PROVINCIAL AND COLONIAL.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 159, 26 November 1872, Page 6

PROVINCIAL AND COLONIAL.

A slight earthquake occurred in Dunedin on thu 20th inst. Mr John Ewing, we read, was heartLy greeted on Lis return to St. Bathans. From all quarters of the Province comes. news of an expected plentiful fruit crop. A legal gentleman in Lawrence was recently lined £2 for assaulting a brother solid*.;; -.-. The appointment of Sir George B< » _.•, the Governorship of Victoria meets with favour. Mr T. I>. Gillies received a rote of conn- j dence upon addressing his constituents in Auckland. Mr Ah Toiig obtained in Lawrence nearly all the 500 Chinese labourers he wanted fur , the Clutha railway. Messrs J. W. Robertson and Co. are, says the Arrow Obxerm; shortly to start a woollen factory in that district. A boy 11 year? of age was lately brought up before the Police Magistrate in Sydney on a charge of drunkenaess. At Tambaroora, the Krohmami Co.'s crushing averaged 40 ounces to the ton, and Beyer's and Holterman's (55 ounces. It is said that the } > ope purposes forming New Zealand into an Archbishopric, and conferring the see upon Dr Moran. Mr Every M'Lcan's Hereford hull, which, took the first prize attire Auckland show, hasl been sold for £SOO, to go to Napier. The Melbourne Aye is now the largest penn; I daily in the Colonies, its average daily circulation being close upon 17,000 copies. All the immigrants per Lady Jocelyn m\ Christchurch, except eight families, obtained employment the first day. at good wages. Since the first discovery of gold in the Colony, the quantity exported amounts to j (5,959,5060z5., of the value of L.25,852,4'7. | A sensational actress from America is expected in Melbourne before long. She i an-; jnounced as " Lotta, the pet of the liciiic, ! Slope." The parties who discovered the i.arblc quarry at Timaru have since " made a series of valuable discoveries," including tli.t of a slate quarry. At Invercargill, the other day, the tcamcr I Wallaby broke her back. The ti.e went out, and she rested on a sandbank, wtich had ; ' formed unnoticed. The starting of the Gabriel's Giily Company's battery last week was wiK'ssed by ! 500 people. The tunnel and cros-drive in the mine were illuminated. Dunedin is shortly to be visitcclby " Polly Plum" (Mrs Colclo'ugh), of Audand, who intends lecturing during the Ohrttmas vaca- . tion on " Women's Rights." The Grey Hirer Aryus relatcsthat a butcher hoy at the Ahaura, who pitied up a de- ! posit receipt for £485, was profited on re-. i turning it with " exactly noting." A pigeon-shooting match to.: place on the 18th inst. in Christchurch between Mr Redwood and Mr Maxwell. Tin former killed 44, and the latter 30, out of {1 birds. Mr Bills, who went to Engaid for a second supply of insectivorous birdsm behalf of the : Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, was to | sail from London during tluprescnt mouth. Two hundred of the mmgrants shortly to arrive in Dunedin by the Christina M'Aushtnd are for Messrs Brogdc The remainder are Shetland families "sported" by Mr : Birch. An explosion took pla- in a soap-factory in Cumberland-street, fuiedin, on the 10th jinst. A large iron pan as blown 50ft. into i the air, and descended i fragments, A man and boy were hurt. The natives atOhirMuri, '" obedience to Te Ilira's orders, ha* vitlidrawn their land from the Lands Oou.'t. The Thames Adrer- • User thinks this stej willbe fatal to the chance ! of opening up the distrjt for some time to come. The Nelson Exmnrw, referring \o the j scratching of Peeress forhe Canterbury Cup, '1 states that from informtion indirectly objtaiued there is reason t believe that, before 'the race the mare was Hue, and had been ' i blistered. Melbourne news saya suicidal mania is i prevalent. At Ballarat,cc-constabie Gannon , | blew his brains out ; an a christianised Chi- , j naman put an end to hiself. On the Yarra, 3! a man named Wcbsti committed suicide 1 white rowing. *

