IRISH FEMALE EMIGRATION.
Mr Vere Foster, of Belfast, has issued another appeal on behalf of his Irish Female Emigration Fund, which has already been the means of granting assisted passages to twenty thousand two hundred and fifty girls from the west of Ireland to the United States and colonies, at an expenditure of about thirty thousand pounds. This scheme has the support—as it should have—of the clergy of all denominations, and there is little doubt that if carefully gone about, it will prove a benefit both to Ireland and the colonies. Mr Foster, who has exhausted what he can spare of his own means and the funds placed at his disposal, has also given assistance by loan to four hundred girls, who have promised to repay him. We trust they may do so, as the good fortune of four hundred more hangs on this contingency.
The purpose of the fund is the relief of present poverty in the densely peopled districts of the west of Ireland, by assisting the emigration of young women of good character of the farm and domestic-servant class. To such it gives a chance of well-doing impossible at home, where, if they marry and rear families, there is but a prospect of poverty for themselves and all concerned. The scheme is a resumption of that adopted with gratifying results immediately after the great famine of 1846-7.
The plan which Mr Foster has had in operation for helping these young women for the past five years is a very simple one. Blank forms of application are issued to inquirers, when, if returned and approved of, vouchers to a certain value are issued in their favour. These vouchers are available within three months of issue for embarkation from Liverpool or from any port in Ireland where the necessary arrangements have been made. The promoter of this scheme does not approve of shipping young girls in large companies, but leaves them the utmost freedom in their choice of ship and port and time of embarkation. This enables them to take a passage when perhaps they can have the company of friends and neighbours. The young women thus assisted were between eighteen and thirty years of age; and it is satisfactory to know that most of them are going on well, and that many of them have sent home money to their friends more than once.
One of the most satisfactory forms of good doing is to help people to help themselves. This is the object of the Irish Female Emigration Fund.
EXPLORATION IN THE CHILIAN ARGENTINE ANDES.
It would appear, from the proceedings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that Dr Güssfeldt’s explorations in the central Chilian Argentine Andes extended from November 1882 to March 1883, in the wild and lofty mountain region containing Aconcagua, the most elevated known point of the American continent, which lies between thirty-two and thirty-five degrees south latitude, and is bounded on the east by the Argentine Pampas, and on the west by the Pacific. Much of this journey being through new country, Dr Güssfeldt daily observed the great orographical and landscape features, the glacial conditions above the snow, the character of the vegetation, and the phenomena of rock-weathering. He also undertook the special duty of fixing positions astronomically and taking altitudes; for which purpose he was provided with nineteen instruments. The central Chilian Argentine Andes are sketched by the traveller as two parallel chains, having on the Pacific an outlying coast-range. The western chain is the true water-parting of the Atlantic and Pacific; and the eastern is in many places broken through by the waters rising in the great trough between the two chains, which has no well-defined valley formation, indications of a longitudinal depression being only found at intervals, constantly interrupted by cross ridges. This trough or basin, one hundred and eighty-five miles in length, is very difficult of exploration, and only three months of the year are available for the purpose. The doctor crossed the divide at four points, and obtained altitudes from nine thousand four hundred and ninety-four feet to twenty-two thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven feet, which was reached near the great volcano Aconcagua, not far from the commencement of Valle Hermoso. A most interesting question of the effect of rarefied air at great elevations upon the human frame is dwelt upon by the doctor. He states that he and his assistant attained twenty-one thousand and thirty feet on Aconcagua, and were able to work their scientific instruments at that height, though not in good condition, through anxiety and want of sleep. Their lungs were physically exhausted by the effort of speaking; but there was no flow of blood from nose or ears. He says that the so-called puna can be resisted by mental effort and confidence, the only effect upon a properly trained individual being increased lung-action, and that any one who could work as he did at twenty-one thousand and thirty feet, could reach the top of Aconcagua, where the proportion of oxygen is only 6.2-3 per cent. less than at the former elevation.
NATIVE TREATMENT OF DISEASES IN INDIA.
A correspondent thus writes: Regarding the native treatment of diseases, one of the most curious things I ever witnessed was a half-clad native shouting through the streets of a country town: ‘Does any one want back his sight?—one rupee only!’ as if he were hawking fruits or sweetmeats; and, to my astonishment, a patient soon presented himself to be operated on for cataract. There and then standing in the bazaar, the itinerant oculist took out his penknife and performed the operation in a few minutes, bound up the man’s eyes, and telling him to keep in the dark for a fortnight, received his fee of one rupee, and shouted his war-cry for more patients. The operation was almost unvaryingly successful; one instance among my servants being a woman of eighty, who had charge of my fowl-house, and had for many a day been sightless, except to distinguish light from darkness, and who in this way was successfully operated upon. Besides this operator are bone-setters, and medical rubbers male and female, especially represented by the hereditary low-caste accoucheuse of each village, whose skill in shampooing is such an aid in her lowly calling—as the natives regard it—as to supplant much of the useless medicine and enforced rest of more civilised countries, and save endless mischief and suffering to her sex. What skill they have is of course almost purely traditional. None of the science of the world or British usage has yet altered in the slightest degree either the customs of the native or his horror at the idea of male physicians for women—especially in certain ailments—and their wonder at our obtuseness and disregard of propriety on so delicate a point. To supply a vacancy so long unfilled, lady-doctors have now appeared on the scene, who, it is hoped by reaching the zenanas, may reach the real source through which a higher enlightenment in India is possible. An immense field is open to them along with every encouragement; and were but some of the many young ladies at home who are straining health for a future pittance in one or other of the spheres of teaching, to turn their attention in this direction, they would find an opening of wider and greater utility before them, and a prospect of large and rapid emolument.