THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1872.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1254, 6 August 1872, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1872.

The Ross News has received authentic information from Wellington that Messrs Brogden only await the reception of plans from the surveyors to complete their arrangements for at once proceeding with this muchrequired work.

A member of one of the Oamaru mercantile firms informs the local paper that he a day or two ago exchanged a has of wheat for a bag of coal. Cash and coal seem both alike scarce in that quarter.

Mr Yule, foreman of Messrs Connor and Co., and his workmen, on excavating the hill side, at Lyttelton, near to the breakwater, discovered a Maori skeleton. The skull is in the poHsession of Dr Donald, and will be sent to the Christchurch Museum.

In the Assembly of New South Wales resolutions have been carried in favor of the Californian mail subsidy, with the restriction that it is to be submitted to Parliament previous to acceptance.

Captain Baldwin, the Government Life Assurance lecturer, is about to publish a tale written by him, entitled " Tom Hungerford, v Story of the Early Days of the Otago Goldfields."

A miner named John Brown was accidentally drowned in the Molyneux river at Alexandra Ferry, at about five o'clock on the evening of the 20th ulr. Deceased and a man Thomas Graham were rafting a wheel down the river from the Galatea dredge, near Sandy int, bo Alexandra, When about 200 yards

from the ferry, they attempted to get the raft, which they had kept ahead of the boat they were in, ashore, and :'i doing so deceased jumped ashore with the raft lino in his hand. The line got entangled about his legs, and drew him mto the river, Graham then lumped e shore, and thoughtlessly let the boat go ad;lft. Constable Markharo, who happened to be at the fen/ at the time, witnessing the accident, took off ts jumper and endeavored to get it \ilthin reach of de-_ ceased, but the latter, being entangled mthe raft line, wrs immediately swept do«a the river, and watflrowned. Information was received by the Well"^ton police that David Sim left Valentine's Hotel of the Hutt, on Saturday afternoon I to go to his house at Petom, and had not reached home by Sunday morning. Search was made, and things, that had been m his possession were found on the bankß of the river. Farther search was made, and his body was found in the liver. Some days ago a man named W. Gibson, whilst crossing Porter's Pass on the way to tho West Coast, got his feet wet in one of the creeks, and the cold being very intense, his boots and socks werefrozento his feet, and be lower portions of his legs were affected -'-1 such a manner that he was unable to proceed, and he wastaken :•.. op. out-station in the locality. Here, instead of snow or cold water being used to restore circulation in his limbs, he was placed before a large fire, and the result was such that he had to be forwarded to the Christchnrch Hospital, where he is now progressing very satisfactorily towards recovery. • A serious accident of a somewhat unusual kind occurred at the Southland Meat Preserving Works at Winton to one of the men employed in what is known as the bathroom, who was severely scalded on the head, face, and arm, by the explosion of a tin ol meat, which burst at a very high tempera, turo in one of the baths. The tin which caused the mischief in this case appears tc have been accidentally tilted a little on one Bide, and on bursting discharged its superheated contents with great force upon the unfortunate man's face and arms. A sad accident occurred on Saturday wee! to a little boy, the son of Mr Wooton, Kosi Place, Lawrence, Otago. Mrs Wooton was making ready a battufor the children, ant had poured a quantity of boiling water mt< a tub. While she was away procuring som< cold water, the unfoifcunate 'ittle fellow, who was playing about, was accidental^ pushed backwards into the scalding water f The boy is severely burned on the back, t .« now lies in a very precarious state, i What befel a bachelor in the Tuapeka dis » trice, who declined to act on the advice o • Samuel Wellec senior, is recorded by th< i Tuapeka local i aper:-The gentleman alludei * to, for some time past, had paid his addresse to a blooming widow, and succeeded in ob taining her consent to wed The day wa: named, and the happy lover last tfaturda; procured a special license. The marriage wa to have taken place on Monday. Ihe bride groom and the clergyman made their appeal ' ance at the appointed place, but the bnd was not to be found. After waitiug for i considerable time, the clergyman departed I leaving the disappointed groom to oulfcivat patience and ruminate over the mutabillt of things mundane in general and widen brides ?u particular. He waited so long tha his stock of patience was exhausted, and h departed for parts unknown. It appear that the bride had taken a fancy to widower with a large family, and "ske daddled" to his protection, lewmg her dis consolate lover to mourn his fate. Mr W, M'Lean has addressed to the Wa fi j m-^ o f-ii--^.; — i-i.f«.. nn _the._sul 1 meeting of the Westland Quartz Crushin - Company :—" Will you kindly allow me a space in your journal to contradict a repoi " which appeared in your last issue. The r« f port purported to be a resume of a meeting t shareholders in the above company, held a i the Empire Hotel on the Ist inst. four con . tributor could not be actuated by any goa ' motives towards the company or directors , otherwise he would have confined himself fc " the facts which transpired. As regards tb I attacks he has made on myself, I can onl; treat them with the contempt that all pei sons should be treated with who knowingl; . commit perjury. The report, from beginmn, to end, is a complete tissue ot falsehoods and must have emanated from the f ulsora evaporations not only of a perjurer, tut i slanderer. A reptile of the meanest kin< can poison, and retract after so doing, bu when attacked he will stand his ground. I ' your contributor has the smallest spark o manhood left, I trust he will corneforwnn \ and subscribe his name, and prove the truth 5 1 fulness of his anonymous report, which migh ' have been written when smarting under i severe disappointment, and the question o his sanity may be doubted." On Saturday evening an accident oceurrec near the Kanieri, by a collision between j tramway car and Graham's coach, which wai very nearly proving fatal to some of the pas sengers in the latter. It appears, from th< , particulars furnished to us, that the tran 1 car and the coach left the Kanieri almost together at five o'clock. When near thi creek where the road crosses the tramway, the driver of the coach endeavored to pasi before the car, but was not quick enough, and the < car colliding against Graham'i horses, they were thrown, with coach and passengers, over the embankment into the I creek, a depth of about eight feet, the coact turning bottom up. The coach, horses, par.< eels, aud passengers, of whom there were seven, were for a time one confused mass. > However, assistance was soon at hand, and the passengers were extricated, having sus tamed but little more injury than some bruises and abrasures of the skin. The horses were also rescued without haying sustained iniury, but the coach was completely smashed. A lamentable accident occurred in the Excelsior Company's claim, Boss, to a minei named Thomas Green. It appears that the unfortunate man had failed to put a sprague in the wheel of a truck he was employed in bringing from one of the drives to the cage, and that in endeavoring to stop it while running down an incline, his left thigh was crushed between the truck and the wall, and badly fractured. He was, as soon as possible, conveyed on a stretcher to the Hospital, and placed under the care ol the Resident Surgeon. The poor fellow has only just recovered from the effects of a previous injury, Incurred in the same mine, and will now be incapacitated for ■■ some months from contributing anything towards the support of his wife and family of six small children. We copy from the Canterbury Press the following Dy a correspondent of the Times : — " The agricultural laborers have profited by the general riss of wages least of all. Their pay varies greatly in the different parts of the country, and cannot easily be calculated in money, as it mostly consists of substantial advantages in the way of food, clothing, house rent, and the free use of land, &c. Generally speaking, however, the agricultural laborer receives from a fourth to a third less than the worst paid mechanic, and the difference is probably even greater than it was, now that the wages in the towns have risen in a few years thirty per cent, while only ten per cent has been added in the country. But the field hand in Germany has a more exalted object in life than high wages. His ideal is emigration . Owing to the large class of small proprietors constantly before him —

