Untitled

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2304, 16 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

"Yes," said a Queenslander who had been in the Far North ; "aboriginals are powerful fond of whisky. Let'em once get the taste of whisky, and they'll give up eveything for it. An old man out of Rockhanipton offered me a pony, saddle, bridle, blanket, and I don't know what else for a pint of whisky I had with me." "And yon wouldn't give it to him ?" "Not much. That was the last pint I had left. But it shows how fond aboriginals are of whisky." It is well known that when Hocri Rochefort, the noted French radical journalist, escaped from New Caledonia, in 1574, he telegraphed from Sydney to friends in Paris to send hira 25,000 francs. This wns done. Now, however, a French provincial paper brings a curious charge against the Marquis de Rochefort, who is now the editor of the Intransigent". It states that while the persons who enabled the communist Marquis to escape from New Caledonia are ministers and deputies, the bargee who owned the boat in which Rochefort reached the American ship that took him to San Franciso in 1874. together with his friends Paschal Grousset, Oliver Pain, Jourdc, and another, is the struggling lindlord of a small hotel in Australia, and that he has never been paid for the use of his boat, on that memorable occasion. The bargee, it appears, was punished by expulsion from New Caledonia. He accordingly went to Australia, but, being ignorant of English, hud a good deal of trouble in getting on. He iR now iu Paris, and intends to see M. Rochefort about the payment for the loan of the boat as soon as possible,