Untitled

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 44, 27 November 1871, Page 3

Shortly ,«fJei|:Tinidnight on Thursday a number ypt {Kroons, . wending their way observed Axcmarkable phenomenon, the like;o£ .wluefii'ji6nc of-them, as was concver.bebeld in their previous experience. The pteteor was observed to rise from the steep, 4acent at the upper cud of Queen-street, frtrai Which it'descended along the roadway in a zigzag Course, at an angle of about ten degrees from/the ground, rising and: falling at rapid but irregular intervals of time.. When Hirst observed no sound was heard ; the' light appeared to be that issuing from a ball of red lire about Sin. in diameter, which emitted lateral flashes of light. After some seconds, in which the meteor appeared to come in the direction of Queen-street wharf, a rumbling sound was heard, gradually increasing in violence until it assumed that which iis like to a horse’s hoof when the, animal is at full speed, striking upon a hard mejtaljed road. Suddenly the noise ceased, and tlie meteor was observed suspended in the air at about a height of 4ft. from the ground. A number of persons hastened to the spot to ascertian the cause of so unaccountable and mysterious an appearance. All doubts and conjectures were resolved, wlieu it was ascertained that a man was mounted on horseback with a ship’s lamp, faced with a disc of red glass, strapped to his waist. A domestic calamity was pending in the man’s household, He wnntcd a doctor, and he wanted a nurse. He was in a terrible state of excitement, and it was quite evident to the bystanders that be bad never before been used to the thing, i fad the true cause of the phenomena not been ascertained it would have furnished the local newspapers sufficient pabulum for a sensational paragraph. It would have been copied into all the colonial journals, and many persons hundreds of miles away would have borne testimony to having witnessed what is here described, with the particulars much enlarged on, — D. 8. Cross.

THE authorities at Dunedin, have a simple and cheap way of disposing of their paupers, if the story told by a vagrant woman at the City Court be correct. The woman’s name was M’Donald, and she stated that seven or eight years ago she and her husband, who was a bootmaker named P. M’Donald, lived in Melbourne, but the last seven years she had been living iu New Zealand, and there had been deserted by her husband. .She had seven children, and got hardly enough to live on by washing and doing odd jobs, but when she could no longer support the children and sought to throw the burdcu of supporting them upon the Government, the authorities placed the family on hoard the Pangitoto, and paid the passage of herself and her brood from there to Melbourne, at which place slic expected to find her truant husband. She did not find him, however, and she and the seven young ones had been sheltered by a poor woman in Hofcham, wlio allowed them to sleep in the kitchen, though she was unable to provide them with suitable bedding. M’Donald brought with her from New Zealand £3 or £4, hut the money had been handed over to a priest, who gave the money to her a few shillings at a time—a circumstance which tended to show that the woman was not fit to be trusted with more money than her immediate necessities demanded. She wanted the children to be scut to the Industrial School, hut the Bench naturally objected to burdening the state with seven juvenile paupers from another Colony, and wished to send them to the Immigrants’ Home pending inquiry. When the woman found this out, however, she refused to have them sent anywhere but to the schools, and left the Court with the precious seven. —Melbourne Argus.

We arc requested by F. 11. Lcwisson to state that no gold chains or alberls are of his make without they arc stamped F.H.L., 18 carat. Having engaged a gold chain maker from London, lie is prepared to make any English pattern chain to order— Adyt