St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1893-10-21
NOTES AND COMMENTS

| THE officials of the royal British navy
! have for some time been considering tn
| possibility of raising the hull of the ill
| fated Victoria, which sank in the eastern
| end of the Mediterranean Sea near Trip
| oil some weeks ago. 1t now seems that
| the situation could not have been fully
understood wnen the inquiries were in
| stituted, as the report of the Salvage
Association of Great Britain holds that
the feat is simply impossible. The doc
| ument is issued on the authority of T..
| A. CRATER, secretary of the association,
| and Captain Stephen Jarman, the
! Royal Naval Reserve. Among other
statements the report says that the vessel
lies too deep. Referring to the proposal
of Frenchman to build craft to go
| under the water to raise her, they say
that such plan is too visionary to be
seriously considered. The depth is too
great for anything with life to stand the
pressure. The greatest depth yet reached
is twenty-five fathoms, and that cost the
diver his life. 1t was vessel lost in the
Canarics, and which carried $500, 900 in
specie, $4O0 COO of which was saved.
The association is now looking for Il
diver who will go down even twenty
three fathoms, but has so far been I'M
able to find one, Notwithstanding that II
liberal percentage of the $50, 900 left in
the wrecked vessel has been offered as Il
reward. The Victoria lies in seventy
fathoms, where the pressure is equal to
that of ten atmospheres, or enough to
crush anything short of a solid piece Of
fol 20 n in, nf a hun U
clad only in rubber diving suit.
THERE is man in New Hampshire
named William c. Todd, who holds to
the theory that he is bcnefting his
fellow creatures when he puts abundant
supplies of newspapers within their
reach. IIarpers Weekly says that che
lately provided for al expenditure of
$4,000 year for newspapers for the Bos-
ton Public Library, and it has since been
similar provision for the public library
of Newburyport. He believes in the
value of newspapers, and yet it seems
that he is not a patentmedicine man,
as one might suppose, but retired
school master, who has been a great
traveller, and now pursues life Of studi
Gus retirement in village. In extcnua-
ton of his action he declares that the
press has become the great agency by
which information is ditfuseu and the
people are educated, and that free read
ing rooms are likely to be more in de-
mand in the future than free libraries.
1t is interesting to notice that he seems
not to have suffered from the newspaper
publicity about which there is SO much
complaint, and that even his neighbors
in Atkinson, where he lives, were found
to possess scarcely any reliable informa
ton about his past career or the size of
his fortune. They knew him to be
frugal in his personal habits and generous
in his benefactions, but that was all"
A CURIOUS law case has been heard in
Berlin. In the year 1891. in Russian
Poland, quantity of placards were
placed on the walls inviting the people
to emigrate to Brazil, saying that Polish
kingdom would be founded, and that,
if they went to Bremen, they would be
forwarded across the ocean. An immense
number Of emigrants thereupon travelled
to Bremen, only to learn that they could
have no free passage. Having no means
of returning to Poland, they soon spent
their last penny in the Bremen inns.
When the Poor Board found that they
were paupers aud likely to become a
burden on the community, a drastic
measure was taken. A railway train was
prepared and the Poles were told that
it would take them straight to Brazil.
About thousand of them entered it,
and were speedily taken to Berlin. In
that city the wretched wanderers natur-
ally found their way to the public
refugees, and the Berlin Poor Board was
obliged to take care of them and feed
them until they could be despatched
gradually to their several homes. The
Berlin Poor Board then sued to recover
expenses from the Bremen Poor Board,
and the courts have just decided that
the latter must pay up. The railway
trick does not seem quite SO smart now
as it did little while ago.
A LEGAL contest is going on in Nevada
over the right to the use of the water of
the Carson River. The litigants arc
farmers and mill-owners. If the mills
are run by water power, the farmers
crops must be raised without irrigation,
which they say is impossible. The suit
is known as the Union Mill and Mining
Company versus Dangbery and 1914 others
of Ormsby County, New The plaintiff
represents the claims of many other
mills, the Mexican mill, the Brunswick,
the Santiago. Nevada, Franklin, Wood
worth, and Rock Point. The conten-
ton is that each of these mills is entitled
to 1000 inches of water during all
seasons, both as riparian owners and as
prior appropriations The farmers claim
to have appropriated the waters of the
river before use thereof by any Of the
mills. Reams of testimony have already
been taken, and the case is causing an
interest and excitement that is incon-
ceivable at this distance. The Carson
does not flow very far, nor are its waters
deep, but for those very reasons they are
inestimably precious in that arid region.
THOUSANDS of Americans who have
climbed to the summit Of the famous
Drachenfels to behold the beauties of the
Valley of the Rhine may hear with regret
of the death of "The Singer of the
Drachenfels. The ancient bard in his
fantastic costume, with his thick, long
silver hair falling upon his shoulders and
his flowing white beard. seemed
wanderer from the "minnesinger" days,
and in strange keeping with the rugged
mountain whose beauties, history and
romance he sounded. Ludwig Erber,
to give him his real, rather prosaic,