text: 2?SS'—C *k -V ;«A;'F ‘ ;■'■*' ■ "M'mf'-^W'." -.JH'WIKIU - V msF.jIL I'- -.Mi ■£ W W''. ; :? --.JW‘i4s. ajUR- v|XHL« W^WmW*. gwfc.- : W|S* 3•5? - • (Lit ■ -:*t ■» - F' 'r -JCi* - ■■- y u-A- ; >■-'*'.c-v •- VOLUME 1 <Tljf Ciniput lift A. W. ■«C»Ol*L». •DIYOft AND FMormiMYOM, !• SMC 10 ITIIT Oflll *ll* AT t«» CITY OF NINLINGER, DAKOTA CO., M. T AT TWO DOLLARS a TKaR, IN ADVANCE uni or adviit!»»: ■if hi lint*, one time. •• three times..-.-.-..-100 contrecu will be made with those desiring to advertise hr the jeer SsvlMhelm on Niniaewla. This lady and veteran editor, is now located in the northern part of Minnesota, whither she took up her abode to recover her health. She has just resumed her editorial labors in a new paper, printed at St. Cloud, Stearns Co. From the opening article in the first number we make the following extracts: being the point where the destitution and suffering is said to prevail, we hope our contemporaries who have been so urgent in the matter, will regard what is here stated. To those who are at all familiar with the character of Mrs. Swisshelm, it would be unnecessary to show how unlikely it would be for her to give coloring to any statement she would make on this subject. In the allusion to the Indians, womanlike, she had her fears unduly excited on first arriving in the Territory, and published an account in the N.Y. Tribune, of the alarming condition of the settlers, as she then supposed, and which she now playfully alludes to. Her sober thoughts after a few months' time, the experience of all those who come here nervously fearfully, will corroborate. We arrived here in the latter part of June and found the grasshoppers busily engaged in destroying the crops. So far as could be heard from, they had finished up the wheat, the strawberries, and young fruit trees, — garden vegetables they had taken up roots and all, and had left but little of corn and potatoes. They were still at work, the question was, “when will they stop?” Early in the autumn, previous they had come in one night, settling upon the prairies like a shower of hail, stripping many of the gardens in an hour and utterly destroying the crops then standing. These had deposited their larve and died, and it was the young brood that was now at work. Would they emigrate, and how soon was now the question; and one that was answered early in July, when for ten days or more, millions of silvery wings, going with the wind, darkened the air like an April snow storm. During all this period of anxiety and prospect of famine, it occurred to us that the people had a very cheery way of submitting to circumstances — not a solemn face to be seen, nor a lamentation to be heard. Folks looked at the black, warm soil and nodded their heads knowingly, as much as to say, "Well, the grasshoppers are in luck this time; but it will be our turn next." Their cheerfulness was rewarded, for after the pests left, the late crops in most places revived, and yielded abundantly; and all that sowed root crops after they left, reaped plenteous rewards. Some few localities had not been visited at all by the migratory horde, and in the county there is an abundance of corn, potatoes, turnips, beets, and squashes, to supply the wants of man and Beast, while some few persons have good crops of wheat. But the famine was not the only trouble. Last winter there was an outbreak amongst the Indians, who murdered about thirty whites. These murderers fled, and have never been brought to justice, but Uncle Sam so far as we can learn, is still presenting them with guns and blankets. Coming in one day from a visit to Eagle Nest Lakes we met the garrison from Fort Ripley on their way to Kansas, and knowing we were without a show of government protection, between us and some three or four thousand Indian warriors, in a state of open revolt, who could come from the hunting grounds over which they still roamed, in twenty-four hours easy march and stand under our windows. We thought the men here should have taken measures to get possession of some one, two, or half-a-dozen “culled pussons,” known as the property of some citizens of Missouri. Then the government would have been compelled to send the navy up to Lake Superior, and the army to St. Cloud, to catch the thieves and reclaim the property. We could easily have found them one year’s occupation at the business, and, in the meantime our red neighbors would have been quiet, and Gov. Medary could have had the trouble settled. But our folks took the prospect of sealing just as they did that of famine, looked cheery, and counted heads. Well, they rather appeared to like the idea of doing their own fighting, and no thanks to the regulars. In all these up-river towns they organized themselves into volunteer companies and sent to Gov. Medary for arms. These were supplied, and St. Cloud has two companies of seventy mer. each, furnished with muskets. Our Uncle could not