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Just as the community was setting over the shock given by reading the frightful narrative of the burning of the Cospatrick and the loss of nearly all her passengers and crew, we have news from the sea of another disaster nearer home, on a scale which we have not been hitherto able to estimate. I allude to the tantalising anxious tale of the wreck of the steamer Gothenburg on the Great Barrier Reef, and of the passengers and crew having left the ship in boats and gone no one could say where. The full particulars of the affair will doubtless be extracted from the Melbourne papers. It has been a peculiarly un tortunate circumstance that just :ifc the time when we got the intelligence of the wreck the whole of the telegraph lines in North Queens land were in a, state of complete disarray, owing to the offsets of the recent storms and floods, it was, however, thought that there was reason to hope that the boats succeeded in reaching land, which was only about 30 miles away, and that it was quite likely that all the time that so many persons in the southern Co louies were in such extreme anxiety about the missiug passengers and crew they might be all safe in Cleveland Bay. But it was ye culiarly unlucky that when it was a matter of such urgent interest to be able "to speak" by wire with some of these northern seaports we were deprived of the chance ot doing so by the shattered condition of the telegraph wires." The passenger lists contained the names of sevur.il public men officially connected with the North ern territory, and of others who were well known in the various Colonies, and it may readily be understood how keen and wide-spread was the interest which the fate of the- missing people excited. The telegiaph offices have sel dom been so besieged by enquirers as during the last few days by crowds-of people, all asking the stereotyped question, " Is there «uiythin<* learned about the Gothenburg?" At length in the papers of the (sth the rest of the story, or the principal part'of it, is told, and it is woise than the worst of our forebodin«s. 