INTER-COLONIAL NEWS

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1176, 15 May 1874, Page 2

INTER-COLONIAL NEWS

Tlie results of the Palmer River rush are very suggestively, if briefly, described by a miner at Cooktown, who thus writes to a friend at Queenstown : —" Since I have arrived, I have seen over a hundred men come down here from the diggings. Men, did I say ? Shadows of men rather ! Many can never recover, others are dead and many sick. It is not so uuhealthy, but the heat is terrific. But the worst is the hunger and other hardships men on the Palmer and on the roads have suffered —having beeu forced to eat gras?, while it was a patch to get a bit of horse-flesh. The blacks, also, keep making raids and spearing men. Provisions are scarce and high, and not to bo had without a person packs them on horses. A man cannot pack in this climate, as several have fallen down dead while packing. I am in a bad fix myself; but will imitate the rich man in hell, by saying, 'Do not come into this place of torment.' " At a recent sports meeting in Victoria, a half-caste of Eienall.a, in a contest of throwing tho cricket ball, throw the hall the extraordinary distance of 117 yards 8 inches. Melbourne has long possessed a

journal for the Germans of tbo colony published in the language of ft fatherland," and now it has its newspaper for the French residents of that colony, the ' lievue Australienne," for which French compositors have been imported. One of the candidates for East Melbourne, Mr George Coppin, is a strong advocate for public houses being opened on Sunday. He holds that the correct restorative after a dry discourse is beer, fresh drawn, foaming, and frothy • and he says the man should not obtain this by sneaking through the back yard, »s is the custom now," but " walk through the side door, jug in hand, and return with the vessel frothing over, and looking attractive enough to make a policeman's mouth water." The Argus corroborates this view, and says : " The public house is the poor man's cellar, and he ought to have access to it at all times.