The New York Herald Newspaper, March 17, 1874, Page 6

NEW YORK HERALD BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR. THE DAILY HERALD, published every day tn the Annual subscription gear, Four cents per copy. price $1. pete LONDON OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK HERALD—NO. 46 FLEET STREET. Advertisements will be d torwarded on the same terms Subscriptions and received Volume XXXIX.......- 0.0. cece No. 76 AMUSEMENTS THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING ge a VENUE THEATRE, nd Broadway.—-CHARITY, ar 8 P. Mr. Fisher, Miss Fanny Daven- NTOMIME 7:45 P.M TRE COMIQUS, RIETY ENTERTAINMENT, at 8 Booth —THE COLLEEN | enne and iweuty N, at 7:15 P. Bl.; closes M. Dion Bouci- | «a BROO: | Washington street. Bro RAY at8P.M.; | closes at LPM. Mrs. Roche. | HE RIVALS, ata | John Gilbert, Miss Jeffreys \ Broadway ant P.M, ; closes at Lewis ieecker streets — , ENTERTAIN- M AINMENT, at ARDEN, Broadws and Houston streets. —DAVY HOCKEY, atio:so YM. Mr, Frank Mayo. ¢—French Opera | ANGOT, at 8 P, MA; Broadway, co’ at2 Pi AMERICA, at K WHIFFLES, t MAN FROM ?.—EINGERADE joses at il P.M. HOUSE, TAINMENT, at 8 P, OPERA HC Twenty-third r Sixt 3GRO MIN- STRLSY, cc cou ‘ Broadway, corner of ‘ht ith street.—PARIS BY MOONLIGHT. at 1 P. M.; closes at5 ¥.M.; same at7 P| closes at 10 PM. TRIPLE SHEET. New York, Tuesday, March 17, 1874. From our reports this morning the probabilities are that the weather to-day will be generally cloudy, with rain, and falling barometer. Iuinzss or Prosayent Munx.—We learn from Washington that the President was too ill yesterday to see any visitors or to at- | tend to business; that Admiral Porter, Nathan Sargent and F. P. Blair are also ill. Judge Dent, it is known, has been suffering some time, and we heard lately of the indisposition of Senator Morton and others of public prominence. No doubt the cold March winds and trying weather we | have had recently have affected the health of | these gentlemen as well as of people generally. Purnty or Coytrimvrions.—Donations of all sorts still come in freely to carry on the good work of feeding the hungry. Accounts of them all will be found elsewhere. One of the most interesting is a sum of money from Mr. Pell, in Paris. Our citizens abroad have 8 thought for sorrow at home. A New Jcpictan Distzicr von Western | New York is proposed by Mr. Tremain, and he endeavored to get the rales suspended to introduce the bill in the House yesterday, but failed. Still, it is thought the bill may go through the House, but will be blocked in the Senate, chiefly because Senator Conkling is Teported to be against the creation of another gudicial district. Tar Mecca Pircrms are unfortunate. One hundred and seventeen, returning to Algiers on board the steamship onia, were swept into the Mediterranean and, of course, drowned. This is but the repetition of a simi- lar catastrophe in the harbor of Alexandria three years ago, The piigrims are generally Joaded down with gold, carried in belts around their waists, and have an aversion to between decks. Such is probably the explanation of the serious loss of lite, Dz. Lrvrxesto: turn or Sm Garver Wouseney.--Sir Gar- net Wolseley, according to our news of this morning, is to go to Aden or to Malta, Remains and THE ReE- Y. as the case may require, to meet the remains | of Dr. Livingstone and escort them to Eng- land. The idea is well conceived. The simul- taneous arrival in England of the conqueror of Coomassie and the mortal remains of the great missionary will be the occasion of sorrow as well as of joy; and while the nation takes its holiday and welcomes its heroes home W: minster, with great propriety, will be draped in gloom. As we have said already the idea is a happy one, nor is at all unworthy of the in- ventive brain of Mr. Disraeli. Serraxo axp tHe Carrists.—The hour is Tapidly approaching when the qnestion must be decided whether the Madrid government or Don Carlos is to rule in the North of Spain. Yesterday we were told that Serrano, with an army of thirty-four thousand men and ninety pieces of artillery, was face to face with a Carlist foree of thirty-five thousand men. General Loma, at the head of a column eight thousand strong, is at the same time moving | A report from Bay- | on the enemy’s rear. onne, as will be seen from this morning's news, informs us that the Carlists claim a victory in the province of Gerona. Serrano may find that he has a hard task before him. A Carlist victory over the government troops | with Serrano at their head would demoralize | Spain from one end to the other. Such a vietgty, however, is hardly posgikly. _ Bamely, pacify and consolidate France ! KTAINMENT, at | - | and