TOKO.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 197, 24 September 1900, Page 4

TOKO.

(PKOHOUX WH CORKBSPOHDEHT.) Oue town has been for some time under a cloud. I don't mean that Toko ia under a cloud efther socially, politically, or financially, but under a cloud meteorologically; that is, the rain it raineth every day, and the roads are according. For some occult reason, about half a mile of road between Toko and Stratford was not re-metalled. This piece broke up early in the winter, and has almost stopped all traffio, and I hear that far back* the food supplies are very precarious. Our well-known packer, Bill Kelly, sticks to his work like grim death, and the poor packhorses deserves to be pensioned, and one old grey horse, known on the East Road, as or by, the name of Lord John Russell, deserves, at least, the Victoria Cross, as for five mortal years he has, winter and summer, carried his load of tucker into camps far and wide. I often think that if the people in the towns could see a crowd of pack-horses coming along in a torrent of rain splashed with mud from head to hoe), plunging through mud up to their knees, tbey would wonder that anyone could be, of his own freewill, a pioneer. Fortunately the soil, which a chief surveyor once described as a vokanio deb-is, is so porous that }t dries up like magic. Some people here say we are going to get a light railway, some say we won't; eome say it would do us good, some say it wouldn't; some say the terminus would be in Stratford, some say it wouldn't; there is no unanimity, The position seems to be that the traffic on the E st Road is going to be very great and the revenue of the County Council would not be sufficient to keep it in repair, A. light railway would lelieve the road, but Stratford would not then be a distributing centre as the traffic would merely go through, and worse than all, the Government might take it to Eltham. We have all put our money into Stratford, and the tenant in Stratford says: Hurrah for the railway, and the landlord in Stratford says: Will you Bhut up, and so there is no unanimity, A social, promoted by the Church of England people in Trko, was held in the hall on the 7th, and- was a great sucei s j . A number of ladies assisted, but I believe Mesdames Gorge, Beauchamp, and Maxwell, were the leading spirits. Oar Ambulance Class is' still held weekly in the Presbyterian Church and any person meeting with an accid(nt heie could be first aided in aDy part of the township, Messrs. Davies Bros, have let their farm to Mr. Harris at 12s per acre for dairying, _ The settlers are borrowing a considerable amount of money for roads. Some of these loans will be subsidised by the Government and work should be very plentiful this coming summer, Toko is still growing, Mr. Bruce has a four-roomed co'.tage nearlv

finished, and I hear Mr. Brodie is going to build a good-siz'id house on his land near Mr, Newton King's sale-, yard?. A number of the mills have shut down for the winter. We wi'l all be pleased to greet the return of good weather.