THE LATE ACCIDENT AT SUMNER.

West Coast Times, Issue 1656, 20 January 1871, Page 3

THE LATE ACCIDENT AT SUMNER.

A sad accident, resulting in one young woman, a Mrs Williams, losing her life, and that of another being seriously imperilled, has already been reported by telegraph as having happened at fiumncr, near Christchurch. It appears that a party of some twelve or thirteen persons, amongst whom were Mr and Mrs Williams, Mr and Mrs Heath, Mias Pierce, and others, went on a pleasure excursion to Sumner. Shortly after arrival the females of the party went into the sea to the eastward of the Cave rock to bathe. At this part of the beach the sea makes a bend inwards, forming a kind of semicircular bay, and the consequence of this peculiar formation of the land i<> the existence of several dangerous undercurrents. Mrs Williams, who it appears was a good swimmer, being confident in her own powers, went further out than the rest of the party, and was carried out to sea, notwithstanding that Miss Pierce and Mrs Heath made every effort to save her ; the former young woman venturing, out of her depth, would have been drowned, had not a man from a craft lyinjj in close proximity, jumped overboard and rescued her, much exhausted. Airs Williams, however, was pa*t hope of saving, and shortly afterwards the body was thrown upon the beach by the breakers, at a point further up. The bo'ly was at once conveyed to the Sumner Hotel, but life was extinct, and it was then removed to Christchurch. Had it not been for the promptness displayed by the man on board the craft, there is no doubt but that Miss Pierce would also have shared the same fate. At the inquest, Frederick William Jones said : I was husband of the deceased, Harriett Jones. I have been known generally as Frederick George W'lliams. The jury returned a verdict of Accidental Death.

A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazelle, October 26, writes: — What interested me more than the aurora borealis, was the view taken of it by the inhabitants of a little villiipre through which I passed. They were all standing outside their houses gazing at the heavens. " There is France for you," said one of them to me as I approached him. I requested au explanation, and found that not only he but all his neighbors attributed the blood-red light in the sk}' to the burning of Paris. "Gad, how it blazes " I heard a man remark. " They're a gettin' it hunder now," said another ; and so on through all the village. At a garden gate of nearly the last house I observed a respectable-looking man with a telescope, with which he Mas rolling the sky. "It is rum," he said to me, and very sublimely ; " but the d — d asses, I can't make 'em believe it is only the Southern Cross." I rather think he was the schoolmaster of the parish."