INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4189, 24 August 1874, Page 3

INTERCOLONIAL NEWS.

By the s.s. Otago we have our Victorian files to the 12th instant, from which we make the following extracts : VICTORIA. The death of Mr. Henry Bowden (the senior partner of the well-known firm of W. P. White and Co.), is thus referred to by the Daily Telegraph :—Mr. Bowden was cut off in the prime of his life, hut he may still he described as an old colonist. He was connected -with the Melbourne Press bo far hack as 1854-5, when he was a leading contributor to the Melbourne Herald , then Jat the summit of its fame and position as an influential morning paper. A vigorous and facile writer, Mr. Bowden would without doubt have taken a leading position on the Press, but the death of his relative, Mr. W. P. White, introduced him. to mercantile life as a member of one of our largest shipping firms, and he remained associated with the house in question, that of W. P. White and Co., until his decease. It is very rare for men who have once adopted journalism as a profession to be weaned entirely from their first love, and Mr. Bowden was no exception to this rule. Generally speaking, he preferred humorous forms of expressing himself, and at one time Punch received many of hia contributions, while more lately lie was known as the author of the popular “ Peerybingle Papers ” in our contemporary, the Weekly Times. Por some time past increasing ill-health had withdrawn Mr. Bowden from all active duties, and his decease yesterday, though sudden, could not be said to be unexpected. The railway from Ballarat to Beaufort — twenty-eight and a half miles long—is completed and opened for traffic. An inebriate shut himself up in one of Cobb’s coaches at the Provincial Hotel stables, Ballarat, on Saturday night. It is supposed he fell asleep, and whilst smoking set fire to the coach, and narrowly escaped being burnt alive. A sad case of suicide took place a few days ago. Two young girls, sisters, were brought up, charged with vagrancy, having taken to irregular kinds of life, and one of them appearing quite irreclaimable. They had no mother, and their father, a laborer, had for a long time been an inmate of the hospital, and unable to control them. The bench sent the most hardened of the girls to a reformatory, and the other was cautioned and released. The disgrace of this affair so preyed upon the mind of the poor father—who was just discharged from hospital, and who came out to find this terrible accountof the miscouductof his daughters —that he was seized with a fit of extreme depression, and hanged himself. It seems almost incredible, but it is nevertheless the fact, says the Melbourne Daily Telegraph, that we have now a genuinely good performance at the Theatre Royal, supported by actors of great and sterling ability. Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, an American actor and actress, made their first appearance about ten days ago in a drama entitled, “Struck Oil,” and by their general representation of Ameri-can-German life—something of the style of Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle—made a great hit. Their acting is replete with humor, heightened and deepened with occasional mixtures of pathos, and all delivered through the medium of that curious blending of broken German and Yankee-lOnglish, of which Hans Breitman’s ballads gave us some notable examples. Mrs. Williamson is quite young, being only nineteen ; but she has a perfect knowledge of stage effect, combined with great natural cleverness ; she sings well, and dances well, and overflows noth archness, vivacity, and humor. She is ably supported by her husband, and between them they have given us a class of entertainment superior in its merit to anything we have had at the Royal for some years. Gold to the value of £lß,ooohas been obtained from one crushing of stone from the North Cross reef, Pleasant Creek. The yield was 4427 ozs. from 1648 .tons, of quartz. Somemachinery, entirely new to the Australian Colonies, was brought into use for the first time at Messrs. Michaelis and Hallenstein’s tannery, at Pootacray. The machinery consists of a bark mill and engine, both of which, it is stated, have been manufactured and patented in Melbourne. ■ A gentleman, whose reputation for gallantry is not the least of his social distinctions, met with a singular adventure a few days ago. He received a letter in a lady’s handwriting, asking him to meet her in the Botanical Gardens, and specifying peculiarities in dress. The recipient of the letter kept the appointment, and met a well-dressed female, deeply veiled, who answered to the description of her whom he expected to meet. A conversation ensued, which was so interesting, that the swain did not notice that he was walking towards a lonely part of the gardens. At last he was disagreeably aroused from hia dream by the lady throwing her amis around him ; and before he could recover from his surprise a man had emerged from the bushes, relieved him of his watch, purse, and some trinkets, and then, accompanied with the fair one, leaped the fence and made off. Possibly the gay Lothario will for the future not boast so much of his honnes fortunes. The Alexandra Times of Saturday reports : —“An educated and apparently respectable man named Thomas Bartholomew, was found on Monday last in the Puzzle Ranges, at the head of the XJ. T. Creek, He had, been without food for four days, and when first seen by Mr. Pry, was crawling on his hands and knees, and in an exhausted condition. Mr. Pry put him on hia horse, and brought, him to Vining’s Hotel, Alexandra. He was very feverish, much scratched, and bruised. He said ho had been four days in the bush without food or sleep, and wished to bo kept quiet. The doctor, on examination, found that the soles of his feet

