Untitled

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1088, 29 March 1911, Page 16

Taumarunui will receive a further impetus, for it should -'be remembered that even nor-/ it is regarded as one of the principal stop-over places for tourists between Wellington and Rotorua, mid for tho Waugaiuii River traffic. Then again, it must be remembered that the town must receive considerable benefit from the settlement which is proceeding slowly but surely down the Wangaliui River,

, A Dog Tax Comedy. The town itself lies in a flat, while high above rise tho banks of the two rivers. A fine cottagc hospital stands upon an eminence, commanding a beautiful view, and where already thelc are a number of very handsome cottage residences. The white pumice streets are reminiscent of Kotorua, and the tourist tra'llic gives the place another rcseiublanee to the thermal metropolis. At the present time, Taumarur.ui is rather under a cloud. It formed itself into a borough, possibly a little before its time, with an area of .'SOCIO acres, and 110 doubt expected that it had for ever got rid of its troubles, that is so far as the Natives were ■concerned. It is a Native town, and the Native difficulties sit upon it like Jin "Old Man of the Sea." After making , itself' a borough, it proceeded amonast oth'ov things to strike a dog tax. Now, if there is 0110 thing in the world the Maori Councils have a soft spot in their liearts for it is a dog tax. To get a bold on a dog tax a Maori Council will brave almost any dangers. Taumarunui imagined that .when it bad made itself a borough that it had go( rid of the nerve-destroying ordinances of the Maori Council, and that it could f'o ahead. It miirlit have done so, bad it not been for 'striking the dog tax, for then another Maori Council which had never been beard of for years came into being, and demanded the rato under the Treaty of Waitangi, or soma other venerable measure through which lawyers have driven the proverbial carriage and four a hundred times. The irony of the whole thing lay in the fact that legal opinion declared that the ■newly-rejuvenated Maori Council 1 was right. It could collcct, tie dog tax-!

railway passengers. A good deal of the trade south and north leads into Taumarunui. The .Mayor of Taumarunui is Mr. G. H. Thompson, and he is supported Councillors Wackrow, Dunster, M'kean, Hunt, Riches, Sarah, Symonds, Harvey, and Gardner, with Mr. Slattery as town clerk.

Mr. T. 11. Brendin, general provider, Alarton, notifies in this issue that all country orders aro promptly attended to. Visitors to Huntcrviilo will find tho choicest stock of general drapery, clothing, and boots, etc., at Messrs. Thompson and Low's establishment. Un-to-dato millinery work and dressmaking is executed on the premises.

ling Te Kuiti—a town 'now going faster than any other similar metropolis in tho race for the Main Trunk Stakes. The bustle of To Kuiti is absolutely feverish. All day thero aro arrivals and departures of strangers by train or vehicle to spy out the laud or buy up town sections in the place which everybody is talking about. And every morning at two o'clock tho two Main Trunk expresses meet at the dusty, workod-out station! and dump out. on tho platform speculators, farmers, men with families; men who are starting afresh with small capital, and some, hut' very few, with no capital. l'or be it known, a man has to have some money to talk in To Kuiti, and town sections aro being turned over so rapidly that the individual with £100 to-day may bo worth £1000 almost before ho realises it. The town is spending nearly £30,000 on public works; it is all going in the course of the year. And as the man who wrote of Sydney said: — "Everybody is 'avoirdupoisy,' and has money to burn." All day long the strings of contractors' carts wind in and out of the newly-developed streets, raising blinding clouds of dust from the unmetalled roads, and the chairman of the works committee walks gravely about in a funereal-black coat, with a map of the town in his hands, to see that in the disorder of development the contractors do not commcnco to make streets where nono are intended, l'iles of furniture are seen everywhere. Men gallop about in their shirt sleeves after nothing in particular, and raise more dust, and in the afternoon the chief street is lined with a crowd of Europeans and navvies, which, said a wag, makes tho place look more like Lambton Quay every day. At tho eorncrs usually there are litle knots of people talking •to the casual stranger, who may have conic in from anywhere, and explaining that the prosperity is no boom, but solid throughout, and lasting. And as Hamilton talks of showing the way eventually to Palincrston North, Te Kuiti has set itself against Hamilton. "In ten years' time," said a triumphant . Te Kuitian, "we shall have a bigger population than Hamilton. 1 - "leu yeais?."'