Glasgow Courier. — 1846-10-24 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

SATURDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 24.  We have accounts from our possessions in Southern Africa a week later than. those received by previous arrivals, the extreme dates being from the Cape of Good Hope to the 21st Ang.ust, and from the frontier districts to the 11th. The news is not 80 satisfactory as we could wish, and although presenting no feature of much importance, it is not destitute of that peculiar interest that attaches to personal adventure. The colonial forces had advanced within the Caffre boundary, and had been engaged in several smart skirmishes with the insurgent hordes, but being unable to bring them on to a general engagement, nothing of a positive or decisive character bad followed. The most prominent was a sharp affair which took place on Sunday the 9th August, in a kloof known by the somewhat startling name of " Hell Poort," in which a small body of settlers were hemmed up, five of whom fell mortally wounded from the murderous fire which the barbarians poured in upon them from both sides of the ravine. We have given the details elsewhere, and to which we would refer the reader without troubling him with any remarks of our own on the harassing and unsatisfactory nature of this system of bush-fighting. It is clear, however, that there can be no permanent repose for the settlers on the frontier without the expulsion of the Caffres beyond the Fish River and a corresponding extension of our boundary line; and these objects are not likely to be attained without the adoption of plans more comprehensive and principles of action more decisive and precise than have yet characterised the course of policy pursued by the authorities at the Cape.  By mercantile advices arrived at Liverpool, we have some additional intelligence from the River Plate, with dates from Monte Video to the 2fith of August, from which we gather that matters in that locality were still in a state of the utmost perplexity. It was stated that Mr. Hood, the British envoy, had fulfilled the object of his missitin, but the exact tenor of the result.had not been allowed to transpire.  The affairs of the Peninsula continue to occupy a Considerable share of public attention. The recent occurrences at Lisbon have led to no consequences of any political consideration, if we may except a rumour which obtained of a rising of the Portuguese on the Spanish frontiers in favour of the repudiated constitution of 1820 and antagonistic of the late Cabinet revolution. From Spain the news is primarily in connection with the public rejoicings—such as fetes, bull-fights, &c.—consequent on the celebration of the royal nuptials. There was some talk of a change of ministry—the quidnuncs having now discovered the expediency, nay, the urgent necessity, of getting rid of Senor Isturitz at all hazards. The reasons for the change, however, are not so palpable as the earnest dogmatism with which they arc urged. The French Princes, it was expected, would leave Madrid on the 30th instant.  That Ireland, among its other peculiarities, is, SUIT' 40V111, a land of jobbers and jobs, everybody knows; but there is perhaps no other country upon the earth where advantage would be taken, by an order of Christian priesthood, of a great national calamity, for the advancement of purely sectarian objects. There, however, the laws of both experience and reasoning equally fail; and we are doomed to see year after year the same miserable exhibition of naked selfishness dressed up in a holiday suit of faded patriotic finery. The hand of the Almighty has stricken the soil with barrenness, but it has neither brought reflexion to the Popish peasant nor modesty to the Popish ecclesiastic. The one shouts for food, contemns work, and pillages stores; the other writes imflammatory letters, abuses the government, and insists upon the appropriation of public money to the building of Roman Catholic chapels. Here is the description of a scene at West Aluskerry, which, considering the circumstances, we will undertake to say it would be difficult to find a parallel to in any part of the civilised world:—  • -