Wallingford Nov. 21st./66 My dear McLean Thanks for your letter by the Mail and also for the examiner with the Jamaica article which I have not had time to read yet. So we are to have a little quiet from Hau Hau reports and alarms it will be quite a change after late times. I believe that we shall have fresh trouble somewhere in the Northern Island this summer altho' I am inclined to think it will be rather to the North in Waikato or Tauranga, rather than Hawkes Bay. As to the rotten Govt. it is no use writing what one thinks abt. them. I am sorry Whitmore has taken their pay - I wd. have preferred the more independent position had I been him. I note what you say about confiscation of the territory of Ngatihine-uru and will think the question over and give you my opinion upon it. And so I interrupted Robert Hart did I, that day at Wellington in his matrimonial explanations. I am sure I am very sorry. However if it is to be please give Miss McLean my very best wishes for her happiness - I think she is too good for Hart, but still he is a very good and able fellow with but one failing which a sensible wife will do a great deal to check, if not to get rid of altogether. Hart's failing has always been form convivial disposition and a home of his own will make a great difference to him. I hear from Manawatu that the Hau Hau's are making no end of converts on the West Coast and that in fact the Natives of the Wellington Province are all becoming Hau Haus. What a pity it is no exertion is made by the authorities to check this evil. All my letter from Wellington say that the real reason why the Wairarapa Hau Haus are allowed to go on as they do is that Govt. have no person to head any expedition or to mature and carry out any plan and so they dont dare interfere with them. It is a good move sending up to Taupo for information about Waikato. Spencer will do more than George I shd. say. I am very busy with my station work - shearing hay harvest and all going on together. We have had two fearful days of wind the last two days, a perfect hurricane it has been blowing from the South West, still our country is looking very green and well and our sheep are shearing well. My experience again this year is that the sheep of Leicester cross are the heaviest woolled and pay the best. All my Leicester cross Hoggs. which I am now shearing have been running on a very high country and yet they are well grown and remarkably well woolled. It is late and I am tired. I have to work hard these times. We had the Militia enrolling going on today and the men of this Company turned out very well 86 men I think paraded from the whole Company. The way in which the calling out was done is altogether wrong and illegal. I think for enrolment you have to pin up a notice in the district 20 days before hand. Then there is the 5 mile exemption clause under which nearly half of every inland company could escape if they chose. I hear a great many have chosen inland. Good night Yours always J. D. Ormond.