miralty showed a disposition to give the colonies everything they wanted. When monetary matters were determined, the naming of the ships came up. The Admiralty proposed to call one the Pandora. The colonies objected, and at their suggestion she was called the Katoomba. Similarly, the Admiralty-given names of Peloris, Persian, Phoenix, Wizard, and Whiting were changed to Mildura, Wallaroo, Tauranga, Karralatta, and Boomerang. All these are the native names of Australian places, or of articles and implements known to the aboriginals.

Thus has Australia possessed herself of a necessary part of her national outfit. It is the first instance on record of a colony and a parent country entering upon an alliance in such terms.

From Temple Bar. A NIGHT WITH JAPANESE FIREMEN. No country in the world, not even excepting Turkey, suffers so frequently and so terribly from the scourge of fire as Japan. The reasons are evident. Owing to the prevalence of earthquakes, the houses are principally built of wood, the constant use of cheap, highly inflammable kerosene oil, the passion for adorning teahouses and places of entertainment with flimsy paper lanterns, which are generally swinging close to mat blinds and paper windows, and the happy-go-lucky character of the people, being the most prominent.

A fire in Japan is generally a very substantial reality, for, once under way, it scorns to pause after the destruction of a single house, or indeed of half-a-dozen, but speeds with incredible rapidity over entire villages and entire quarters of a town. Hence the remarkable scarceness of really ancient edifices in one of the world's most ancient empires. Matters have changed nowadays, but ten years ago the safeguards against the terrible national Scourge were miserably inadequate. The native fire-engines, wooden squirts of antique pattern and of the rudest manufacture, were about as efficacious as so many garden syringes. There was a good deal of pomp and show in the way of mounted officials in picturesque dress, gaudy standards, and mystic insignia; but in nine cases out of ten, when a fire got well alight, it burned itself out, and, for aught the native firemen did to check it, they might have been snugly snoring between their quilts.

In the foreign settlement of Yokohama Western science of course did its best to obviate this state of affairs, for, although the native quarter was most frequently the seat of these destructive visitations, rarely a month passed during the winter months without the record of one or more fires among the more solid habitations of the foreigners.

We had two steam fire-engines, British and American respectively, manned by British and American volunteers, principally the young commercial men of the settlement, active, athletic fellows who joined as much, it must be said, for the fun of the thing, as from any impulse of duty towards the community; and these rival companies throughout the fire season ran a neck-and-neck race for supremacy in the most friendly manner, and together were of more practical value than all the native brigades with ten times the number of men. The Japanese authorities, of course, secretly recognized this superiority, but at the same time the Japanese official, ready as he was beginning to be to let his hair grow in Western fashion, to wear Western shoe-leather, and to appreciate Western liquor, had not yet quite learned to smother his old national pride, and was only toying with these allurements of Western civilization which he now so eagerly and enthusiastically embraces, so that when the fire-bell rang out, forth he came with his plumes and standards, and shouts and excitement, in the good old fashion of his forefathers, and, as often as not, had to submit to the mortification of seeing the errand upon which he was bent performed by these same foreigners whom he affected to despise.

Matters, however, could not go on like this. In two successive weeks two big fires destroyed a section of the city of Tokio, whilst a brand-new steam fire-engine was being veiled in cobwebs in a shed, because the Yamato Daishi". the spirit of old Japan - would not permit use being made of it. A meeting of wise men was held as a result, and a long confab gave birth to the following invitation, which was sent to the captain of the American Fire Company, to a French officer, and to the writer of this paper:

--

"Kikuchi, chief of the Tokio firemans, offer his wish to Mr. X, and he can come to food when so likes him at Firemans office, Shinagawa, Tokio."

"The thin end of the wedge. The old fellow is going to get all he can out of us about his engine," was our unanimous com. ment upon this extraordinary epistle. To

Shinagawa, a suburb of Tokio enjoying a very ill repute, we therefore went on a bitter snowy evening of December, prepared for possible emergencies by donning waterproofs and big boots.

The Shinagawa fire-station was sufficiently conspicuous by its tall ladder surmounted by a fire-bell, its pyramidal piles of buckets, and its two huge lanterns; and that we were to be the recipients of unusual attention was evident from the appearance of the entire fire company, drawn up in front of the house to greet us.

Smart, active-looking, muscular little fellows these firemen were, attired in coarse overall suits of blue, adorned on breast and back with white hieroglyphics, and wearing hoods over their heads and faces with eyeholes which reminded us of the cagoules worn by the Italian brothers of the Misericordia.

The captain and his lieutenant, attired in full war-paint, which made them look as if they had stepped down from an ancient bronze or lacquer tray, received us with the customary prostrations and guttural expressions of abject unworthiness, and showed us round the station, explaining the antiquated squirt-boxes, hooks, ladders, standards, and other paraphernalia, with which we were in duty bound to express ourselves surprised and delighted.

