The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1874-10-17
TOPICS OF THE TIMES

IOElCS OE The I1mEp
The King is but a man as am; the violet
smells to him as it doth to me; all his senses
have but human conditions; his ceremonies
laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a
man; and though his affections are higher
mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop,
they stoop with the like wing. g.--Shakespeare
An Illinois writer estimates that the cash
value of all the taxable property in that
State is So, 900, 600, 900, of which but 81, 100,
0Oo,000 is reached by the assessors. De
rickson, member of the State Board of
Equalization, says that some persons are
assessed at only twenty per cent of the
actual value of their property, while others
pay taxes ON an excessive valuation. Illi-
nois is not the only commonwealth where
similar discrepancies exist.
1t is said that the deepest coal shaft now
in the country is 666 feet in depth, located
north of Pottsville, Pa, but in the hope of
reaching coal area five miles long and
1850 feet wide, out of which 80,000,0 600
tons of black diamonds can be taken, the
Philadelphia and Reading Coal Company
are now sinking shaft short distance
from the first named. The work has pro-
gressed since May at the rate of more than
100 feet per month, and it is expected that
the mammoth vein will be tested by means
of the drill holes by Christmas, and reached
by the shaft in the spring of 1875.
The family Of Postmaster General Jewell
will sail from Liverpool for the United
States about the first week in. November,
and will come Immediately to Washington.
The two daughters of the Postmaster Gen
eral will be a special acquisition to cabinet
society, as there is but one young lady in
the families of the present cabinet ministers,
and she is the daughter Of the Secretary of
State. The Postmaster General has not
yet fixed upon residence for himself at
the capital, but will do SO before his family
arrives Washington Star.
One after another the broad gauges are
displaced by the popular American gauge
of feet 81 inches. The line from Gin
cinnati to st. Louis was changed in a single
day. The Canada line from the Suspension
Bridge to Detroit has been changed and
now the last broad gauge train has passed
between Portland and Montreal, and the
popular gauge is adopted. There are other
broad gauge roads in Canada, tho want of
foresight in railway builders leading them
to use gauge which required the transfer
of freight and passengers at each end of the
road. They never dreamed of through
traffic" The Erie now remains the colossal
broad-gauge road of the continent. There
change is promised, but the state of the
Treasury procrastinates a consummation
daYoutlv to be wished for.
Shakespeare makes one of the children
of his fancy engage to "put girdle round
the earth in forty minutes" We of these
later days, however, are about to show how
much the fact of the nineteenth century is
ahead of the fancy of the sixteenth. San
Francisco is already in electric rapport with
Melbourne, at the antipodes, and the only
segment of the girdle wanting is that which
| will doubtless soon be furnished in a line to
Japan. In view of the necessary additional
| length of cable, the United States steamer
Tusearora has already completed one line of
sounding, along the islands skirting the
Tropic of Cancer, which is known as the
| Southern route, and is now engaged in sur
| veying the bed of the Pacific by way of
Kamschatka and the Aleutian Isles. But
| so favorable was the former route found,
both as to latitude and the character of the
sea-bottom, that it is not likely that the
survey now going on will affect the superior
] claims of the Southern route. The exist
! ence OF suitable bed for the cable once
proved, the spirit of the age and the needs
of commerce would guarantee the speedy
electric connection of Yokohama with ou1
| Western coast, and then Puck and his
| fellow-fairies may be relegated to the slow
society of the ''old fogies" +" Of history.
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