News and Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 41, 6 January 1894, Page 5

News and Notes.

The English mails via ’Frisco reached Auckland on Thursday.

Good! Within nine months of the financial year already gone the Customs revenue of Hew Zealand is £21,709 over the Ti-easurer’s estimate for that period, the total amount collected to the end of last month being £1,236 709.

An Auckland miner named Michael William O’Keefe, who filed in 1890, paying Is 3|d in the £, did not consider himself thereby freed from his obligations to his creditors. The other day he handed the assignee enough to pay them all in full. A petition has been lodged against the return of Sir Robert Stout on the ground that his secretary bet Captain William Jackson Barry a suit of clothes that Sir Robei-t Stout would not head the poll. Barry denies all knowledge of the transaction. A } r oung girl named M’Lellan was walking with her lover, named Birtle, on the esplanade at South Melbourne, when she suddenly drew the contents of a bottle, which she threw in her lover’s face, remaiking, “ There, you will be troubled by me no longer.” Before she could be stopped she jumped off the pier. Satchel, a wellknown cyclist, jumped after her, but was compelled to reliquish his hold in order to try and save himself. A lifebuoy was thrown, but in the dim light he could not see it, and both were drowned under the eyes of hundreds of spectators. It would appear (remarks the Otago Daily Times) as if farmers in the south anticipated a large harvest, judging by the number of binders that are now being delivered. On Wednesday a special train containing 15 Walter A. Wood single apron reaper and binders left Dunedin for Invercargill to fill supplementary orders from the company’s Southland agents (the Farmers’ Implement and Engineering Co.), and we understand another train load will follow in the course of a few days. What an exchange terms “ a welldeserved snub ” has been administered to the Caledonian Society in Sydney by the Governor, Sir R. Duff. They had in effect called him a “duffer” for not attending their gathering 1 . His Excellency has since stated that he had laboured under the delusion that he was entitled to the privilege of spending his Christmas holidays with his family- —a delusion which he had acquired in the Old Country. Ho doubt he should have parted with such ideas when he came to a new country. The inquest into the circumstances connected with the death of William Mudge, who was fatally .stabbed at South Dunedin on Christmas Eve, is now being- held in Dunedin. Richard Dobson and Eberhardt Kufner, who are under arrest on a charge of murder, were in attendance. It has been said that the man’s life might have been saved had the wound been properly bandaged, but one of the medical witnesses stated that if there had been half-a-dozen doctors in the street at the time they could not have done more than was done b} 7 the constable. Captain Arthur Phillip, first Governor of Hew South Wales, had a curious idea of how criminals should be dealt with. From “ The Australian Commonwealth,” a book recently placed on the shelves of the local Athenreum, we cull the following quaint passage, .vhich occurs in one of the Governor’s letters to the authorities In reference to the treatment of convicts : —“ Rewarding and punishing- must be left to the Governor ; he will likely be amswerable for his conduct, and death, I should think, will never be necessary. . . There are two crimes that would merit death ; for either of these crimes I should wish to confine the ci-iminal till an opportunity offered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of How Zealand, and let them eat him. The dread of this will operate much stronger than the fear of death,”