Then we were ushered into a large apartment, made by the simple process of taking down sliding doors and screens and so knocking half-a-dozen rooms into one, wherein there was evidence of a banquet. To describe this banquet does not come within the province of this paper. Suffice it therefore to say, that we disposed of a very satisfactory quantity of viands, commencing with sweet seaweed and winding up with stewed eels, and, had we yielded to the pressing invitations of our hosts, would have disposed of a far from satisfactory quantity of wine, which was hot and of the famous brands known as the wine of the Three Virtues, the wine of the Carp Saltant, and the wine of the Red Arrow.

Then we pulled out cigars, and chatted and joked all the time that our ears were eagerly listening for the weird, solemn voice of the hanshô or fire-bell. But hour after hour slipped by, light after light disappeared from the world outside; the watchman with his staff of jingling rings croaked out midnight, a few roisterers alone broke the silence of the sleeping streets with their songs and shouts, and the great alarm-bell hung dark and mute

high up, as it were, amongst the snowclouds.

Our hosts plied us with questions concerning the manipulation of our fireengines; that is to say, indirectly they wanted to learn how to handle their own white elephant, and we gave them ful information. Still, we had not come all this way in such weather precisely with this object; we began to fidget about catching the last train back to Yokohama. But our hosts would not hear of our departure, and as we were sufficiently versed in the intricacies of Japanese etiquette to be aware that by breaking up the party against the wish of the enter tainer we should be committing a heinous offence, we remained, nursing the perhaps villainous hope that the fire-bell would ring. Suddenly our practised ears caught its distant boom. Everybody else heard it, and the effect was electrical. Whilst one of the men ran up the ladder and began to hammer away at our station bell, the officers huddled on their uniforms, and sprang on to their horses, kept ready caparisoned, the captain arming himself with a huge wisp of horsehair, the lieutenant seizing his standard — a spear from the end of which hung a horse-tail. Meanwhile, with much shouting and, no doubt, bad language, the "brigade " had harnessed itself to the three squirts, and the procession was formed officers leading, engines next, hook and ladder men with us three visitors bringing up the rear.

Out we went into the snow-bound street, up which a fierce north-easter was sweeping. All Shinagawa seemed to have sprung into active life during the few minutes which had elapsed since the first notes of the fire-bell. As if by magic, houses, but a few minutes since dark, silent, and lifeless, burst forth into light and life. Lanterns danced about in all directions like huge fireflies, throwing weird shadows on the white ground, and making the surrounding darkness more intense. Men, women, and children swarmed out of every doorway, clustered about the first-floor balconies, and even crowded the roofs, all chattering, gesticulating, and uttering exclamations of terror and wonder as they gazed at the broad, lurid glare in the sky. Far away as they were from the scene of conflagration, there was no retiring after their first curiosity had been satisfied. A man in Victoria Street, Westminster, who sees the reflection of a fire, say in the City, may go to bed with a certain sense of

and we presently saw the hook and ladder company limber up and dash off at the double towards the group of houses indicated by us. The inhabitants of these shanties, squatting outside with their heaps of goods and chattels, evidently clinging with true old-world tenacity to the hope that the gods or the firemen or something would stave calamity off their homes, remonstrated warmly when the hook and ladder men told them they were about to take the unheard-of step of pulling down untouched houses; but the captain riding up soon silenced their objections in a harangue which from its sound was evidently very much more forcible than elegant, and the work of destruction, or rather of salvation, commenced, and in a very few minutes the hooks and battering poles had made an open space which was an effectual bar to the progress of the flames. But even they seemed to be imbued with a spirit of patriotism, for they made fierce efforts to leap the gulf and so nullify the counsel of the "foreign devils." But feebler and feebler grew their leaps, and gradually they subsided into a grumbling and snorting and hissing which seemed to express almost in language baffled rage. So at four o'clock in the morning the great Shinagawa fire was stayed, and we returned to the fire station with our hosts and their bruised and singed subordinates. At first the old captain did not seem over-pleased at the successful result of our advice, but a few cups of saki thawed him into good humor, and he expanded so far as to thank us heartily, and to promise that if we happened to be present at another fire in his section we should see matters differently managed.

Six weeks afterwards I happened to be in Tokio, and curiosity led me to the shed where last I had seen the steam fire-engine with its cobwebs. Alas! there it was, rusty and forlorn, a grand plaything for the boys, weeds clambering about its wheels, and big cobwebs festooning its ungetatable parts. Had it ever been used? I asked of a bystander. No. But the authorities had made new engines for themselves, with which they were perfectly satisfied, was the answer. But this was twelve long years ago, and I doubt not that if the inhabitants of Japan have advanced in the science of protecting their cities from fire with the same strides they have made in other directions, my old friends the captain and his lieutenant, with their armor and standards and squirts, have long since been relegated to the limbo of curiosities of the past.

From Chambers' Journal.

A NEW TASMANIAN TOWNSHIP. ZEEHAN is a recently formed township and mining centre in the county of Montagu, on the west coast of Tasmania. When, in 1642, Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched from Batavia by Anthony Van Diemen, the governor-general, and the Council of Netherlands-India, on an expedition having for its object_the_discovery of the reported Great Southern Continent, the first land he sighted, after leaving the then Dutch colony of Mauritius, proved to be the west coast of Tasmania. This land, discovered on the 24th of November, 1642, appeared to be mountainous and clothed with dark forest, and in these respects differed from the low, sandy shores ascribed to the Great Southern Continent by previous navigators. Recognizing it as a hitherto unknown territory, Tasman named it "Anthony Van Diemen's Land;" and to the most prominent summits first visible he gave the names of the two ships Heemskirk and Zeehan (Seahen) which comprised his expedition.

