THE RETURNED SYDNEY MEN.

Evening Post, Volume LVIII, Issue 142, 13 December 1899, Page 5

THE RETURNED SYDNEY MEN.

RESULT OF THE ENQUIRY. ALL BUT EIGHT EXONERATED. SYDNEY, 12th December. The military enquiry regarding the action of the thirty-one cancers who returned to the colony from London by the Nineveh after refusing to volunteer for service in the Transvaal has conc'uded. The report states that with eight exceptions satisfactory explanations were furnished. However, as the eight in question had committed no breach of the military regulations, nothing more than an error oi judgment could be attributed to them. Two of the troopers have been dismissed for insubordination during the voyage. A CHRISTCHURCH BOY WOUNDED. Many people will remember the late Mr. D. S. Melville, at one timo manager of the Union Bank of Australia in Christchurch. Mrs. Melville and her family are (says the Christchurch Press) now in NataA, and in a private letter, dated 24th October, written from Batstone's Post, Umzinkula, to a friend in Christchurch, Mrs. Melville says that her four sons were engaged at the battles of Glencoe and Elands Laagte, and that one of them, Hugh Melville, was wounded. She Bays: — "My four hoys joined tho Border Mounted Rifles some few weeks ago to see some fun, as they said. They took two prisoners at the battle of Elands Laagte, and I am thankful to say none of the volunteers were killed or wounded. They were at once sent to Ladysmith, a miserable town, and are encamped outside the town. There was a great deal of dust in the place, but now the rain has set in their farms will be open to them when they return. The Boers fought, they say, like demons at the battles of Glencoe and Elands Laagte. There is much distress in Durban and other places now, caused by the Avar. The weather here is very cool still, although we are nearing summer. This is the rainy season, which accounts for the coolness, and I call the climate a perfect one. We (Mrs. and Miss Melville) are living all alone in a small cottage in the bush, and our Kaffir servant leaves us at night." In a later addition, to her letter, dated 25th October, Mrs. Melville says : —"I have just received a telegram from Leslie saying that they were all fighting again on Monday last, and that Hugh was wounded, but doing well, and that there is no necessity for me to go to Ladysmith." In the postscript, dated 26th October, Mrs. Melville concludes : — "I have just received a telegram that Hugh -*as been shot through both lungs, and we are off to Ladysmith." NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE. A difficulty w being experienced in obtaining suitable steamers to convey all the produce ordered in New Zealand for South Afrip. About 80,000 sacks of oats and wheat, 25,000 carcases mutton, and a considerable quantity of dairy produce — about one-half of which has been purchased for the War Office — are awaiting shipment in the South, it is understood that the steamer Lincolnshire is .now on her way to Lyttelton to take away the produce required for the British troops..