EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26637, 6 December 1947, Page 6

EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

FROM THE FILES OF THE ©tago TDatl'g Himes DUNEDIN, DECEMBER 6, 1862. “ We have had some samples of prepared New Zealand flax submitted to our inspection,” says the Daily Times. - “The samples are very good and fully prove that the Phormium tenax will yet become an important item of export from this colony. One of the b samples, which by the by have not been hackled but simply cleaned, i. would be worth about £3O per ton — London,” The Hobart Town Mercury states that Mr Blackwell’s celebrated racehorse Shilelagh is to leave in the Cosmopolite for Otago about December 22. Shilelagh is one of the horses - entered'for the three-mile Champion Race, to be run in March next on the Dunedin course. “The large influx of immigrants which has latterly taken place in Queensland appears,” says the Daily Times, “to have occasioned a good v deal of confusion and even distress, but i we learn from the local papers just to , hand that the immigrants were being steadily absorbed by the employers of labour and that even a scarcity of labour is felt in some districts. The rate of wages. appears to run from 25s to 30s per week.” r Messrs A. McLandress and Co. advertise that they are instructed by b' Messrs Dalgety, Rattray and Co., to sell the whole cargo of new sugars just arrived from Mauritius by the : Witch of the Tees. The quantity for n sale consists of 3086 bags, and there t- are no fewer than 22 different brands of sugar listed. “Another instance of an attempt at sticking up on the road came to our knowledge yesterday,” says the Daily Times. “A storekeeper from Tuapeka ?. was stopped on his way to town, about I two miles and a-half this side of Horr s nublic house by two men, one of whom % presented a pistol. The person thus attacked had the presence of mind to turn his horse’s head and gallop away, l and he thus got clear off. So runs the story. We tell the tale as it was ... told to us.” “Veritas” writes to the Daily Times 7 under the heading of “Water! Water! water!”: “In all. communities there are croakers and dog-in-the-manger kind of bodies, who grumble equally -•i at fortune and misfortune, satisfied with nothing but their own croak, croak, croak . . . because their degenS erate and little minds will not suffer ’■ them to go along with others m.the • march of improvement. Such a one » is your illogical and ungrammatical correspondent ‘H. E.,’ who in your ?. issue of to-day, attempts to ridicule ■ the advantages which the inhabitants . of this overgrown town will derive from an abundant supply of pure • . water. ... You may depend on it, Sir, b the man’s mad for he doesn t like -> water.”