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Passengers and Crew of the British Steamer Aeon Are Shipwrecked In Southern Waters.
Victoria, B. C Cable advices from Fanning Island state that the steamer Aeon, which left San Francisco July 6 for Auckland via Apia and was considered overdue, was carried on Christmas Island by the strong currents setting in shore and became a total wreck. The ship’s company, fifty in all, took to the boats and landed at a small settlement, all safe.
There are four women and two children, mostly wives of officers of the United States battleship squadron who took passage to join their husbands in Australia. All are camping on Christmas Island awaiting rescue.
Geological Survey Party in Arctic Was Believed to Have Been Marooned.
Dr. Philip S. Smith of the Geological Survey and a party of three Washington engineers who were believed marooned at Point Barrow, on the Arctic coast of Alaska, have started in canoes up the Yukon River to Nanana, the northernmost point of the Alaskan railroad, according to word received yesterday at the Geological Survey offices here.
Dr. Smith, J. B. Mertie, R. K. Lynt and Gerald Fitzgerald, who entered the Colville River basin early in the Spring after a sensational dog-sled journey over the Arctic mountain range, drifted down the stream to Point Barrow, the most northernly point under the Stars and Stripes, arriving early in September. Just how they reached the mouth of the Yukon from this village was not explained in the brief message received here, it is thought probable that they were picked up by some whaler that had got through the abnormal ice along the coast this Summer.
The most dreadful display of the Whale’s strength and prowess yet authentically recorded, was that made on the American Whale ship Essex, Captain Pollard, which sailed from Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean, in August 1849 [sic – it was 1819]. Late in the fall of the same year, when in the latitude forty of the South Pacific, a school of sperm Whales were discovered, and three boats were manned and sent in pursuit. The mate’s boat was struck by one of them, and he was obliged to return to the ship in order to repair the damage.
While he was engaged in that work, a sperm Whale, judged to be eighty three feet long broke water twenty rods from the ship on her weather bow. He was going at the rate of about three knots an hour, and the ship at nearly the same rate, when he struck the bow of the vessel just forward of her chains.
The Union and American, of yesterday, publishes the following from a letter received in this city. We congratulate our friend on this lucky escape. We don’t think now, and never did, that be was born to be drowned :
Washington Correspondence of the Boston Journal.
In my school-boy days one of the most pleasing pictures in my geography by Malte Brun, was that intended to illustrate the character of the Green Mountain boys. It was simply a picture of a regiment of men on the march. An explanatory note said that they did great service in the revolution, that, they were tough, hardy, steady fellows, or something to that effect. The note is not half so well remembered as the long line of soldiers, marching over the hills and through the valleys, is to me the most vivid of all the numerous pictures in the book. I cannot remember what illustration gave the character of any other State. I remember only the Green Mountain boys.
The picture was recalled as I visited the Green Mountain boys of to-day in their encampment located in just such scenery as you may find in Vermont. There I found the 2d Reg., Col. Whiting, and the Third, Col. Hyde. My visit was to the last named. Every thing was neat around the camp, everything quiet. The Provost Marshal’s quarters of the brigade are near the guard tent of the Third. As I entered the camp I saw three soldiers of the New York 33d standing on pork barrels as if they were about making stump speeches, yet all three were silent as if waiting each for the other to begin. Occasionally they turned round as if to survey the scene, and catch, perhaps, the significant gesture of a soldier off duty, but they were dumb orators and were only paying penalties for slight offenses taking green corn without leave of the owners, or offenses of similar turpitude.