Untitled

Grey River Argus, Volume V, Issue 363, 12 May 1868, Page 2

The whole of the barges, horses, towing gear, &c, lately belonging to the Nelson Coal Company have been purchased by our enterprising townsman, Mr J, Kilgour, who took possession of them yesterday, A stupid error appeared in our report of the civil cases in the Magistrate's Court, published in our Saturday's issue. In the case Blake v, Magoffiu, the subject of dispute was stated to be a quantity of potatoes instead of a case of enffee, the real cause of action, Our reporter was not in Court at the time this case was called on. We are glad to find that practical efforts are now to be made to give effect to the vote of the County Council with regard to placing the Greymouth Cemetery in decent order. A combined collecting committee representing each religious denomination has been formed to canvas the town and neighborhood for subscriptions towards the amount necessary to secure the grant by the Council. The following gentlemen have consented to collect the subscriptions : — Messrs Smith and Allen for the Church of England ; Messrs Joyce and Kennedy for the Roman Catholics ; and Messrs Parkinson and Masters for the Wesleyans. A meeting of the Committe will be held at Messrs Kennedy Brothers' store, at 3 o'clock this 'afternoon. We are sure that the .appeal for subscriptions towards so necessary and Christian an object as that in view will be heartily responded to by the public. We learn from the Westport Times that on Friday evening last, at about nine o'clock, Trimble's Nelson Hotel, and with it no doubt a large portion of Gladstone street, was in serious danger of destruction. It seems that a candle had been placed on a chair at the top of the stair landing, and by some means the draught blew the flame against a blind which ignited, and set lining and paper of the house in a blaze. Fortunately it was almost immediately discovered, and a host of willing hands lent valuable and prompt assistance before the fire had spread. By this timely aid the paper, &c , was torn down and all danger quickly at an end, without any more damage done than awindow blind, and a little canvas and paper consumed. His Honor Judge' Clark sits to-day in the Resident Magistrate's Courb, for hearing civi cases and applications in insolvency. A list of the cases set down for hearing will be found in another column. The installation of the officers of the first Greymouth Lodge of Freemasons will take place on Tuesday, the 26th inst., at high noon, at the Lodge Room, at the Albion Hotel. The ceremony will be followed by a banquet, which will .take place at 9 o'clock p. m . the same day. Tickets are to be obtained from the following brethren :— Messrs Ancher, Maclean, Moss, Tonks, Kenrick, and the Secretary Brother Guiness. All members 'of the craft are invited to attend, and we are requested to state that the promoters of the Lodge are desirous of seeing as many of their brethren frcm the county as can attend. The following is; a copy of the letter from the Superintendent of Nelson to Mr Commissioner Kynnersly on the subject of the recent disturbances at Addison's Flat: — "Superintendent's Office, Neison, May 6, 1868. Sir — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 18th ult., narrating, for the information of the Government, the occurrences of the previous month at Westport and Addison's Flat. lam directed by the Superintendent to convey to

you the special thanks of the Government for the prudence as well as the firmness which have characterised your action under very difficult circumstances, and to congratulate you upon the highly successful result of your exertions, which have secured the vindication and re-establishment of law and order, and have relieved the Government and the Province from the very serious difficulties in which a less firm and a less prudent course on your part would have involved them. The Superintendent further instructs me to assure you that he considers the colony is greatly indebted to you for the course you hare pursued on this occasion, and he is convinced that had you yielded to the pressing solicitations of a large number of influential and well-intentioned persons in the district under your management and control, a conflict would have ensued between different sections of the community, which would have led to the interruption of industrial pursuits, and most probably a serious loss of life, suoceeded by a permanent hostility between different classes of the population, not only in the dis* trict within your jurisdiction as Commis? sioner of the South-West Gold Fields, but also in other parts of the West Coast, most injurious to the place, and most disastrous to the prosperity of the whole colony of New Zealand. I have, &c, , Alfred' Greenfield, Provincial Secretary." The Rev. E, Royer has kindly placed at our disposal a letter which he has received from the Queensland diggings, from which we make the following extract: — "I am very sorry to say that I have not much news to send you, and what little 1 have to send is of the worst description. I must inform you that for the last three months and