MOUNT BENGER.

Evening Star, Issue 3078, 31 December 1872, Page 3

MOUNT BENGER.

(FHOM OUK OWN COIIKESrONDENT.) There is a certain amount of Tapleyan humor in my composition, yet it has been hard to pump up the semblance of jollity this Christmastide. Firstly, the weather has been so hot as to suggest thoughts of brimstone and fire-shovels. Then one gets tired of the monotonous drink, drunk,drunkest of an up-country spree, and turns with loathing from the decoction of Milestone and mavling-spikes retailed as whiskey or brandy by our “enterprising” pubs. In short, lam cninii/e of Mount Longer and its inhabitants, and in tbe full enjoyment of an annual fit of the blues. Pe.ste, if it is not a justification of suicide, this forced merry-making, this sixpenny cordiality, this nightmare of drink and drunkards. And what is worst, New Year is not yet over, so the agony has another week’s duration at any rate. But I really must stop whining, and endeavor to string together a few scattered items of news. The results of the Tcviot races you have already received. The meeting can hardly be called a success. The attendance was poor and the sport despicable, and one serious accident occurred to damp the spirits of all. The victim was a boy named M illiaiu Mackiunou, whose horse fell while running in the Handicap, the poor little fellow sustaining most serious injuries, in fact so serious as to render Ids recovery very problematical. The result of the meeting, altogether, is to prove what an enormous blunder was committed by some of our leading citizens when they agitated for a racecourse on the cast bank of the river. The annoyance of crossing and re-crossing the river deters people from attending, and the result is that racing is at the very lowest possible ebb in tins district. On Boxing Day there were sports at Coal Creek, and also, I believe, at the Lunger Burn.

Must of the miners arc in from over the ranges, t-’ome parties arc doing remarkably well this season. One party, lam told, has struck a P ad of about four feet wash, which will run Idwts. to the dish. If there is any extent of such ground, the owners are pretty safe to make their piles. Harvesting will soon bo on. There is plenty of Hunting labor in the district to do all that is required. Any fresh arrivals would only tend to lower the rates of wages. Why nigger minstrelsy should be so wonderfully popular up-country, I cannot imagine ; but the fact remains that nearly every nrning township Ims its amateur band of Chhstys, and to the number of these patrons of low buffoonery I am sony to say, Roxburgh must now be added. The first performance is to be upon New Year’s Day, when I most certainly shall not be there.

J’.S. I reopen this letter to make use of a really startling incident—love, jealousy, ami attempted murder 1 The perpetrator is a German named Reck, an elderly man, blessed or cursed with a young wife. .Jealousy was the natural consequence, and Reck imagined Ids worst suspisiona confirmed when he discovered his spouse in a delicate position with a grimy sou of Vulcan. He went for them with a tomahawk, and inflicted some shrewd cuts and bruises before he could be disarmed. He was taken into custody, and remains still in durance vile.