40,000 people are said to have been present i»n the Melbourne Cup day. At the Balmaiu Regatta, N.S.W., the Intercolonial Champion Gig Race, of £SOO, was won by the Sydney Rowing Club's Representative Crew, No. 1. The same Club's No. 2 crew were second, and Victoria third. The race was won easily. , A Taranaki paper says : —"A marked feature in many of the Maoris at this time is their utter contempt of Sunday observance—ploughing, harrowing, kurnera planting, and housebreaking being performed by them on that day more zealously than any other." By a fire in Auckland on the 18th inst., property valued at £OO,OOO was burnt. The Post Office, Telegraph Office, Custom House, and Provincial Government buildings were destroyed. The latter cost £25,000, and were uninsured. Late telegrams say the flames spread while local brigades squabbled. ]n a recent spiritualistic address iTTTMelboume by Mr James Smith, alluding to reincarnations, he is reported to have said : " Moses had re-appeared as Elijah' and John the Baptist ; Shakspeare used to be Dante. Smal'. minds lost thbir identity, and were absorbc 1 into great ores in the spirit world." The barque City of Newcastle, bound from Wellington to Newcastle, was wrecked off Wellington Heads, near Picton. The captain and twenty of the crew were picked up by the Taranaki steamer. A boat containing several females is missing. The vessel belonged to Mr Dransheld, Mayor of Wellington, and was insured for £1250. The captain's certificate has been cancelled. During the hearing of a case in the Warden's Court at the Akaura, at a recent sitting, it transpired that a "hatter" at Nelson Creekhad earned on an aveiage £3O per week whenever he had water to wash with. His claim >"•> on the top of the ranges, near the iosed terminus of the race intended to be brought from Lake Hochstetter to Nelson Creek by the Government. Id the Dunedin gaol recently, a prisoner named Gallagher,—wio is under sentence of 15 rears' penal servitv.de for a murderous attach with a tomahawk upon Mr Craig, storekeeper, and his wife, at the Marewhemia diggings, whilst in bet. in the night-time,— received twelve lashes for insubordination. — The same convict has since been sentenced ; to fifty lashes more as a punishment for gross and ctristinued insubordination, i The Grey Hirer Argw announces that the first gleam of advanced civilisation reachul Jhaura a few weeks ago in the shape of a 1 Iflack stove-pipe hat on s, man's head. White [{olgothas have been seen occasionally, accompanied by wandering nigger minstrels or itinerant members of Parliament, but this is the first black "bell-topper" that has ever made its aj pjarance in 1 'gitunate use further up the Grey Valley than the Arnold Junction. The case of Lincoln c. Dent, an action fur defamation, has just been tried at Auckland, Damages were laid at £SOO. The parties are gum-dealers at Wangarei, and the defamatory words were in effect " chat the plaintiff used ' wrong' weights," and in consequence the Natives and others would not bring their gum tn the plaintiff, who lost his business, and was driven into the Bankruptcy Court. The trial Listed two days, and the jury rewarded the plaintiff £IOO damages. In their journey between Sandhurst and Eaglehawk, the German princes (says the Bendigo Aflmi i tser) were much struck with the extent of the gold-field, its astonishing quartz resources, and instituted comparisons between the Bendigo quartz mines and the celebrated Congo Soco and St. John Del Rev quartz mines of Brazil, where the workings are 2000 feet deep. The Bendigo machinery was also considered much superior to that employed on these mines. The princes were greatly struck with the orderly character (if the miners, and with their neat cottages;' the handsome appearance of snnm of the residences of the wealthy quartz reefers also attracted their attention. —The princes have: since gone to India. The running for the Hurdle Race at Christchurch, between Bismarck and Medora, has, caused a good deal of talk in racing circles. | M'Kay, the rider of Medora, it appears,] weighed out properly, but after the race he] was found to be 3 lbs too light. It was ob-i served some time before the race that some friends of Medora were putting their money on Bismarck, and the knowing ones were at a less to understand how the latter could be possibly made to win, unless Medora waspalpably held back. Even during the race, which to all appearance was a gift to Medora. from the commencement, the parties referred to kept laying their money on Bismarck. It is just possible that they may have noticed .M'Kay dropping his three pounds of lead. If the people of Victoria have the exclusive j privilege of witnessing every year the great 1 contest for the blue riband of the turf 'm I the Australian Colonies, their neighbours in. New South Wales can console themselves l with the fact that the trophy now-a-days isj | almost invariably gained by a Sydney horse. ! The Cup Day of 1872 scored another victor}' I for New South Wales, when M,- John Tait's |bh The Quack van past the post in front of i twenty-one competitors. Probably the result was no great surprise, as The Quack stood | next to Dagworth in the betting before the j first day of the Victorian Spring Meeting. l Pagworth's defeat in the Melbourne Stakes caused him to recede considerably in the betting, and it. is not improbable therefore, thai at the start for the Cup, The Quack may have I been the favourite. In the Essendon Stakes, I which was run for on the Derby Day, The : Quack took third place, being defeated bj | Blue Peter and Dolphin. He carried Ost, j]2!hs., however, on the occasion; his Cuj | weight being Bst. lib.