The Potteries Examiner : — 1878-07-20 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

RORAN FLEETS.—Mariners were not esteemed by the Romans until after the gnat battle of Actium, which threw the monopoly of the 'iterative Indian trade into their MVP hands. Clueelins, A.D. 41, deepened the Tiber, and built the port of Ostia; and shoot fifty years later Trejan constructed the ports of Civita Vecchia and Ancona, where commerce flourished. The Roman fleets were often a sours, of trouble to them. Carats. mos, who was really a Dutch soldier of fortune, about the year 2SO, seized upon the fleet he commanded, and messed from Gessoriacum (Boulogne) to Britain, where he proclaimed himself emperor. He held the reins of Government for seven eears, and was at length murdered by his lieutenant. He was really the first to create • British manned fleet. In the reign of Diocletian, the Veneti, on the coast M Gaul, threw off the Rom" yoke, and claimed tribute from all who apnearea in their seae. The same emperor founded Constantinope, erected later, under Constantine, into the teat of Government. This city seemed destined by W.nureeas a great commercial centre caravans placed ft:red communication with the East, and it was entrepot of the world till its capture by the eetes, in 1204. That independent republic had ;Len in a flouriehiee condition ;b: over two 'nun,ree years, and for more than as ni..ny after, as people were the greatest traders of the world. It was at  Venice in me, that some of the leading pilgrims assembled to negotiate for • Sent to be used in the fourth crusade. The crusaders agreed to pay the Venetians before sailing eighty-four thonsand marks of silver, and to share with them all the booty taken by land or sea. The republic undertook to supply flat.bottomed vessels enough to convey four thousand five hundred knights, and twenty thousand soldiers,-provisions for nine months, and a deer of galleys.— From .• The Sea" for July. Love MAXING tsu Mexico.—ln their lovemaking Mexicans are equally innocent of any suspicion of the impropriety of priblic demonstrations. You see couples walking through the crowded plaza with their arms about each others necks, totally oblivious of their cur. rounding.. Except among foreigners, such exhibitions excite no comment. Driving along the Guadeloupe road one afternoon, we came upon a strapping fellow se sled by the roadsidi, with a young girl lying beside him, her head resting on his lap. As we passed eke turned her face up to his, reached upward, and with a shapely hand patted the impassive brute on his lanternjaw—he all the time gazing stolidly at the passing carriage. "You dog !" roared the exasnerated colonel. Bat the dog maintained his equanimity all the same. As another time, while riding out to the iron baths, on a street car, we encountered a young couple, bedecked in holiday ribbons and clean clothes, walking down the broad roadway with their arm, lovingly clasped about each other's necks. She was young and quite handsome. and be was young and carried in his unoccupied hand a pitcher of ',algae, stray drops of which were sprinkled along the road. Evidently a couple of lovers returning from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, slightly the worse for their potatious. Their arms were twined abont each other's necks for mutual • support as well as to demonstrate their affection. They walked pretty steadily. however, though with that obliviousness of demeanour which we see in more civilised drunkards, when they try to nlay it on the people, and think they are succeeding. We watched our two lovers from the roof of the car. and saw their steps grow gredually unsteady until they began to totter and wave. After drinking a half-dozen gooses of the effervescent water fresh from the bubbling spring, we took another street car for the city. We had forgotten all about our two lovers until we came upon them again, lying prone upon the ground by the roadside, their arms still lovingly intertwined, and their cheeks together, the pitcher broken at the fountain,and a tortuous streak of moist earth showing where the pulque had meandered away.—From the Note•book of a Traeel:er.