afford rifles for Minno sota, but many have them in their list of private pro perty, with revolvers to boot, ami they talk of not al lowing the Indians to do all tfie shooting if they should come down liurmg the winter ; but no danger is appre hended, as our blue coats got safely through with the siege of Lawrence, frightened the wicked Yankees who were going i<> kidnap ihe black babies, and have got back again to Fort Ripley. Then the majority of our oldest inhabitants had eojue here since the Spring of ’sb, and the winters ! \V hew '• The story of our Muscatine friend who assured us that " up here there was fif een months winter every year, was not so much of a mistake after all.” The river was to close at the 10th of November, snow fall before or soon after, when we should have our last view of the brown earth until the March sun melted her fleecy shrouds. The mercury was to freeze in December and stay frozen until late in February. Ho that the only trouble which threatened this doomed community,apart from the ordinary ills all “ flesh is heir to,” were those i.f ii(.jn>r starved, scalped, aud frozen, and all the while the people refused to lay it to heart. Men would whistle and children romp ond when we “felt to mourn ” over their insensibility, the minor revealed the startling fact that our face lacked length of sorrowful proportions, while we had very nearly reached the predicament of i'lvra MoiUwaey, by having out-grown that self. Sir, our beloved merino, the comfort and of years gone by. Alas! for human depravity. But when we are in the midst of afflictive dispensations, not knowing where to get the wherewith for the next barrel of flour; and yet looking as merry as the man who has meal to sell. The cause appears to be in the climate. Something in the sunlight fades out the blues and melts on thin haze, for lack of other vapors out of which to manufacture clouds; while the prairie breezes toss despair into the river to be tumbled down its swift current, over its dashing falls and rushing rapids, and find a lodgment somewhere below. This is the 9th of December, and the swift current rushes on laughing at the futile attempts of the true Spirit to place shackles on her free, strong will. The mercury has twice dropped below zero for a few hours each time, but very soon thought better of it, and for the last month has been zigzag between five above and fifteen below freezing point. On the 17th of November we had two inches of snow which soon disappeared under the bright sunlight, and gave place to several days of warm rains. On the 6th inst., five inches of snow fell, and two days of sunshine threatened to exterminate it, but today (Dec. 11) proves it well settled into fine sledding. The Press of the Times. The art of being happy is less cultivated in this land than almost any other. We wake extravagant preparations for it; we heap up material; we go through an immense experience preparatory to being happy, and in the midst, it is the very thing which we forget to extract from an abundant preparation. Contentment is a quality which few know how to reconcile with aspiration, and still less with enterprise. Satisfaction, therefore, is the bright ideal of the future. It never blossoms today. It is always tomorrow. Men never come up with their hopes. The short and intense excitements which we misname enjoyment are paroxysms, not steady pulsations. At length it comes to pass that men do not enjoy life in the midst of heaped up prosperity. And am I reverses they become themselves when the topmost leaves of the frutan tree are plucked by the wind, and refuse to shelter themselves beneath the vast breadth of what remains. The whole land stands in surprise and complaint at a sudden and violent revolution. Our disasters are in every mouth. The change of circumstances is the torrid theme. A little while ago and we could see nothing but brightness, and now nothing but darkness. Then it was now all the while; now it is midnight. In neither case was there a balance and just judgment. The light was too bright then, and the darkness is too dense now. It becomes us to estimate — to sit down and put one thing over against another, and to trace a judgment upon a view of all the sides of our life. Case. There are undoubted evidences of the advance of the world in true civilization. Within the last ten years, the most extraordinary wars and civil revolutions have taken place on the globe. Once such a combination and movement as we have but lately beheld, would have effected the whole globe with terror. Since the French Emperor put his bloody foot upon the steps of the throne, there have been set on foot the most widespread combinations of governments, the most prodigious armies and navies, such as turn the historic Armada into a mere affair of yachts. Once the globe would have trembled to the footsteps of such an unparalleled war! So much did the spirit of the past dwell in