The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-10-09 00:00:00

RETURN OF SIR BARTLE FRERE.

The Union Steamship Company's Royal Mai
steamer Pretoria, having on board Sir Bartle Frere,
Lady Frere, the two Misses Frere, and suite, arrived
in Plymouth-Sow-id on Monday evening.

The Pretoria left Cape Town on Wednesdays the
15th ult., having been detained a day owing to the
illness of Lady Frere. Never .before was there such a
demonstratioff in Cape Town as on the departure of
Sir Bartle Frere, Lady Frere, and family, all of whom
have endeared themselves in the hearts not only of
the inhabitants of Cape Town, but of those living in
the country districts; to every one, in fact, who has
had the good fortune to come into contact with
them. From Government House to the steamer's
side thousands upon thousands thronged streets,
house-tops, and windows, all the principal streets
were decked with flags, troops from the garrison
lined the streets, and when the carriage in
which his Excellency and Lady Frere were seated
was half-way between Governntent-house and
the docks the people took out the horses and
pulled the carriage to the pier. At six p.m. the
Pretoria steamed out of Table Bay, salutes of 19 guns
being fired from the garrison and her Majesty's ship
Boadicea.

Sir Bartle Frere arrived at Southampton on Tues-
day, and was cordially welcomed. An address numer-
ously signed by Cape merchants was presented to him,
expressing hearty approval of his policy in South
Africa and regret that he had been called home before
his work was completed, and to this Sir Bartle Frere
replied, expressin his acknowledgments for his warm
reception and gratification that his polio had been
approved. Another warm welcome by a large throng
of people awaited Sir Bartle Frere, Lady Frere, and
their friends at the Waterloo Terminus of the South-
Western Railway, where they arrived shortly before
ten o'clock on Tuesday night.

In anticipation of Sir Bartle Frere's arrival in
England. his friends prepared and issued in the form
of a circular letter thd subjoined sketch of his official
career :

"Sir Bartle Frere was appointed to the Civil Service of the
East India Company, on the Bombay Establishment, in 1833,
and was at once attached to the Revenue Department.
In 1835 he was appointed Assistant to the Collector of
Poonah, and in 1837 Assistant to the Revenue Commis-
sioner of the Southern Mahratta country, in which position
ho rontinneei until 1842. when he was appointed Pri-
vate secretary to the Governor of Bombay, Sir George
Arthur, the father of Lady Frere. In 1848 Sir Bartle
was appointed Resident at Sattara, and in December,
1850, Commissioner in Scinde, in the administration
of which then recently conquered province he was so ably
assisted by the late General John Jacob and Sir 'William
Merewether, now a member of the Indian Council. In
1856 he went to England on three years' furlough; but on
the Persian war breaking out in that year—and John Jacob
being ordered in command of the cavalry of our invading
army—Sir Bartle Frere, apprehensive of the dangers likely
to arise on the Scinde frontier, hurried back to his post,
just in time to hear, as he landed at Kurraehee, otfteoisut
break of the Indian Mutiny at Meerut, on the 10h o lif 3y:
1857. It was then that the high character of the man
fully manifested itself in one of the greatest acts of self-
devotion ever shown by a public servant. Acting on lns
own responsibility, and without waiting to refer to the
Governor of Bombay, he at once despatched to the aid
of Sir John (afterwards Lord) Lawrence the let Bombay
Fusiliers, his strongest European regime*, and the Ist
Belooch Battalion. This was one of those preiMpt and
'critical steps, taken at the right time, which really saved
India. A little later, when revolt broke out in Bombay at
Kolapore, he almost completely denuded himself of Euro-
pean troops by sending to Lord Elphinstono'a aid all that
remained with Mtn, except a company or two of the
2nd Bombay Light Infantry. When he sent away the let
Belooehes to Lawrenoe, he wrote to Lord" Elphinstone :
"When the head and heart were threatened, the extremities
=lst take care of themselves." And thus surrounded by a
Mabornedan population, and with mutinous Bengal regi-
ments On his Indian frontier, and foreign intrigues rife on
his Persian, without any military aid, by his own fearless-
ness and tact he kept Scinde and the Scinde frontier tran-
quil all through the mutiny, his only help being the presence
of Jan Jacob and that of Jacob's ablest lieutenant Sir
William Mereivether. These were great services patent to
every one, and it is for them that Sir Bartle Frere's t-tight
and unsullied name will live imperishable in history besides
those of Sir Robert Montgomery and Elphinstone. and
Lawrence, as of the men who, in 185 Y, by their statesman-
ship, aided by the military courage and services ef Nichol-
son, Haveioel, Outram, and Hugh Rose (Lord Strathnairnl,
saved India. In 1059 Sir Bartle Frere was appointed to the
Council of the Governor-Goneral, Lord Canning, and in 1862 to
the Governorship of Bombay, an quittiug which, in 1807, he at
once took his seat as a member of the India Council in
Downing-street. He completely rebuilt pzenbay in five
years, and one of the noblest sights in the world of the
works of man is that of the new city of Bombay, as built
by Sir Bartle Frere, siting in lofty towers and pinnacles
directly out of the sea from which it is viewed. Since his
return to England, Sir Bartle has been employed on a
mission to Zanzibar for the suppression of slavery on the
east coast of Africa, and in 1876 was especially selected
by the Queen to acconipany the Prince of Wales on his
Indian tour. He was appointed Governor of the Cape in
, the spring of 1877."

