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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1109, 1 September 1871, Page 2

The live stock export from this port during the mouth ending 31st August has been —178 head cattle and 998 sheep. In the Resident Magistrate's Court this morning two cases uf drunkenness were disposed of. One inebriate was fined 10s, and the other ss. The Customs Revenue at this port for the month ending 3Lst August, amounted to M 1,707 5a 6d (including pilotage.) The Rev. W. McGregor will (D,V.) conduct Divine Service at the Port Church at 7 p in. on Sunday next, 3rd September. The favorite steamer Rangatira left for Wellington last evening. On arrival at that port, she will be laid up for about six weeks, to have new boilers put in, and undetgo a thorough overhaul. Wheii the alterations (which are extensive) are completed, she will •be in a.s efficient state as when new, and will resume the trade between Napier and the South. In the meanwhile, we understand, a suitable steamer will supply her place.

The Evening Post, August 23, says i —Last night, in asking supply, the Colonial Secretary stated that he only required sufficient to carry on till the end of next month, as by that time he thought the Government would be able to bring in the Appropriation Bill. Whether the lion, gentleman was sincere in his belief or not, we are not able to say, but if so, he must possess a very sanguine temperament indeed. Every one must agree that if such a happy state of things were practicable, it would be in the highest degree desirable, but we certainly are greatly in doubt on the subject. In the House of Representatives, one of the Maori members has gh en notice that he will move that a council of chiefs shall be formed for the Middle Island, to devise measures to protect Maori property in that part of the Colony. Referring to the aboye, the Evening Post remarks :—" If we can believe the evidence of the Middle Island whites their property is already pretty well protected; but possibly another berth or two in the . Native Office may there by be created. The motion is worthy of notice, inasmuch a* it is the fii st any of our M aori legislators has ventured on since the senseless experiment of their introduction into the Assembly has been tried. A correspondent of the Argus writes : —You are lively people in Melbourne. You arc going to have such an organ — one which for beauty and power is not often sui passed. I was at Messrs Hills the other clay, on a tour of inspection, and was greatly pleased. Everything about it was first tale, and the tones of the solo and swell organ in particular were very charming But E think it will be very neecrssary to have a waterpower engine to lil! it with wind, for it takes five men to blow.

An inquest was held at ChristchurGh on the 3rd ult., on the bodies of William Rudge and Thomas Nevis, the drivei and conductor of Mr Doyle's coach, pUing between Doylesion and Burnham station on the Southern Railway, who were drowned in the Sehvyn. Mt' Oholmondeley was the only witness examined. He stated that Monday morning, July 31st, he started to ca*.ch the morning train at Burnham station, but on arriving at M-Alpine ford, he found the Selwyn so flooded that he considered it dangerous to cros?s, and was returning towards Leeston when he met the coach about a mile and a half from the ford. * Fie told Rudge, the driver, the river was nob fit to cross, but Rudge said he would go on and see Mr Ohlomondeley therefore replied that he would go and see how he •rot on On arriving at the ford, the conductor, Nevis, was told by Rudge to cut a tUx stick and feel the depth of water at the bank. The boy did so, and on returning said '* It is \ ery deep." Rudge said he had crossed when there was more water in it than there was that morning, and would try it. He at once put the hoises into the river, but they were no sooner off the bank than they were afloat, and the fore carriage parted, and with the horses went down the stream. The body of the coach, with the driver, conductor, and the Rev. Mr Campbell (the only passenger) on the box seat, ran down the bank, and was overturned immediately on getting into the water, and turned i over and over' as it was carried down the stream, Mr Chohnpndeley immediately unbridled his horse, and unbuckled one end of the rein, to which he fastened the halter lie had round his horse's neck, and threw the bit several times towards the coach as it turned over. At last Mr Campbell succeeded in getting hold of the bit, and was landed safely; but by this time both Rudge and Nevis had disappeared from the box. The body of the latter was found on the day of the accident entangled in one of the wheels of the coach; t\u\t of the former an the following day. The jury returned a verdict of '* Accidental Drowning." Mr Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, writing to a friend in Auckland, gives the following amusing account ot his visit to the Sandwich Islands : —" bailed for the Sandwich Islands at two, in the Moses Taylor, familiarly —but by no means vulgarly —entitled the Rolling Moses. Reached Honolulu, the capital of the Island of

