AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1144, 23 January 1874, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

A stabbing case occurred on board the steamer Ellora while lying alongside the Sandridge pier. A Spaniard named Joseph Martinas drew his sheath knife and attacked several of his shipmates who were iu the forecastle. Three Manillamen were the victims of this brutal frenzy, two of them escaping with comparatively slight wounds, but the third was very serionsly injured. Bush fires are reported from all parts of the colony, and the weather has been intensely hot. In South Australia the thermometer has stood at 120 in the shade. It stood one day at 118 for three hours and a half; for two successive days it registered 113, and on the third day 114. The little native birds came into the houses under the sofas and beds for shelter, and died all about. The kites aud crows died in numbers."

" Not for the last 10 years," writes the Smythesdale correspondent of the Ballarat Star, " has the atmosphere in this locality been so stifling from the smoke of bush fires as it has been since New Tear's Day. Several places in this district have narrowly escaped being burned down." The woollen factory and contents, erected at the Pentridge Stockade and valued at £3OOO, has been destroyed by fire. The cause is conjectural. iEgles in the Australasian says : The most excruciating effort of verbal humor is that which accounts for the small scores of the All England Eleven in their first game in this manner : That when W. G. Grace had suffered severely from a Boyle, the other side put on Cosstick. (The clothes of the perpetrator, found on the bank of the river, fit his surviving brother remarkably well.) Sandhurst (says the Age) is in the doldrums, and the busy hum of men has almost ceased to be heard before the Beehive. The condition of things in that normally animated locality is described as " little short of utter stagnation.

A funny circumstance occurred in connection with the riot at Clunes, Victoria. The friends of the unfortunate Mongolians in Chinatown received them back with open arms, never more to wander, either by Cobb or on foot, Clunes way again. Some were cut, others bruised, all well frightened. "No fear," John says, "no catchee me there again, all Arish and Cots—very mad "

A writer in the Australasian observes: —In two years the Victorian Bating Club has paid aw?y about £24,000, and its present liabilities are—£lo,ooo on debentures, and £IOOO to its bankers ; so that some good profits must have been realised. Next year it is likely that the stakes will be increased and even now I am told that there is more added money at our Spring meeting than in a whole year's racing at Doncaster.

A Rockhampton (Queensland hotelkeeper advertises in the local Argus the following series of beverages:—" Corpse Reviver, the Templar's Smile, the Connecticut Eye-opener, White Wolf's Milk.

Alabama Fog-cutter, Kentucky Eggnogg, Japanese Cocktails, Sangarees, Slings, Stone Walls, Dolly Vardens, Sarsaparilla Hats, Blessings, and Ginslings The ' Smile' is described as an agreeable beverage, harmless as a kitten, and mild as a pet lamb. A capital drink for politicians—cheering, but not inebriating, composed* of mystery and preserved snow-balls." An ingenious trick adopted by a Chinese fowl-stenler is thus described by the Beaufort Chronicle: —" The latest device of the Celestial mind in regard to the peculiarly hazardous business of fowl-stealing is for the operator to put on a pair of hobbles. The familiar clank of these useful articles alarms nobody, and is in fact rather reassuring to persons of delicate nerve. ' John,' therefore, has ample time to gather into his bag the fattest occupants of the roost, while the treacherous hobbles enable him to work without apprehension of interruption by covering his advance towards his victims. But after all, ' the way of transgressors,' even with hobbles on, is liable to be ' hard,' and so a miserable Chinese, who was accoutred as described, found it last week at Charlton. He had forgotten that hobbled horses do not generally get inside fowl-houses, and the consequences were that the entire apparatus came to grief. A court of petty sessions was got together hastily—a powerful digger being the arresting constable, bench, clerk, attorney for the prosecution, and executiouer, all rolled into one. The sentence of the court was that the prosecutor's bootmaker be introduced to the defendant's tailor ; and the ceremony having been gone through with a degree of emjiressement that brought tears into the eyes of the Chinaman, the court adjourned and had a smoke."

A discovery of a magnificent coal seam, says the Goulbourn Herald, has recently been made by some gentleman named Cosgrove, while out kangaroo hunting about three miles from the cross roads in the Berrima district, and 40 miles from Goulbourn This seam i 3 described as being 17ft in thickness, and rising like a wall perpendicularly, so that the trouble of getting out the coal is reduced to a minimum. The quality is very superior. The distance from the railway line is about six miles, and the carriage either by tramway or traction engine would be easy. It is thought that the whole country between there and lilawarra will be found one large coalfield, but considering the ease of getting at the present discovery and working the mine, it may well be doubted whether any greater facility of carriage, either by rail or water, can render any other mine of greater value. Negotiations are on foot, and promise to be successful, with some of our Goulbourn townsmen for the purpose of fully testing the capabilities of the new discovery.