a-half there has not been one foot of new ground opened for mining purposes on Gympie Creek, or within forty miles of the same locality of Gympie, which is called Nashville. There are prospecting parties out in every direction, but not one of them can get a prospect far oi near, and 1 am sure if nothing new breaks out very soon that there will be many hundreds here in a state of starvation, and that before many weeks are past, There has never been anything but the gully that was first opened ; all that has been found since is three or four quartz leaders, some of them having gold in them and some not, but I have not seen one that I should call a quartz reef. Although they are getting some very rich finds in some of the quartz leaders on Gympie (which you may say is all the diggings) none are getting gold, without it is a few of the old claims that are not yet quite worked out, but these are very few, for they have all been worked over twice, and in some cases three times. I could hardly give a worse account of any place than I could of this place at the present time. Yours, &c), Walter Bennett." The Westport Times says it is not at all improbable that the shilling nobbier is doomed, an agreement having been entered into by a number of consumers not to pay more than sixpence for their refreshment, that being the price. at Hokitika and other places. Whether the publicans or the asso* ciation will give way remains to be seen. On Saturday, the only business transacted at the Resident Magistrate's Court was the hearing of three charges against John Harris, of the Star Hotel, for breaches of the Public House Ordinance The defendant was charged with having kept a disorderly house, served drink after 12 o'clock, and kept his house open after the licensed time. The first charge was withdrawn, the ordinance not making any provision for the offence, and the other two charges were dismissed, because the eridence of proof was not strong enough in one, and the ordinance did not provide a penalty in the other. The County of Westland Gazette, of the Bth inst., contains a notice declaring " all that portion of New Zealand which is contained within the County of Westland to be a Gold Field under the 'Gold Fields' Act, 1866,' t0 be called and known as 'The Westland Gold Field.' " This proclamation has been tendered necessary by one of the regulations for the sale of waste lands, which provides that all land sold shall remain under the operation of the Gold Fields' Act. We learn from one of the Buller papers that from Lyell Creek some very good accounts have come down, and though there is nothing to justify anything like a rush, a great proportion of those at present at work are doing well, or in digging phrase, making good wages. The escort from Ross, in charge of Sergeant Wilson, arrived in Hokitika on Friday afternoon, bringing up 4000 ounces of gold consigned to the various banks. Two letters appear in another column again complaining of the conduct of the ferryman at the Little Grey Junction. It would certainly appear that the Nelson authorities snould instruct the police to make enquiry into the truth or otherwise of the statements 'regarding the mismanagement of the ferry, and ii found to be true, remove the present holder of the ferry-boat. The subjoined obituary notice, taken from the Otago Daily Times of the 28th ult., announces the death of the oldest Freemason in these colonies :- "On the 27th April, at the residence of his daughter, Mrs Muir, Bedford House, Mr Thomas Allen, in the 82nd year of his age. The deseased was one of the earliest colonists of South Australia, having arrived there with a large family, in 1836 > and presumed to be the oldest Freemason in the Australian colonies. Adelaide papers, please copy." We take the following from the Qwenslander of tha 25th April :—" The question of relief to able-bodied aud destitute persons came rather suddenly upon the Municipal Council of Maryborough last week, as,| we learn from the local papers just to hand. Sixty -two ' starved-out diggers'^resented a petition for relief to that worshipful body at their meeting on the 16th inst. The petition set forth that the petitioners had been l - deluded and misguided' by the different reports which had appeared in the papers, and had come to that part of the colony for the purpose of earning an honest livelihood, but after

spending what little means they had .on Arrival they found nothing before them but starvation. The Municipal Council suspended their Standing Orders at once, to conpjdor the petition, and having; decided 'without muoh trouble that there were no Corporation funds available, either to find » employment for these men, or afford them relief in any way, they fell hack naturally enough upon 'the .Government.'" . . Mr R. D. Ireland,'^. G, the late Attorney General of Viotoria, arrived at Hokitika on Friday, by the steamer Tararua. for Mcl- j bourse, specially retained for the defence of j the prisoners under committal for "rout 1 and seditious libel. It is understood that Mr Travers bas also been retained on the same side. The Supreme Court will open its sittings to-morrow, and we