WAIROA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3078, 9 May 1881, Page 3

WAIROA.

(FROM OTJB OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

May 7, 1881. The weather this week has been very changeable, cold, wet, and windy one day, and beautifully fine the next. The small fresh in the river has had a peculiar effect on the fish, numbers of cavalho (araard) and kingfish, throwing themselves on shore in a dying condition. The kingfish varied from thirty to sixty pounds in weight, and are said to be delicious.

Inspector Swindly, A.C., has inspected the men under bis command in this district, and ordered all but two up to Onepoto. This important post is the key of the district, and strengthening that station will have a beneficial effect on any discontented natives there may be knocking about. The Inspector has removed, or is about to remove, the constable from Opoiti, where be has been ferryman for no less a period than six years. This is an instance of Government red-tape. The Public Works Department would not put a bridge over the creek, but the Defence Office paid a man 6s 6d a-day for being ferryman. Another instance is the Judicial Department which declined to pay £110 per annum for clerk and interpreter to this Court, BO the Defence Office send a man (totally new to.the work) and pay him £120, the Judicial Department giving him Is a-day in addition.

There was no applicant for 'the office of ranger to the Couuty Council, and owners of stock running on the flat are in consequence much pleased. It certainly seems very hard that the 300 or 400 acres lying waste should not be utilised, and if the grass was allowed to get rank nothing could have saved the destruction by fire oi this lovely village. Had such a calamity happened, it is open to question whether the insurance offices would have been liable, as such a fire would have come under the head of bush fires, from which, some, if not all, insurance offices carefully exempt themselves,.

The pound has been moved from Orere to the Clyde Hotel. Captain Preece arrived on Monday overland from Napier, and held a sitting of the Court. There were only two cases—C. Rich v. Renata Ngongo, claim of £50 for trespassing on the Mohaka run ; judgment for plaintiff for £3 and costs. J. Powdrell v. Flood, claim of £9 18s for a horse; judgment for plaintiff for £6 and costs.

I observe that potatoes in Napier are quoted at £2 a ton. It is singular that this esculent cannot be procured in Wairoa under seven shillings a sack (bag to be returned or charged for). Probably the freight being three shillings a bag, besides cartage and wharfage, prevents much business being done.' Every week strangers arrive to look at our waste lands, and speak very highly of whatever portion of the country they travel over. All the surveyed land has been purchased, and the Ruakiture block is now to be cut up into sections of five thousand acres each.