Mount Zeehan, thus discovered and christened two and a half centuries ago, remained until the last decade an absolute terra incognita. Though no more than ten miles distant from the western shores of the island, approach towards it, either from the sea-board or from lands lying north, east, or south, was, until lately, almost impracticable, by reason of the impassable nature of the country-alternating with hill and swamp, covered with dense forest and scrub, or equally impenetrable button grass.

In 1884, Frank H. Long and William Johnstone setting out from Mount Bischoff to prospect for tin or gold, entered the district around Mount Zeehan, and discovered silver-lead ore in great abundance; but the news of this discovery was disseminated slowly. In March, 1885, two proprietary companies had established themselves on the Zeehan silver field.

In March, 1888, an extent of country measuring north to south six to seven miles, and east to west two to three miles, had been proved to be silver-bearing; and at the close of that year twenty-five thou sand acres had been let on lease by gov. ernment as mining claims of forty to eighty acres each. Owing to its inaccessibility, only seventy men were then at work on the field. The colonial parliament at this time voted a preliminary sum for the survey of a railway to connect

the field with the port of Strahan, on Macquarie harbor, twenty-nine miles distant. This railway was practically completed at the close of 1891.

In March, 1889, the population of the Zeehan field scarcely exceeded one hundred. In September, 1890, it was estimated at two thousand; and at the close of 1891, at not fewer than seven thousand persons, ranking then as the third town in Tasmania.

The township of Zeehan was formally incorporated in 1891, and the erection of hotels and public buildings has proceeded with great rapidity. A tri-weekly newspaper was started in Zeehan in October, 1890; and in October, 1891, it became a morning daily, with a daily evening issue as well.

According to the "Report of the Minister of Mines" on 30th June 1891, the mining claims leased around Zeehan extend over a tract of country from Mount Zeehan north-eastwards for a distance of about twenty miles, with a breadth of about eight miles, and an area of eighty-seven thousand acres. The geological formation of the district proves it to be of Silurian age. In the northern part of the field, around Mount Dundas, carbonated ores of lead are principally found, while around Zeehan, galena is the predominating mineral. Both of these are very rich in silver. The first five hundred tons of galena ore from Zeehan, received in this country during 1891, contained sixty-six per cent. of lead and one hundred and ten ounces of silver per ton.

THE business aptitude and economy of time displayed by the great majority of London traders are deserving of the highest commendation. But in relation to some of the large houses of even London itself, I have been rather surprised at some of the "slow-coach" hands in the establishments. I fancy Australians could here and there give them a wrinkle or two, sharp as Londoners may consider themselves. One good feature I specially note in most of the houses, and it is the desire to restrict the system of credit. "Cash down" is the safe rule, and many seem to be aiming at that, on the principle of smaller profits with quicker returns. And I cannot help thinking that for every

day traders the adoption of Franklin's economical maxims and principles will be most advantageous to all concerned. A line or two as to prices. Generally speaking, they are low. But in some places on the Continent the price of similar articles is lower still. In this respect the higher rate of wages in Australia will not enable that country, with many manufactures still in their infancy, to compare favorably.

In politics I am a Radical. I believe in marching forward as the ages move onward. Therefore I oppose the old notion that all things should continue as they are. The divisions and strife and turmoil of political life are happily not so pronounced in Australia as in England. I notice by the press, in meetings I have attended, and in conversation with individuals, numerous instances of the very strong party spirit which exists. An intelligent business man I met is a Conservative. All would probably have gone "merry as a marriage bell," but for one objection. The moment he discovered my Liberal tendencies his manner was entirely changed. That Liberalism was the fly in the pot of ointment which had the effect of spoiling the whole. His bearing became more and more distant, and the temperature of friendliness fell below zero.

There appears to be a well-founded complaint that the parson and squire dom. inate the political affairs of the country. In Australia it is not so. Whilst I believe in the right of ministers to direct men in religious concerns, and to maintain a high moral tone in society, I object emphatically to electors being dominated at the ballot-box by the power of money and influence of wealth. Great battles will have to be fought ere long in the political arena. The incident of taxation requires radical change. Land laws must be altered. Fixity of tenure should be extended. Freer access must be given to the land, and a right to acquire the fee simple of the land, as in Australia, where the system of leasehold, except for business premises, is extremely limited. And with these reforms must also come speedily a cheap and easy plan of land transfer, such as that prevailing in Australia, and known as the Real Property Act law. The present attitude of the classes must be changed, and the legitimate demands of the masses more fully recognized, or there will be strikes and strifes, or possibly a revolution, on a gigantic scale. But some of these reforms are not far distant.

Notwithstanding all the religious and philanthropic efforts of Churches and