military things, that, a hundred or two hundred years ago, such a history would have drawn with it the world's nerve and blood vitality. But now all Western Europe rose up and the world not trembled. All Russia gathered together and the Orient did not feel it. And the pounding of war in that gigantic conflict disturbed the world as little as a thrasher's flail upon the barn-door disturbs the firm earth beneath it. Not even the nations that carried such battle in their hands thought it heavy. Great Britain took her left hand. Not a wheel stopped in her manufactories. Not an acre the less was filled in France; and the world when this side read the account simply as news, it produced no more effect than the last serial story that drags its long and tedious tail through the cheap and stupid magazines. But now, upon these Western shores, over-eager capitalists and operators have pushed their trade too far and built their plans too fast. A bank explodes in Ohio; then a line of banks gives way in Pennsylvania. It shook the continent more than all the cannonade of Sebastopol. Next, the banks of New York suspended. All business stopped. Society was tremulous from top to bottom. The tidings are buried across the ocean. That wonderful Island, whose top is narrow, but whose base is broad as the whole earth, began to quiver, and that silent panic brought her down quicker than an axe brings the ox! War could not make her plumes to quiver; but Commerce, by a look, cast her upon the ground. And it stands apparent to the world, by the grandest Demonstration, that Commerce has supplanted War, and is its muster. The General’s sword, the Marshal’s truncheon, the King’s crown, are not the strongest things. The world’s strength lies in the million hands of producers and exchanges. Power has shitted. No matter who reigns—the Merchant reigns. No matter what the form of government is, the power of the world is in the hands of the people. The King's hand is weaker than the Banker’s. War cannot convulse the world—but Capital cannot. This should not be mentioned as if it were an un-mixed good. It has its own nuschéis, for every event grows in a husk, which at first preserves and then gathers the grain; and Commerce has its dangers and tyrannies; but it marks the direction the world is pursuing, and the progress of the match, the growth which is everywhere to be witnessed, is away from dynasties, from imperious governments, and towards the great masses of men. This is one of the signs of the times which wise men are able to discern in the present crisis. It is true, a man that was rich yesterday, but is bankrupt today, may. It is not only consolation in being told that his facile destruction was one of the straws which show which way the wind blows; but, notwithstanding, it lives to show; and though we are sorry for the immediate sufferers, we do not think it necessary to refuse some alleviation. The conditions of growth in our age and nation are unlike those of past times, and are not to be measured by them. Germany, France, Great Britain, began in a barbarous state, and through centuries developed their civilization. Their growth was slow; their wants did not require any ingenuity or skill for supply. Slowness gives nations a chance to be steady. Our nation has no interior infancy. Our fathers were ripe men for their age. Society in America has begun, at the beginning, with all the wants which, abroad, came gradually through centuries. INTENTIONAL DUPLICATE EXPOSURE CITY OF NININGER, DAKOTA COUNTY, MINNESOTA TERRITORY, JANUARY 25,55. The inevitable result of such condition was two-fold: slow to give an extraordinary impulse to our people in industrial directions; and to oblige them to devise every possible means of operating. With no accumulated capital with no past behind us, that had built towns, roads, and structures for us, we yet had the same taste, the same intellectual wants, the same scale of social life, the same or higher domestic needs. It was impossible that men who were under such conditions—a quick, enterprising, industrious, ambitious people—should not be powerfully influenced, and that in the earlier stages of national life the propelling power should not be in excess, and the consolidating and steadying power relatively deficient. Never was there a people truer to their circumstances had they tried to live in the past they would have been like a plant trying to grow away from the light. God put their life in their future. They pressed toward it. Even the present was but one broad step, by which to go further toward the future. And all the developments among us have been those which were necessary—in the imperfect way in which the world always grows—to this answering of our people to their true nature. The central faculty which warms, incites, and intensely influences the American mind, is Hope. And while we are conveyed by this power we must take it, with all