soul. ’ The Meeting at Chisctharst—The Ap- peal to the People. The assemblage at Chiselhurst seems to have been.of a placid character. The ladies in Paris quietly attended church, and the gentle- | | men, with well waxed mustaches, ‘“demon- | | strated’ along the boulevards, with violet | flowers in their coat lapels. ‘The Chiselhurst day was cordially spent, and the young Prince | bore himself in an admirable manner. Nothing | | in the way of deportment could have exceedod \ | the grace and tact with which he welcomed | | the friends and supporters of his father under | | the stately oaks of Camden Place. As for bis | | speech, it was worthy of M. Rouher and the | committee of literary Bonapartists who con- | Siructed it. According to this address the | Prince will wait until France ‘pronounces."’ | He will be Emperor by universal suffrage or not at all. If France wants an cighteen-year- | old lad, now studying engineering and mathe- | mnatics, to come and “save the nation,’’ he will accompamed by his Spanish mother, and do what Gambetta and Thiers and MacMahon have not yet succeeded in doing— come, ‘The thought that there is really a large | party of the most intelligent people in the world who believe that this slender, amiable stripling is really the only porson who can “save France’ is grotesque tous, with our | republican feelings and our belief that it re- quires 4 man, aud a strong, great man to rule an Empire. We could understand how this Prince might be a symbol, a decoration, an emblem of power, like the Queen; how be | might ascend the throne as a constitutional | raler sustained by able Ministers. But such a proceeding would not be Napoleonism. This | lad, who is now of age, and who to-morrow | might be Napoleon IV., would ascend the } throne as master of France, a monarch with | absolute power, untrammelled by any con- | siderations or restrictions, and beyond the -reach of any legislature. Napoleonism means | an appeal to the people whenever it suits the pleasure of the Napoleon. It may be made | once ina year or once in twenty years, and after this appeal there remains unrestricted authority over army, navy and treasury to the | | Napoleon in power. The only time it was ever | | attempted to combine Napoleonic — ideas | with constitutional government there came | a coup d'état. The two systems have no sym- | | pathy. They are as powder aud fire—only mectiag to explode. This young man is re- ported as saying that he did not wish to be | Emperor, clogged with the dragchain | | of the 2d of December. We presume | some grammatical Bonapartist has said it for him; but it indicates that the party means to play a new drama. For we can | never understand Napoleonism unless we look at it asa comedy ora drama. A Bonaparte off the throne is playing a part, the throne is meant after all, Any “love for liberty’ or | universal suffrage or republican institutions | is like the eloquence of Mr. Booth as Hamlet or of Mr. Wallack as Alfred Evelyn. Mr. Booth and Mr. Wailack show how gifted and ac- | | complished men express the emotions of heart i A Napoleon shows us how to ex- | press the emotions and passions of liberty. The people are simpiy those who come into | the theatre and pay. The players act because they love their art and live by it as a protes- sion. The imperial players act because they love power and would earn their livelihood by governing France. 4 This is the view we take of Napoleoniam. But it would be a narrow and limited view if we sawin this party manifestation nothing more. Our interesting and elaborate inter- view with M. Ollivier shows the influence | Napoleonism exercises upon one of the first minds of Fra: M. Oliivier has the cour- age of his convictions, and he shows that the Bonaparte party is one of the ruling influences in France. It rests upon the prestige of the most famous man of modern | times, of one who may be called, like Casar, “the foremost man of all this world.” Al- | though criticism and the maturer judgment of | history have diminished the prestige of Napo- leon as a general and a ruler, he was a character calculated largely to influence the imagina- tions of Frenchmen, and not only of French- men but othernations. His influence stamps itself upon the literature and thought and policy of the nineteenth century. Take Na- poleonism out of this century and it is as barren as the eleventh or twelfth. The im- agination of France sees in Napoleonism the power which carried its flag into nearly every capital of Europe, which overthrew empires, reconstructed nations, rooted out old dynas- ties and founded new ones, and made the French name unspeakably glorious. Any yearning for Napoleonism is the