The Mountain Mystery of New South Wales. leaf; also, the keen sarcasm of Rufus Choate, the causticity of Thomas H. Benton, the fertility of repartee that Richard Henry
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Dana had, the geniality of William Kent, and the high sense of honor and integrity that belonged to William Wirt.
THE MOUNTAIN MYSTERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. READERS of the daily papers will have observed, among other items of cablegraphic news, a paragraph from Sydney, New South Wales, announcing the convic tion and sentencing to death for murder, and later, on July 16, the execution of the notorious Frank Butler, whose surrender to colonial jurisdiction by process of extradi tion was made by the San Francisco author ities in February, 1897. The criminal juris diction in Sydney had a considerable number of aliases from which to choose, as this fellow in careering round the world, some times as a soldier, sometimes as a sailor, frequently as a deserter, once as a West Australian policeman, and always as a scoundrel, was in the habit of taking a new departure in nomenclature at all times when prompted either by the exigencies of a career wholly criminal, or, as might be, in an occasional spirit of bravado or caprice. He was indifferently Frank Butler, Frank Harwood, Simpson, Clare, Newman, Richard Ashe, Lee Weller, Burgess — a list which is far from exhaustive. " Lee Weller " and "Burgess " he temporarily borrowed from two of his victims respectively so called. The events crowded into this paper, cover little more than the concluding six months; are, in short, merely the finishing fringe of a blood-stained career. Our immediate concern with Butler falls between the dates of August, 1896, and April, 1897. What is left unrevealed may be not inaptly inferred from a remark made by him in a moment of unsophistication to detective Roche on the voyage from San Francisco to Sydney: "I ought rightly to have been hung fifteen
years ago." Before his execution he had, however, confessed to four murders. About November, 1896, rumors were heard in Sydney of persons who had mys teriously disappeared from all knowledge of relations and friends. One of these was a young fellow named Arthur Preston,- of respectable parentage and irreproachable antecedents. Another was Captain Lee Weller, a sea-captain by profession, and more or less of a world rover by choice; but in all respects a man of worth, held in good repute by those who knew him. Yet another was a man named Burgess. As rumor began to congeal it got to be remem bered that both Preston and the real Lee Weller had been met with, not as one party, but separately, in the company of the person subsequently identified as Butler, in the neighborhood of Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains, somewhere about forty to fortyfive miles from Sydney. In camping in the ranges, the professed object, as effusively explained by Butler to chance wayfarers, was that of prospecting for gold. About mid-October Butler, under the alias of "Clare," had put up for about a week at the Railway Dining-rooms, George street, Sydney, the proprietor of which, Mr. E. Thompson, subsequently remembered having had his attention directed to an advertise ment: "Wanted, a mate for a prospect ing trip in equal shares," a bait which, as subsequently appeared, was the one sys tematically used by Butler for the entrap ment of his victims in the first instance. From Mr. Thompson's evidence given at Preston's inquest — if for the moment events
