Part 3
Opening the newspaper two or three days later, I read at the head of a column, in conspicuous type: ‘Arrival of the Cape Mail. Audacious Robbery from a Cape Town Bank’—then in smaller print: ‘A considerable sensation has been caused at Cape Town by the discovery of a robbery planned and carried out with an audacity which it is not too much to describe as unique in the annals of crime. The circumstances are briefly these. On the morning of Wednesday the 16th June, the mail-steamer _Turcoman_ arrived in Table Bay from England, having on board some five thousand pounds in gold for the Alliance Bank, to whose care it was duly delivered on the same day. A portion of this amount, namely, fifteen hundred pounds, was destined for the use of the bank’s Diamond Fields branch at De Vriespan, where it was required with all expedition. The overland service between Cape Town and the Diamond Fields is a bi-weekly one, leaving the former place at six A.M. on Monday and Thursday, and covering the whole distance of seven hundred miles in about five days nine hours. In order, therefore, to insure the despatch of the case containing the specie by the mail-cart on the following day, Mr Percival Royston, the assistant-cashier, was requested to undertake, in conjunction with the senior clerk, Mr Albertus Jager, the duty of counting and repacking the gold, after the completion of their ordinary work at six or seven o’clock. According to the latter gentleman’s statement, the task was not commenced till after dinner at about eight o’clock. They had made some considerable progress when Royston remarked how pale and tired his companion was looking. Upon Mr Jager’s admitting that he was feeling far from well, the other asked him if he would not give up the work and go home to bed, saying that he (Royston) would finish the counting himself and have everything ready in plenty of time for to-morrow. Knowing how thoroughly the assistant-cashier was trusted by the bank, Mr Jager allowed himself to be persuaded, and left at once for his own quarters. The case was duly despatched in the morning, in charge of a clerk proceeding to the De Vriespan office on promotion, the fact being reported by Royston to the head-cashier.
‘Nothing further appears to have transpired until Tuesday the 21st June, when the head-cashier addressing Royston, asked: “By the way, when is that gold due at De Vriespan? To-day?”
“Yes, sir,” was the answer; “we ought to get the telegram announcing its arrival in half an hour or so.”
‘It is the custom of the bank to send a junior clerk to the home-going mail-steamer with late letters for England, which may be posted on board upon payment of an extra fee. This duty Royston asked to be allowed to perform on the present occasion, stating that he would be glad of the opportunity of seeing some friends off who were leaving by the steamer that day. He left the bank at three forty-five, was seen to go on board with a travelling-bag ten minutes later, and has not since been heard of. His other luggage, consisting of two portmanteaus, had been removed from his lodgings before daybreak, Royston having somehow obtained the services of a coolie, who states that, following his instructions, he first carried the luggage to an inn near the docks, subsequently transferring it thence by hand-truck to the ship as soon as the dock gates were opened. It should be remarked that Royston occupied rooms on the ground-floor, the landlord and his wife and the other lodgers sleeping on the first and second floors. But for this fact, it would probably have been impossible to effect the removal of the luggage without disturbing the other occupants of the house.
‘At five o’clock a telegram was received at the Alliance Bank: “De Vriespan, four thirty. Case just arrived. On being opened, found to contain nothing but lead-sheeting to exact weight of gold expected. Clerk in charge denies all knowledge. Wire any instructions.” A cab dashed furiously to the docks, its occupant the head-cashier, who, as he turned the corner towards the quay, was just able to descry the smoke of the vanishing steamer now four or five miles on her way. “Too late!” shouted the Steam Company’s agent as he passed on foot. “Ship sailed sharp at four thirty!”
‘The above incident will most probably give a sharp impetus to the movement, already initiated in Cape commercial circles, for the establishment of ocean cable communication with Great Britain direct, the importance of which, from an imperial as well as a colonial point of view, has long been recognised.’
* * * * *
A keen east wind was blowing in my teeth as I hurried along the Strand towards Temple Bar one morning in March, and as I bent my head to meet a more than usually piercing gust, I came against a passer-by, who answered my apology with a smile of recognition. ‘Mr Rodd, I think?’
It was no other than the polite detective, more polite than ever, because of the whirling dust and biting wind, against which the best of good-humour is so rarely proof.
‘Ah, sir,’ he went on, as we drew into a low archway for a moment’s talk, ‘you would be astonished to hear the story of the wildgoose chase we had after Mr Percival Royston last summer and autumn. If you would care to call in at my quarters any day after four o’clock, I should be very pleased to tell you about it.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied; ‘I will see. Meanwhile, how did it end?’
‘All wrong for _us_, I am sorry to say. He got clean away from us; and I don’t suppose we shall ever hear of him again.’
