OUR WESTLAND LETTER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4433, 4 June 1875, Page 3

OUR WESTLAND LETTER.

(from our own correspondent.) Hokitika, May 31. The course of history in Westland has been marked by no very important events since the date of my last communication. So quiet indeed is the routine of life here, that the manufacture of a readable letter is a feat to be compared to the boring of an Artesian well at Napier, or the conversion of petroleum into pale brandy. So far as actual incident is concerned, I believe the only matters to which I have to refer are the committal of a prisoner to the Supreme Court for house-breaking, the promulgation by the Greymouth Municipal Council of a code of by-laws, which for miserable meddlesomeness are probably unique in the colony, and the announcement by the Hokitika borough Council, that by June Ist all houses within the borough are to have earthclosets, or take the consequences. With regard to the committal to the Supremo Court, it speaks well for the orderly character of the people hero that this would have been the only committal since the sitting of the Court in March. In Hokitika and Greymouth, aa in the other towns of the colony, almost all the children have been attacked with measles. The disease seems however now to have pretty well run its course, and although several children have died, I think the mortality has been wonderfully little, considering the large number of those who have been laid up. The latest report from the Jackson’s Bay Settlement announces the discovery of good limestone in that district. In any case this is of Importance to the district, and should the atone prove suitable for the manufacture of Portland cement, will be a valuable discovery for the colony. The township of Arawata in this settlement is to be put up to auction at the Waste Lands Office on July b'. The survey of the line of railway between Hokitika and Greymouth is at present in progress, and hopes are expressed that Government will fulfil their promise of placing this line upon the schedule of railways to be constructed during the forthcoming year. It has at least as good a prospect of being immediately payable as many sections of line now in hand in the colony, to say nothing of its prospects whenever the trunk line between the East and West Coasts shall be constructed, and the development of Westland South be progressing in real earnest.

There has lately been some talk of the probable resignation of the member for Hokitika. It is, however, now understood that Mr. White intends to retain his seat until the expiration of the present Parliament.