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Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17633, 9 December 1922, Page 13

Mr M. A. Eliott, who has just returned to Palmerston North from a motoring tour of Gisborne and part of the East Coast, reports that the roads were in very fair order, but as sections of them near Gisborne were unmetalled they would quickly become difficult for motoring with a week or so of rain (says the "Manawatu Standard"). The. Government was spending large sums of money and employing a great many men on the improvement of the road from Wairoa to Lake Waikaremoana, and from Wairoa to Gisborne, while a further scene of keen activity was the completian. of the railway line linking up Wairoa with its new port of Waikokopu, some 20 miles 4istarat. The Wlharerata hill, which furnished the chief means of access to Gisborne from the south, was being regraded, metalled, and deviated, and it was now possible to do the trip from Napier to Gisborne in seven to eight hours. The new bridge over the Mohaka river was expected to be completed in January, and thi3 would still further speed up communication between Wairoa and "the south, as at present foot passengers crossed by a suspension bridge while vehicles were taken over the old structure. It was rapidly recovering from the slump, which had hit the isolated town exceedingly hard, and a much more optimistic tone was everywhere prevalent in consequence of the rise in the values of the Dominion's primary produce. The extension of the tram system and the construction of a new ferrc-concrete bridgefian the centre of the town were well under way, and the district, which had had a splendid wet winter and spring, was now enjoying a desirable dry spell. Visions of palm trees and tropic seas were conjured up amid the prosaic surroundings of Winchester House, Old Broad street, London, recently, when Messrs Hampton and sons submitted to auction several ex-enemy properties in the British sphere of tne Cameroons, West Africa, the colony which German " acquired in 1884 and lost .in 1914. The <siim of £lls obtajped the freehold of Njcoirlsland, situated off the coast of Birabia, in the Mbamba Bay, formerly owned or occupied by Count von Schwerin.