A YANKEE JOKE.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1124, 1 September 1882, Page 2

A YANKEE JOKE.

Commend us to our American cousins for big things. The practice of Aprilfooling, for instance, as we know it in this country, is childish nonsense as compared with the latest specimen of such fun which has reached us from the other side of the Atlantic. We , send a simple lad to some crusty cobler for " a pint of strap <jl " ; but the Transatlantic jokers go* in, for volcanic

disturbances which throw up Egyptian mummies from the bed of the Atlantic. The New Orleans Picaqune of April Ist perpetrated a champion hoax on its readers. A Tyne steamer, the Jesmond, commanded by Captain Robson, of Jarrow, arrived at New Orleans at midnight on the 31st of March. On the following morning the crew of the Jesmond, who had gone to bed all unconscious of having had any remarkable adventure, awoke to find themselves famous. Crowdes of eager visitors thronged the place where the vessel lay, anxious to see the wonderful things which had been found in mid-Atlantic. They had learnt from a lengthy narrative in the Picayune of that morning that Captain Robson had communicated to a reporter of that enterprising journal an account of marvellous adventures. After ploughing through immense shoals of dead fish, the steamer came near " new land in midocean" — an evidently volcanic island situated (how circumstantial the report is !) in "25 40 west, 25 north." Captain Robson and some of his crew had visited the new island, on which were found relics of all sorts of ages in the world's history. Stone arrowheads were there, together with " bronze swords, rings, hammers, carvings of heads and figures of birds and animals, and two vases or jars, with fragments of l>one and a cranium almost entire " ! The most startling discovery of all, however, was a mummy, which " was so encrusted with volcanic deposits as to be scarcely distinguished from the rock itself." u The carved heads," the readers of the Picayune were informed, " are in the Egyptian, style of sculpturing, bftingdistinguished by the veil or hood which characterises Egyptian figures. The urns are spherical, with large mouths, and upon them may be discerned inscriptions in hieroglyphics, whether Egpptian, Hebrew, or in which ancient tongue, the reporter was unable to ascertain." Shades of Ferdinand Mendez. Pinto ! 1 his " boss lie of the season," as our American friends would call it, ended with the announcement that Capt. Robson would "be glad to display the curiosities to any visitors." I here were multitudes of visitors, and precisely the same numbers as of what in the North of England are knows as " gowks." The unblushing audacity of an invention which made the Egyptians hob-nob with the men of the stone age in mid- Atlantic compels admiration. Let us never talk of our Aprilrfooling again : Jonathan has for ever put us out of competition. Homo Paper.