NEWS IN BRIEF. INTERPROVINCIAL.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1898, Page 5

NEWS IN BRIEF. INTERPROVINCIAL.

The smallest mailship on record was picked up at Tako Bay, north of the Bay of Islands, the other day, being a tin boat with messages enclosed sent adrift from the Mokohinau lighthouse. An aged Maori ohieCtaiuess named Tahuri, widow of the late chief Te Heuheu, of the Ngatituwharetoa tribe, 'died at Tokaanu, Lake Taupo, last week. Her son, the present chief Tureiti te Heuheu, was at Wellington watching the progress of the native laud legislation. Tutanekai, the name of the historic Maori lover for whom Hinemoa S'vam across Lake Rotorua, was the name of the line umpire in a native football match played at Otaua, in the far North, lately. A beginning has been made at the Government farm near Waerenga Station, Mercer, Upper Waikato, with the work of crushing for tanners' use the wattle bark stripped in the plantations last season. A large whale, 40ft long and Oft in diameter, has been found on the North Beaoh, about three miles from Barrytown, West Coast. * Frost has been very severe at Rotorua lately, so much so, in fact, that the water in the supply tap became frozen, and had to be thawed before water could be obtained. Surprise is expressed at the Thames at the fact that puriri sleepers as good as the day they were laid down are being replaced on the Thames- Waikato line by silver pine sleepers brought all the way from Greymouth. Mr. Dupre, a Greymouth resident of 30 years' standing, and who ha« been for many 3 ears a leading spirit iv the Borough Council, besides holding the office of Mayor for two years, is about to join his son in business in Masterton. There is a scarcity of feed in the Bruce 'district, and the other da3 r one farmer sent 2000 hoggets to Oamaru by road.