Oahu, and the seat of the Government of the Hawaian group, oil Saturday the19th; eighteen days, four thousand and thirteen miles and three-quarters!; (accuracy again, exact as. an architect's estimate, £4,000 Is lfd.) Head winds (of course) all the way; longest passage, (of course) ever known ; and certainly the roughest. Heavy-rolling seas—not a sail, a bird, or a fish sighted ; the only excitement we had arising from the odd novelty of two Thursdays, coming together in one week—two 9ths of February arm-in-arm. At Honolulu, one of the loveliest spots on earth, I acted one night by command, in the presence oi his Majesty Kamehameha V., King of the Sandwich Islands, (not Uoky Ponky WonkyFong, as erroneously reported) and a memorable night it was. On my way to the quaint little Hawaian situated in a rural lane, in the midst of a pretty garden glowing with gaudy tropical flowers, and shaded by cocoa-, trees, bananas, banyans, and tamarinds,, I m.»t the play bill of the evening. A perambulatory Kanaka (or native black gentleman), walking between two boards (called in London figuratively a 'sandwich man,' but here of course literally so), carried aloft a large illiir minated lighted lantern, with the announcement in tjie Kanaka to cateh the attention of the colored, inhabitants. 1 found the theatre (to use the technical expression) * crammed. to suffocation,' which merely means ' very full,' though, from the state of the thermometer on this occasion, * suffocation * was not so incorrect a description as usual. A really elegant-looking-audience (tickets 10s each), evening dresses, uniforms of every cut and every country. ' Chief teases' and ladie* of every tinge, in drenses of every color, flowers and jewels in profusion, satin playbills, fans going, windows imd doors all open, an outside staircase leading straight into the dress circle, without lobby, check-taker, or money-taker-. Kanaka women in the garden below selling bananas by the glare of flaring torches on a puitry tropical moonlight night. The whole thing was nothing but a midsummer night's dream. " And was it nothing to see a pit full of Kanakas— black, biown, and whitey-brown, all lately cannibals showing their white teeth, grinning and enjoying ' Patter v. Clatier' a:« much as a few years ago they would have enjoyed the roasting of a missionary or the baking of a baby Xb was certainly a page in one's history never to be forgotten.''

The marriage contract of the Bride of Lammermoor has (the Athenaeum states) quite lately been discovered at St. Mary's Isle, the scat of the Earl of Selkirk. Tt was evidently unknown io Sir Walter when he wrote the novel. Lord Selkirk is the representative of the family of Dunbar, of Baldoon, and has the family papers in his possession. It was in arranging these that, acci-

dentally he came upon this contract of marriage. The four signatures are David Dunbar (the bridegroom), Janet Dalrymple (the bride), Jan.es Dal-, rympie (bride's father), Baldoon (bridegroom's father). One of the witnesses, James Dal rympie, may have been the bride's brother, who rode behind her to the church, and whose dagger was said to have been used in the murder. A facsimile has been taken of the document, which Messrs Black will publish iu their centenary edition of the Waverly novels. The Dumfries Courier says that the Athenaeum is in error in speaking of a murder. Dunbar led his unwilling bride to the ancient tower of o ... Baldoon, the ruins of which, almost covered with ivy, are still to, be seeu, close to the farmhouse of Baldoon, ana soon after the retirement of +he young people frightful cries were heard from their apartment. When, tbe door was opened the bridegroom was found on the threshold sorely wounded, while the bride was a maniac, who only survived for a fortnight after her marriage day Dunbar recovered from his wounds, but he was killed a few years afterwards by a fall from his horse. According to family tradition, it was not the bric(e who stabbed her husband, as Scott's story has it, but the rejected lover, Lard Rutherford, who had secreted himself in the bridal apart-, meut. Dunbar never mentioned what had occurred on that terrible night, an. 4 took his secret w ith him to the grave.,