The sun shone out for a moment, and the wind seemed to have lost something of its bitter chill as I wished Detective Elms good-morning and passed on my way eastward.
THE MONTH:
SCIENCE AND ARTS.
The abnormally mild winter—if winter it can be called—which has been experienced this year, has once more raised hopes in the minds of farmers that brighter times are in store for them. The extreme mildness of the season has not only been favourable for all field operations, but it has been most beneficial for stock. Lambs have never been so numerous as they are this year in many of the southern counties, for not only have they had the climate in their favour during the most critical time of their lives, but there has been a wonderful number of twins. Indeed, the proportion of these latter to single births has on some farms been as high as sixteen out of twenty.
A silver lining to the dark cloud which has so long overshadowed the British farmer may also perhaps be discerned in certain operations which are now being pushed forward at Lavenham, in Suffolk. A private Company has been formed to recommence, under the more favourable conditions which the progress of scientific agriculture has rendered possible, the making of beet-sugar in this country. Between the years 1869 and 1873, Mr James Duncan tried a similar experiment, and the present Company has acquired his works at Lavenham, to take up once more the industry which he tried to establish. The recently devised methods of extracting sugar from the beet are much easier and simpler, and far less costly, than the processes employed by Mr Duncan; and the promoters of the enterprise are sanguine of success, if they can only induce the farmers to grow sufficient beetroot for them to operate upon. The Company has arranged favourable terms of transport with the railway authorities; for instance, a truck-load of roots can be brought to Lavenham from Bury—a distance of eleven miles—for eighteenpence a ton. For the same distance, Mr Duncan formerly paid four shillings and twopence a ton. The experiment will be watched with extreme interest by all agriculturists.
Mr Wood’s lecture to the Institute of Agriculture on the subject of Ensilage gave some valuable particulars of experiments he had made with the object of ascertaining which are the crops that can be most profitably cultivated for that method of preservation. He first of all took the value of ensilage at twenty-six shillings and eightpence, or about one-third the value of hay. An acre of heavy meadow-grass produced twelve tons of compressed food; and the same quantity dried into hay weighed only two tons seven hundredweight. After allowing for the cost of producing each, the lecturer showed a balance in favour of the ensilage over hay of nearly five pounds sterling an acre. Buckwheat cultivated for treatment as ensilage, against the same valued as a seed-crop, showed a gain in favour of the silo of two pounds eight shillings and threepence per acre. Oats compared in like manner show a balance of five pounds per acre; and here there is a further gain, for oats cut in the green state have not had the time to exhaust the soil as if they had been left to mature. There is still a further gain in favour of ensilage, when it is remembered that the ground is cleared before the usual time, and is therefore ready very early for new crops. The lecturer concluded by throwing out a useful hint that dairymen and cowkeepers in towns could be with great advantage supplied with the new form of fodder in casks, a sixty-gallon cask holding about thirty-one stone-weight of the compressed material.
Mr W. F. Petrie, whose recently published book upon the Pyramids of Gezeh we noticed two months ago, has just undertaken some excavations in another part of Egypt, which are likely to bear fruitful results. Amidst a desolation of mud and marsh, there lies, in the north-eastern delta of the Nile, a place far from the track of tourists, and which is therefore seldom visited. This now remote spot, Sàn-el-Hagar (that is, Sàn of the Stones), was once a splendid city, in the midst of the cornlands and pasturage which formed part of the biblical ‘field of Zoan.’ Excavations were begun here in 1861 by Mariette Pasha, and he unearthed the site of the principal temple; but lack of funds and want of support generally, caused him to give up the work, though not before several treasures had found their way from his diggings to the Boulak Museum at Cairo, and to the Louvre. Mr Petrie, under the auspices of the newly formed Egypt Exploration Fund, commences the work anew in this promising field of research; and before long we may possibly have very important finds to chronicle.
At the recent meeting of the Scottish Meteorological Society, held in Edinburgh, an interesting account was given of the daily work which has been carried on in the Ben Nevis Observatory since its first occupation in November last, and which is telegraphed daily from the summit of the mountain. Several new instruments have been added since that date, and improvements in the buildings costing a thousand pounds will shortly be commenced. Referring to the new marine station at Granton, near Edinburgh, Mr Murray of the _Challenger_ expedition gave an interesting account of the work going on there. The laboratory is now in working order, and there is accommodation for five or six naturalists. It is intended to offer this accommodation free of expense to any British or foreign naturalist having a definite object of study in view.
