A STORY OF THE OHAU.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6521, 26 June 1899, Page 3

A STORY OF THE OHAU.

. Referring to the ill-fated Obau, the. Fiji "Times"' says: — "While 'in Fiji in the hurricane of 1895, the Ohau had a very narrow escape of being wrecked off the Taviuni coast, and it was alleged at the time that in the height of the storm she sailed jover reefs that would have been impossible for her to have missed in ordinary weather. Captain Place. was the pilot on board of the Ohau at the time, although he. did not at the moment claim any large amount of credit for bringing the ship out of troubled waters. He rather put it down to a piece of luck which to this day he cannot quite account for." MAKING THEM "LOOK CLEAN." Mr Rider Haggard has been drawing a prophetic picture of the future, when, owing to the ignorance of Englishmen of agricultural matters and their unwillingness to work on the land, Great Britain will consist of huge cities surrounded by marketpardens and large uncultivated tracts of veldt. Had he been at Parliament-hill fields, Highgate, s a few weeks ago, he would, says the London correspondent of the "Lyttelton Times," have found some justification for his prophecy in the group of spectators who, open-eyed, were watching the shearing of a large flock of sheep | grassing In the fields. Most of them seemed j never to have seen, or even heard, of such an operation before. One bright youth, more inquisitive than his fellows, asked what it was being done for. "To make 'liem look clean" was the answer, Avhich, doubtless, satisfied the inquirer's thirst for knowledge, seeing that in their normal condition the sheep in and about London look uncommonly like black sheep.