MOUNT BENGER.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2606, 24 June 1871, Page 2

MOUNT BENGER.

(From our own Correspondent.)

The foggy weather complained of in my last continues with increased intensity. To day (17th inst.) it amounts fo something very like darknesss visible. So much so that I actually got bewildered on a- piece of flat ground considerably more familiar to me than the road to heaven. But then, I have a knack ef losing my way, and have passed a considerable period of my life in a sicleling. 1 hear you intend publishing a volume of ana illustrative of the character of our leading statesman. Should the rumour be correct I have no doubt the following will prove acceptable. In this favorable district there is resident a gentleman who combines agricultural pursuits with politics, and who is sufficiently appreciated by one goklliekls constituency at any rate to have secured a seat in both the Assembly and the Council. Some time during the past harvest, this worthy started with his horse and dray to procure a sheep from the adjacent station The extinct mutton was duly purchased and had been carried to within 20 yards of the “palatial” residence of our M.P.O. when the brilliant idea struck him that the flue weather was just suited for the carting of his oats. With that promptitude which characterizes all his actions, he turned into the oat paddock, piled a load on his meat and brought it in triumph to the stackyard. Time was too precious to be wasted by throwing off the sheep, so backwards and forwards it went between the oatfield and the stackyard, wind ug up at night by forming the base of a load of firewood. It was pretty well baked by that time and in a very fit state for preservation in the Museum as a monument of untiring industry of the British Cockatoo. A calculation I have seen shows the repeated joiirnies it made, to be equivalent to a single load of a ton and .a half. A Daniel come to judgment—this M.P.O. ! By the way I see farmers’ wives clown country are beginning to correct their husbands with a pitchfork. After that, who will deny that the feminine of cockatoo must be cockatrice.

We have had the womanhood suffrage raised in this quarter. Some time ago Mr Rous Martin “ fluttered the dove-cots of the Volscians,” by objecting to nearly every voter in the district. Among the rest was a lady, whose only crime appears to have been her sex. 0 ungallant Rous Martin!— 0 heroic damsel ! who alone of the Otagoman chignon-wearers ventured to vindicate the rights of woman. A launch on Moa Flat has at the first mention no slight smack of improbability. Such an event has, however, been consummated with—you may be sure—copious libations of whiskey. The craft was the waterpower dredge “Moa,” which has been rebuilt by a party of tributers. Everything went off smoothly, and in another fortnight or so 1 expect the machinery will be shipped and the vessel in a fair way to pay the shareholders a hundredfold. As she can put through from two to three hundred loads of dirt pfer diem, she can work with profit on the very poorest ground. From the Horse Shoe Bend comes a rumour of quartz reefs. Mr Riddell is said to have struck a very rich leader on Messrs Grant and Rutherford’s run. For my own part I hate the very sight of quartz. 1 once did speculate in that line, and got the magnificient result of 10 grains to the hundred tons, I hear a rope and chain is to bo placed by an enterprising miner across the gorge. This will save the exponse of the foot bridge petitioned for by the residents. That abominable land question ; 1 hate the very name of it, and yet cannot help referiug to it. The burden of the present lament is the Millar’s Fiat Block, which I am sorry to say lias not as yet been thrown open. As the applicants are all or nearly all miners resident on the block, who have Lung on for eight years in the hope of forming a home, it is rather too bad to disappoint them. The block has been proved to bo nou-auriferous, and the beaches can only be worked for a short time, so that none of the usual objection* to opening land on the goldfields can apply. Were Bradshaw and the rest of our members worth their tucker, they would attend to tho matter ; but 1 suppose all hands are so busy lengthening the session by wordy debates or useless land resolutions, counter resolutions, amendments, and compromises, which after all the fuss are duly consigned to the waste paper basket, to care a fig for the interests of their constituents. The river continues at a low level, and all the boacb claims arc doing well. The two dredges—the “ Let Her Rip ” and the “ Yorkshire Lass ” —arc both on good wages ground near the Welshman's Beach. “ Faitl), Johnny, your dancing days are done,” otherwise 1 might treat you to au account of the Oddfellows’ anniversary. I expect it will prove a brilliant affair, as eligible ladies have for some time been in great demand. Premiums ranged from a ball-dress to a set of gold—of the period—ornaments. Narrow gauge railroads are about to be extensively brought into use. A line is contem?lated from San Francisco to San Diego, 'alifornia.