WAIMATE PLAINS.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 543, 8 July 1880, Page 3

WAIMATE PLAINS.

[FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.] Hawcra. Wednesday

The fencing nccross the road that has lately been practised by the Parihaka natives is simply one of the many “ tries ” that the Maoris have indulged in during the last eighteen months, and which have proved too successful, so far as they arc concerned. Te Whiti is no fool or fanatic, as some people put him down to be. Ho is folly aware that we dare not fight, as it would injure our position on the London market too much ; therefore he instructs his followers to keep us in a continual state of alarm byjthesc acts of defiance; not that he wants to fight, but he knows that we dare not, and by these means he will bo able to get larger concessions for his people and other hapns than he would have by passive obedience to the Government dictum. It has been a matter of surprise to many that the Constabulary have not been ordered to arrest them, as their.brethren were last year. Mr Climic is the only surveyor on the plains who is going on with the surveys that were so iguominiously stopped in March last year, but so soon as Messrs Cheal and Finnerty have finished some work on the Mountain road, it is understood they will also be employed in finishing their late work. If the Government are earnest in their protesta-

tions about getting thc.se it lands into the market, there is nothing at present to stop them from putting 15,000 acres in the market before three months elapse.