DROWNING FATALITIES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8663, 4 November 1899, Page 2

DROWNING FATALITIES.

Our Tolago Bay correspondent wired shortly after we went to press yesterday giving particulars of a fatality by drowning chat has occurred in that neighborhood as the result of the heavy weather iv the early part of the week. A man named John Harris, aged 34, a ihepherd on Fitzgerald Bros.' station, Wbakatupu, came into Gisborne for the Show last week, and returned to Tolago Bay on' Tuesday. He left the township for the station, which is about seven miles distant, early in the afternoon, and so far as is known that is the last that was seen of him alive. He had to cross the Matigatuna stream, which was swollen by the rains, and is believed to have been drowned in making the ford, for his riderless horse and faithful dog were found yesterday afternoon some distance down the stream. It is thought strange that the accident should have happened without anybody knowing of it for so long, as the ford of the river where he must have come to f»rief was not fur from a Maori pah. The boisterous weather, no doubt, accounts for this fact, however. Harris was well known throughout the district. He came from the Wairarapa, where his father is a station owner. The matter was reported to Constable Douovan, who was at Tokomaru yesterday, and a search is no doubt being made to-day for the body. Waieoa, This day. Reports from Nuhaka state that a man named Home, a blacksmith, is supposed to have been drowned at Tunanui whilst crossing the stream. His horse has turned up in a wet condition, minus one stirrup. A search for the body is being made. Last Saturday afternoon, the Taranaki News reports, two men named Walmslsy and Hen wright, employedasstone-breakers, took a small boat at the Oakura leach and went out fishing. They had not been out long when they hooked a shark, which pulled the boat out into the breakers, where it capsized. They tried to right it, but Honwright wanted to swim ashore, Walmsley preferring to stick to the boat. Henw rig lit swam ashore to give the alarm. Walmsley was seen on the top of the boat for over two hours, but there was no other boat available to go to his rescue. The police in town were advised of the accident, and a volunteer boat crew was got together, and 6tarted off from the breakwater in a boat for the scene. They saw no signs of the missing boat, and they kept up the search till dark, when the captain called in the boat.