WIFE HUNTINC.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12773, 21 April 1910, Page 1

WIFE HUNTINC.

An Australian farmer who married a New Zealand girl was in London recently on a quest that had already occupied him tor twelve mouths and carried Jiim over throe continents. His name was James T. Mitchell, of •The Prairie," one hundred and iifty miles from Melbourne, and his wife ' had been a Miss Muir. They were married in Melbourne in 1895, and in 1902 visited England. Subsequently Mrs Mitchell went to New Zealand with her sister, for a long holiday at her mother's home. On January Ist, 1909, she met her husband again in Melbourne, and, although no quarrel had occurred, she suddenly booked a passage to London and went back in the Morea.Mr Mitchell was just in time to board the steamer as she was leaving Port Melbourne, but he failed to persuade his wife to stay. After tho ship had sailed he hastily settled his affairs, caught the train to Adelaide, and joined the Morea there. ' "My hope was," he told a London newspaper man, "that I could induce my wife to leave the ship with me at Col- . ombo, but I could never-get to see her, and the captain, perhaps quite naturally, took the view that as she did not wish to se me, we had better be kept apart. He asked me to leave the ship myself at Colombo, and I refused." Mrs Mitchell managed to leave the ship at this port, however, without her husband's knowledge, and after lie had wasted some weeks in waiting for her at Marseilles and London, he heard that she had returned to Melbourne. He hurried home at once, and, finding that his wife had gone to Suva, lie followed her there. "At Suva," he stated, iiurelating his experiences, "I found that she had sailed for Vancouver some weeks ahead on the steamer Makura, under the name of Mrs Jennie Smith. I followed to Vancouver, where the immigration officer satisfied mo that 'Mrs Jennie Smith' had promptly travelled on to Montreal, and a stewardess who had seen much of her told me that she intended to_ travet in Europe. 'Mrs Jennie Smith' had given to tho officiafls as her home the address of a brother in Melbourne, and the name and address were those of my wife's brother, Mr Muir. I lost a great'deal of time tracing her movements after that, but have no doubt whatever that my wife is the 'Mrs Jennie Smith' who arrived at Vancouver on June Ist from Suva, passed from Canada, to i^e United States, booked the only available berth on the Mauritania, third class, and arrived at Liverpool from New York on Juno 22nd." Last month Mr Mitchell had lost trace of his wife altogether, and seems to have almost despaired of success in his strange quest.