COUNTRY NEWS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 343, 8 March 1911, Page 5

COUNTRY NEWS.

i Own Correspondents. ! Kirltehars - Moeatoa. I Discoveries of some interest have - taken place in the Kiritehere Valley i during the past I'avV inuntns, in the shape of stone chisels, adzes an.: other implements of the stone age -:: rat j age which is passed for ever. A few weeks ago Mr George Smart I while going through the bush on his | section in the Kiritehere came sudI denly on what he thought to be a ; strangely shaped log of wood lying i across the path. He investigated the ; fern covered mass and found it to be, { to his astonishment, the hull of a near j ly finished Maori canoe, about forty i feet long, burned out of a single giant tree. Ferns, mosses, humus and the ! accumulation of generations of forest | rubbish were cleaned away with the slashers, and a canoe of totara, per--1 feet with the exception of a iittla rot on the outside, lay revealed. The I makers of this ancient dug-out must ; have been disturbed in their work | for they left it unfinished —probably by some marauding war party from down the coast —Taranaki may be. That the remains are very old is easily proven by the charred appearance of I the inside of the canoe, which, if ■ appearances tell truly, was burned I and dubbed into shape by those quaint j little Maori adzes which we pick up so often. The nearest float-water is j the sea—a mile distant, and the old ! workers of wood and stone would have | had to negotiate a high ridge before ' reaching their destination —the sea. i They would, in addition, to unlimited I man power, have required at least an j elementary knowledge of mechanics — , that of the handspike, the pulley, and ' the roller —the use of which we know ! them to have been acquainted with. Settlers resident in the Upper Kiri- ; tehere are much concerned regarding j the Tawa bridge, opposite Mr P. • Klein's section, which is quite rotten i and restipg only on a few inches of :clay. Settlers and pack horses alike are wary of crossing it, and it is time, ' considering the bridge has been up two or three years, and was only built ■ of two soft-wood stringers, now rotten J and worm-qaten, that a safer struc- ; ture was erected. A few pounds of the grant money —if available—j would be well spent in making this place safe for sledge and pack horse traffic.

Trout ova, which was packed from Te Maika. on the Kawhia harbour, by Mr P. C. Rose, Kiriehere, and sat in the river has not thriven well, few, if any, having been seen in the shape of grown fish. The r:rs t meeting of the Kairimu Debating Society was held at Marakopa on February 25th. The prime movers in the society are: Messrs Bell, president; Honore, sec. and llalley treas.; P. Ross and T. Johnston, vice-presidents. The society has a practical aim, viz., the education and practical instruction of its lumbers. Bones and skulls are often picked up along the beach from Marakopa, but are returned to the sand. Among the shifting sand ridges of the coast, the bones of Maori warriors of the past—mighty men, perhaps, during their brief span of life—are sometimes picked lip by ihe curious student of nature. It gives one an odd feeling when in search of some rare or gaudy flower —an ephemera, a fleeting blossom of the moment —to see a white and gleaming skull that once contained all that was mortal of a man. The scene, the green waving flax, the close, blue sea, and the animated, pulsating life of nature all around are worthy of the philosophy of a Plato. Men who live close to nature as we do, see all that is beautiful and curious in nature.

There is feed in abundance since the first showers on the 20th February, which put second fires out. The showers which have fallen in the Waikato during the past two we>:ks are keeping up the price of sheep, particularly the better class. Farmers are hanging on to all stock they can, preferring not to sell in most instances. The flush of the season is ever as far as grass feeding is concerned, and they will have to sell off some of their surplus stock within the next month or two. While riding through the County from the West Coast one is struck by the abundance of feed growing on bush clearings adjacent to the road. Here there is no shortage of reserve feed, and the settlers could, as far a3 one might judge, do with more stock than they are running.