ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. New Plymonth, 28th January, 1848.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 266, 16 February 1848, Page 3

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. New Ply month, 28th January, 1848.

Sir, — A$ this settlement is without a local newspaper I am induced to trouble you with a question of some mteiest as it appeavi to me. On hund.iy or Monday last a blind native boy called Te M«»ku. (well known in Wellington) lost his life by falling over or through the wooden bridge at the Henui. The river being very shallow at the time and the fall from the top of the bridtf c considerable, we imagine he was killed where he (ell. The body was discovered by some European on Tuesday morning, placed i by him on the bank and covered over with I branches of the fern tree ; and afterwards on request, was removed to Puketapu by the natives to whom deceased was related. Now I am desirous to ask, knowing little of these matteis beyond what I gather from a common tense view of the case, whether the deceased was not a fit subject for a Coroner's Inquest, though I now recollect an inquiry, in the absence of a Coroner, has always been the course adopted in this place by the Police Magistrate when European* ha\ c died out of the nsur»l way. The f,itr of the boy himself caused little or no regrr t imongst the Europeans. The interest which might otherwise have been felt for his sad i'ffl'ct'n n and untimely death was lost in dislike to his constant aims-seeking and bad lanpuaarp The former, proverbial among the natives of New Zealand was increased by his total blindness, and the latter was mostly uttered in our own tongue and carried its own censure, He lost his life in feeling his dark way across a bridge allowed by us for many months to be unsafe for those having the full use of their eye*; and it seems to me fhat the Resident Migistrate or gentleman having charge of these matters should have held the inquest or inquny to show the natives the Government wih seek di> ciiixiousiy into their fate as that of our own countrymen. It would have also called attention to our own criminal negligence in -allow. n% life to be risked on a bridge r. eking and crtakuig with every footstep, full of dangerous holes, and so rotten that it must yield to its own weight. Surely the Magistrates should have authority to knock down or stop up so dange* rous a footpath. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, Katahi.