LATE INTER-PROVINCIAL.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1159, 17 March 1874, Page 2

LATE INTER-PROVINCIAL.

The recent pale experienced on the West Coast also raged to the northwards. A correspondent of the Nelson Colonist writing from Havelock, says : —The " oldest inhabitant" of this place does not remember such another day as Saturday last, and it is to be hoped tliat the youngest child of that much quoted individual may be well stricken in years before its experience gets another instance, A furious tempest raged against the town ; two houses were torn down, scattered abroad and their wrecks blown about like straws I Another house was ruined and burned. A man was blown down in the street, and another was heard relating how a similarly humiliating catastrophe had occurred to himself. At Mr Tear's bote! a very heavy chimney was blown down upon the roof. The fences everywhere are smashed. The waves of the creek were beaten down and their white crests driven like smoke before tho gale. If no more loss or damage is recorded it will ho a most fortunate thing, for the force and extent of the gale was unprecedented. The reason often assigned for delay in public works is the difficulty of obtaining tho service of competent engineers and surveyors, but IhoTimaru Herald tells a different tale. It says : There must be a vast amount of engineering skill running to seed in Zealand. The Waimate Road Board advertised the other day for an Engineer, offering a salary of £SOO a year, and received no less than 21 applications from different parts of Canterbury, Otago and Wellington. The Otago Daily Times of March 2nd states :—Tho Provincial Solicitor, Mr G. K« lurton, has resigned the Provincial Solieitorship as well as his scat in tho Executive.

Mr Holloway who lately arrived in the Colony as representative of the English Agricultural Laborers' Union, is now on a tour through the Province of Olago, accompanied by a member of the Survey department, Mr Samuel C. Thompson. It is said by the Napier papers that at Waipawa the Good Templars command a majority of over two-thirds of the population, and that they are deterto shut up all the public houses next licensing day. One of our contemporaries congratulates the hotel-keepers in tho adjoining townships of Kaikora and Vv'aipukurau on their prospect of doing a roaring trade. Hitherto Waipawa is said to have had rather a bad reputation in the matter of sobriety.

The members of the Otago Daily Times staff, on March 3rd, presented a substantial token of their regard to Mi' 0. Muston, who has been for the last six years sub-editor of that journal, Mr Muston leaves to-day by the Jessio Headman to recruit his health. lie carries with him the best wishes of all tlic members of the Press in Dunodin, and of many other friends who have known him for years past. A correspondent of an Otago paper, writing from Chrislehurcu, says: " You would scarcely credit the statement that the other day a man went to a well at midnight, overbalanced himself, and fell down a distance of •jl feet into eight feet of water at the bottom, and succeeded in getting up again without sustaining any material injury. Yet such is a fact, nevertheless."

A handsome testimonial is to be presented to Mr Strode, late .Resident Magistrate of Duuediu, by tlio legal

jrofession of Otagp, and Mr Strode

has been requested to have an enlarged portrait of himself taken by a photographer at the expense of the profession, fch# portrait to bo hung in the .Resident Magistrate's Court, with the sanction of the Colonial Government."