ABSCONDING FROM NEW ZEALAND.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2742, 30 November 1871, Page 2

ABSCONDING FROM NEW ZEALAND.

A BUTCHER PRESERVED INCOGNITO AT THE iil.U IT'. It is not many months since we chronicled an elopement in low life, the parties being 4 goldfield's butcher carrying oh business $ 4 quartz reeling township not a hundred miles from Kawarau, and a pert little lady who usually presided behind the tap of an adjoining hostelry. After the butcher’s iiight several of his creditors came to the conclusion that he had obtained goods by means of false pretences, and acting in the interests of commercial morality, set the detect ve police in motion. Full particulars of the transaction reached Invercargill by telegram, and the police were requested to wait the arrival of a certain steamer at the Bluff en route for Melbourne, The attempt that was made to catch the absconder is thus described by the Southland Times: —The steamer arrived and a searching investigation ensued, but the missing “knight of the cleaver ” could not be found. The supposed partner of his flight—the ex-landlady —was the e, sure enough, but above and below, from stem to stern, the vessel was searched, and the gallant butcher could not be seen. The ship’s officers and passengers had observed a gentleman on board resembling the one son-lit for, but still the fa< % remained that now, when be was most urgently wanted he could not he had. The police clung to the steamer until the pilot left her spme distance down the.girvit?, and

still their man did not apperr. All this ' 1 e the lady preserved an amount of tranquility which showed she had implicit confidence in the security of the joint venture, Bcfmc dealing with subsequent events, which v. e may explain have been communicated to us on reliable authoiity, it is but right to add that the captain and officers of the vessel were untiring in their endeavors to discover the evdprit. After the pilot had left, and indeed after the steamer had got clear ot the New Zealand coast, the veritable butcher quietly emerged from under one ot those casks of slush or tallow such as are usually to be found on ship-board in the. region of the cook’s galley. The butcher, it appears, acting in conceit with an accomplice, got beneath the cask, the to ■ of which being slightly in ented. admitted of a thin covering of tallow being tilled in. The whole fabric was then lashed down to the deck, so as to prevent any chance of its hidden mystery berg revea’cd. The cask was s> neatly arranged with its tallow coviring, that no ore, not even a Ivnx-eyed police nan, ever dreamt for a moment that it was aught but what it icpresented itself to b ', viz., a receptacle for refuse deposited from the eeok s coppers. The escape was managed with eon uunnatc skill, and there is sune reason to assume that a portion at least of the proceeds of the squatter’s mob of fat cattle went as a reward to the ingenious party or parties by whose assistance the goldfields’ butcher succeeded in preserving his incognito at the Bluff The last heard of the pair was that they had arrived sa‘ely in Melbourne. Their further movements are not known, but it is not all improbable that they may eventually find their way into the bosom of the Church or the First Born, established in the suburban district of Oakleigh. If so, they should att-ia ecclesiastical honors amongst these newly-dodged saints.