MOUNT BENGER.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2638, 1 August 1871, Page 3

MOUNT BENGER.

[from our own correspondent,] Rain, snow, and wind combined, tended to cause a flood in the river, which effectually knocked off all the mining claims. At the Teviot the river rose about ton feet, and were it not for a timely warning flashed along the telegraph wires from Alexandra, the loss in mining plant must have been heavy. As it is, barring a few old sluice-boxes, the loss is confined to the inability of the claimowners to continue work. Still these floods have their bright side, as they sluice away great quantities of accumulated tailings which seriously interfere with dredging. Apropos of dredging, I observe in your morning contemporary a new invention, in which the diving-bell figures prominently, introduced with a great flourish of trumpets. I cannot criticise it better than by quoting a bit of diggers' slang : ‘ ‘ The man that made that machine could make a watch —if he only knew how.” You may mention in your column of fashionable intelligence that the Mt. Benger district is honored by the presence of no less distinguished a personage than the late ringleader of the Dunedin unemployed. As far as 1 can judge from one hearing of this illustrious specimen of the pot-house demagogue, he possesses great fluency, greater check, and the greatest possible ignorance of his own unenlightened condition. He alternates his daily toil with orations on all conceivable topics. Mr Macandrew of course catches it hotly for daring to insinuate that the honorable member for the street corners was a bit of a sea-lawyer - x while Mr Brad shaw is emphatically declared to be the only gentleman in the Council. This last assertion leads medical men tq quest on the pqor fellpAv’s sanity,