BALD HILL FLAT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 21

BALD HILL FLAT.

August 29.— As the Arbor Day appointed was too early for this locality our School Committee kept holiday on Friday the 26th, and planted over 100 trees, mostly macrocarpas, laying off a piece of the school glebe for the purpose. The proceedings were most enthusiastic throughout, a consideiable number of the residents of the place being present and taking part in the planting. Every child present planted or helped to plant a tree, and nearly every person present planted one. Our school ground i.- further forward in the respect of trees than most places, having had a belt planted round the 10 acres some s yen years ago ; and although they have not received a great deal of attention, they have thriven very fairly, some of them having attained a height of 10ft or 12ft. After the tree-planting— which was carried on under the superintendence of the chairmau, secretary, teacher, and members of the committeewas over, refreshments, which wore kindly provided by the ladies, were handed round; and games and footracing were indulged in during the three or four last hours of the afternoon, when the juveniles broke up for the purpose of preparing for the entertainment to be held in the schoolroom in the evening. A repetition of the operetta or kinderspiel " Red Ridin? Hood " was given in the school in the eveniug by the school children, and was a pronounced success. A dance followed up, and continued till the small hours of the 1 morning. The Late Shooting Accident,— A lot of needless noise was made some few days back, over the so-called Bald Hill shooting case. There was really very little said about it here, atid no one thought for a moment of connecting the lad criminally with anything of the kind. 'J he lad Murphy, who is a son of a very old and respected resident of this place, was out shootiDg on a piece of ground near Shingle Creek, where Chinamen are more plentiful than rabbits— and that is saying a good deal- and he by accident put a pellet of shot into the Mongolian's lips. The Chinaman had at first no intention of instituting proceedings against Murphy, whom he was well acquainted with, had he not been persuaded by some countrymen to do so, and then he entered into things with his whole soul, and ran at top speed to Roxburgh for police assistance. A Chinaman was shot dead in a ca.ve not far from the. same spot about seven or eight years ago ; and of course all charitably-disposed persons in the locality, and out of it, at once jumped to the conclusion that it was some of the lads rabbiting about the place that had done the deed— never for a moment laying the blame on his poor innocent, heart-broken mate, who ran all the way to Roxburgh, where he arrived in a terrible state of fatigue, to give information. An open verdict was arrived at, but some residents are quite positive that he was shot by the mate— he having attempted to borrow a gun at a considerable distance from the scene of tho crime some little time before its occurrence. He hung himself some months afterwards at the head of the Tuapeka river ou the only tree for some miles' round ; the local paper remarking that ho committed suicide from grief at tho loss of his mate —an opinion not shared by those who knew the facts of the case, and are acquainted with the tricks and cunning of the heathen Chinee, when in his own native element.

Mining.— There is very little doing in mining at present, most of tho claimholders being engaged with their water races with a view of getting a food supply of water during the summer months?, understand that tho pneumatic dredge on the Clutha river some few miles from here has so far not paid expenses, the process of lifting the stuff being too slow to pay, unless very rich ground is met with.