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Southland Times, Issue 1010, 26 August 1868, Page 2

It will be seen from our advertising columns that a meeting of the friends of Mr George Lumsden, will be held this evening at the Prince of Wales Hotel, at half- past seven o'clock. We learn from the ' Wakafcip Mail ' that the Clyde Municipal Council has sustained a loss of £99, through their Town Clerk ; and as they had failed to take security from their officers, the Councillors, to appease the wrath of the papers, made up the deficient sura out of their own' pockets. The ' Grey River Argus,' of the 11th instant, publiihes the following extract from a letter from a miner on the Auckland G-oldfields : — " Auckland, July 1, 1863. Dear Sir— Will you allow me a little space in your valuable paper to give a small bit of information to my fellow-diggers respecting the Thames Goldfield. I have spent some time there and have gained a knowledge of the field ; and from its appearance, I should say it is moifc likely to be rich in the product of gold. Many claims are on gold, but the great want is machinery. The ground is taken up for miles, and for the present there is not much chance of getting a claim. I hope and believe there wi'l be ground opened before Ion? ; but at present it would be madness to go into the bush to prospect, the weather is so very wet, and the bush is as bad as it is on the West Coast. Wages are very low, from 30s to £2 per week } living is cheap, but i 3 rising every day as the population increases. I would advise my feilow-miners not to start for this place at present, unless they have same capital to stand by or to speculate with ; there are any quantity of shares lor sale, and great swindling going oa in buying and selling." A corresponded at Little Akaroa, (Canterbury) writes to the "Lyttelton Times" of the 20th inst: — "On Saturday morning the 15th, about 6 o'clock I was lying in bed, when my attention was attracted to the noise made by the sea. I got out to look, and in the dusk I saw the aea come up to H. Mela tosh's paddock. I opened the door, and ran to wake Mclntosh, and while I was knocking at his door the sea came up as high as" my knees. I ran back to my own house, and found it full of water ; my wife had the children under her arms ; we had only our night clothes on. When we started for the hills I secured two blankets and a counterpane to cover mj wife and children. The frost was on the ground. The saa went out again as far as Green's, where thete is usually 16 feet of water at low tide. It was quite dry. I was then able to get into the house, and, and get some clothes. In the meantime Harry Mclntosh had got his family together, when there came another rush, and it was a piteous sight to see the little children in their night clothes running for the hill. The weather was bitterly cold. Mr and Mrs Finlay, Mr and Mrs Hunter, and the Misses Waghorn, were very kind to us. We had another heavy rush at one p.m. The water was three inches higher than at half-past six. If the water had risen a foot higher it would have swept away all the houses on the flat ; fortunately it was low water when the first rush oame, or we should all have been drowned. It is mud everywhere. The Sfcruggler, ketch, was floating about in a place whore a dingy could never go ; the bridges are floating about in the b&y ; one of them is in Finlay's garden, which is destroyed. Mclntosh' a fence is carried away." Mr Vogel's motion for abolishing the postage on newspapers was rejected by the Assembly by a majority of 11 — 22 voting for the resolution and 33 against it.

