COUNTY NEWS.

Patea Mail, 27 November 1880, Page 2

COUNTY NEWS.

A Weekly Supplement of 14 columns is presented with this issue of the Mail.

A Flying Visit from Wanganui to Patea, written for the Mail, appears on the fourth page.

The Governor will sail from the Manukau in the Hinemoa for Wellington, and a public reception is prepared for his Excellency on Monday in the “ Empire City.”

Defaulters on deferred payment sections in Otago are to be allowed till after the harvest in June to pay arrears before their sections are sold. House Building will be stimulated in this district by the formation of the new permanent building society. Over five hundred shares are already applied for, and a meeting of shareholders is called for Friday next. Several surveyors have gone up the Coast this week to peg off the Parihaka seaward block. They volunteered for this duty. The Government refrained from ordering men in the survey department to take risky work, and invited volunteers for the duty.

An Elore men t at Hawera is rumoured. A cricketer is supposed to have made a long run off the field, and another man’s wife is missing. A coincident disappearance may be the merest accident in the world, in spite of all that gossips say to the contrary. Under the Property Assessment Act, the following arc appointed to act in the northern portion of Wellington province:—John Morgan, David Peat, and J. Bommorvillc, for Wanganui; Thomas King and Tbeophilus White, New Plymouth.

Wreck. —The schooner stranded near the breakwater remains in the same position, and scorns to be still sound. All the timber cargo has been got out, and landed above high-water mark. Instruction has not yet come from owners or underwriters as to the disposal of ship or cai'go. The timber may be sold on the spot or rafted into harbor. The official inquiry into the stranding is postponed until the return of the Resident Magistrate from Opunaki.

Another Engine on the Taranaki railway has “ gone smash.” On Thursday the engine tires cracked near Inglewood, and the train had to crawl to Sentry Hill in that condition. If the Government do not send now engines, the Taranaki people will be making themselves brand-new engines out of the iron-sand. The long - suffering people of New Plymouth would be quite justified in avenging themselves in that way on a stingy Government who never spend anything on Taranaki, The plant of the Wellington Chronicle newspaper has been on sale, but no sufficient offer has been made. It is now to go to auction. The property was offered some months since for about £1,600 as a going concern. A paper which is losing money, and has no prospect of a profit, cannot be worth more than the value of the plant. Two daily papers, a morning and an evening, are as much as Wellington can support; and it is only a mad waste of money to sustain a third journal. The Chronicle must have been losing £2O a week at least. Another paper in that city is not paying daily expenses. Yet there has been an attempt to start a penny morning paper.

Several new finds of gold quartz are reported from Charleston. The ship Remington, from Lytteltou August 23rd, has reached London. The Homeward ‘Frisco mail leaving Auckland October 12th reached London last Tuesday. Joseph Minto has received two years penal servitude for horse-steoling at Waitotara.

The Education Board at Wanganui are asking the Government to consider their claims to a larger building grant. The Grand Worthy Chief Templar of New Zealand is visiting at Wanganui. He has delivered an address on temperance.

A bather dived and struck his head on the bottom of the bath at Wellington. He had to be taken to the hospital, and died yesterday. The P. and 0. Company’s s.s. Bokhara reached King George’s Sound on Wednesday, with the London Suez mail of October 22.

The Manawatu gold quartz has not yet been tested. About three hundredweight of stone has been forwarded to the Thames to be properly crushed. Two samples from different localities were included.

At Otako, a chapel is to be erected for the Catholics of that district. Mr Doyle has given an aero of ground in the centre of the town, and the building is to be fifteen feet wide by twenty-five feet in depth.

Kate Kelly and a brother of the bushranger exhibited themselves in a public hall at Melbourne, the night before Kelly’s execution. The place was crammed. The police prohibited any repetition of this outrage on decency by threatening to take away the license of the hall. The lessee is being prosecuted.

A Poultry Farm is being started at Island Bay, near Wellington, to supply eggs and poultry on a large scale. Poultry is scarce and dear in Patea. Why should it be ? Many of the cottier settlers are strangely shiftless, or they would try to make money and fill up time by growing poultry and fruit for a local market. Few of them have energy or sense enough to plant a shelter-hedge round their sections. Do they intend to squat always on a bare bleak patch, existing without effort, satisfied to end as they began—with nothing ?

