AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2605, 15 May 1877, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

(FROM THE A.UBTEALASIAN, APRIL 28.)

The reefs are rapidly improving at Palmerston, Northern Territory." The Union claim yielded 600 ounces gold from a fortnight's crushing. Some coolies working on tribute are making £25 per man per week. The deeper the mines are sunk the richer they become. Intelligence has, reachedi W"ahgnnyah that at the present time there are at Urana and on the BiUabong Creek 13 cases of the most malignant form of typhoid fever: Two deaths have occurred, and to add to the" seriousness of the situation, I) r Stewart, the only medical man within 40 milesi is himself a prostrate victim to the malady., It is asserted that the immediate cause *of the' epidemic is " the poisonous state of the atmosphere, consequent upon dead cattle putrefying and rotting in the sun. Sheep and cattle are dying in thousands, and there is but little rain.

The Sydney E vcriicg News of the 19th insfc. state that, in consequence, possibly, of the important news received from Europe during the past week, "active steps have been taken by tlie military, authorities to have the forts'efficiently manned. The Permanent Artillery have conveyed to each of the principal forts a lavge quantity of materiel, and the magazines may now be said to be provided with shell and powder; sufficient : t.o ; mainlain a formidable and protracted defence. Arrangements have .been made with the two batteries of artillery so as to allow of the immediate manning of both the outer and inner lines of defences.

(in the County Court on Friday, John Miller and" Annie Miller (his wife) sued Stephen F. Croxton for £19 damages, for having assaulted' Mrs Miller by attempt* ing to steal a kiss from her. Miller and Croxton are Sandridge cabmen, and it appeared from the evidence that they were drinking rather heavily in- Melbourne on the night of the 12th March, and then went off together to Miller'g house in Sandridge. When there they had drinks, and after that Croxton caught hold of Mrs Miller with the intention of kissing her. She however, frustrated his efforts, and her husband put Croxton outside, and thrashed him so severely that he had to be taken off at once to the Hospital. In his defence Croxton informed the Court that he drank so much on the night of the occurrence that be knew nothing of what happened from the time he left town until the following morning, when he found himself in the Hospital. His Honor Judge Cope thought that as the male plaintiff had taken the law in his own hands, and had punished the defendant so severely as he did, the plainttiffs were not entitled to much further damages. He therefore gave a verdict for plaintiffs for 20s, that amount having been paid into court by defendant before the case commenced, .and ordered each party to^pay their own costs. The following story, is. told by the Ovens and Murray Advertiser :—" Some l?or 14 years ago a miner at Stanley, whose name we have been unable to learn, when in that excessively .cautious state of mind which takes possession of some men on their road home from a public-house at night,' planted' a bottle somewhere alongside his homeward path. Unfortunately for him instead of the bottle containing whisky, it held about 41b. to 51 o. weight of gold, and in the morning, although he had a vivid recollection of burying the bottle, and. Philip sober was mentally cbngratulatic«^ Philip drunk : on his admirable, cunning^ when he came to think of the spot where he had hidden his treasure, he was nonplussed. He, of. course, sought and sought for it, and got drunk again, but apparently unaware of that curious phy* siological fact that if he got- into*, exactly the same state of drunkenness, and started for hoc:'*, he would most probably have gone straight or tacked to the.very spot where his bottle lay, he either drank too much or not enough to place himself en rapport with himself on the former-occfto sion. Certainly he never found the bottle, and before he left Stanley his loss came to be known. The man has since died, but search for the bottle has been renewed again and again by miners and others, especially by one ' Lucky Jack,'^ who searched for it, and trenched and • fossicked for it, but without success, even his nickname proving false,on this occasion* During last week, however, Ah Lee, one of. a Chinese party sluicing \ just above Edward's old brewery, at the back of the/ township, unearthed the lost treasure, corked and unbroken, and sold the contents to the'local branch of the Oriental Bank. Of course the gold it contained belongs to them to all intents and purposes for it was ou their own ground, and even if the owner were alive he would find "it very difficult to identify his property,"