here who sur-
rounded him from interested motives, flattering
his ambition of becoming, like his father, a Euro-
pean celebrity by his great undertakings. This
had been leading him into enormous expenditure
in maintaining and equipping in the most
expensive way a large standing army, and in
various other ways by yielding to the impor-
tunities of piojsctors proposing schemes in which
they are interested, or soliciting orders for the pur-
chase of various articles, on the execution of which
they make enormous profits. And in this way
some favoured few have made, and others are ex-
pecting to make, fortunes in this country. But
unfortunately for the latter, and perhaps fortu-
nately for the Viceroy, his finances appear to be at
present at a very low ebb. It is a notorious fact
here Viet the pay of nearly all the Government
officials, and even of the officers of high rank in the
army, is five or six months, some eight or nine
months, in arrears. Said Pasha himself has been
borrowing money from some of the banks at an ex-
orbitant rate of interest, and still he continues this
reckless expenditure as above indicated in a way
that far exceeds the means which the revenue of
this country (though larger for its extent than that
of any of the smaller States of Europe) places at his
disposal. But Egypt is a country of wonderful
resources, and Said Pasha is a noble minded, en-
lightened, and generous Prince ! So says M. Les-
sops, who has had, no doubt, good reasons for
asserting it, as he had " the honour of approaching
and appreciating his Highness."
The yearly increasing trade of this country with
Great Britain, both in its exports of the staple arti-
cles of cotton and grain and in its imports of cotton
manufactures, &c., is so great, and the political im-
portance of preserving Egypt as a dependence of the
Ottoman Empire—thereby ensuring the overland.
route via Suez to India from being interrupted—is
so evident, that it is really a matter of surprise to
some that the active influence of England, through
her representative here, has been so little felt, merely
because seldom or never exercised on the councils of
the Viceroy, while he has been left wholly to the
guidance of other more energetic European func-
tionaries. This is the more to be regretted, whether
it arises from indifference or a laisser faire principle
on the part of the British Government, or the apa-
thy of its representative here, because the present
Viceroy, it iswell known, would readily lend his ea
and be easily led to act on the disinterested advice
which would be given him from that quarter, and
which, it is said, a more thoughtful review of late
events and of his present position has made him
latterly better able and more disposed to appreciate
than ever.
However, tho transit of the overland mails and
public are at present,
pEagysspeiti,geinrswbhoitchh othuetw.Barridstishandhomewa,rds through
most interested, is really effected very efficiently •
under the administration of this Government ;
though one of your London contemporaries com-
plains very fairly regarding it, particularly refer-
ring to that of the previous mails—the fact being
num
that on that occasion the delay complained of was
unavoidable from the largeness of the mails and
the great number of passengers, Indian and Aus-
tralian, unexpectedly arriving
be
at Suez at the samaree
time. The difficulty of finding camels sufficient at
a required day's
for the when an
an arr
extraordinary
the transit across some 90 miles of
ct
desert, can be easily appreciated; but the active
ethaego advantages
sd
that
t the
w u gl
agent hero of the Peninsular and Oriental Com-
fiaainlyh administration
adsonietim
derived from making use of the portion of the rail-
road already made, to which they at once assented;
yet, strange to say, some routine official objections
were made to using it for the mails until the
whole line of railway from Su"
to Cairo was
opened ! This appears incredible, but is only on a
par with what has just taken place here regarding
the forwarding of the Bombay mails this time,
which were sent by a slow French steamer leaving
here for Marseilles, instead of sending them by her
Majesty's despatch steamer Caradoc (lying iu this
harbour, together with her Majesty s steam corvette
,
the Desperate, awaiting the arrival of the Siamese
Ambassador), by which the intelligence from India
by this mail, so anxiously expected, would have
arrived fullyn
dyet
w
two daysecomplain of
an a
sooner th than by this
accidental
eFi
areentncalh
steamer ; and
delay of a few hours across the desert on the part
of the Egyptian transit administration ! Cannot,
then, the Admiralty really spare a despatch
steamer, while so many are cruising about the
Mediterranean accompanying Lord Lyons' fleet, to
await the arrival of th 3 Indian mails here, and
obviate such delay in their transmission to Egg-
land as must occasionally occur from accident or
rregularity
of arrival here of the mail steamer,
on so long and dangerous a sea voyage as thatfrou
India to Suez ?