AN OLD IDENTITY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13533, 2 March 1908, Page 6

AN OLD IDENTITY.

SOLDIER. SAILOR, DIGGER AND OCTOGENARIAN.

Here is a- typical instance of a- colonial career which may have been tire experience of many an old hand but is, in my opinion, unique, says a writer in -the Greymouth Star. The subject' of it lives on a residential area in the Grey County, for which he pays 5s a year and on which he has erected a fairly snug dwelling which he lias comfortably furnished in batchelor style and where he resides quite comfortably. He was born six weeks before < Jcorge IV. died, consequently he is seventy eight years of age and lias never married. ha.ving led the life of a wanderer till within the past score of years. As a lad he had to work on his lather's farm from a very early age till he was 17 when lie ran away and joined a vessel bound for Melbourne and Sydney. On the way there liie vessel met with severe weather, was dismantled and lost, eight men. .Subsequently they reached Ilobart. where the leinainder of the crew and a few p»ss« nwers went- ashoie. As this was in 1817 t lie now arrivals did not lind things v ry |i:-aeeable. so they took the first op portunily to get. to Melbourne, where till" subject- of this note ship ped on board a vessel trading to China. During his stay in Ilobart. O'Hri.n and Mitch I. who hud taken an :i«"ive pari in the Iri.-h l ebrllion, as lived as prisoner*. Having iiaded between China, anil Calcutta for a time, the vessel he served on wan chartered to take sick pri-

Id Singapore, and ly took ;i number of Chinese coolies lo California, w]u'i-4- 11 m_'v arrived in M; 1 y 1857, when t lie town of .Sail Francisco was burnt down. He also happened to tie in L'liili at the time of tlie revolution there, and was uno of those who volunteered to take the prisoners otf from there, but way prevented from this by tlie arrival of a French man-of-war which took charge of them. After trading between California. Valparaiso, and Honolulu. iic leturned to Australia, having served in all capacities 011 board from cook to .skipper, olio of the boats he nailed in being the old Gazelle, recently sunk in Palliser Bay. Ho also sailed under Captain Thompson in the Geelong between Oamaru and Llie Bluff. She then belonged to Messrs John Jones and K. B. Uargill, but was subsequently the initaal boat of the now famous Union Company. Coming t<> the Coast in the early sixties, he was on the Kanieri diggings when the Burgess and Ivelly gang stuck up the police camp there, and saw the members of the gang many a time when in Hokitika. He remembers Levy well when he carried bread round in the various diggers' camps. He also formed one of an excited crowd in Hokitika who- had formed a plot to relieve the police of .Sullivan when the latter was brought down from. Xelson to give Queen's evidence against his mates in crime. In this they were frustrated by the action of the police, who, knowing that .Sullivan Mould be unmercifully lynched, landed him farther south and secretly conveyed him to the gaoll From one rush to. another ho met, with good and ill luck as it happened and has now settled down to the (juiet pursuit- of " fossicking," which he has succeeded in so far as to bo able to avoid becoming an old age pensioner, though as he remarked " Possibly in another ten years I may have to' avail myself of it. It is always u good thing to look forward to in tile case of need." Hale and hearty, knowing neither ache or pain, he enjoys his life in a. respectable and fairly prcsperous way, always being glad to welcome a visitor to whom lie dispenses the hospitality of his home and regales him with reminiscences of his career with a. relish born of solitude and baclielordom.