Wanganui Manners are peculiar. Wanganui has two newspapers, both patterns of cultivated sweetness, each perfect in its way ; and this is how one compliments the other;—“ The departures from the truth in our contemporary’s article on Saturday last were so monstrous and numerous, and put forward with such unblushing effrontery, whilst his sources of information were so excellent and so easily to be got at, that we were reluctantly forced to the conclusion that ho went wrong knowingly and of set purpose. We say reluctantly, because, although we were well aware that his performances in untrustworthy or purely fictitious narrative would match those of the old serpent, when occasion demanded their exhibition, we could not but regret that patient industry and brilliant inventive powers should be so misapplied.”

The carriage accident to Mr Bryce and Mr Ilollcston near Parihaka appears to have been a narrow escape with life. The two-horse express ran down the hill in the Waitahi stream without any check, the break having given way, and the whole concern was upset in the water. The trap turned over on Mr Bryce, holding him in the shallow water, while Mr Ilollcston was pitched headfirst on the struggling horses. Both Ministers got out without serious injury, a little bruised and wet, and probably shocked as to their nerves. Saddle horses were fetched from camp, and they went on. The wheels of the trap were broken, but no other damage was done. These break-neck spills are often astonishing, for the parties expect certain death one minute, and the next they find themselves sprawling in all predicaments, but hardly any worse for the sudden summersault.

Mr Greenwood, dentist, visits Patea next week. A Lunatic at Nelson tore out one of his eyes, and died of convulsions. A walking feat of 180 miles in 48 hours is being tried in Wellington by Robert Croft, Sydney Parliament is summoned for December 10th. The elections are not completed. Australian fresh moat is to be imported into England on a large scale. A London company has been registered with a capital of three hundred thousand pounds. Window Smashing had become a mysterious nuisance in Christchurch till the police hunted down sonic of the “ jolly dogs.” Two men were caught in the act, and were ordered to pay £ll 15s. The only way to slop this sort of amusement is to make it expensive. Other districts were informed by telegraph last week that Mr Proctor lectured at Patea on a certain evening, to a crowded audience. Pity it isn’t true. It would have been been a treat to have had the eminent astronomer here, if only for one evening’s lecture. The Goldeield at Te Aroha, Waikato, was opened on Thursday morning, guns being fired after reading the Queen’s proclamation. About three hundred minors set to work on claims to peg them out. The warden then took down the names, and inspected “ miner’s rights.” Mr Solomon, Attorney General of Fiji, has been claiming several sections at Napier, Lawyers for claimant and for occupiers have been investigating the title, and it is stated that Solomon conveyed the land to Sheddon twenty years ago, and that he sold to present owners. The claim ends in smoke, But cannot Mr Solomon be made to pay the costs he has caused these owners to incur ? The Government are to be complimented on the laudable efforts they make to keep the colony informed of all important matters. They have just forwarded to this office a copy of the third report of the West Coast Commission. We happen to have published this report exactly fifteen weeks ago. If the readers of the Mail had been obliged to wait for this important information till the Government forwarded it in regular course, the people in this district would have been behind the age. This report was important to the West Coast in particular, and ought to have been forwarded to West Coast newspapers at the earliest moment. What is the use of sending this report now ? It is fifteen weeks since it was presented to Parliament in a printed form, and we ought to have had it then or not at all. It has been circulated, discussed, and disposed of.

One of the Terawhiti prospectors claims to have discovered a gold-bearing quartz reef on Mr Pharazyn’s land, Karori Road, near the Botanical Gardens, at Wellington. The reef is stated to be of bluish stone, with a surface 6ft wide, and traceable for 150 yarde ; and a sample is said to have yielded a fair prospect of gold upon being crushed. We are informed that arrangements are now pending for the erection of machinery on the ground.— Post. A shire council in Victoria adjourned for lunch leaving eighteen envelopes containing deposits accompanying tenders lying on the table. When they came back the envelopes and their contents bad disappeared. All efforts to clear up the mystery have proved fruitless. Archbishop M’Cabc, of Dublin, has written a pastoral letter, deploring the silence of the Irish leaders in whose presence threats of violence to landlords have been made.

The young physician returns from his vacation to find his patients lively as crickets. He inwardly vows that he will stay at home and attend to business hereafter.

A man went to a police station in London and applied for a warrant against the Prince of Wales for having shot his sister. The police ran him in on a charge of lunacy. The retrenchment in the police force will effect a saving of £4,500 a-year. The compensation paid to those who had to retire from the service amounts to £3,000