AUSTRALIAN NOTES.

Evening Star, Issue 3071, 21 December 1872, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NOTES.

A shipment of very valuable horses has lately been made to Calcutta from Perth, W. A. The abstract of the revenue and expend! • ture of Western Australia for the quarter ending 30th September shows an expenditure of L 22.570 against a revenue of L 26.107. A letter has been received from Hume, the man who obtained his discharge from prison on the statement that he could find records in North Australia of the explorer Leiqhardt. He reports splendid pastoral country west of tbe Port Darwin telegraph line, and describes a large fresh-water lake, 70 miles long, with plenty ef fish.

The Presbyterian Church of Victoria has lately had an accession to its ministers by the opportune arrival of tbo Rev. G. H. Frazer and the Kev. Andrew Hardie, from the eld country. Both reverend gentlemen come highly recommended, and have already given proof, by their able and eloquent discourses, that their arrival is a great acquisition to the church.

Women may gradually find way into the public service by proving their fitness for the performance of duties hitherto considered the exclusive occupation of the stronger sex. At Tamberumba, during the long illness of the Mining Registrar, a helpful wife fulfilled the duties for him, and did this so much to the satisfaction of the local mining community, that a petition was sent to the Minister requesting that she might be allowed to retain the office, which petition has been granted. Bye-and-bye the discovery will be made that a woman may be fit for these and similar duties, without having first passed through the process of serving as a wife and as a widow, just as, according to Charles Lamb’s delightful essay, it was found possible to have roast pig without burning down a house. It is rumoured that some curious litigation in connection with property in one of the fast-advancing suburbs of Melbourne is about to take place. Many ago a gentleman obtained in that district a Crown grant for 300 acres, which he subsequently subdivided and sold, the deeds stipulating that, whenever necessary, he should produce the original Crown grant in order to prove the titles good. As population increased and ground became more valuable, these subdivisions wore in turn subdivided, the sellers guaranteeing the purchasers to produce the guarantee of the original holder of the Crown grant to produce that grant. This process went on several times, until now the 300 acres .arc divided into building allotments of smaller or larger size, the titles being simply guarantees upon guarantees to produce the original Crown grant. A dispute is said to have arisen requiring the production of this very document, and it is alleged that it is nowhere to be found. The first purchaser is dead, and his executors know nothing of the grant. Something like a panic amongst property-holders in that district has taken place.

The last banquet given by the Mayor of Melbourne was not very different to others which have gone before it, the only circumstance lending more interest to the affu’r than usual, being the speech in which Viscount Canterbury referred to his approaching departure from the Colony. In reply to the toast of his health, ho said—- “ Those who believe that a Governor’s interest in a Colony in which lie has lived for six years is only trandent, do not know a Governor’s feeling. It is not t» be supposed that tiat which has been the permanent interest of my life for six consecutive years, can fail to be interesting to me because I return home, and do not see close to me those with whom I have been associated for so long. You may feel sure of this, that when we do depart from Melbourne, although we know and feel that we are returning home, where many of our family row are, we shall, on the other hand, feel that we are leaving a home behind us” These cordial expressions were received with much applause. and his Excel ency spoke wnh equal heartiness in givin.' the tons - , of “ Prosperity to Melbourne: “Without referring to ancient days iu the Colony’s history, he might state that Me'bou ne ha-1 made marvello s progres* even during his re i.leoce here. Palaces were bc'ng erected, villas more than cottages were rising in abundance in every part of the suburbs These suburb* were extending on every side 'I he streets were crowded with people who were evidently above the world.”

The Aye is down on Mr Marcus Clarke, the writer of “Talk on Change” in the Australasian, who is plainly accused of telling great lies, being his second offence in story-telling. Mr Clarke, it is known, writes for a Warnambool paper, and, in a late issue of that journal appeared with his signature attached, a paragraph purporting to disclose the fact of the existpppe of a new body of religionists in Melboqrnp, termed the Carmelites. These people are said to hold their meetings in a house in Lonsdale street, and their rites were declared to culminate in an orgy of both sexes held in the dark. A medical man was alleged to be one of their leaders, and it was hinted th :, t his services were useful in preventing their atrocities from becoming public. This paragraph, sensational in its character, and quite probable enough to bo greedily believed by numbers of readers, was extensively copied into other journals. It was speedily followed by more startling revelat ons. Mr < larkc, having created his Carmelites, was not going to allow them to remain for many days at peace. His second venture was a more daring one. It included a murder, the details of which read much like the morbid sensationalism of a French novel. An old lady was killed by the Carmelites for the sake of her money, and on her body being exhumed, % knitting nee le was found embedded in her heart. To thinking persons this piquant item has the stamp of fictitionsness on the face of it. Still it is not so startlingly improbable but that it found admission in some quarters, and in so respectable a paper as the Sydney Empire, we discover it, in the issue of 29th November, among the Melbourne telegrams, thus “It is rumored that a body of religious enthusiasts have killed an old lady to get possession of her money, amounting to L3OOO. The surgeons who examined the body discovered a knitting-needle thru’t into the heart of the corpse. Extraordinary disclosures are expected to he made.” Now, it is quite sufficient for the Colony to have to bear the burden of the crimes absolutely committed within its boundaries, without baviug further to suffer in reputation in consequence of Mr Clarke’s sickly imaginings, and the heedlessness, to call it by no stronger term, with which he presents thorn to the world as veritable facts, The Aye tells Mr Clarke iu plain Saxon that he is “a wholesale perverter of the truth,” and calls bis statements “ printed lies.”