INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1012, 11 October 1872, Page 3

INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

I Mr Joshua Strange Williams is [gazetted Begistrar-General of the land [Transfer Department, Wellington. | Tbe Wakatip Lake miners are sending a practical man to report on the Port Darwin Goldfields. A meeting at Papaknra, Auckland, passed resolutions condemnatory of the Government proposals to withdraw the Road Board subsidy, and to give back the confiscated lands. i At the criminal sessions, Samuel Holly, for larceny, was sentenced to [two years imprisonment; George Sinclair, for horse-stealing, was acquitted. Plummer's trial commenced on Wednesday. He declined to plead till he had had time to consider the evidence. The Auckland criminal sessions is opened. The Judge said he knew nothing of any prosecution in the Green Harp case. The calendar is ■very light. A false alarm of fire was raised in the theatre on Saturday Rose Evans was playing Hamlet to a ■crowded house. The panic was stopped lefore any damage was done. One fc\»M went into hysterics. ' A meeting of the settlers of Waikau condemned the Government proposals to return the confiscated lands to the unlives and the withdrawals of the subsidy to Road Boards. A mine of quicksilver has been ■opened at the Bay of Islands, of superior quality, A northern paper informs us that the Mercury is found iii a sort of sand vein. The discovery was made at a place ahout 20 miles north of the Bay of Islands, near an ■old crater. The explorers sank a shaft near the crater, until tlicy came to water, and they then carried in an open cutting from a small creek. In this they found two sand veins, each ahout nine inches thick, containing mercury in large quantities. They look about one and a half hundredweight of the stuff, which is to be submitted to the most searching tests. A new industry appears likely to he initiated in Southland in the shape of the collection for export of rabbit skins. At the third annual meeting of the Caledonian Company, Thames, held a few days ago, the Secretary stated that the quantity of quartz raised and crushed during the year had been 15,777 tons, which yielded 73,7330z5» of gold, or at the rateof'4ozs. 14dwt. 15 gr per ton. The amount paid in dividends during the year was £154410, or at the rate of £54 per share, thus completing a payment to shareholders of £l9B 10s per £l2 share, or a total distributed in dividends during the last two years of £569,710. A prospecting party has been fitted cut at Havelock to test some newlydiscovered alluvial diggings about six miles from the town. About three oz of very fine gold has been brought has a sample, and great hopes are entertained of further success. It is stated that the criminal prosecutions and payment to jurors cost the Government of the colony, for the financial year IS7O-71, £7407 3s 7d. Ewing, the miner who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for shooting a Chinaman at Mount Ida, in Otago, has had his sentence commuted by the Governor to imtrisonment for four months. A deputation of the Otago members waited opon the Governor for the purpose of representing the injustice of his longer detention.