MOTUEKA HIGHWAY BOARD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 95, 22 April 1879, Page 2

MOTUEKA HIGHWAY BOARD.

This Board held a special meeting on Saturday the 19th iostant, for the purpose of considering tenders for making -1 miles of new road on the Takaka Ranges. Present : The Chairman, Messrs Askew, Bisley and Edwards. There was only one tender received for the whole of the work, the amount of which was greatly in excess of the sum placed at the disposal of the Board for completing the portion between the stockyard and the summit. Eesolved — That the Secretary communicate with the Minister for Public Works on the subject, and request an early reply as to what course the Board had better pursue under the circumstances.

The Auckland Working Men's petition to the House of Representatives, praying that some restriction should be placed on the threatened influx of Chinese, has now reached the respectable length of 30 yards, and contains upwards of 3000 names. The Thames Advertiser shows at its publishing oflice a pear grown on Rangiora Farm, Upper Thames, weighing 28ozs. (l-J-lbs). It says :— " The orchard at Te Puke, so excellently kept by Mr Austin, has given a return of £20 for one tree, £15 another, and so on, this season. Mr J. W. Thorpe, who has an orchard in the same place only planted within the last few years, is equally successful in the production of excellent fruit. A German named Berthold Hipauf committed suicide at Stutfs Hotel, Melbourne, recently, in a peculiar, but determined manner. He had a plate of oysters sent up to his room, and these, it would appear, he sprinkled with strychnine prior to swallowing them, and it was proved by the medical evidence that death was the result of the effect of that poison. A Greymouth paper thus delicately criticises a magistaate who is threatened with a writ for damages for false imprisonment. " He is one of the most incompetent and pig headed magisterial noodles that ever brought the New Zealand Bench into contempt. He is almost as bigoted as , R.M. of , and, of course infinitely more ignorant." It has been announced that the most hopeful item in the position of the City of Glasgow Bank is the fact that of the three millions' worth of marginal bills sent out to India, eight hundred thonsand pounds' worth are almost certain to be declared legally invalid in consequence of some irregularities. Tbe bank's assets will, therefore, be eight hundred thousand pounds better than anticipated. Commenting on the recent departure of a. family of Now Zealand settlers for the Holy Land, the Otago Witness writes : — Emigration from New Zealand to Palestinel Well, that is a new idea. It is not apparently Hebrews, but Britishers, who are attracted lo the land that used to " flow with milk and honey," but from all recent accounts is very desolate at present. " Land and labor cheap "—these are the two attracting causes, not any sentiment of reverence for tbe consecrated haunts of sacred story We suppose government does not go for much, and that the Turk is regarded in some quarters as quite an eligible ruler. It may be that, now England has her foot on Cyprus, affairs on the mainland will be more under British control and influence thau before; but apart from 'the sentiment, we confess to a leaning towards New Zealand in preference to Palestine, and to the amenities of British rule rather than to those of the "gentlemanly Turk." The land of promise to the Jews was undoubtedly Palestine, but the land of promise to the AngloSaxon race is this Britain of the Southrabbits and nominated Governors notwithstanding. It seems a sort of treason to give up our birthright here to become strangers and pilgrims in that foreign land. But perhaps, after all, we are the Lost Ten Tribes, and are only going back to the land of our forefathers. There are curious things going on in this world, and this does seem one of the " ctiriouaest."