its limitations and evils, as well as all its good. Hope, tempered and judiciously combined, works out full and fruitful enterprises, and gives light and pleasure to industry. But this feeling is subject to various conditions and diseases. Gambling, in the worst sense, is a crime. is nothing but the last and worst development of diseased Hope. The distance and difference between the mild beginning and the terrific end of this action is immense. The risk and ventures of the stock market are another source of speculation. Hence, nationally, and as a fact of race, this feeling is large. Past and present circumstances have powerfully developed and inspired it. It has given to us, in our circumstances, a character of adventurousness not only, but a great part of our material prosperity has arisen from this very thing. To construct thirty or forty thousand miles of railroad in twenty-five years could never be done by themselves, but it is a great part of our material prosperity. There seems an overruling element in affairs, that provides tendencies that in the exigency. If our border men were not rude, coarse, hard—nature and circumstances would be too much for them. Even when cut off, they are less a loss. Living on dying, they seem fitted. And in the early periods of commercial development there is a need of pioneers. Men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, in venturesome enterprises, shall go ahead. We are fortunate in having such. We owe to them an immense obligation. It is the ruined men of the community who make the prosperous men. They went before. They ventured as no others would. They foresaw, or thought they did. They had that mind-element which made it easy for them, as it was hard for others. Even in the mutations aud upsettings of this class of men there is to bo observed a wisdom of aftairs. It I does not hurt a sanguine man, full of spring and hope, Ito be destroyed. Some men are like some of the earliei I forms of worms; cutting them in pieces only multiplies them. Every fragment gathers up a head, and fiuishes : out a new tail, and moves along. You may turn a life boat over and it will right again ; but it would not do to try it on a frigate or liue-of-battle ship. Many meu in New York get so used to failures that they expect them as much as ten pin* expect to be tripped up—it is part of the game; or if they do not expect it, their neighbors do. When a community is moving under such influence land pressure, there is neither legislation, nor experience, ! nor any other regulating power, that can prevent ten i deucy to excess. Some men will live too fast. Some 1 will venture too far. Gradually, competitions and j strivings in a large and free acting community will en ; gender heat. Heat will carry people further than they ! know ; it will tend to develope that most, powerful ele- I incut —credit, which carries iu its right hand blessings, j and in its left curses, but ten blessings to one curse, in i varying periods, ten, fifteen and twenty years, according ! to circumstances, meu will have ventured so far along 1 that a reckoning day will come. And such cases are but that relief which the gieat system needs. It is but 1 a fever, arisiug from the re-action of nature —the throw ! ing ott of morbid matter. In this process, sufferings of pride, honor, and even personally and bodily, tend to keep men's faces too close to their affairs to let them see the benefit of the whole operation. One would think by the exclamations of ruin, disaster, and dismay, that discs are deadly—almost the whole evil is upon individuals, without inflicting any considerable damage upon society. And even that which falls upon individuals is temporary, and compensated by collateral benefits which, upon the whole, in a large way of judging, are beneficial. It should be borne in mind, and thought of with thankfulness, that although a heavy pecuniary pressure has been resting on the community, our great indulging mercy of Health, the land throughout, was never more eminent than now; that abundance for man's sustenance was never greater, and for the general national want, never so available; that it is only particular points that suffer; that the average virtue, intelligence, and progress of the masses is onward; and not backward; that we are not tangled or wasted by foreign wars; that our great national struggles are pointing toward Victory; that Free Labor never so strong as power; and that discussion never was so thorough and satisfactory. It should be borne in mind, also, that with this crisis, nothing peaches. No ships will rot, as under embargo; stores will not go down; not a wheel will rust, but only rest; the railroads, whose creation has cost us so much, are created, and will not go back, but thunder on. Not an acre will go again to forest; not a seed will rot. We shall hold all the substantial elements grined, losing no art, no science, no ideas, no