natural wish of France for triumph and revenge, for a re- turn of the old days of Austerlitz and Marengo, when Frenchmen ruled from Hamburg to Milan. We may argue that this is an illusion; that Napoleon. ism is in many essentials a sham; that its glory was as fleeting as the purple-goiden summer cloud; that its victories were barren; | that France was sacrificed to the selfish pur- } nee. | was to make kings out of his foolish brothers, | and who used France as a preserve or an es- | tate, asa personal possession for his own com- | fort and nses. ‘never in its darkest days, not even when Louis XIV. was menaced by the formidable | coalition under William of Orange, was France so severely injured as under Napoleon. If his victories made France the greatest of Huro- pean empires we must remember that the men who won them were the soldiers of the Revolu- tion, the Marseillaise and the men of Terror, who, animated by freedom, were equal to any task, and whose fiery, burning valor rolled | over Europe like a tide of lava flame from the | summit of Vesuvins. The soldiers of the | Revolution, fighting under the banner of | | 1793, and animated by the spirit of that tre- | | mendous time, gave France greatness. What | they gave Napoleon took away; for he | abandoned his mighty genius, not to the con- solidation and perpetuation of France, but to | the foundation of a dynasty. The result was | that atter twenty years of war, after sacrifices campaigns which deprived France of a million of her men and dried up many sources of life and prosperity, Waterloo deprived her of her acquisitions and left her dismanned, disman- | tled, dishonored; the armies of Europe en- camped on her soil, her art museums de- pleted and her influence as a European Power diminished. That France should have arisen outof the depths of Waterloo, th | his cousin and the head of his house. Some | Were the nuclei of cyclopean fires that rivalled | of Prince Napoleon's publications have beet many on the shores of the Mediterranean. | parte gospel. He has been keeping unseemly | able upheaval in Mexico, in 1759, when on the | hopes that he will join their party and aid in | t - SHEET. NEW YORK HMRALD, TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1874.—TRIPLE | Rave become once more an arbiter among na- | The | tions, is due to Franee alone, to the genins | Carolina, | and valor of her people, to the one fact that | The clocirie wires have, perhaps, never | should never be forgotten, that great as any | fashod more startling tidings of physical con- man may be a country is greater far. | yulsion than the announcement of yesterday ‘Therefore, when this young Prince chal- | evening, that a volcanic eruption was immi- lenges a plebiscitum and avows himself ready | pent in the mountains of North Carolina. No to accept the verdict, he makes an appeal to | geologist of the present century has ever France in the name of his ancestor. France | ventured, we believe, to predict that has never resisted the advances of a Napoleon. | the Appalachian chain, at our own Will she resist them now, when he comos, a | doors, would ever agein be disturbed slender stripling, carrying the flag of Auster- by those litz? Or will she prefer Prince Jerome, with | oatled prehistoric epoch, they were supposed the ancestral face, with his ostentatious “ , to have been convulsed. The intelligence as tion for the people,’’ his genius for intrigue, | now conveyed to us reveals a terrestrial dis- for oratory, for everything necessary to a ruler | turbance which, so far as we know, has no except war? An event in this family union parallel on this Continent during the historic is the absence of Prince Jerome. He will not | period. The historic accounts of American come to the feast and the rejoicings, and ac- | yoleanoes are confined to the western coast of cordingly he is disowned by the Empress. It | the Continent lying in that belt of fire which is uot the first time the strong-willed Prince | stretches from the Patagonian and Chilian has been in trouble. Although the Emperor | Andes, through the isthmian mountains, far, gave him the Palais Royal, wealth, rank and | away to the northwestward, along the fog- throes with which, in the so- fec- high commands; although he is the | shrouded shores of British Columbia. Weare heir apparent to the throne should } told by Haydon that, in a remote geologic the Prince die; and although, unlike | period, the entire country drained by the the Prince Imperial, or, im fact, most | Yellowstone and Columbia rivers was the of the present Bonapartist princes, his mother | gceno of volcanic activity as fierce as that of came from one royal house and his wife from | any portion