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Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 152, 8 June 1877, Page 3

A recent fresh in the Grey River carried away 600 or 700 tons of gravel from the new Harbour Works in 24 hours. We (Daily Times) have reason to believe that an Otago member, in dealing with economic administration in the Assembly next session, will have a good deal to say concerning Mr Whitaker's Auckland trip in the Hinemoa, and other circumstances connected with the use of that vessel and the Stella. A member for a suburban constituency has, it is known, determined to make strict enquiries into Colonel Gorton's branding or stock-taking department. The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction receives something like verification in the following, which (says the Bendigo Advertiser) is authentic in all particulars. A short time since, a young sailor, second officer of a ship trading to the Mauritius from Melbourne, left his wife living at Williamstown. At Port Louis illness seized him, and he was left in the hospital, seriously ill. On the arrival of the ship, the wife saw the captain, who gave her the facts concerning the health of her husband. Subsequently another arrival from Mauritius told her he had beard that her husband " died in the hospital"; and upon this very unreliable authority she concluded herself a widow, and in this capacity took a situation in the provinces, and after a time — say about a twelvemonth from her husband leaving—she married her employer's brother. Meanwhile the Enoch Arden of the narrative was not dead at all, but recovered, and, no ship offering for the Colony, he shipped Home, wri tingbis wife, who, having left her former residence, never got his letter?. Arrived in England, he learned that a rich relative ia China had died and left him a large amount of money, and accordingly he sailed to China and took possession of the property, upon which he realised some L 90,000, the result of years of successful speculation by the deceased devisee, and sailed for Victoria to find his wife and enjoy his wealth with her, only to find that, unlike Penelopft, she had not waited for her Ulysses, and was another's. The next homeward mail-boat took him away to England, without disturbing the felicity of the existing arrangement. The wife now repents of hor precipitancj' when it is too late.