TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 78, 2 April 1900, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

Battle in Free State. Water continues scarce. ! Heavy fighting- expected. j Archibald Forbes is dead. I Plague spreading in Sydney. i Typhoid is increasing alarmingly iq Sydney. iKrug-er talks of bombarding Bloenv fontein. Cambridge easily won the University boat race. The s.s. Mararoa arrived from Southern ports. | Bankruptcy sitting at the Supreme | Court this morning. i Meeting of Irishmen in the V.M.C.A. Rooms this evening. There are over thirty plague case? in the Sydney Hospital. Michael Davitt intends making a long stay in the Transvaal. Mission yacht Southern Cross has returned here from Norfolk Island. Mr John Shaw will address the City; electors in St. James' Hall this evenIt is expected that the next battle | will be at Kroonstad, in the Frea State. ; The Australian contingents did good, work in the latest fighting1 in the Free State. It is said that Steyn has orlerecl all English burghers refusing to fight to be shot.

Bishop Wilson, of Melanesia, has arrived here from Norfolk Island by thei Southern Cross.

Complaints are "being made in. England and South. Africa of undue leni« ency "to rebels. The Auckland members of the Fifth Contingent for South Africa are 'on board the s.s. Maori. The Governor -will open thei 'Auckland Ladies' Benevolent Society's carnival on the lGth inst. ;•- N To-morrow the Governor and partyI.' will visit the Waitomo caves and go from there to Eotorua. One hundred and seventy Britisa' were killed and wounded In the latest battle in the Free State. The New Zealand Government have chartered more steamers to carry fodder and produce to the Cape. The Fifth Conting-ent, despatched from Wellington on Saturday for the Cape, totals 489 officers and men. The crops have all failed at Norfolk Island this year owingl to the drought. Auckland City, Assessment Court sat tfc-day. Ten thousand British and threel thousand Boers have had a sharp battle at Karree siding, in the Free State. The Borchg-revinck Antarctic expedition is expected to yeturn to Au3« tralia in the Southern 'Cross from .th« South Polar regions this month. Should the excursion arranged hf. the Scenery Conservation Society b« indefinitely postponed the amount j paid by ticket-holders will be returned lin full.

A seaman on board the s.s. Buteshire, in quarantine, was seriously hurt on Saturday, and Dr. Grant, who | went down to attend to him, was also I quarantined. There is a scarcity of food at .Norfolk Island at present, and the crn Cross has come back to Auckland for stores to provision the Melanesian Mission there. During the month of March. 175 births and 90 deaths were registered in Auckland. Of the births, 90 were in Auckland City, 6 in Birkenhead, 5 in Devonport, 11 in Grey Lynn, 5 in Newmarket, and Bin Parnell. The deaths in Auckland City were 53, Birkenhead 1, Devonport 3, Grey Lynn 1, Newmarket nil, and Parnell 3. Lieut.-Colonel S. Newall, who left in the Waimate for the Ctipe with the Infth Contingent, is a Maori war veteran. He served through the Waikato and Taranaki wars, and also in the Urewera campaign against Te Kooti, and was for a number of years an officer in the Armed Constabulary Field Force at Taupo, Fort Galatea, and elsewhere. For some years past he had been in command of the Wellington district. . ', Coat and skirt dress fabrics, an attractive display of new colourings and makes, all marked at popular prices, IOJd to C/6.—Smith and Caughey.— (Ad.) ; . ' . \ ,