skills, no industry, nothing but a little temporary comfort; and for that, we shall receive back steadiness, safety, reality, and consolidation, worth a thousandfold. Michael Angelo's Lot for Florence. A spell seemed to hang over Michael Angelo's exertions to ennoble his beloved Florence. The cartoon, in which he celebrated the martial exploits of his countrymen, perished before it was transferred to the walls of the Capitol. His offer to execute the sculpture of Dante's Monument was made to the unheeding ear of one who was the constant enemy of true greatness, and fell to the ground. The heroic defense of Florence, protected by the fortifications of Ban Minia, was rendered useless by treachery. The sculptures of the tombs of the Medici, in which some of the workings of his mighty soul, vigorous even in his sadness, were fine? SCHIF Fain to express themselves, remain unfinished; and all other attempts to induce the artist to revisit the spot which he had so much loved, proved ineffectual, owing partly to Papal compulsion, and partly to his unwillingness to abandon in his old age a work which he had undertaken for the glory of God and for the good of his own soul, but certainly not for his peace of mind or body in this life. Nevertheless, the glory of Florence as a home of liberty, and defender to the death of national rights, reached its culminating point in her resistance to the Imperialist forces in 1528. And of this glory Michael Angelo had no small part. Of the actions which an epic poet would narrate, of the scenes which a historian would describe, of the picture in which a painter would represent the operation of those forces which so many times and in such confusion and dismay, rolled back the tide of war from the devoted city, Michael Angelo is the hero, the leading personage, the central figure. In the year 1551, a violent tumult arose in the people of the priests attacked the Sultan and threatened him with all the terrors which their office placed at their command — the reason being the brilliant success of the first coffee houses, which were in that year opened. These were crowded all day, while the mosques were almost deserted. The Sultan relieved himself from the difficulty by the means most profitable to himself; he laid a heavy tax upon the coffee houses, and thus quieting the muffs, obtained a considerable revenue; for, in spite of this, the use of coffee spread with wonderful rapidity over Europe. In 1652, the Greek, Basque, opened the first London coffee house in George Yard, Lombard Street, (according to McCulloch, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in the place where the Virginia coffee house lately stood,) and in 1671 the first in Marseilles was established. The present production is probably about 250,000 tons, while a hundred and fifty years ago it scarcely exceeded 5,000. In 1620, A. Von Humboldt estimated the consumption in Europe at 75,000 tons, valued at 1,500,000 pounds; while the value of the present consumption of 125,000 tons does not perhaps reach 0,700,000 pounds. Whence came this custom of drinking coffee? Who discovered the precious substance? We know not. We find the most trustworthy account in the work of the Scheikh Abd-Alkader-König, dated in the year 1666, which has been published by Sy Lives of S. Sey in his 'Gristophane Arabi,' and which bears the title of 'The Prop of Innocence,' in reference to the lawfulness of coffee.' According to this account, the very learned and pious Scheikh Djemal eddin-Ebn-Aben-Alfaggar introduced the drinking of coffee in the beginning of the fifteenth century into Aden, the city which has in recent times acquired such great political importance, and from thence it soon spread to Mecca and Medina. He himself became acquainted with this beverage in Abyssinia, where it had been known from time immemorial. The common notion, therefore, that coffee was originally indigenous in Arabia, is altogether incorrect. At that time, a decoction of the roasted shells was as often drunk as that of what, from the Arabian word Bonnu, are called the Beans. The beverage was in both cases called Kahvca. According to the other accounts published by Abd-Alkader-Ebn-Mohammed, it appears also that the custom of coffee-drinking goes back beyond the time of historical record in Abyssinia, and that in Arabia even, coffee only supplanted a drink of similar properties, the cafta, made from the leaves of the Kat, (Cela), the use of which they also inherited from their ancestors, without any account of its origin. When the Spaniards first landed in Mexico, they became acquainted with a native beverage, which had been used from time immemorial, called by the natives cholera, and prepared from the seeds of a tree which they named cacahwquahuiti (cacao tree). Wherever the Spanish dominion has subsequently extended, there also has the use of chocolate reacned, and the rest of Europe has asserted an abundant