The French Academy of Sciences has just received an interesting account of a meteorite which fell not long ago near Odessa. A bright serpentine trail of fire was seen one morning to pass over that town; and the editor of one of the papers, surmising that a meteoric mass might have fallen from the sky, offered a reward to any one who would bring it to him. A peasant, who had been terribly frightened by the stone falling close to him as he worked in the fields, and burying itself in the ground, answered this appeal. He had dug the stone out of the soil, and preserved it, keeping the matter quite secret from his neighbours, as he feared ridicule. This stone was found to be a shapeless mass weighing nearly eighteen pounds. The fall of another meteorite, which in its descent near the same town wounded a man, was also reported; but it had been broken into fragments and distributed among the peasants, who preserved them as talismans.
The visitors to Cliff House, San Francisco, had recently the rare opportunity of viewing a marvellous mirage, during which the headland of North Farallon, which is under ordinary circumstances quite out of sight, indeed absolutely below the horizon, not only came into view, but appeared to be only a few miles from the shore. The strange sight fascinated the onlookers for many hours, and marine glasses and telescopes were brought to bear upon these veritable castles in the air.
It seems strange that Samuel Pepys, whose famous Diary is known to all English readers, should have been left without a monument in the old London church where his remains repose, until one hundred and eighty years after his death. This may be partly explained by the circumstance that Pepys’ Diary was not published until the year 1825. It was originally written in cipher, and the key to it, strange to say, was not made use of until that time. Although Pepys was a well-known man in his day, and occupied a good official position as ‘Clerk of the Acts’ and Secretary to the Admiralty, his fame is due to his unique Diary. At last, however, Pepys has a monument to his honour, which was unveiled the other day in the ancient city church of St Olave’s, near the Tower of London. The question has been raised whether Pepys, in using a cipher alphabet, did not intend his Diary as a private document. But still he left the key behind him, which he might have easily destroyed. However this may be, the book has delighted thousands of readers, giving as it does in a very quaint style a picture, and a true picture too, of London life two hundred years ago.
A curious record of the year 1478 is quoted in the _Builder_, which points to an early case of water being laid on to a town-house. The ingenious individual who thus tapped the conduit or watercourse running along the street, seems to have paid more dearly for the privilege than even a London water-consumer has to pay to the Companies in the present day. The man was a tradesman in Fleet Street, and is thus referred to: ‘A wex-chandler in Flete-strete had by crafte perced a pipe of the condit withynne the ground, and so conveied the water into his selar; wherefore he was judged to ride through the citie with a condit uppon his hedde.’ This poor man was nevertheless only adapting to his own purposes a system of water-conveyance that had been known and practised in many countries ages before his time.
It is expected that nearly one thousand members and associates of the British Association will cross the Atlantic in August next to take part in the meeting which is to be held this year at Montreal. All visitors to the Dominion know well that the Canadians understand the meaning of the word hospitality in its broadest sense, and they are, according to all reports, taking measures which will cause their British cousins to long remember the welcome which they will receive. The Association is taking good care that the members shall be seen at their best, and no new members will be allowed to join the party except under stringent conditions. This will very rightly prevent an influx of people who will take a sudden interest in scientific research for the sake of getting a cheap trip to Canada. The names of the representative men under whose care the various sections are placed, are sufficient guarantee that plenty of good work will be done. We may mention that special attention will be paid in section D, under Professor Ray Lankester, to the vexed question of the supposed connection between sun-spot periods and terrestrial phenomena. This question has long been a bone of contention among scientific men, one side bringing forward figures giving remarkable points of agreement, the other side disclaiming them with the assertion that statistics can be made to prove anything. Perhaps this meeting of the Association may guide us to a right solution of the problems involved.
‘The Mineral Wealth of Queensland,’ the title of a paper recently read before the Royal Colonial Institute by Mr C. S. Dicken, was full of matter which should be interesting to those who are seeking an outlay for their capital. Queensland is five and a half times larger in area than the United Kingdom. Its gold-fields are estimated to cover a space of seven thousand square miles, and it produces large quantities of silver, copper, and tin. According to the official Reports of geologists, coal crops out on the surface over some twenty-four thousand square miles. Hitherto, these vast resources have been comparatively untouched. Men and capital are required for their development; and as the climate is a healthy one, and the laws administered by capable and impartial men, there is every incentive to Europeans to turn their attention to the country.
A Bill now before the House of Commons is of extreme interest and importance to students of natural history, to artists, and many others. We allude to Mr Bryce’s ‘Access to Mountains (Scotland) Bill.’ In the preamble to this proposed measure, it is set forth that many large tracts of uncultivated mountain and moorland, which have in past times been covered with sheep and cattle, are now stocked with deer, and in many cases the rights which have hitherto been enjoyed by artists and others of visiting such lands, have been stopped by the owners. It is now proposed that it should be henceforward illegal for owners of such property to exclude any one who wishes to go there ‘for the purposes of recreation, or scientific or artistic study.’ At the same time the Bill clearly provides that any one committing any kind of poaching or damage is to be regarded as a trespasser, and dealt with accordingly. Parks and pleasure-grounds attached to a dwelling-house are of course excepted from the operation of the Act.
