Romance of a Crime.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 207, 18 June 1887, Page 7

Romance of a Crime.

A New Yorb. despatch of April 28th says. — A London financial journal, jusb received here, contains further details of the shooting in the Transvaal country of South Africa of C. X. llobbs, a mining: prospector, by Jefferson McClelland on March 24th. For a quarter of a century these two men figured among the pioneora of California. "Old C. X.," as Hobbs was familiarly known, played a somewhat prominent part in many of the big deals,and McClelland was a mining expert on the Comstock lode. The news of his killing Hobbs recalls a circumstance that makes a romance of the event. More than ten years ago McClelland had a dispute with Hobbs over a stock speculation which resulted in an understanding that the quickest man with his pistol would be the only survivor if they should ever meet. Both men were living in San Francisco then but Hobbs drifted East and settled down in New York. From there he went to London a coxiple of years ago, and was employed last winter to look into some mining property in the Transvaal country for o London syndicate. How " Jeff" McCelland came to go there is not known, but his friends here say that he went to Australia a few years ago, and he probably drifted thence to South Africa. The two men thus went around the world in opposite directions, and ten years after their quarrel met as superintendents of adjoining properities in that dreary country. Tne immediate result was the death of Hobbs. McCelland fired only one shot, and ib went right through his opponent's heart.