PATEA COUNTY MAIL Wednesday Evening, December 28.

Patea Mail, 28 December 1881, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL

Wednesday Evening, December 28.

Published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings ; present Circulation over 620 copies—average of previous quarter 500. Politics, Independent.

The seal for the new borongh has arrived, and is not quite a successful representation of what was wanted, though it will serve the purpose. The engraver was instructed to show Mount Egmout within a circle, and a fertile scene in the foreground. The scene is a mountain, and little else. The fertile foreground consists of a two-storey house which looks five hundred feet high, in proportion to the mountain; and we almost fancy there is someone looking out of window. Two lines of posts and rails run three-parts up the mountain, suggestive perhaps of the Mountain road. Two big trees and a flax-bush may be made out by the naked eye; and these with the very tall hall that Jack built are all we get for a “ fertile scene in the foreground.” There is so much left to be filled in by the imagination, that a Patea ratepayer will be able to complete the picture according to his own fancy. Around the seal is the legend : “ Patea Borough Council.” A London telegram says that a quarter of the city of Oronstadthas been burnt, and it is supposed to have been done by Nihilists. At a panic in a church at Warsaw on the 23rd instant 30 persons were killed and a number seriously injured. A fresh case of small-pox is reported from Sydney. A special telegram to the Melbourne Age says a farmer in the County of Roscommon has been shot for no other reason but paying his rent. 3000 sympathisers ploughed Mr Parnell’s estate at Wicklow gratuitously during the owner’s absence in gaol. The King of Italy is to pay a visit to the Emperor of Germany. 2000 more Nihilists have recently been arrested at St. Petersburg. The Rissington estate, 18 miles west from Napier, is to be cut up and sold as small farms. It is satisfactory to see that the Taranaki Herald is authorised to contradict that absurd statement about Te Whiti ordering the Natives back to Parihaka. It appears that an interpreter was present during the conversations, and the interpreter’s version is that nothing was said by Te Whiti to the son respecting the return of Natives to Parihaka. An Aucklander named Zanc has acquired two cartloads of linen by the simple process of unloading neighboring Hues at night. He had also “ annexed ” £lO worth of boots and shoes from a neighbor named Garrett. Can this be called kleptomania, or is it simple 1 stealing ? That queer item about the meeting of the New Plymouth Harbor Board, when Mr Dingle moved “ that political loafers be dismissed,” may have been read as an ill-timed joke. But the “ man at the corner ” in the Taranaki JVews treats the matter seriously, and says; “If Mr Rhind is half the man I take him to be, he will get rid of these men without delay, for a working-man who allows politics to interfere with his work is a regular nuisance—he shirks work himself and induces others to do likewise.” Efforts are being made in Victoria to obtain a protective duty on condensed milk. The Nihilist “executive committee” was engaged on Ith September in appealing to the Ruthenians of the Ukraine. The committee say the small farmer has no enemy but the government, which is remarkably like what Sir George Grey tells our own agriculturists. A large devil-fish boarded Timaru on Saturday week, and engaged in personal conflict with the first inhabitant he met. Two settlers came to the rescue and the fish beat a retreat. Probably he was a very ancient <( devil,” and expected to find Timarn no more strongly garrisoned than it was, say, in 1810. The American Fenians are busy arranging matters for a grand raid on humanity generally. American and English detectives engage with enthusiasm in the task of checkmating them, and great good temper is displayed by both sides in this new and extraordinary game.