were as black as coal, senile gangrene had set in, and that the nails of his big toes had already dropped off, and that the poor fellow must lose both his feet. The four 'nights that the man was iu the bush were very cold, as ice was seen half an inch thick iu washtubs. The man, who is now iu the Alexandra Hospital, states that after the second day he threw away his blankets, which he could not carry, and suffered severely during the nights from cold. He became unable to walk, and crawled along on his hands and knees.” An inquest has taken place at the Dew Drop Inn, Wangaratta, on the body of Annie Jane Cain, a married woman, who had been separated many years from her husband. Thomas Larkins, an overseer at the I‘ecchelba station, stated that he was a married man, but his wife being in Ireland, he had cohabited with the deceased at Tatong, near Benalla, at Killawarra, and at Peechelba for six or seven years, and had a daughter by her. In January last he sent for his wife. She arrived by the Great Britain, and reached Wangaratta on the 7th inst. Deceased knew that witness’s wife was expected, and was at the railway station when she arrived. Witness sent deceased away with some money on 31st July. On the 4th August he missed some strychnine from his hut. Witness took his wife home on the Bth inst., and deceased followed them. Witness, on deceased’s arrival, got out of bed, gave her food and blankets, and sent her into an old kitchen. Next day she was destroying things about the place, and abusing witness. At six o’clock her daughter called out to witness that the deceased had poisoned herself. Witness gave deceased soap and water as an emetic, and sent for the police, but she died before their arrival. Evidence was given that the deceased admitted having taken poison, and had exonerated Larkins. The - inquest was adjourned in order that an analysis might he made of the contents of the deceased’s stomach. The next edition of “ Vicissitudes of Noble Families ” might be supplied with an instance from Victorian life. The Bacchus Marsh Express in its last issue writes as follows ;—“ Our readers will notice with regret the announcement in another column of the death of Mrs. Farmer, or more correctly, Lady Farmer, although herself and husband abandoned the title during their residence in Bacchus Marsh, as then - circumstances were not in accordance with it. The deceased was striving to pass an examination as telegraph operator, as the office at Bacchus Marsh had been promised her, and it was over-anxiety to effect this object by attending lectures when suffering from a severe cold that caused inflammation of the lungs to take such a hold of a somewhat weak frame that Mrs. Farmer just lay down after returning from one of these lectures by a teacher of telegraph operations, and never rallied, but died three or four days afterwards, leaving four children, aged about eight, four, and three yearn, and fourteen months. Her husband has suffered for years from weakness of sight, and is now all but blind. The case is a sad one, as Sir Qeorge Farmer has not an income, although we believe there are family expectations of some value. The present baronet is the third, the creation dating from 1780, and having been conferred in consequence of the gallantry of the father of the first baronet, who, while in command of H.M.S. Quebec, had his ship blown to pieces during a contest with a French frigate of much superior force.” NEW SOUTH WALES. While Sir Hercules Robinson has been amusing himself by winning races and pardoning bushrangers, Lady Robinson has been “sitting” upon Sydney society. Her first innovation was asking a number of young ladies to a party at Government House, having previously excused herself to their mammas on the ground that she was in mourning, and did not mean to give more than a carpet dance. The experiment was so successful that on the next occasion Lady Robinson did not take the trouble to ■write to the mammas at all, but communicated direct with the young ladies. The matrons took the alarm, held a meeting, and the result was that all the invitations were declined. Since that period there has been a deadly feud between the upper ten of Sydney and the Government House, until Lady Robinson felt it only prudent to hang out the white flag and make overtures for peace. •- QUEENSLAND. Reliable advices state that the new rush at the Palmer is overdone, and that the ground is very shallow. Cooktown is glutted with goods, but carriage is required. TASMANIA. An amendment on the Treasurer's budget was moved by Mr. Innes, who was at the head of the last Cabinet. It was defeated by 15 to 12. The Speaker of the Lower House has been seriously ill, but is recovering, A curious discovery is mentioned by the Cornwall Chronicle: —“On the last passage of the Derwent, from Melbourne, the stokers in conveying some coal from the bunkers to the fires, met with an unwieldy lump, and broke it up to make it more convenient. Mr. Kelly, chief engineer, was surprised to find that inside the mass of coal, and attached to one side where it split, was a package of bark not very far on the road to decay. The fibre seemed to be refined by its some thousands of years’ confinement in that dark space, and more suited for paper material than when it became imbedded there. The question we would submit to geologists is—what preserved this portion of vegetable matter from decay, and prevented it from becoming by mountainous pressure for unnumbered centuries, like the tree from which it was shed, a portion of the black diamond?” SOUTH AUSTRALIA. A fish, similar in every respect to the Newfoundland cod, has, it seems, made its appearance in the watei-s of Moonta Bay. On the 22nd July, writes the Yorke's Pen insula Advertiser, Mr. Watherstone and two of Sir. Kerrison’s sons, who were out fishing, caught ten of the new comers in their net. About a hundred of the fish were enmeshed, but as they were fast dragging the net out to sea, all except ten were allowed to escape. One of the cod which was shown to us by Mr. Kerrison measured upwards of four feet in lengtli, and was estimated to weigh between 70 and 801 b. This is the first instance of the cod being found iu Spencer’s Gulf, and indeed we do not remember anything of this kind of fish ever having previously been caught on the South Australian coast. Mr. Kerrison intends curing the cod for sale.