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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 932, 6 April 1881, Page 1 (Supplement)

A correspondent to the Bay of Plenty Times says “ A gentleman arrived in Katikati the other day from Manitoba. He has been deputed by his brothers to visit this country with a view to purchase land. He gives a very bad account of Manitoba, whose wheat-growing capabilities, he says have been greatly exaggerated. The climate is very bad—-burning hot summers and terribly severe winters. So thick was the ice that every winter they had to make a track across the river ten chains wide. At sunset in summer they have to light huge fires, to which the cattle rush from a distance to ease themselves from the countless mosquitoes and black flies which torpient them. For three years running their crops, he says, had been eaten by grasshoppers. On the whole Manitoba must be an agreeable place to settle on.