TEVIOT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 527, 24 May 1872, Page 2

TEVIOT.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.) It’s not often I trouble you with a communication, and. I daresay it -would not disturb your rest were my letters still more like Angels visits. But as a considerable number of [copies of the Dunstan Times find their way to the Teviot, it is only fair that the district should occasionally be noticed in its columns. First and foremost, the prospects of the mining community are fairly prosperous. The river is at a very low level, and water tolerably plentiful, and that the bank claims have a fair show. Woodhouse’s truck claim is said to be on excellent gold, and as a proof of the suueriority of this system, I may mention that a claim worked in a similar manner is about to be started at the -Horse Shoe Bend, a small diggings about twenty miles down the river. Our only representative of the dredging flotila is, has been, and is likely to remain laid up in ordinary : but it is currently reported that the Water-wheeler working near Moa Flat is paying fair wages. Personal squabbles and shearing summonses occupy the time of our magistracy, the former generally end in smoke, the latter have generally gone against the employers—as we have a the law settled in our district lively times may be expected. An amusing altercation between two local magnates has afforded us with no small food for laughter. Dukimara as I shall christen one, devotes his time to our physical ailments, and his opponent G igas is great on the land question. Duleimara accused Gigas of showing him up in an upcountry paper, and Gigas retaliated by another dose of the same medium, whereupon Dulcamara got ropeable, and threatened violence, but quickly subsided on discovering that Gigas was all there with the mittius, finally cooling down with apologies and olfers to shout. As both parties are well known, and carried on their discussions at the top of rather stentorian voices you may imagine a crowd quickly collected and listened with intense delight. On Friday last the 17th instant the Government completed their ruinous policy of selling land suitable for settlement to a squatting capitalist. The 1,900 acre block on Moa Flat was sold on that day and realised the handsome sum of 3,000, the whole with the exception of three lots falling to Mr. Clarke, 'lire Government have only now to administer the coup de grace to the district by selling the valuable land on Cargill and Anderson’s and Miller’s Pams on the east bank of the river, I for one will not be surprised if they do so. The Tuapeka Times of late has been creating some sensation in this quarter by publishing a petition for a line of railway to the up-country districts. No one as far as I can learn was aware of this movement, but all appear to be impressed with the idea—from my own knowledge of the country, 1 can say such a line is both feasible and economical, and much more > likely to open up the country than the line direct to Tuapeka. A royal commission to trace and report on the different lines would not be at all a bad thing. The Odd Fellows Annual Ball comes off in the course of the month, so that we are not without some gaiety after all.