COLONIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 132, 14 September 1844, Page 109

COLONIAL INTELLIGENCE.

The Port Phillip Herald states that wethers are scarce and dear in that district, eight shillings per head having been offered and refused for an average flock.

A correspondent of the Sydney Herald calls the attention of Government to the defenceless state of that harbour. Both France and America have each ten sail of their navy, at least, in the Pacific, while Sydney has only the Hazard and North Star. In the event of a sudden war, the city of Sydney and all English colonies in this part of the world might be exposed to great danger.

A portable soup is manufactured at the boil-ing-down establishments in New South Wales, which the colonists hope to find a large demand for in India, for the army. A similar article brings seven shillings a pound in Madras. Half this sum would yield to the colonial manufacturer a very large profit. Some useful articles of brown earthenware have been manufactured at a pottery at Irrawary, near Sydney. This is the first successful attempt in the manufacture of domestic earthenware in the colony, as the clay, generally, is not adapted for the purpose. An overland expedition from Sydney to Port Essington is about to be attempted, under the direction of a Dr. Leicbart, who has undertaken this arduous task at his own cost. The company which run steamers to Moreton Bay will convey the whole party, consisting of about six or seven persons, to that place, by which a distance of 500 miles will be saved.

Emigration to China. — The following letter from a mechanic who was induced to proceed from Sydney to Hongkong a few months since, has been handed to us by the person to whom it was addressed :—": — " Dear friend — I received your note, and am very much obliged to you for taking the trouble to send my letter. You wish to know whether I have got plenty of work. I have' not done one day's work since I arrived, and am not likely. I have met with a friend, and he is going to advance £100 and to send to Sydney for stone. I have wrote to Talbot about it. As soon as I can get an answer I will remit the money and set up a yard — not but here is plenty of stone, but it is alt granite, and only fit for foundations. You can get four masons for one dollar, and sometimes three masons and eight coolies a day for one dollar. There are plenty of tradesmen of all descriptions here. We are all under martial law. Very few English here. They die off very fast with fever. The Chinese are terrible thieves. You are obliged to v have fire-arms by your bedside, and long pikes. They break into your house, forty to fifty at once, and rob you of everything? and, as we have no judge here, they only flog them instead of hanging them. Tobacco, 10 lbs. for one dollar; 3 dozen brandy, three and a half dollars ; J '.case gin, thine and a half dollars ; 200 duck eggs* ?ne dollar; good ducks, each 74d. ; fowls, each 7jd. \ geese, %y Is. Bd. ; pork, sd. per Ib.; sogar, 3d. 'per lbc; ~ bacon, 2s. per lb. ; butter, 2s. per lb.; andfchMfG, Is. 6d. per lb.— Sydney Herald) June 29. ' * _v" -j