WAIPAWA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3016, 24 February 1881, Page 2

WAIPAWA.

(from our own correspondent.) February 23rd, 1881. Assuming that fire is to be employed as the destroying agent in the final winding-up of this sublunary world, a person possessed of sufficient superstition to enable him to believe the of Mother Shipton regarding the year of 1881 might well be excused for " trembling in his boots' , to-night on looking upon the hills which surround Waipawa. Aβ far as the eye can reach along the ranges of hills running towards Kaikora the country appears to be one mass of flames. How the ire on the Waipawa side of the river originated, I am still unable to ascertain; but this much I know, that already a vast amount of property has been destroyed by it. Mr Ratbbone will, I understand, be the heaviest loser, the flames having travelled over the greater portion of one of his largest runs, and licked off every blade of grass thereon. Mr Brittain will also lose considerably, I fear, while Mr Scrimgeour (who resides near Kaikora) has already had a large tract of his property ruined for this season. A report was circulated in town late to-night that Mr Scrimgeour's wool-ehed has been burnt down, and that his dwelling-house is scarcely sjfe. The report, however, wpota authentication, and is, I sincerely hope,exaggerated. Certain it is that hundreds of pounds' worth of grazing, never calculating anything else, has been desolated within a few hours. I trust that a rigid investigation will be made into the origin of the fire.

Another conflagration, almost as destructive as the above, occurred in the forenoon to-day at Waipukurau. From the information received here it seems that Mr Harding, of Mount Vernon, was burning off a small patcb of grass or rubbish (I don't exactly know which), when the flames gained advantage, and in a few hours' time had spread over the greater part of his extensive property, destroying everything that came in their way, including a number of young trees., The foolishness of attempting to burn down grass or rubbish, without the most thorough protection, in weather like the present, cannot be too strongly condemned, although I certainly sympathise with Mr Harding in his misfortune, which will undoubtedly prove to him an expensive one.