PUNIHO.

Opunake Times, Volume I, Issue 8, 27 July 1894, Page 2

PUNIHO.

(Our Own Correspondent.) Mr John Corbett has returned to Okato after an absence of thirteen years. He finds the place very much altered. I hear be contemplates starting in the butchering trade, in which all his old friends will wish him success. Opposition they say is the life of trade. It is rumored that a native of Paribaka, who apparently is possessed of the broadest communistic views, appropriated two bead of' cattle, which another native claimed, under the mistaken notion that an individual might hold private property for his own particular benefit, and sold them to a settler. The police took the matter in hand, but it was amicably settled in Maori fashion by giving five head of cattle to the injured one. Their method of dealing with cases of the kind is primitive but very cheap £yad effective. A ten gallon of beer disappeared mysteriously from here. The owner says he would be inclined to forgive the appropriation *but thinks they might return the keg anyhow. Joe Sbarlaud, a native of Okato,died on Sunday last. He was wellknown to the old identities of Taranaki. He was brought up and educated by the late Mr J. C. Sharland, of Sliarland and Co, Chemists. He was a very promising and clever young man, but before be reached 25 years of age he married one of his own race and returned to Stony River, which, at that lime, was beyond the pale of civilisation, where he afterwards lived in accordance with Maori customs until his death.. Being welleducated and having a good knowledge of English, his. services were in great request among the* natives, translating the news from the pape* of the day for them. He had been a great sufferer for years from chronic rheumatism. A big tangi is to be held. Our main«road is in pretty good order now for winter, thanks the contractors and councillors. We have practical men in the council now representing us, not windbags.