PRESIDENT CASTRO'S STEEL PALACE.
President Castro, of Venezuela, lives in what is probably the most remarkable dwelling-place of any modern ruler. It stands within a park at Caracas, and is built almost entirely of steel. The outer walls are covered with a kind of soft stone, so to look at there is nothing peculiar about the place; but it is said to be the strongest house in the world, and it will resist the heaviest gun fire. The idea of a steel "palace" occurred to the President after he had had experience of one or two earthquakes. One night he was awakened by an earth tremor, and in his fright he jumped out of a window and broke his leg. After that he decided that bricks and mortar were not safe, hence the reason for his metal abode.—"TIT-BITS."
GOLFING DIFFICULTIES IN CHINA.
"I remember once," says Mr. Bertram Steer, in "Woman's Life," "when I was in Northern China, I and some others were laying out a nine-hole golf-links near a European settlement, with curious results. The local mandarin was informed by a native that some 'foreign devils' were doing weird things, and it seems that in that part of the globe the laying-out of a golf-links is not exactly an everyday occurrence. Anyhow, that mandarin sent an urgent despatch to the Imperial Government at Peking calling attention to our dangerous doings, and asking for immediate instructions as to the measures he should take to nip our conspiracy in the bud. We were, he reported, busily engaged in mining a tract of land near the town, and had already sunk nine holes ready to receive the charges of dynamite."
SEAWEED-FISHING OFF PORTUGAL.