of the globe, and that it formed another, ho was never a cordial servant of one vast crater made up of a thousand smaller the Empire and never respected by France. | volcanic vents and fissures, out of which the Loyai Bonapartists call him Prince Jerome | fluid rock was hurled in unlimited quantities. Egalité, in remembrance of that Duke of Or- | We know that Mounts Doane, Langford, leans who voted for the execution of the King, | Stevenson and more thana hundred others sadly at variance with the text of the Bona- | Humboldt has recorded the almost inconceiy- company—seeking radical afiliations, and en- | night of September 29, between the setting couraging Gambetta and Louis Blane with | and the rising of the sun, the volcanic cone of Jorullo rose in fiery splendor sixteen hun- creating the Republic. Prince Jerome never | dred and eighty-three fect above the plain. Voteante Outhburst in North | Of those four surpassing artista gave his party any strength, and his dismissal | now is only one Bonaparte less. But the fact | that the Empress could afford to dismiss him shows a consciousness of party strength | In the middle of August, 1868, when the | Pacific Ocean came rushing into the port of | Valparaiso, many of us remember how its | shock, responsive to the deep upheavals of | will suflice | is that in one of the many sudden and extraor- ' consequence, has been obstructed by artificial | poses of a master whose crowning ambition | We may demonstrate that | anexampled and generous, after battles and | the should | that surprises us. Whether this strength | the Pacific coast, spread terror and dismay in to compel an appeal to the ! the streets of San Francisco. people remains to be seen, The result | At that time the shaking of the earth ex- of a plebiscitum depends very much | tended far inland in California, The ground upon the way it is managed, and now that opened; jets of water were ejected from it; Bonapartists are no longer in power there is many buildings were demolished, and ever no assurance that France would summon the | since then the inhabitants of the land of gold } Woolwich student from his mathematics to be have lived in constant uneasiness. her “savior.’’ An appeal to the people, Aji these rockings of the Continent have however, is an attractive and magnanimous | oecurred on the western slopes. The con- part, Nupoleonism never assumed a more | oyssions which have been transmitted trom Winning and amiable aspect. If the appeal | the West Indian and Atlantic earthquakes should iail to-day there is no reason whyit t, the Mississippi Valley have been scarcely should not be tested to-morrow and so on perceptible and made but little or no im- from time to time, It keeps the party alive. | pression on the popular mind. The nearest It strengthens discipline and enforces diligence approaches to volcanic action in the Missis- upon tollowers and leaders. It makes the ; sippi Valley have been the occasional Prince a perpetual pretender; and the chance slight disturbances in the bayous and estuaries of the Lower Mississippi, which dinary changes that take place in France | haye been traced to the agency of he may slip into power. Once upon the sad- (he Mexican Gulf and its underlying volcanic dle, it will be easy enough to ride. At any furnace. There is no doubt it is a centre of rate, if Count Fleury lives he will have a mas- plutonic force, and Figuier, the eminent | ter whose lessons, however severe and harsh | French physicist, bas gone so far as to sup- | to Frenchmen, need not be followed in vain. | pose that its submarine furnace partly ac- Clearing the Hartem River. counts for the superheated waters which Major General Newton has reported to the emerge through the Florida Pass as the great Chief of Engineers on the Harlem River ob- | Atlantic current. structions, and estimates the cost of the pro- It is not impossible there may be a connec- | posed improvement in clearing that river at tion between this voleanic centre and the $167,875. This is a small sum for such a | foundations of the Alleghany peaks, from one necessary and great improvement, and should of which, in Western North Carolina, the be provided at once. General Newton says truly present eruption is reported. The Alleghanies that the Harlem River forms an important | form an apparently isolated barrier, or rather | passage trom the Hudson River to Long | series of isolated upheavals, extending from Island Sound and New York Harbor; that its | Alabama to Maine, with a mean altitude of upper part has been much neglected, and, in | two thousand feet. The two brothers, the Rogerses, so eminent as American geolo- obstacies, while the natural ones have been | gists, who most fully explored them, first | i | suffered to increase. He reports that raking | pointed out the extraordinary fact that they | alone would not prove a successful means | have no central axis, but consist of a series of | of removing the obstructions to safe | convex and concave flexures, giving them the | channel navigation. Surface blasting will | appearance of so many colossal intrench- be at first necessary, and the removal ments. Mount Mitchell, the loftiest, and | of the rocky obstructions must be Mount Washington, the next in altitude, | performed by means of a systematic process | guard either flank of the series. The western ot rock drilling, blasting and grappling. The | slope of the whole range, running from the | preliminary work here recommended is, as we | Genesee country of New York to the Mussel have said, necessary, and the benefits to arise Shoals of the Tennessee River, are | from it would vastly exceed the cost, and it | skirted by a deep underlying bed of | will lend, no doubt, to tar greater improve- | limestone. This latter fact is significant and ments hereafter. It will be the beginning of | Qn ive a clew to the origin of the volcanic | that great project which we have frequently | action in North Carolina. If, as Sir Charles advocated, of opening a broad and deep ship | Lyell, the highest geological authority, asserts, canal or channel between the North and East | voleanoes are due to chemical action in the ivers. The time is not distant when ocean | bowels of the earth, and not to an internal sea shipping will connect with the railroads and | of fire, it is not inconceivable how such chem- the boats bearing immense freightage by the | ical action has culminated in the present fiery Hudson River at that end of Manhattan | disturbance in North Carolina; bat we anx- | Island, so that the transfer can be made at | iously wait for further intelligence for the data | small expense. Nature has indicated by the | from which to draw a satisfactory conclusion, deep trench of the Harlem River the proper | - we place for such a canal and a system of docks, | Musical and Dramatic Charity—The The whole of the railroad item concentring Stage Enlisicd in the Good Work. | and radiating from New York could be The cause of charity never fails to enlist | brought there in immediate connection with | the heartiest sympathies and support of the the shipping. Let us have the preliminary | members of the musical and dramatic profes- work suggested by General Newton at once, | gions, and the widespread destitution exist- | and the greater work hereafter. ing in this city has urged the leading repre- sentatives of the stage to unusual efforts to alleviate such distress. Two remarkable en- tertainments will be given within the next few days, for the benefit of the poor of this city, representing the most attractive elements in music and the drama. Messrs. Lester Wal- | lack and Augustin Daly have organized a dramatic performance of a truly colossal | nature, which will take place at the Academy of Music on Thursday afternoon, Sheridan’s famous comedy, ‘The School for Scandal,” will be presented with a cast comprising the best elements of the great companies of both managers. Besides those sterling artists, | Lester Wallack, John Gilbert, John Brougham, Charles Fisher, William Davidge, G. L. Fox and Miss Fanny Morant, a rare attraction will be the reappearance, after some years’ ab- sence from the stage, of Mrs. L. J. Jennings | (Miss Madeline Henriques), who has con- | sented for this particular occasion to return to the scenes of her former triumphs. The valua- | ble co-operation of Mme. Pauline Lucca has | also been secured for this occasion. | Avsornen Horse Disrase.—It will be seen | by our local reports to-day that the horses in | the city have been attacked by a new disease, | which is causing already considerable trouble | to the car lines. The exceptional weather of the last week or two may have caused or ag- | gravated the malady. As spring is so near it is to be hoped the disease will abate, The Superintendent of the Sixth avenue car line says it is simply a phase of | the ordinary complaint known as “pink-eye,”” that it runs its course in three to five days, | and then the animal recovers. Perhaps the | best advice to be given just now is that which | Mr. Bergh posts up, to “Spare the horse,” | for rest appears to be the most effectual remedy. Countixc Vorrs.