GOVERNMENT LAND SALE.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 34, 25 November 1842, Page 3

GOVERNMENT LAND SALE.

(From the Port Phillip Herald, Oct. 21.)

There was a public sale of Government land held at the Survey-office, on Wednesday last. There were sixty-eight lots put up, situated in the respective counties of Bourke and Grant, in the parish of Tullamarine, Bulla Bulla, Korkuperrimul, and Carrah, and ranging in extent from 80 to 1,260 acres each. The second lot put up was knocked down to Mr. Forster, at the upset price of one pound per acre; all the other lots were successively offered to public competition at the upset reserved price of one pound per acre, hut there were no bidders. There might have been about a hundred present, whose closely shut mouths the auctioneer tried hard to open. He described one lot as containing a village reserve, which, however tempting such a bait might have been about twelve months ago, now passed away quite unheeded ; and it is questionable, had he even dotted the reserve with houses, whether lie would then have succeeded in extracting an offer. The result of this sale shews that the land-jobbing mania in effectually cured in the district, and that the colonists, “ like burnt children, dread the fire.” The lot sold contained G4O acres, and if we take into consideration the expense of surveying and marking off the several lots, we fear but a very small moiety of the purchase money will find its way into the gullet of that leviathan, the land fund. A stronger proof of the general depression at present existing throughout the province, than the above announcement, wc cannot offer to our readers.

Foreign Wheat. —We lnive been favored with the perusal of a private letter from Sydney, by which it appears that 20,000 bushels of wheat had arrived there from Valparaiso. The speculation is altogether a foreign one, and was not anticipated by the colonists. It is also currently rumoured that 100,000 bushels more may be expected to arrive from the same quarter. This is much to he regretted in the present depressed state of our colonial market; for whether the latter report turns out to he correct or not, it will have the effect of making the Sydney buyers limit their offers for our wheat to a still lower figure. Indeed, this lias already been done by the house in question.— Hobart Town Courier, Oct. 2S.

A Launceston Invention. —We learn that one of the most ingenious inventions that could have been devised in the scientific woi'ld, has been made by Mr. Tyson, the builder and carpenter, of this town. It is no less than the accomplishment of a seeming impossibility. By the simplest contrivance, Mr. Tyson raises water in his pumps from any depth, though far beyond thirty-two feet, the limit to which common pumps will act, and he accomplishes his object with only a single tube, and a single piston-rod, attached to the common pump handle. At Longford, is a government pump, 96 feet long, of Mr. Tyson’s construction; there is a single tube of 96 feet in depth, and a single piston, and the handle being worked as in common pumps, the water immediately rises and flows to any extent. Formerly Mr. Tyson was a great sufferer from the willy lure of brewers’ vats ; one of the many victims of alcoholic fascination; but he manfully set the insiduous enemy at defiance—broke through the (too frequently) debasing bonds of spirituous drink—and is now a principal mover among the ranks of Tetotallers; a credit to himself, and a beneficial member and ornament of the community. Whatever merit there may be in the discovery of Mr. Tyson, he puts it all to the score of Tetotalism. He has forwarded

to some friends dud relatives rit home, engaged in the Engineering business, the particular's of the construction of his pmnp, by which tile seeming, and hitherto supposed, impossibility, has been so readily accomplished by him.