Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1893-04-01 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

FLORIDA.  It requires a stern sportsman to do much quail shooting in Florida, writes a Globe correspondent from that country. It is a case of long, dusty driving through interminable pine woods; then of very hot walking and very difficult shooting, with an incidental affair with a moccasin snake or a rattler; and then of another long drive home by quickly failing light, during which you will probably lose your way two or three times. Life in the country in Florida is a very mixed pleasure. The swamps are innumerable. Where it is not swamp-land it is pine-land for scores and scores of miles, and Heaven knows what is the monotony of millions upon millions of pines. The roads are all sandy and dusty—mere waggon tracks through the woods; horseback is the only method by which you can get much pleasure out of them. Then, if you plunge on foot into the woods, you will immediately make the acquaintance of the red spider of Florida, a tiny little haunter of every piece of scrub, which bites like the very old Nick, and is quite impossible to avoid except by a complicated arrangement of gaiters. Add to these country charms the swailla of snakes which infest the country, and you have a notion of the pleasures of a woodland walk in Florida. The moccasin snake is for me a new acquaintance and a deadly; but my old friend, the rattlesnake, is so big here that Ws cousins in California and even in Montana are pigmies in comparison. But the great thing to do in Florida is to fish. This is a fisherman's paradise. The waters, salt or fresh, swarm with fins. Bass and trout, red snapper and grey mullet, are some of the best fish of the neighbourhood; but, of course, the king of all, from the sporting, not eating, point of view, is the tarpon, the silver.; king. Tarpon fishing has been well written up in the magazines, and most people know now that the fish runs to a length of about 6ft. 6in. (with a minimum of about sft.), and will weigh some 150Ib. ; that it has a huge. scaled armour of silvery whiteness ; and that it will provide more hard work for the fishernyin than the biggest salmon on the Spey. I will Oterely refer here to that form of it which is generally enjoyed by the Northern visitor to Florida, who thinks that it is a matter of duty to catch a tarpon. At Punta Gorda or Punta Rassa he will find plenty of boatmen anxious to shew him the sport and to conduct him to likely ground. He has secured his fishing outfit; he is also recommended by the experienced to provide himself with an umbrella, an easy chair, and a good novel. With these he goes out into the Gulf of Mexico. The line is baited and thrown out, and, with an occasional glance at the situation, our friend gets through the day and the best part of his novel. The tarpon ate -net biting to-day." Another day repeats the experience, and another, and yet another. By the end of the week, perhaps, he gets a bite, or rather the tarpon does, cutting ' the hook off clean with his sharp teeth. It is tho same story for another week, if the fisherman is still persistent, and then a second tarpon will appear, consent for form's sake to be hooked, go off with almighty runs and leaps, and break the inexperienced one's tackle with the ease of a pro. fessional strong man. This generally ends the tarprm Ashing—at least it did in the case of the gentleman who gave me some such account as this of his own experience as a tarpon amateur.  The body ot a young man named too, an employe of the Great Western Railway Company, has been found in the river at Taunton.  Sarah Ann Crisp, wife of a railway porter, residing at Marlborough-road, Upper Holloway, ate some codfish for breakfast. She was seized with vomiting and died.  Intelligence has reached Limerick that Constable Lonerghan, stationed at Castletown, had committed suicide by blowing his brains out with a rifle. He had been suffering from depression.  The new first-class battleship Ramillies is about to leave Glasgow, where she has been built. The Ramillies is to go to Portsmouth, where the vessel will be prepare I fur service forthwith. At the Liverpool Assizes on Saturday, Margaret Ward was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude for the manslaughter of John Skiffington, whom she fatally stabbed on New Year's Day. The sudden death is announced of Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Irish Local Government Board, and formerly Assistant tinder-Secretary at Dublin Castle. He was a brother of Sir Hercules Robinson.  Two ricks of hay and a house were destroyed by fire on Saturday night at Mungret, two miles from Limerick. The constabulary are inquiring into the facts, which seem to indicate that the fire was maliciously caused. Whilst returning from the Boat Race with several companions, Thomas Knight, aged 27, of East Dulwich, fell down the stairs of the Vauxhall Railway Station, and received such injuries as to necessitate his removal to St. Thomas's Hospital, His death is reported from a fracture ot the skull. Margaret Rainbird, of 2, High-street, Stepney, has been fined £3 at the Thames Police-court, for selling whiskey 38 degrees under proof, or 13 degrees below the limit allowed under the Food and Drugs Act. She urged in mitigation that the strength of the whiskey nurst have decreased through evaporation. A contingent of Indian soldiers, consisting of one native officer and seven non-commissioned officers of the native cavalry, will shortly arrive in England, under the charge of a British officer, to furnish a guard of honour to the Queen on the occasion of the opening of the Imperial Institute by Her Majesty in May  The news that Ai% ueurv, Meredith is going tO sit to Mr. G. F. Watts for a portrait, shews how completely the distinguished writer has conquered an old aversion, for it was but a few years ago that he submitted for the first time to being photographed. It was, .we (./forniny) believe, in an Atneriean magazine, circulating freely in this cank,try, that the first portrait, upon which all later likenesses are founded, originally appeared. Mr. Meredith lives a very retired life, and allows himself only to entertain, or be entertained by, a, few close frien,i_.