DIRT-TEA.—Little boy (on receiving a cup of weak
tea from his mother) :—" Mamma, the milk you have
given me is quite hot and dirty."—Fun,

THE AUSTRALIAN CRICKETERS.

On Monday night the Lord Mayor of London en-
tertained at the Mansion House the Australian
eleven, on the completion of their tour in this country.
A considerable company of colonial officials and dis-
tinguished English guests met Mr. Murdoch and his
colleagues. After dinner the loving-cup was passed
round? Each name of the Australian eleven, and
those representing their English rivals and friends,
when announced were greeted with cheers. The
Lord Mayor, proposing the health of the guests,
congratulated them on the success they had achieved,
and he ventured to tell them on behalf of the
people of England, that if anything could gratify
that people more than the success of their own
cricketers it was the success of the younger sons of old
England. Mr. Vurdoch, in responding, heartily
thanked the Lord Mayor for his expressions of good-
will. Lord Harris said it might seem strange that the
Lord Mayor should do honour to what was considered
merely a game. Cricket was, however, more than a
game. It was a great school for encouraging the
use of some of the finest qualities of human nature,
And for discouraging some of the worst. First,
as to its purity and the utter absence from its
pursuit of anything but honour, it was, he believed,
singular. On the river and on the running path, and
at football, there were c mtests at which prizes were
offered to the victor, and it was only in isolated cases
that those contests were for honour alone; but in
cricket, on the contrary, it was only in isolated cases
that prizes were offered. In the Olympian Games the
competitors had crowns of laurel wreaths, but in the
game of crioket they had not even that, the only thing
they had in the shape of a laurel wreath being the
cypher that rewarded the unsuccessful.
The Australian cricketers left London on Tuesday
morning in the presence of a small number of persons,
who gave them a hearty cheer on leaving. The time
was very early-7.40--and the fact was not made
public, or there would probably have been a large
gathering. Those present had been intimately con-
nected with the tour of 1880. The Australians go via
Dover and Calais. and then travel overland to Venice.
They join the Peninsular and Oriental Company's
ocean steamer Deccan at Suez, and in that vessel they
proceed to Australia. They are expected to arrive at
Adelaide on November 13.

A FA.I2:EWRLL-
(To the Australian Cricketers.,

Good-bye You are off to your dry swartled South
From the premature fogs of our watery West,
Leaving praise of your prowess in everyone's mouth,
Good-bye ! Here's your health in a bowl of the best.
Ws must pack up our willows, our wickets must draw,
For one can't play the game in a mist 0.0 a bog,;
Vain the bat-skill of GRACE, or the ball-sleight of SR,. w
'Gainst the dclorous rule of King Fog.

But you—all the taste of our Winter you'll get
Is the rich turtle twang at the Mansion House feed.
We must make a bad best of our gloom and our wet,
You to sunshine and Spring take your Bkill and its meed,
You have taken the shine out of some of our lights,
And when worsted played up with invincible pluck
"Won" or "honours divided" seems most of your fights.
So bon voyage, my boys, and good luck I—Punch.