claim to a share in this new beverage. In the commencement of the seventeenth century, a quantity of carefully packed dried green leaves were presented to a Russia East India Company in return for their gifts of splendid sable furs, and even forced upon them at spite of their protest against such useless wares, but when they brought the same to Moscow, and had them prepared according to the directions, the tea, for such it was, found equally great approval. Almost at the same time the Dutch East India Company attempted to sell sage to the Chinese, which, at that time, was used as tea is now, and they obtained in exchange Chinese tea. In 1661, the English East India Company considered that they made a brilliant present to the Queen of England, in the shape of two pounds of tea. The use of tea as a beverage in China goes back to the earliest periods, and the traditions speak of it distinctly so early as the third century. The oldest Chinese legend remains one strongly of the course of the introduction of coffee into Arabia. It narrates: ‘A pious hermit.’ Who in his watchings and prayers had often been overtaken by sleep, so that his eyelids closed, in holy wrath against the wealtite of the flesh, cut them off and threw them on the ground. But a god Orused a tea-shrub to spring out of them, the leaves of which exhibit the form of an eye-lid border with lashes, and possess the gift of hindering sleep. At the period Tea and Coffee. DEFECTIVE PAGE When the Europeans first became acquainted with it, it is largest, sized spaces and the larger parts were already spread generally over the whole of South America. The more eastern Asia, and Europe did not long remain behind its walls, the more eastern Asia, and Europe did not long remain behind its walls. With the same passion with which key and some other birds, the Japanese take their tea, the Brazilian and almost the electricians. The nautilus is a whole population of South America rejoicing in their gator. He raises and lowers his sails, e.-t, and highlands, which is sometimes confused birds of musicians. The baver is an archer, a bird of music, which is sometimes confused birds of musicians. The baver is an archer, a bird of music, which is sometimes confused birds of musicians. With the Camini, the leaves of the Camini Gonyolia, or wood-cutter. He cuts down trees and erects houses, with the Guarnna, a kind of coffee prepared from the and dons. The marmot is a coin! enginer. He does seeds of Paulhmn norbihs. The use of mate also has not only build houses, but construct, aqueducts and been a custom in Brazil from time immemorial. Drapers to keep them; the ant mainiaius a regular standing army. Wasps are a p-per manufacturer. Caterial life is everywhere is the origin of their use of pillars are silk spinners. The squirrel is a terry man. Enveloped in mythical obscurity; everywhere has man, with a chip or a piece of bark for a boat, and his tail not led by rational considerations, by knowledge of their for a sail, he crosses a stream. Dogs, wolves, jackals, properties and action, or by comparison of them with and many others, are hunters. The black bear and already known nutritive substances, but as it were in heron are fishermen the ants are day laborers. The ants are day laborers. On account of the importance of the substance, and of the merest which must naturally have been excited by the considerations just alluded to, chemistry has sought to know how far it is able to contribute to the explanation of these strange phenomena. The result has proved contrary to all expectation, and has only more entangled the problem. Ouday found in tea a substance crystallizing in delicate white needles, which he called the "inexhaustible," and the quantity of which amounted to one-half percent. Even earlier, in 1820, Runge had detected in coffee a substance in fine crystals, with a silky luster, of which there was scarcely one-third percent. Runge named it caffeine. Another inquirer found in cacao theobromine in smaller quantity; then there was shown to exist in that, caffeine in guarana; and finally, more accurate researches demonstrated that theine and caffeine are one and the same substance, which is distinguished from all other known vegetable substances by the extraordinarily large proportion of nitrogen it contains. and that theobromine, if not identical, is intimately related to it. Is it not in the highest degree remarkable, that a proportion, even though only very small, of one and the same peculiar substance occurs in all these beverages, which have with such striking rapidity become necessaries of life over the whole inhabited globe? A remarkable problem, from the solution of which we are still so far the more distant, that the experiments hitherto instituted by physicians and chemists have as yet. On the whole, it seems likely that the Shetland, Scottish, Welsh, Swedish, and Icelandic pony is one and the same