TAUPO.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3025, 7 March 1881, Page 2

TAUPO.

(FROM OTJB OWN CORRESPONDENT.) February .28, 1881. Taupo affairs generally have pursued the even tenor of their ways since my last, excepting an abnormal bustle on the part of our local bonifaces and storekeepers anent the Native Lands Court, which is advertised to sit here again on the 21st proximo. But it was advertised and put off so often before last sitting that one fails to take the slightest notice of even the Government Gazette. Anyhow it is to be hoped it will sit and adjudicate upon the Murimotu and Rangipo country. The Messrs. Moorhouse and Co. are indeed to be pitied and commended—pitied for the usage the native lords of the soil are serving them out with, and commended for their pluck in hanging out to the bitter end. People may say, " Ob, well, they must hang out; they cannot help themselves," but 1 think otherwise. The treatment those gentlemen have put up with from Kemp's party and Topia's alternately, beggars discription. Each tribe and hapu probably growl and threaten what not to each other, but, my word, they both can combine and forget everything where a Pakeha is to be fleeced. And they do combine, and won't they fleece. The wool—or part of it—from Messrs Grace and Morrin's station close at hand here has also been held in "durance vile " by the gentle and unsophisticated Topia anent some monetary dispute. But as the "major" (bless the mark) has a thoroughly shrewd opponent to deal with in Mr Johu Grace, and, moreover, looiit be talked or pati patid into the "Major's frame of mind or way of thinking, why there is no doubt this little difficulty will be soon tided over. It is to be hoped so. Our pioneer settlers in this district have a great deal to contend with ; they have the inevitable up-hill work that follows on taking up new country, besides, what is incalculably worse, the open hostility of the very natives perhaps who invited them to take up their country. This opposition, and hostility, clogs the proper developing of

country so taken up as a matter of course, and indeed, the native owners, who nearly always mean well in the beginning to a pioneer theep farmer, are put up by outside Pakehas to throw all obstacles possible in the way of the settler. It is a sorry concession to make, but it is neveithelesa true, that if the natives were let alone to deal with their own country in their own way, and to whom they liked (subject to approval of the Government), and outside Europeans and their baneful influence were to keep at a distance, we would hardly if ever bear of wool being seized—and sheep driven off to God knows where.

While on the land question I may ask, what is the intention of the Government in regard to the large amount of acreage they hold in this distrist ? Some of it has been public property this last twelve or thirteen years, and is in as high a state of cultivation and improvement now as it was then. Surely this is not as it should be. We want our district settled, and holding land that bona fide settlers would be most happy to take up ia not the way on the part of the Government to forward settlement. If the Government would only deal liberally in this matter they would soon find that the native owners around would follow suit, and in another decade we will see very many smiling homesteads and brousing flocks where now there is nothing but the fern and tupeke, for we have | very very many broad acres in our disI trict that are capable, with improvement (such as laying down English grasses) of carrying hundreds of thousands of stock; I yes, we have indeed plenty, any amount of country in this much despise Taupo capable, of splendid improvement. The hitherto Historians of the Taupo district no doubt will smile at my enthusiasm, but I have not spied out the nakedness of the land from the box seat of Cobb's coach as they have done. I have padded the lordly hoof over it all, and I know that it is so.

But as I won't pretend to an agricultural treatise, I will change the subject to that never-failing resource of ' inkslingers—the weather — which since the 22nd of last month has changed from splendid summer to almost severe winter. On the above date we experienced a slight shock of earthquake, with a slight frost the night previous, since which a S.S.E. wind has been blowi ing more or less fiercely. The shock was preceded by about fifteen or twenty seconds heavy rumbling noise from Tongariro. The earthquake wave tended, as they nearly all do here, viz., from S.W. to N.E.

Our local Jehu, Mr Griffiths, is carrying out his duties with'great punctuallity, but I have failed to learn that he has been under the necessity of refusing a seat to an extra passenger. I must again put forth my weak protest re the break in our communication with Auckland. It is indeed shamefulone can hear from Melbourne or Sydney as quick as from the metropolis of the North. Mr Robert Graham, of Auckland, has succeeded in getting a survey completion of some 5000 odd acres about five miles from here, enclosing the celebrated Wairakei springs. I hear Mr is going to build a large hotel and sanitorium there. A young gentleman (Mr Wood), a Napier resident I believe, met with a sad accident about six weeks ago at Loffley's baths by carelessly walking about too near a hot mud hole, when the ground broke and he slipped in. One of his legs was badly scalded above the knee, but under the earful superintendance of our local Esculapius, Sergt. Campbell, he is fast recovering again, and in a few days hence will proceed home to his friends on the Government waggon. The Dauntless has been to and from Tokano and its neighborhood to here twice or thrice a week until the proceedings of Major Topia as stated put a stop to her cargo, but it is to be hoped that the embargo of the " gentle Topia " will ere long be removed, and we will see the smart little boat at her work again.