all German peasants are lords of the soilthere is not a common laborar in the remotest village but aspires to have land of his own either here or in America. As ne can harc"y hot 3 to acquire even the smallest plot in the old country, where peasant estates are rarely sold, and when sold are quite beyond his means, the goal of Hib longing desires is a homestead in the Untteci States. To scrape together enough to pay hia passage is alr%e wants. Once there, the benefits, of the Homestead BiH extend,. to him, -aftd he may look forward to . the blissful prospect of dying in his own cottage among his own oxen and sheep. This tendency of the agricultural mhd has suffered no diminution from the political progress recently made by Germany, a id continues un-n-bated after as before the war. vym'e defeated France is hardly deserted by one of her children, the sons of victorious Germany, aspiring to personal indepndence, continue to emigrate at the rate of two hundred thousand a year." The diamond seekers of Southern Africa must have their pockets better lined than the diggers on the West Coast of Jew Zealand, as we ace by referei cc to the JVatai Colonist that a race meeting being advertised to take place at the mines, the site for the grand-stand fetched L 920, and that on the day following the purchase, no leas than 3000 tickets • £* seats thereon were sold without difficulty at one guinea

apieco The following portrait of a newly made Justice of the Peace in Victoria, as set forth in the body of a petition to the present bovernment to expunge his name from the commission, must, if a faithful likeness, be anything but pleasing to the person limned— one Mr James Lewin-' 1 That his sole occupation for the last eight years has been that of a vendor of liqaorß;?he being the owner ot a wayside publichouse on the road between Smytbesdale and Ballarat. That owing to his temper, vindictiveness, bias, and general unsuitability, the said James Lewm is utterly cifit to hold the Magisterial office. At the present time the following extract from an American paper may be useful :- A Western paper whose subscription list has suffered from the evil of newspaper borrowing, says :-" Reader 1 if you have borrowed the paper you are reading don t do it again. Subscribe. It isn't safe to borrow papers. We once knew a poor, but honest man, who borrowed a paper, innoceutly and inadvertently, from a hitherto wholesome neighbor. Fatal act. That terrible contagion, the smallpox, was conveyed insidiously in the ribres of that sheet. Of that extensive and interesting family, a doting father, a fond wife, several intellectual and heroic sons; thirteen lovely daughters, two popular m'<Sttiers-in-law, and three beautiful aunts— not one remained to tell the tale." With reference to the San Francisco mail contract, Mr Vo<?el the other night stated that the Government intended to agk the House to ratify the Victorian contract, even though the Victorian Government might desire the terms modified. Correspondence with the Victorian Government was going on now, and the House would be invited to discuss the whole system. Mr R, Packer, an old colonist of 21 years standing, died at Uhristchurch last week. James Holmes, owner of the North Shore ferry steamer,' Auckland, was charged at the Police Court there with assaulting Mr Reed, editor of the Evening Star. Holmes made * public apology,, and the case was withdrawn. Freestone, well adapted for building purposes, is reported to be found in large cmantities__at_Se4w^dJ)ownj^M^ Mr Reeves informs Dr Featherston, in a memorandum dated the sth June last, that the Government "will not in future send home agents to carry on immigration from foreign countries ;" and that "the appointment of Mr Thyrstupp, as agent for Germany, has been cancelled. Last week a rather serious accident occurred to a lad in the employ of Mr Campbell, at his 'flax mill in the Kaituna Valley. It appears the boy was reaching over *ome part of the machinery, and the sleeve of his shirt being torn hung from his arm; the consequence was that it caught in the cogwheels, drawing his arm down and tearing the flesh completejy from one side of the bone. Medical attendance was procured without delay, and at first it was thought necessary to remove his arm, but the symptoms having improved, amputation was delayed, and the little sufferer removed to the Picton Hospital, where he js improving rapidly. . . . ,