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Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1286, 18 June 1883, Page 2

Mr Warden Eevell reached Reefton on Saturday last, and will hold Court at the usual hour this mormng. Captain Jackson Barry has purchased the skeleton of a whale up Nelson way. We are glad to hear this. Barry is a bit of a whale himself— he certainly can " blow " tremendously, and is not half a bad "spouter." When he left Reefton there was a good deal of wailing after him, if not actually some "blubbering." People, at all events, put him down as a rather queer fish. It is related of Barry that, amongst his other wonderful adventures, he on one occasion was shipwrecked somewhere up by the Three Kings, and that he got on the back of a live whale and was carried right round New Zealand, eventually being thrown ashore without a shilling in his pocket. Here then we have a singular illustration of the iron of fate. It has now come to the whale's turn to be thrown ashore, and Barry is going to give it a ride round New Zealand. He formerly played Juno to the whale, and now the whale has got to play to his Juno. However, the motto of the redoubtable " Captain " no doubt is, ) All's whale that ends whale. A case of peculiar interest is to come on in the Magistrate's Court to-morrow. It is an action to recover the sum of £20, being the amount of a reward alleged to have been offered for the recovery of the lost corps of a Chinaman. The case is expected to bristle with legal points. In the first place the defence purpose to contend that the coffin found was not the one lost — this will, of course, necessitate the production of the coffin in Court, in order to its identification. It will be further contended that the corps contained therein was not that of the particular bereaved Mongolian so mysteriously "lost." This will, of course, also necessitate the presence of the corps in Court, and at this stage the case will no doubt begin to get very interesting. Reefton on Saturday night last was enveloped in by far the thickest fog ever experienced in the Inangahua. From an early r hour in the evening the fog descended, aud by 9 p.m. was so dense that the shop and street lights could not be seen from one side of Broadway to the other. The effect was very peculiar, and as it was intensely cold people went about muffled up like so many divers. Mrs Pfaff, has opened a servants registery office in Bridge-street, in the j premises of Mr A. Moor, and has applicants for situations as domestic servants and barmaids. Mrs Pfaff has had considerable experience in the conduct of the business, having for some years kept a Servants Registry at Kumara and elsewhere. A curious superstition is mentioned in an American telegram under date Baltimore, March 17. It runs as follows : — " The remains of Captain Andrew Jackson Hess, who died on March 2nd in San Francisco, arrived in this city this morning, and were taken to the residence of his mother, 177 German-street, t-aptain Lockwood, who came on with the body, said to a reporter that Mr Hess, while a deputy sheriff, had been assigned two months ago to the duty of 'death watcher' of Sing Lum, a Chinaman condemned to death, and who committed suicide hi prison. Jnst before hanging himself Sing Lum wrote a letter in Chinese to one of the Chinese priests, in which he said that he had been treated so kindly by Captain Hess, his watcher, that he intended to report him favorably to "Poo Sot," the Great Saviour, who, he believed, would send to earth for Captain Hess also. The fact that Captain Hess died suddenly of heart disease soon after the suicide of Sing Lum caused quite a sensation in San Francisco, and the followers of Confucius there fully believe that Sing Lum kept his word, and that, as a result of his intercession, the Great Saviour actually sent the Angel of Death to call Sing I. urn's American friend from this world."