WAIROA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3101, 6 June 1881, Page 3

WAIROA.

(from our own correspondent)

May 28, 1881. I have been up to Whakapunake for a fortnight recruiting my health, and took a gun with me to protect me from the wild cattle. I saw thousands of pheasants, but having no license of course I did not shot any. I only metion this to show that the rougher the country the more plentiful the pheasants. This is a very healthy district. Not long ago we refused to subsidise a doctor, and now our chemist expresses his intention of leaving. This is much to be regretted, as we shall not only be without a dispensary, but the dispenser himself is one ot those superior sort of men not often met with, and, besides being well up in his profession, is a most pleasant man to knew. The Good Templars here are trying their best to form a lodge, and have authorized their secretary to write and find out how much it will cost to open one. I would have joined it, but I find that Templars are not even allowed to smoke tobacco. This is going a little too far in the abstinance line.

I am living in a house with a man who amuses himself (and annoys me) by Bcraping secular airs all Sunday on a fiddle. Now, if the Lord objected to the smoke from the Union boats going up to Heaven on the Sabbath, and if he has an ear for music, I am afraid he may vent his auger on me as a sort of warning to my friend. lam therefore going to take a ticket in the New Zealand Accident Company. There is nothing like being precise, as the following birth .notice will show : — "At midnight on the 18th and 19th instants, the wife of Mr of a daughter." It is not half precise enough, tbe latitude and longitude, state of the barometer, age of the moon, and a host of other minute details, are omitted. The Rev. Mr Hill gave a first-cla a lecture on electricity and magnetism on Monday night to a crowded audience. As the admission was free the County Chairman proposed that a collection should be made to pay for the l'ghts aud advertisement. The proprietor of the Guardian rose and nobly said he would make no charge. Very good taste altogether, was it not? June 4, 1881. I wrote a letter last week to go by the s.s. Result, but am now informed she left without taking a mail. If steamers would never take mails we should know then what to do, but it causes no end of confusion and inconvenience when steamers neglect to notify our postal officials when they expect to leave the river. I may take this opportunity of stating that our post and telegraph office, as conducted at present, is a very mirror of efficiency. A copy of Matariki (No. 2) has accidentally fallen into my hands, and really the fable about Raetotara is most laughable. Whether the party ridiculed will think so though is a different matter.

The value of native committees is at the very least problematical. A leading member of the Napier committee, who eat here recently to settle the Opoho dispute, has sent word that did not agree with tbe decision arrived at. It

has beeen ascertained tha' he is in deadly fear of leing bewitched by a man on the losing side, who has already been accused of killing more than one i _:son by enchantment.

We have fully one hundred voters on the Napier electoral roll, and a brisk business is going on enrolling everyone in the whole country eligible to vote not already on, and we mean to vote straight this time. We want some Government money spent here, and as we have no railways or harbor works we want fifty or a hundred of the A.O. sent round and stationed at Clyde and Frasertown. Major Atkinson, before reducing his warriors, should march them all round New Zealand, and give them a month's pay in each small township. It is very selfish to keep it all in one place.