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Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3061, 6 December 1878, Page 2

A ceicket match will be played at Parawai Gardens to-morrow afternoon between elevens from the Thames and Union Cricket Clubs. The eleven of the T.C.C. Club is as follows j—Whitford, Hargreaves, Burgess, Spencer, Lawless, Gellion, Buttle, Lumsden, Murphy, Smeaton, Waddington.

We observe from our advertisement columns that the No. 1 Company Thames Scottish, their band, and cadets will assemble for church parade on Sunday at ten o'clock, on the invitation of Hauraki Engineers. The parade will march to the Independent Chapel, Mary street, where a special sermon will be preached by the Bey. Mr Laishley, hon. chaplain to the Engineers.

A MEBTiJirjj of the stewards of the Thames Annual Race meeting will be held at the Provincial Hotel this evening at 8 o'clock.

It seems that the men who left the Thames lately for the Waikato, under an engagement to Mr Fallen, contractor ,for the extension of the railway, have not a very pleasant time of it. The following is extracted from a private letter received from a young man by his relatives here, and has been handed to us with a request for publication :—"We have not been getting on well siuce I wrote last; I have got completely sick of the place, and I am sure it wont hold me njuch longer.

A lot hare gone back already—one or two going away every day this last fortnight. Thero are five of us living together in one tent. It is miserable the way we are living. The tents were found us by Fallon, but we did not happen to get one of the first lot that came up, and the next lot had no ' flites ' with them, so that we haven't one over our tent, and when it rains at all heavy it comes through; and we have had nothing else but wind and rain ever since we came up here; I never saw such curious weather as we have had. We have all been bad with colds, and I have not been well since I've been here. I told you last time that we were working in a dry cutting, but that didn't last long, for we were shifted on the Monday to the ' big ditch' being made, and there we have been ever since. The men are all told off, and are working under four, or five different bosses along the line, some of them being as far aa three miles away. We are the hind party, and are working in a dirty swamp —up to our knees in water. ... I

am lying full stretch on the grass writing this on a piece of board." From another source we hear that one of the workmen has been conveyed to the Auckland Hospital suffering from fever, and is not likely to recover.

At the official enquiry into the wreck of the Taranaki yesterday, at Tauranga, Mr J. A. Wilson, Judge of the Native Lands Court, deposed that the circulation of the currents, airs, and sea had been one of his chief studies for years. He said there was a strong current setting in where the Taranaki was lost. He visited Karewa two days after the wreck. The current was from N. and E. to the 8. and W. The wind was from the N.E. This portion of the tropical current, he should think, would affect the vessel outside Karewa at from a mile to a mile and a-half an hour. Witness had been set towards that rock himself in a small boat in a calm from the same quarter, and the current would be stronger in summer than in winter. It emptied itself at Cape Runaway at quite two knots an hour. He was also nearly wrecked off White Island by a current. He considered a master knowing other parts of the coast might be taken by surprise.—The first and second officers confirmed the captain's evidence. The chief officer's log books showed that a precisely similar course was steered on the last trip. The Court adjourned till to-day.

At the R.M. Court this morning some amusement was created by the case French v. Donovan, in which the former, I irreverently styled " Mother Flinch," charged the defendant with assaulting her. While French was easing her mind of her woes the defendant frequently interrupted the evidence with such ejaculations as " Oh, you dirty blaggard, you—you'd sware your loife away for a pint of beer." When complainant was done, Donovan started her story, interlarded with aspersions on the character of complainant, and kept pluckily at it for several minutes, notwithstanding the continued cries of " Silence " by several policemen. The Court adjourned the case for a week, whenl it is hoped both ladies will come to Court with their jaw-tackle belayed.