—Whoever wishes to study the operation of free institutions in their minute points should not fail to read the testi- mony in regard to the appointment of in- spector of elections by Mr. Charlick. It indi- cates graphically some of the neat ways in | which majorities are obtained for the right On Saturday evening, March 28, a | man, oven though the voters should have been | musical performance for the same worthy | foolish or obstinate enough to have preferred | object will be given at the Academy | the other man. of Music which, in point of attractiveness, has scarcely any precedent in the annals of concert or opera in this city. Mme. Christine Nilsson and Mme. Pauline Lucca have al- ready signified their desire to take part in such a noble work, and Mr, Maretzck offers the ser- | vices of Mile. Hima di Murska and his entire company for the same object. It is probable Axprews Decutnes.—Mr. George H. An- drews, recently nominated to the vacant place of Police Commissioner, has, after ample de- libs on, declined the pl: He assigns as a reason the request of his colleagues in the | Department of Taxes that he should remain with them; but it is thonght that the election | of Mr. Gardner to the Presidency of the Police that the talents and personal attendance | Commission was a more oficieat cause of this | of Miss Kellogg will also be enlisted | ‘effect detective.” in this performance. The appearance | id the violent hurricanes of the high south- ame the same performance cannot fail to} ern latitudes. The infusion of immense ice draw such a house as never has been wit- nessed before within the wails of the Academy. Add to such attractions the Liederkranz Society and Gilmore’s Twenty-second Regi- ment Band, and the features of interest will be doubly increased. Mr. Max Strakosch, the director of the Italian opera, expresses his hearty concurrence in the proposed musi- cal entertainment, and his entire company are also willing to aid in its success. It will be thus seen that the cause of charity will not languish as far as the power of music and the drama is concerned. The Transportation Question in Con- «ress. There was an evening session of the House of Representatives yesterday, though no quorum was present in the afiernoon, when the question of cheap transportation and rogulating the railroads was discussed. On this occasion the Pacific side of the Continent carried off the honors in an assault upon the railroad monopoly. Mr. Kendall, of Nevada, delivered the speech of the evening. While admitting the difficulties that surround the subject he asserted that Congress had the con- stitutional power to regulate interstate com- merce as carried on through the railroads, and that it would fail in its duty to the country if it did not prevent extor- tionate charges and unjust discrimina- tion in carrying freight. He was op- posed to government owning the railroads, as some of the governments of the Old World did, but was in favor of government control, asin England. While the people have been perishing for the want of food the produce of the soil in great abundance was burned or suffered to rot in some parts of the West be- cause of the enormous charges for freight by the railroads. Three hundred and fifty mill- ions of bushels of cereals were transported last year from the Mississippi Valley to the seaboard by railroad at fifty cents per bushel, and Mr, Kendall says the cost onght not to have exceeded thirteen cents, He showed that the Union and Central Pacific railroads, which had been built by the government, or, in other words, by the money of the people and for the people, are most oppressive monopolies, These railroads discriminate so unjustly in their more to send freight from Nevada to New York or San Francisco than for the whole distance from the Atlantic ports to those of the Pacific. Mr. “Kendall contended that as these railroads had been subsidized by the government, and the Central Pacific at the rate of seventy thousand dollars a mile, | they should certainly be controlled by Con- | gress. In adverting to the argument some- | times made, that to concede the power of regulating the railroads to the federal govern- ment would be to enter upon a dangerons sys- tem of centralization, he exclaimed:—‘en- tralization, indeed! Why, the contro) of all our immense interstate commerce is already centralized in the hands of some half dozen despotic railroad kings, more exacting, im- perious, tyrannical and irresponsible than the head of any State in Uhristendom.’’ The railroad power is great in Congress, but such | blows as these cannot fail to make an impres- sion. A Terrible Outrage in Mexico. Our telegraphic news from Mexico, pub- lished to-day, gives an account of a shocking outrage upon an American missionary at Abualulco, in the State of Jalisco. It appears that on last Sunday week a priest at the above place delivered an incendiary sermon, and in the course of his remarks advo- | cated the extermination of the Prot- estants. This inflamed his hearers, and an armed mob of two hundred persons proceeded to the residence of Rev. John Stevens, a Con- gregational minister, sent out by the Boston | Beard of Foreign Missions, crying, live the prie: house of Mr. Stevens, seized him, smashed his head toa jelly and chopped his body into pieces. They afterwards sacked the house and carried off everything valuable. Finally the riot’ was suppressed by the local authorities. The government has sent troops to Ahualulco and proposes to investigate tho horrible affair and to arrest the priests. Other outrages and ‘Long troubles are mentioned in the news ; but this | monstrous deed of blood and fanaticism calls for exemplary vengeance. The Indian savages could not be more brutal. many of the Mexicans of the interior are little more civilized than our roving tribes of In- | dians. If the Mexican government cannot prevent such horrors on our border, if it can- not show that Mexico is a civilized nation and to be recognized as such, the sooner the United States blots out its existence the better. The Atlantic Icebergs—A ew to the Late Occan Weather. The reports from the Atlantic demonstrate an early and extraordinary descent of ice fields and icebergs from the Arctic Ocean. On the first of the month large fields of ice were re- ported from St. John’s, sailing off towards the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The Cunard steamship Calabria ‘passed great quantities of ice on the 7th inst., latitude 43 deg. north, longitude 50 deg. west,’’ and, on the same day, the Frisia, within a hundred miles of | that spot, encountered a mass of these icy | flotillas, But the steamship Idaho, as early as the 28th of February, in latitude 45 deg., longitude 48 deg., became entangled in them, and stopped her engines two hours. It is not known to many seamen that occasionally, as | Sir Leopold McClintock found in 1860, great quantities of ice accumulate on the coasts of Greenland, afterwards to be dislodged and precipitated toward the mid-Atlantic. In that year the accumulation of ice exceeded anything like it in the past thirty-six winters. unusual mildness of February, it would seem, has been potential, even in these high lati- | tudes, in unloosing the glacial masses and launching them on the swift Polar currents, which, sweeping throngh Davis Strait and along the Labrador coasts, commingle with or underrun the northern margin of the warm Gulf Stream. The early and apparently excessive precipi- tation of these ice islands into the vapor-laden region of the warm Atlantic current may probably afford a clew to the mystery of the terrible gale of the 27th of February, in which | so many steamships were disabled, The Antarctic icebergs which penetrate the warm- water helt gaat of Cape Horn are said to charges that it costs | This mob broke into the | In fact, | The | masses, with their widespreading boreal influ- ence, to the southeast of Newfoundland, would’ undoubtedly cause rapid and excessive con- densation of vapor, and hence a rapid fall of tho barometer and the invariably conse quent cyclonic tempest. The same chilling agency would also explain the furious snow storms which were reported by several of the disabled vessels, McClintock describes one of these frozen | Monsters two hundred and fifty feot high, | which was aground in five hundred feet of water in Baffin Bay, and ships, we know, have passed hundreds of smaller ones on the trans-Atlantic voyage. To melta single one of them an inconceivable amount of heat must be drawn from the surrounding air and ocean and their temperature be consequently re. duced. c As the indications favor the movement of unusually large numbers of these ice | mountains into the North Atlantic double skill and vigilance are demanded of the steamship captains. No doubt the equinoo- tial gales that have now sot in, and the ‘early approach of spring, will occasion great dis~ lodgements of the glaciers on the Arctic coasts, and render unwearied caution on the Atlantic necessary, not only by reason of collision with ice, but also by reason of the tempestuous weather the ice serves to breed. The Catiook—A Remarke- able Meteorological Phenomenon. From the monthly weather review, just published by the Signal Office, we have the | record of violent atmospheric disturbances, which seem to have anticipated the equinox. ‘The sun this week crosses the Equator, aud his march from the southern tropic to the line, with the consequent shifting of the bal- ance of heat from hemisphere to hemisphere, is invariably announced by such disturbances. There is no doubt we have passed through a remarkable winter—remarkable