TtfE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



299 



is nearly south over a level fertile country till it strikes the Murrumbidgee, which is 

 crossed by a costly bridge one of the principal engineering works which hindered the 

 extension of the Southern Line. The main channel of the River is spanned by two 

 continuous wrought-iron lattice-girders of six hundred and forty feet each, the supports 

 being cast-iron cylinders, nine feet, in diameter. On the north side there are two hun- 

 dred and fifty-seven spans of thirty 

 feet each, and on the south fifty-six 

 spans of the same width, so that in 

 the event of Hoods there may be a 

 good outlet for the powerful stream, 

 the River here being wide and deep, 

 and having gained much force and 

 volume on its western course from 

 Gundagai. The necessity for pre- 

 cautions of this kind was forcibly 

 illustrated some years ago, when 

 the mountain waters came down 

 with force and made a huge gulf in 

 the railway embankment close to 

 Cootamundra, thus causing the 

 wreckage of a passenger train. To 

 the right, on a level which is con- 

 siderably lower than that occupied 

 by the railway line, stands one of 

 the most important towns of the 

 South, whose name, Wagga Wagga, 

 is not unfamiliar to dwellers on the 

 other side of the globe. Its fame, 

 indeed, is wide -spread, it having 



been the place in which the claimant of the great Tichborne estates was twenty-five years 

 ago unearthed. On the 26th of July, 1865, there appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald 

 an advertisement offering a handsome reward to any person who would furnish information 

 which would lead to the discovery of the fate of one Roger Charles Tichborne, a young 

 gentleman who had sailed from the port of Rio Janeiro twelve years before in a ship 

 named La Jiclla. It was thought that this vessel was wrecked, and that a number of her 

 passengers had been picked up and brought to Australia. The Tichborne which the adver- 

 tisement sought was described as being about thirty-two years of age, and of a delicate 

 condition. He was heir to all the estates left by his father, Sir James Tichborne, Bart. 

 It happened that there was residing at Wagga Wagga a rough burly butcher known as 

 Tom Castro, and a sharp solicitor with the keenness for which the legal profession is 

 remarkable discovered in this vendor of chops, steaks and sausages, the identical scion of 

 English nobility to whom the advertisement referred. The announcement took Wagga 

 Wagga by surprise even the most intimate friends or most liberal customers of Castro had 

 not entertained the faintest idea that they had been so highly honoured. He was not an 



THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT. 



