OBITUARY.

Many old identities as well as other colonists -f would feel it as inappropriate that the death o£ i Mrs Amelia Muir on the 6th inst., should be L merely formaUy chronicled. The deceased lady h was so -well and widely known both in and far if beyond New Zealand, that a few particulars of >:f her life would be read with interest. She was U born at Bushy Park, near Hampton Court, on 'fDecember 16, 1814, where her father, Mr ;! Thomas Allen, held the post of land steward 4 to King William IT, her godmother being his 1 daughter the Princess Amelia, after whom she H was named. In 183t the family "left England for the new settlement of South Australia, f where Mr Allen had received the appointment h" of botanist and curator to the embryo govern- i " ment. Arriving at Kangaroo Island-by the ! ''' second vessel of the expedition, before the new ? colony was even proclaimed, they experi- I enced all the vicissitudes of the most |- ■ primitive colonial type, such as couia 1 be fittingly.matched by the after-experiences ' of our Otago pioneers in the year I 1848. In the last number of the "Review ' of Reviews" is an article on the South *'■'■ Australian Register, whose first . number « appeared on June 18, 1836. It is re- j marked that "not one member of the South ■ ■ Australian Cabinet—not even the Speaker o£ T the Assembly—was alive when No. 1 of this ' ■ great Australian daily was added to the liters-.. 3 ture of the world." It is'noteworthy that Mrs \-' Muir (then Miss Allen) was already a colomsb S two years before that date and had then arrived I' • ■ at woman's estate: The first Cfovernor ofl j the new colony, had as A.D.C. Lieutenant 1 Grey, R.E., who was also a member of the * survey staff. The A.D.C. and the Governor J did not quite "hit it," so the former-left the • colony for England—only speedily toSefeim ': and supersede his former chief. This gentle-** man is now known as Sir George Grey, and he i' ■ and Mrs Muir, comparatively lately, have had I repeated "cracks" together about the old days 1 when the colony of South Australia was so I '■ ' young. Anecdotes in abundance could Mrs 1 Muir tell of those times and of the people who I have since become such important folk. Had - ' she jotted down her reminiscences, what inter- f esting and sometimes what "spicy" reading I they would have been! She knew personaTlr f ; nearly everyone of note there, such as i' Colonel Wakefield, the explorers Eyre and I Start, the Fishers, Sir William Milne, the f !Pqlolt8' davenports, and others. Married in f 1846, Mrs Muir extended her knowledge of the i colonies by a year or two's residence in TasmiSha during the Governorship of Sir JohnJ Franklin, who was subsequently loat in arctic I : exploration, and whose wife was godmother to} her eldest son Adventures with bushrangers* and blacks (for there were aboriginals mr Van Diemen's Land in those days) were* no uncommon occurrence. Returning to-? Adelaide, she lived for some years &ti Mmtaro, near where tbe celebrated BurraßurW copper mines were subsequently discovered'l On one occasion the house was broken into> by blacks, and on another occasion by somei half bred Chilians whom the Burra Copper Mine! ' ' Company had imported to pack the copper ore^ on mules' backs from the mine to the port The' occasion of this latter outrage was thai the leader of the Chilians had become enamoured of Mrs Muir's nursemaid, who, however, df^, clined to listen to his suit, when the American , l^sujrtik oy force-happily without success? The name Mintaro (beautiful) re-appears ii* JNew Zealand nomenclature, having been givei to a newly-discovered lake on the Te Anau Milford SoHnd track by one of the grandson of the subject of this sketch. Mrs Mm went to Victoria in 1856, and in 186J*""'*"'—.* came to New Zealand by the first tup d the s.s. Onieo, Captain J. M'Lean who« startling sobriquet will be borne in mind bT many; and in New Zealand —with tbi exception of brief visits to the other colomei? and one to Eugland in 1886-she remain^ until her death. Her energy, vitality, ad mental vigour were remarkable, and she evV took a kindly interest in the various religioi and philanthropic matters of the day, being life governor of the Benevolent Institution, ol ot founders and treasurer for years of tV late Servant,' Home, and also the Fem ß Refuge, a zealous supporter of the Girls' Hi School (her daughter having been its first di and its club, whose meetings she regula attended, and a valued working member of PauPs Guild, where she was actively engag' to within a fortnight of her death We h truly lost a connecting link not onl 5 vformer times and manners but with genf^ colonial history of a very far back epoch? ° Mr Rawlins brought into Lawrence 1 weight of gold the result of four™ L at the Island Block Company's claim He Clares that between this and Christmas ft* gold will be secured.—Tuapeka Times. A cable message received on Saturday st. that during the passage of the Acacia f Tairua to Melbourne a seaman named A ander M'Donald was washed overboard " heavy gale and drowned. The Bruce Herald states that the ra-itii^> Stirling and Inch-Clutha have suffered fhri " the floods of last week, and that the effect^ milk supply and quality of cream is very dJV for the worse. v y aec *