LAKE WAKATIP.

Dunstan Times, Issue 954, 30 July 1880, Page 3

LAKE WAKATIP.

(VUOM AN OCCASIONAL OOUKEHI’ONDENT.) Writing of any kind I abhor, more especially do I dread it when what is now sent is to be exposed in your paper to the public gaze, lint as a promise has been made to send you a few jottings of onr doings occasionally, I foel|iu honour bound to try my ’prentice hand. To begin with the weather. We, like yourself, have had a delightful winter up to the present. The only thing to look out for is that Dame Nature does not make us suffer by a bad spiiug, or possibly summer, Frost we have had hone, except son'etimes at night, anil the season is too fat advanced to expect much this year. This district, 1 am very sorry to say, has lately exhibitedja frightful exainp'c. The week before last no less than two members of our very quiet and orderly community put an instantaneous end to their lives—not with “a bare bodkin”—but by discharging the contents of loaded rifles into their systems—the one (Mr If. G. Jones, of Arrowtown) through his breast, and the other (Mr G. Russell, of Queenstown) through his brains. The usual verdicts of “ temporary insanity ” were returned, and both unfortunates having been members of the local Volunteer Corps, they were accorded military funerals. It is not for any man to judge, but I cannot help thinking that where such self-murders weie committed with apparently so much deliberation and self ■consciousness, it would have been hotter to have passed over the terrible incidents with sacred silence, rather than blazon them forth with “honours” as great as could be bestowed had. they been the natural deaths of our most esteemed civilian soldiers. The custom would in the recent instances have been more d:screetly observed in the breach than in its performance. I sincerely believe- -so disordered was Russell’s mind and trembling I in the balance—that the idea of being in- 1 toned with the same pomp and blazing . away of rifles as his late comrade in arms at Arrowtown, turned the scale and precipitated his sad cud. To turn to a more cheerful topic of our social existence, I may mention that things arc going on here much as usual. Business generally is, of con se, a little dull just now, but the summer is likely to bring an improvement in the shape of good crops for tanners, and plenty of visitors for the enliven meat of the town. Town improvements during the past twelve months have IbcenfdW. MrM. J. Malaghan has made some additions toj his establishment, and Air R. Boyne, another merchant, has I erected a large and most substantial business place and residence on the site of his old building. The County Council—after the tenderer had backed out in the lint instance, have accepted a rresh tender ; but that bargain is not yet clinched, but if all accounts be true the contract is not signed at present, and it would not astonish me to hear that the requisite sureties are wanting to Complete the contract—the price, some J. 950, being asserted as too low to make anything on. 'There is a little excitement just now on account of the opening of the Waimoa Plains Railways on Saturday, when two or three hundred excursionists from Dunedin, &0., are expected to pay the Lakes a flying visit and return on Monday. If the weather

continues fine I am sure they will enjoy themselves. Ei eh unit's hotel will no doubt he the head-quarters of the majority ; in fact, lam told that many of his private rooms are already engaged for the occasion.