MATAKITAKI NOTES.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 284, 31 July 1886, Page 2

MATAKITAKI NOTES.

(from our own correspondent). Murchison, July 27,1886.

The contract for the long talked of dray road up the river is let at last for the vary low sum of £940. Notwithstanding the many mysterious limits as to the intention of the County Council to leave us in the lurch. The specifications are unusually strict and were the occasion of much growling, and not few were the assertions that it could be done for the money voted, but it seems there are some who think otherwise.

There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among Couuty Council Chairman dow that there is to be no emolument attached to the honour. Ido not doubt that one of the chief reasons why a salary is not iu future to be paid is because it proved such a boue of contention, aud that by removing it peace would be restored to many much perturbed districts. If the reform had boen effected some 12 months back it would have been the saving of much public and private money; now virtue is to be its own reward and many will think that the Quid pro quo is insufficient for this work to be done, and chairmanships will be for sale cheap. We are gradually progressing. The latest innovation being a reading room in connection with the public library; the very energetic chairman and secretary Mr M'Nee, has baen hammering away at the idea for some time, and to illustrate the old proverb, patience and perseverance overcome difficulties, has at last succeeded with the assistance of our councillor in obtaining a grant of £3O from the council, on condition that the land shall be freehold, which difficulty has been overcome by the Co-operative Society making a free gift of part of their section a very central and in every way suitable situation, and as the necessary additional funds are all promised Christmas should see its completion.

Another new erection is the Six Mile aided school, about five miles from Hampden, which is now completed and in occupation with a fair attendance. I see that Reefton people are in a high state of jubilation over the news of the letting of 25 miles of the Midland Railway, believing it to be from Brunnerton to Reefton; Christchurch and Nelson people have a different version, that it is to be a continuation west from Springfield ; the egotism of some people is ludicorous in the extreme.

The weather is very dry and frosty, about 1,590 degrees below zero at a rough guess, (its no use being too exact) and coughs and colds are abundant the common topic of conversations being synip-

Toms, and many and various are the prescriptions the most efficacious being tincture ot old Jamaica, ad. lib., sugar to taste, Aqua para, (hot) Quant, stiff, see Pharmacopoeia. Quid Nunc.