The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1865-10-07 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

ROE MAOIII ES WERE SUPPLIED WITH AMMUNITJON.- The following curious story of smuggling war materials to the Maories is from the liawies Bay Times.- The writer of this wax in the employ of a noted trading tires engaged In the native trade, owning a small schooner running from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty, trading with the natives with gunpowder, lead, ad rum, arms 11 all sorts, from a George II musket to a tunic rifle, tomahawks, and eartouch boxes ; in fact, all the implements of war coveted by their dusky customers One of their common tricks to cheat the customs was to inter the vessels with pork in cm ts, containing six or ten kegs ed sporting powder and bags of salt, containing each about I nib. of old teal, boxes of caps, , all these shipped in the open day, rolled through Analand streets, lett standing on the wharf, arid sold In the Bay of Plenty. The old tiles of Auckland papers need only to be consulted to tell tales of cargoes of empty casks arid tons of sash weights ;lead of course, for building purposes lu places where the only buildings going up were room, whares. The writer of this knew of one where containing at one time 72 kegs of powder headed up in the way mentioned, and close alongside an old potato hole with about a ton of leaden sash weights in it And all this carried on by a firm whose principal held "nice next to the sriperlntendent, on ha went home aunt, with other Auckland merchants who had made their pile by Tower muskets arid other honest merchandise, weld lir depreation to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and hoped that the war would he carried on with vigour, and cruisers stationed to prevent the extensive smuggling by the Yankees.  HANGING NOT AN EASY DEATII !—All our old beliefs are being ruthlessly thrust aside. If there was any point on which all concerned, and a great many not at all concerned, were fully agreed, it was that hanging is an easy death. Dr. Lyford, of Winchester, many years surgeon at the county trisom who has seen forty hangings in his day, gives it as his decided opinion that the popular belief is a popular error. A clergyman the other day advocated the introduction c.t the guillotine, on humanitarian principles. He once saw a recently hanged criminal galvanized, and the paroxysm of horror, despair, and agony into which his eatures were thrown was something never to be for gotten. He recorded, also, the recent case of the poor fellow who, through some faulty arrangement if the rope, managed to strnggle up again on the platform, and had to be " put clown," screaming horribly. hr. Lyford would put rderers to work in thereby shortening their lives, lint still giviog them tone for repentance. The Medical Timrs, which given his letter, verrwiscly iliments from his view, and says, Let ns have the guillotine for two reliBollB -first, because " those concenied" would dread it much more than hanging ; next, to avoid the useless torture which hanging seems in many instances to produce.  Su it'l DM NI tii is.-- A Paris paper givem the following list of suicides, or attempts at suicide, in Paris, proceeding from love if one kind or another :--Mr. It— , a Florentine by birth. destroyed himself with carbonic acid gas, becansehe could not endure the relusal of a yang lady whom he passionately loved. Another person, also an Italian, Ming himself init of the six storey window of a house, because he experienced a similar refusal. .  SI Auguste V---, having lost, a few days previously, wife to whom he WWI devotedly attached, neglected his business, AIIII Iris 11111).111111.1`: at two o'clock tho previous ,lay he went to the grave ii litre his wife Wahilll tied and aftt r is lone prayer he drew forth a pistol, and shot himself in the heart Ile left eight children . .  Edonart r-----, a young man, aged 10, was seized as lie was whont to throw himself into the Seine, because he felt weary of life since the death of his mother.