A ROMANTIC STORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 September 1907, Page 3

A ROMANTIC STORY.

A!)\ I'NTURES LX NEW ZEALAND. London, August 2. , '! a : • was quite a flavor of romance , a'jLiit an application which was made , tu Air -Justice Bucknill, in the Probate, j D'.wrce, oal Admiralty Court on Mondty, ,vli. n he was asked to presume the . :-vth a, a young man who, some 27 . .a- > .v'j, went out to New Zealand, viz. in lune, 1881. I ..-■ uame of this young man was Harry Watts, who was born in 1802,, and who, when last heard of, had been working as head ploughman at Evcburn station, near Xaseby, New Zealand, where he was supposed to have died shortlv after September 30, 1888. At the time he left England for New Zealand he was, it was stated in Court, "an idle and extravagant man of intemperate habits." For some years after he landed in New Zealand he seems to have disappeared, but in September, 1888, it was ascertained that after arriving at Dunedin he had gone to the whaling station at Picton. After that he sailed for Akaroa, and subsequently he found his way to Marrakiko, in the Chatham Islands, when he left his ship and went into the bush. While there he made his way to a Maori pa, liccame friendly with the Maori chief, who was anxious that the young Englishman should marry his daughter and join the tribe. The efforts of the chief in this direction, however, seem to have been fruitless, for Watts stating that he already was married, fled from the pa, to die, it is supposed, in obscurity. All that is i known of his subsequent movements is , that he got back to Picton, and then • went again to Dunedin, finally being at ! work at Xaseby, as already mentioned. After perusing the affidavits, Mr Jus- • tice Bucknill gave leave to swear the ' death on or since September 30, 1888, . on a further affidavit being filed as to \ the applicants' belief that Harry Watts ' had died a bachelor and intestate.

VVith special reference to this curious case, a London paper remarks: "There are legal 'corpses' walking about England to-day. Men who were wrongly certified to have died during the war turn up hale and hearty, to find that their 'widows' had done their weeping,drawn the insurance money, and bought the nicest of mourning. Friends presumed the death of a Kentish man a fortnight ago. They sorrowed for a man taken dead from the Thames, identified him, buried him, did everything that friendship could suggest. When all was over the man whose name had been placed upon the burial certificate walked into his home, and had the effrontery to declare himself not dead, and the corpse a pretentious upstart."—Auckland Herald.