Bithop Selwyn, («aya the ' Lyttelton Times,') consacr.-Uad a new oliufoh iv the tillage of Our* bar, in the dioooso of Liohfleld a few daya hefowj the departure of the Juno mail. Aftarwar la, »t luncheon, in iwply to the toast of his health, ho spoke out against bazaars, expressing a hope that the parishioners would bo able to complete thair school-rooms and parsonaga without having recourse to basaars. lie remarked :— " Let them on no account hare a bazaar. (laughter.) He thought that was a very unmanly way of raising money. The meanest thing men could do was to throw work on the women. (Renewed laughter.) He said that advisedly, because, having lived twenty-five years among savages, ha recognised that their distinguishing mark was to make women do the work of men. That was the system on which bazaars were hold. Ho hoped they would complete their endeavors by direct taxation, not indirect. (Renewed laughter.) When, he returned from "flew Zeal*nd, he hoped ho should find the remainder of the money necessary for the schools and parsonage had been raised. But his last words were — c Don't hare a bazaar.' (Cheers and laughter.)" The 'Herald,' (Auckland) of the 10th, says:— " About half-past six, on Sunday morning last, a fire broke out in the leather and saddlery pre^ mises of Messrs Ireland Brothers, in Durhamstreet, East. On the east side of Messrs Irelands' store were the stores belonging to Mr J. Black, which were quite uninsured ; and on the west side was the Exchange Hotel. At the rear of Messrs Irelands' was Arthur and Son's auction mart, also uninsured. Messrs Irelands' stores consisted of a three-story brick building, with plate-glass windows, and contained a very large quantity of imported goods, leather, &c. The fire had attained such strength when discovered, that all the efforts of the fire brigade were required to keep it from spreadingjto the adjoining premises, and in this they were only partially successful. As the premises of Arthur and Son sustained some damage, while the furniture - remoTod~from that and other adjoining buildings was greatly injured. The building and stock of Ireland, Brothers, were ralued at about £13,500, for which insurances were effected in the New Zealand office for £3,000, and in the Liverpool, London, and Globe for a similar amount. The ! adjoining buildings were uninsured. A dreadful calamity attended this fire. A portion of a brick wall fell aud seriously injured seven persons. The following are the names of the sufferers : — William Dixon, son of Mr Dixon, Chapel-street —Skull fractured, jaw fractured, thigh broken, severely burned ; not expected to live. John Butler, of Chapel-street, captain of fire engineFractured Bkull, undergoing operation ; daagerous. William Arthur, son of Mr A. Arthur, Auctioneer — Injured spins, several cuts and bruises ; serious. Alexander Macmilan, laborer — Severe scalp wounds, arm injured ; seriou*. Richard Kearney — Three scalp wounds, several contusions; not dangerous. — Moyle, Durham-street— Scalp wound and contusions ; not dangerous. H. Joseph, auctioneer ; not serions. It is not known how the fire originated. A report has been published in the ' Gazette,' furnished by Mr Wrigg, on the Mount Eochfort Coal Fields, from which we extract the following itemß. He says that " the south east slope of the valley known as Coalbrook Dale, may be said to be almost one continuous seam of superior coal of various thickness ranging from three to nine feet." On the lower part .of the Dale,coalteams are visible in various places on both sides of the valley, before its junction with the Waimangaroa Gorge. From these facts Mr Wrigg is of opinion that a line of railway cut along the south east slope of Coalbrook Dale would lay bare a seam of coal almost from the top to the bottom of the valley. The thickness of the seams in Waimangaroa Gorge far exceeds those of Coalbt-ook Dale, but they are exposed on the face of a perpendicular cliff which descends from the general platform in a distance of fifteen chains, no less than nine hundred feet. Mr Wrigg then proposes working the Coalbrook Dale coal only for the present, and constructing a line of railway worked by locomotives. He abandons the line proposed by Mr Burnett, and suggests one seven miles longer, viz., nineteen and three quarter miles in length, the average cost per mile, of which he estimates at £5034, or the total probable cost, £133,326. The rolling plant which he included in the above will he Bays, be sufficient to enable 144,000 tons of coal to be delivered in Westport per annum. The " New Zealand Advertiser," (Wellington) 14th inst Bays : — " We understand the Government has under consideration an Act for the purpose of amending the existing Bankruptcy Act. .We have reason to believe that the chief points of. interest affected by the fresh Act are those bearing upon the case when no meeting of creditors takes place, the release of the debtor from gaol, and the notification of the " Gazette," power being given to .enable the petition to be carried through the Court, instead of as at present, a dead-lock arising ; and giving the Judge power to order the release of the debtor from gaol upon adjudication. As the law at present stands the debtor, if in goal for debt, must wait there till he obtains his discharge in Court. It is also proposed to vest the estate of tha debtor in the I provincial trustee, on the declaration of insolvency being filed, and the doubt that has been entertaine 1 as to whether more than one newspaper can be proclaimed a " Gazette " for the same judical district of the Supreme Court will be solved by giving the Judges power to proclaim such number of the newspapers " Gazettes " as they may deem fitting. These amendments in the proposed Act, though few, are of great practical importance, and we believe will much facilitate the proper working of the existing Act."