animal, as to its origin or original mode of production, slightly influenced perhaps by the original type of horse of which it is a pattern, diminishes in size, but undeteriorated in spirit by years, nay centuries, of habituation to cold and scanty fare. In Spain, there existed from an early date in the middle ages a peculiar breed of very small, highly bred horses, scarcely to be called ponies, known as the Andalusian jezzet, the descendants of which are said still to exist in the Conemara horse, peculiar to Galway in Ireland, and to have existed in the Scottish Galloway, on the shores of the Solway Frith, in the south of Scotland, and probably in the Nurragansett pacer, both of which familiar are now unfortunately extinct. These Spanish ponies, or ponies of Spanish descent, are referable to another and entirely different mode of production, by breeding, and not by deterioration in size or dwarfing. In Asiatic and European Russia, again, the Cossack horse, which is little more than a large pony with good Turkish blood, is evidently the result of modified dwarfing by hardship and severity of climate. It is remarkable, however, of all these European and Asiatic ponies, as also of the American varieties, that, unlike most animals which have degenerated in size, owing to severity of climate and scanty fare, they have lost nothing of their spirit, and, what is yet more singular, have gained rather than lost in their capability to endure toil, hardship, and spare diet, in which particulars. The tiny Shetland and the rugged Cossack will probably surpass any other horses in existence. Of the Southern Asiatic races, comparatively little is known, but it is certain that in Ceylon there is a pigmy race of ponies, not exceeding twenty-seven inches in height. A little mare was exhibited in London in 1765, brought from the East Indies, only 27 inches high, well formed, and between four and five years old. At the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, somewhere about 1818, a little horse was exhibited, said to have come from Siam, of 8 inches, which, however, did not at all resemble a pony, but was a perfect miniature type of a thoroughbred horse of 16 hands, and was too slender to be of any possible utility; whereas the small Shetlanders, but little superior in size, are capable of carrying a man whose legs will drag upon the ground. From the singular tendency of the Siamese, Chinese, and Cochin Chinese to produce dwarfs and monstrosities of all kinds, whether plants, fowls, quadrupeds, or human beings, by some mysterious artificial process, it was greatly doubted at the time, whether this animal was not the result of some strange jugglery. In Persia, and among the mountains of Afghanistan, there is found a useful breed of large ponies called Ynuhn, which is probably merely the Turkoman horse stunted by the harshness and severe tyi titers of the hill country. And lastly, in America we have the Indian Pony of the North, of the Canadian type, the Mustang of the South West, and in South America, a very singular looking breed of horses of very diminutive size, which is found in the mountains of Venezuela, not neatly formed like ponies, but rather resembling ling cart horses in miniature. They have large shaggy manes, very rough coats, and thick fetlocks covered with long hair. They are never shod, nor are their booty ever pared, so that the horny part projects forward in some instances to nearly a foot in length. This gives the animal a most awkward appearance and suggests the idea of people walking with spovy shoes; yet, notwithstanding this apparent encumbrance, they are very sure footed little animals, and are considered equal to mules on bad, rocky roads. Bees are geometricians. The cells are so constructed as, with the least quantity of material, to have the furious Fads. Expedition up the User. We learn from Rev. Mr. Bushnell, the excellent missionary from the Gaboon River, on the Western coast of Africa, that letters have been lately received in this city from Rev. Mr. Mackey, one of the missionaries of the Presbyterian Board, giving information of the progress of the present English expedition to the Niger. Mr. Mackey was at Fernando Po when the expedition arrived at that island, and became acquainted with the general plan and object of the expedition, and he has great confidence in its success, and in the important results which it will secure to science and to missions. The exploration of this ancient river has long been a favorite object of geographical discovery. Its source has been enveloped in mystery. Travelers have ascended it for hundreds of miles, and still left it wandering far away into the heart of the African continent, to be lost in the sands of the desert. Repeated attempts have been made to explore it by intrepid adventurers. Mungo Park succeeded in reaching it, and was in the act of descending the river when he lost his life at