believe it is likely that the political trials will commence on the following morning. , The diggings on the Caledonian terrace at the Buller appear to be in a prosperous conditiou. The correspondent of the local journal states that the claims all along the lead and on both sides of the creek are rich, and from LlO to L3O per week per man is obtained. The German Terrace is good too, and in full work, every available piece of good ground being taken, up, one party here are using hydraulic power, Oh Friday evening there was a meeting oi the members of the Greymouth Volunteer Fire Brigade, nt which an animated and rather angry discussion took place regarding the action taken by the Treasurer of the Brigade, who was also Treasurer of the Engine Committee, in having applied the funds of the Brigade (in all about L6O) to the payment of the price of the new engine. This the Brigade considered an unjustifiable proproceeding, as the Brigade was now at a dead stand for want of funds. After some debate, it was proposed that the householders in the towu should be asked to contribute one shilling oach, weekly, towards, the cost of maintaining the Brigade in aa efficient position. The following from the ■ letter of the Waimea correspondent of the West Coast Times may prove interesting to our mining readers :— At the Pin's lead, Fourtn Scandinavian Terrace, some of the old ground has been again taken up, because a party there has discovered a plan of washing auriferous dirt with despatch in large quantities. They use a box about twenty-four feet long, covered with perforated iron plates along its whole length, and plush placed at the bottom of the box, about three inches below the plates. By these means a great deal .of stuff is washed with success, the gold having ample time to be caught by the plush before [ it reaches the tail end of the box, and the necessity for a man Btirring the wash dirt about over the hopper is thereby obviated, the only work to be done being the throwing the dirt into the head box. About thirty loads a day are easily run through, and the plan has been adopted now by several parties. ' W« learn from th^, Lyttelton Timesoi the 6th iust. that a meeting of the promoters of the Grey River Coal Company was held at Messrs Wilson and Alport's offices on the previous day, for the purpose of deciding upon future operations. Amongst those present Were— Messrs H. P. M. Aynsley, R. Rhodes, Inglis, Richardson, W. Wilson, W. S. Moor* house, R. M. Morten, G. Holmes, and Dr Haast. After a lengthened consideration, it was resolved that the shared for the present sLould be limited to 6000, at £5 each, and that a local directory should be formed at Greymouth, at once, with power to make immediate arrangements for opening the mine. Some other business of a routine nature was transacted, after which the meeting broke up. The West Coast Times informs us that on Saturday, at the Resident Magistrate's l Court, Hokitika, before J. Aylmer, Esq., R. M. , James Francis Crowle.y, . printer ,pf . the Celt newspaper, wasr,brought up charged with malicious,. and defamatory libel. Mr Harvey proceeded to introduce the case; 'but; was interrupted by Mr FitzGerald, Resident Magistrate, desiring that the information might first be read. The information was accordingly read, and was as follow^ :- "The information of Richard Crompton Bisbop taken on oath this eighth day of May, 1868, before James A. Bonar, Esq., •aith that James Francis Crowley, of Hokitika, in the County of Westland aforesaid, on the eight day of May, a.»., 1868, unlawfully, w : .ckedly and maliciously did publish a certain false, wicked, malicious, and scandalous, and defamatory libel of and concerning one Gerard George FitzGerald, and one William Shaw, contrary to the peace of our Lady the Queen, her Crown and dignity, and against the statue in that behalf made and provided." Signed Richard Crompton Bishop, and sworn before J. A. Bonar, Esq Fitzgerald here rose to address the Magistrate, and said that he desired to draw the attention of his Worship to the irregularity of the present proceedings. When about to take his seat on the bench, to hear the cases before the Resident Magistrate's Court, Mr Malet, the clerk to the bench, to his great astonishment, said that there was an iuforma- 1 tion down for hearing in which his name appeared. The information just read would appear to be the one alluded to. He protested emphatically, and with considerable feeling, against the way in which the information had been laid without his knowledge or consent. The first intimation he had received of the affair was from the Clerk of the Court. He did not know why the information had been laid, and, never reading the paper in which the libel was said to have appeared, he had no idea what it consisted of. He remarked that if the libel complained of related to him as a private individual,' then! as a citizen he had his remedy, and was himself the best judge as to whether he should seek it. He characterised the masner of the filing of the information as most ungentlemanly. Mr Shaw agreed with the remarks of Mr Fitzgerald, and the information was dismissed.