alike for its mildness of temperature and yet its tempestu- ousness. The high barometer and high cold winds of last week appear to have been the old Winter's dying effort to assert his waning supremacy over the season. The ice-making temperature which this spell gave us solidi- fied the streams and ponds from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the valley of the Potomac, and enabled the ice harvesters to secure an abundant supply of the summer luxury. This will remove every conceivable plea for costly ice next summer, and thus reconcile even the poor to the chilling blast, which apparently promises to be the breaking up of the winter. Among the interesting and striking phe- | nomena bronght to light in the current weather review is the thermal contrast presented tow- ards the close of February by the juxtaposi- tion of the polar and equatorial air currents over the Middle States, of which it iis stated ‘similar cases have occurred but three or four times during the last three years.’’ On the 22d and 23d ult., all along the seaboard States as far north as New Jersey, the cold northeast wind was struggling with a warm southwester, overlapping and underrunuing each other, so that the most | marked thermomuetric contrasts appeared. | Thus, on the 22d, with a northeast wind (47 | deg. Fahrenheit) at Philadelphia, there waa | an opposing southwest wind (73 deg. Fahren- heit) at Baltimore, showing a difference of uinoct 26 deg. in less. than a hundred miles. And this extraordinary group of contmsted isothermals continued for forty-eight hours, to be at last dissipated only by the development of the storm of the 25th ult. This phenomenon would seem to prove the somewhat premature arrival of the southerly or equinoctial conditions. The isothermal charts for the month (which ac- | company the current review) also show that | for the Middle, South Atlantic and Gulf States the mean monthly temperature was slightly above that which usually prevails in these sections, After the abnormal mildness ‘of the past season there can be no doubt | great caution is necessary to preserve health, and exposure will be more sensibly felt than | after a rigorous winter. But the poor, who have suffered for lack of food and fuel, may now take cheer in the prospect of approaching spring. And so, likewise, may all classes of business men. hs | The Eastern Question. | We print elsewhere a singularly thoughtfat | and able letter from a correspondent in Lon- don in reference to the Eastern question and the relations between England and Russia, | Our correspondent shows us, on the one hand, | the restlessness of English temper so far ag foreign relations are concerned—a restlosness | which was one of the animating canses of the | downfall of Gladstone. For although Mr. Dis- racli has no more intention of making war | than his predecessors, and although he sees very clearly that the glory of his administra- | tion must be peacefal to be enduring, yet it | was a good party cry to remind Englishmen that | they had been ‘“‘snubbed’’ by Bismarck and | “cheated’’ by the Americans. There is a feel- | ing, as our correspondent shows, that England , cannot make any further concessions in | European affairs without “losing her prestige” and becoming as unimportant in Europe as | Belgium or Sweden. ‘The one point on the Continent to which | the minds of Englishmen are constantly di- rected is the Black Sea. Now that France has been humiliated by Germany and hemmed in by smaller kingdoms, now that there is no longer a danger of French ambition, the Eng- lish are anxious about Russia. It will be re- | membered that, during the French and Ger. man war, Bussis compelled England to break the treaty which had been signed after Sebas~ topol. England had either to break this treaty or fight, and fight Germany as well as Russia, with France, her natural ally in all | Enstern questions, prostrate, helpless, gasp. ing for life. The treaty was broken, and, as | our correspondent shows, “‘it was the lifting of | the floodgates;” and he adds, “‘it is idle now | to try to sweep back the deluge.” The natural \ result, sconer or later, must be the dismem- | berment of Turkey. Austria is to have @ | slice, and in return for the eastern coastof the | Adriatic as far as the Greek frontier she will give | Italy the Italian Tyrol and, perhaps, even Trieste. In Constantinople everything is ripe | for Russian aggression, and the only party | that would oppose the Russian advance would | be the fanatical Mussulmans. While no timeis intimated for this movement our correspond- | ent shows that there is no time better than | the present for a favorable execution of the 1 Ruslan, plang, | | | \ |