the hands of the natives. Other explorers have not been more successful. But the chief obstacle hitherto to the advance of Europeans into the interior of Africa, has been the terrible climate—which has been far more dreaded than the savage foe. This has proved most deadly to the white race, and has been the great barrier to travelers and to missionaries. But experience is teaching Europeans how to guard against its fatal effects. The secret of combating it successfully has been at last discovered, though the knowledge has been obtained at a fearful cost. When the first English expedition ascended the Niger, about 1842, so great was the mortality that on its return, it is said, there were hardly enough left alive to throw the dead overboard. But this terrible experience did not prevent a renewal of the attempt. A dozen years later, in 1855, a second expedition sailed up the river. This time it carried a physician who thought he had learned how to fight the African fever. Before the steamer crossed the bar at the river’s mouth, he commenced giving quinine to every man on board, in doses of about six grains. These were given every day, and this was continued for sixteen weeks, or all the time that the expedition was in the river, and was even kept up for a fortnight after it had crossed the bar again and was out in the open sea. The result was that it did not lose a man! The scourge of Africa was completely disarmed. Thus fortified against the climate, the present expedition will probably be able to prosecute its voyage in safety, and we may reasonably anticipate great results from its prolonged and careful explorations. The last expedition accomplished more than had been done before. It penetrated three hundred miles farther into the interior, and discovered beyond the coast region, beyond the mountain and the forest, a vast prairie country, hardly broken by trees, over which any expedition which had once passed the chain of mountains along the coast, and the dense forests that overhang the river, might roam almost without limit. The present expedition is designed, not only to sail up the Southern branch—the Chidda—but to explore thoroughly both arms of this mighty river. Though the source of the Niger be not yet exactly determined, it is supposed to lie in Senegambia, in the rear of the chain of mountains behind Sierra Leone. There it is probable that Europeans, in the course of the present year, will discover the secret that has so long baffled their search. This expedition, in connection with the grand discoveries of Barth and Livingston, in North, Central, and Southern Africa, will do much to clear up the mystery which hangs over that dark continent, and to open its rivers, its forts, and its deserts to the entrance of civilization and Christianity. —[N. Y. Evangelist. The spider and the snake. It would seem that there is no living thing so obnoxious as not to find some admirers. What creatures so repulsive as rats and spiders? Yet the London Quarterly finds something beautiful and even loveable in the fumer, and Dr. Asa Fitch, in Harper's Monthly, labors to show that the latter ‘delicate little objects’ are worthy of our esteem and admiration! He denies that their bite is fatal to any sane insects, and extols their agility, adroitness, sagacity and heroism as worthy of all praise. In support of these views he tells the following curious story concerning a heroic spider who captured a snake. The affair came off last summer, in the store of Charles Cook, in the village of Havana, Chemung County, N.Y., and is attested by the Hon. A.B. Dickinson, of Corning, who himself witnessed the phenomena, as did more than a hundred others. An ordinary looking spider of a dark color, its body not larger than that of a common house fly, had taken up its residence, it appears, on the underside of a shelf beneath the counter of Mr. Cook’s store. What may we suppose was the surprise and consideration of this little animal on discovering a snake about a foot long selecting for its abode the floor underneath, only two or three spans from its nest. It was a common silk snake, which, perhaps, had been brought into the store unseen in a quantity of sawdust with which the floor had been recently carpeted. The spider was well aware no doubt, that it would inevitably fall a prey to this horrid monster the first time it should inautiously venture within its reach. We should expect to avoid such a frightful doom, it would forsake its present abode, and seek a more secure retreat elsewhere. But it is not improbable that a brood of its eggs or young was secreted near the spot, which the parent foresaw would fall a prey to this monster if they were abandoned by their natural guardian and protector. We can conceive of no other motive which could have induced the spider so pertinaciously to stay and defend that particular spot at the imminent risk of her life, when she could so easily 