COUNTRY NEWS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 331, 25 January 1911, Page 5

COUNTRY NEWS.

Own Correspondents. Kiritehere-Moeatoa. The majority of settlers will clip their sheep within the next few weeks at Mr John Wouides'. where a square plunge dip has been built. On the upper reaches of the Kirite-here-Mangakokopu road, the bridging of two or three small streams is badly needed, sheep being driven home through them, losing much of the dip, particularly on the lower parts of the body. At the back of the Kiriteherc-Moea-toa Vailey lies a -1000-acre block of land which will be surveyed very shortly by Mr Wynyard, Government surveyor. It is rough bush-covered country, eminently adapted for sheep farming. It will come out some time next year in four and six hundred acre sections.

Complaints are heard on every hand from settlers wanting the grant money expended. So far iittle road work has been done. Summer passing and nothing being done and settlers themselves asking for road work for the past two months, hoping thereby to get roads improved a little before winter sets in again. This sumr>.er, owing chieiiy to the presence on the roads of two or three unbridged creeks, a foot or two deep, settlers in the upper Kiritehere have had to get their wool packed to Marakopa Heads, instead of having it sledged as was intended by them at first.

Petitions have been sent into the Hon. R. McKenzie from time to time by settlers resident here, praying him to cause money to be spent on the widening and improving of the Mangakokopu road., which is the main mail and stock road from KiritehereMoeatoa to Te Ku'iti, and, in time, the main telephone line route from Te Kuifci to Marakopa. It is expected that the work of erecting the Marakopa-Te Kuiti telephone line will be commenced at the iMarakopa end very shortly. The posts, of imported hard wood, will be shipped per s.s. Pitoitoi to Marakopa Heads, and when the road is improved sledged from thence along the telephone route. Mr Murray, the respected and popular district engineer, is expected in these parts any day now. Settlers are anxious to see him concerning the diverting of a stream on the Mangakokopu road. They are afraid that if this stream be diverted from its naturally-curved course, into an artificially made straight one, it will scour out the soft river silt along its banks, wash away road 3 and fences and gardens in its path, change to the lower side of the road and turn into private property. Fruit trees planted a few years ago are coming into bearing. Peach and apple trees do we'd. This is a great country for flowers, every garden being a mass of them of all varieties and colours. Dahlias and bulbs grow like weeds and most profusely everywhere.

Passion fruit vines pre ".overed with massed clusters of green fruit which hang pendant from the rough flowercovered trellis-work. Lemon trees do v/ell, and a few orange trees are to be seen here and there. The hills resound to the clack of flails and the line brown seed is beginning to pour into the homesteads to be stacked for the new burns. On the 9th inst. the Marakopa boarding-house, owned by Mrs Carr, was practically destroyed by fire. The alarm was given before the outbreak had done much damage. A bucket brigade wa3 quickly organised and pressed into service, and at daybreak the fire was extinguished and the main building saved. The kitchen and all that it contained was destroyed by the flames. But for the prompt assistance of the lodgers, who turned cut quickly, the whole building would have been burned to ashes. It is reported that Mr Jack VYillison, of Marakopa, is laid up with a touch of typhus. A doctor and nurse are in attendance.

Many objects of curiom interest have, from time to time, been picked up in the Kiritehere Valley. A. few months ago a long, paddle-shaped spade, with a lashed-on puriri handle, was found fay Mr John Wouldea while draining a swamp on his farm. It was three or four feet beneath the surface of what must have been at one time an old Maori garden. This interesting relic of the past is supposed by some to be at least several hundred years old, as it was found so deep under flax and other rubbish. Other interesting funis have been made near the same locality in the shape of an adze and several fish hooks beaten out of copper. There is abundance of copper along the coast and these implements of industry, hand-wrought out of the same metal, seem to have a better temper than ordinary copper would take. Those few bits of nativeworked metal lead one into an interesting speculation as to whether the Maori had any aptitude for the working of metal?, As far as one could judge the- fish hooks themselves appear to bo exact imitations of those made of bono by the Maoris in olden days except, of course, that they are better shaped, for the soft copper has lent itself easily to be worked into the desired form.