Mr Johnston’s book upon _The River Congo_ is full of interesting particulars of his wanderings through that part of Africa and his meeting with Stanley. He certainly throws some new light upon the climate of the country; for whereas previous travellers have described it as fever-breeding, and full of terrors to the white man, Mr Johnston tells us that the climate of the interior table-land is as healthy as possible, and that any European taking ordinary precautions as to temperate eating and drinking, need never have a day’s illness there. This is perhaps a matter of personal constitution and physique. Because one man has had such a pleasant experience of African climate, it is no reason why every one else should expect the same exemption from illness. Still, we trust that Mr Johnston’s deductions may prove correct.
We are all of us now and then astonished by the report of some sale in which a fancy price, as it is called, has been paid for something of no intrinsic value, and very often of no artistic value either. Hundreds of pounds have been paid within recent years for a single teacup, provided that the happy purchaser can be sure that it is unique. Even thousands have been paid for a vase a few inches high simply because it was rare. The mania for collecting curiosities which prompts people to pay these large sums, is by no means confined to articles of virtu. Natural history claims a large army of such collectors. A single orchid was sold only the other day for a small fortune. At the time of the Cochin-China fowl mania, which John Leech helped to caricature out of existence, a single rooster fetched five hundred pounds. Only last month, in London, some enormous prices were obtained under the hammer for a collection of Lepidoptera, vulgarly known as moths and butterflies. Single specimens fetched three and four pounds apiece, and even more; whilst a common white butterfly, apparently having a particular value because it was caught in the Hebrides, was actually knocked down for the sum of thirteen guineas. It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the exact nature of the pleasurable sensations with which the owner of this butterfly doubtless regards his purchase. The export of a few white butterflies to the Hebrides might prove a profitable venture, if not overdone.
It may be that the age of big prices for little teacups and vases is on the eve of passing away, for it would seem that the secret processes by which the old workers could endow the china with a depth of colour and richness of tone impossible to achieve by more modern hands, have been rediscovered. It is reported that M. Lauth, the Director of the Sèvres state porcelain manufactory, has attained this result. Moreover, his discovery does not, like too many others, resolve itself into a mere laboratory experiment, but represents a manufacturing success. The results, too, can be looked for with certainty, whereas there is little doubt that the old workers had many a failure as well as successes.
The recent opinion of Mr Justice Stephen that cremation, if properly conducted, is not illegal, has again opened up a subject, which, although of a somewhat delicate, and to some people actually repulsive nature, is bound sooner or later to force its importance upon public attention. There is every reason to believe that public opinion is fast undergoing a very great change, as the subject becomes better understood. A like alteration of public feeling is also observable in other European countries. Sir Spencer Wells has lately published an account of the public cemetery in Rome, where, in the four months previous to his visit, no fewer than forty bodies had been submitted to the new form of sepulture. Dr Cameron’s Bill for the regulation of the practice of cremation will possibly come before the House of Commons before these lines appear in print, and we shall then have an opportunity of gauging the feeling for and against a practice which, after all, is not new, but very old indeed.
Lovers of nature will be glad to hear that otters are yet extant in the Thames; but unless possessed of that unfortunate instinct which causes the average Briton to kill and slay anything alive which is not actually a domestic animal, they will be disgusted to learn that these interesting creatures are no sooner discovered than they are shot and stuffed. In January 1880, an otter weighing twenty-six pounds was shot at Hampton Court; another shared the same fate at Thames-Ditton in January last; and one more has recently been slaughtered at Cookham.
We have recently had an opportunity of visiting the steep-grade tramway which is being laid, and is now on the point of being finished, on that same quiet Highgate Hill where tradition tells us Dick Whittington heard the bells prophesying his future good-fortune. This tramway is the first of its kind in this country, and will probably prove the pioneer line of many others in situations where the hilly nature of the ground forbids horse-traction. Briefly described, it consists of an endless cable, a steel rope kept constantly moving at the rate of six miles an hour by means of a stationary engine. This cable moves in a pipe buried in the ground midway between the rails; but the pipe has an opening above. Through this opening—a narrow slit about an inch wide—passes from the car a kind of grip-bar, which by the turn of a handle in the car is made to take hold of the travelling-rope below, or to release its hold, as required. This system has been in successful operation in San Francisco for many years, and there is no reason why it should not succeed in this country. The only question seems to be whether the traffic up and down Highgate Hill is sufficient to make the enterprise pay.