HAWERA.

Patea Mail, 31 July 1880, Page 3

HAWERA.

[from our correspondent.] BRANCH OFFICE OF THE MAIL Friday Evening. At yesterday’s sitting - of the 11.M. Court there was nothing of importance. Most of the cases being civil, were adjourned till next Court day. The ease of pig-shooting reported in your last issue, has been settled by the huntsmen paying to the Maoris £lO as compensation. It is rumoured that these gentlemen have become converts to the Jewish faith, and will henceforth look upon pigs as unclean animals. The news published in the Mail last issue, re the recommendations of the Railway Royal Commission, to discontinue for a time the progress of the Railway between Hawera and Waver] 03’, has taken the public hero quite aback, they having thought that the necessity of constructing this lino at once would commend itself to those gentlemen forming the Commission in spite of any favour they may have had towards their own particular localities. Those who have travelled through this district unanimously admit that it is the finest in New Zealand, and that its progress has been greatly retarded by the paucity of public works. We had hoped that our claims for railway extension would be recognised, but the Commission seem to ignore altogether the richness of the district, and also the increase of revenue the Government would derive from the rise in the price of land consequent upon easy access to port, and the undoubted direct reproductiveness of a lino between New Plymouth and Wanganui. Setting all these advantages aside they have, it seems, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact of the Native question and its solution by encouraging public works throughout the district, and which would bring into our midst such an increase of population that the Maoris would find it useless to strive against us.

Several gentlemen have placed themselves in communication with Mr Bradley, the master of the hounds in Wanganui, in order to get a couple of runs here, but the final answer lias not yet been received. There are many anxious enquiries for “fencers,” and no end of people who are going to show the way across country. Will their horses follow ?