RUATANGATA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5635, 8 December 1879, Page 5

RUATANGATA.

The past month has been distinguished by a mperabuudant degree of moistare, raia having fallen, nv>re or le s heavily, during every week. Owing to this, feed is unusually plentiful, and crops of all kinds are growing luxuriantly, but unless the weather changes immediately, it will bo a work of extreme difficulty to save the hay crop. Tho Karao end of the district is looking particularly well, and the grass in Mr. Wakelin's paddock is almost knee-high. Uuafangata settlers are beginning to look upon Kamo as their headquarters and market-town, aud as the stores lately erected illur goods at, or less than at, Whangarel prices, and purchase all descriptions o£ country produce, ranging from a dozen egga to the same number of bales of wool, the trade must increase. Kamo has grown so in ;iL"h of late that it promises to put the older settlement q.iite in tha ihade, and when the railway is completed from the coal mine to deep water tho settlement will no dnubt grow faster yet. Quito naturally, as thu place gets bigger, the noti>ns of the inimijitante :ire getting bi»ger in tho samo ratio, and they talk of the time when the Karao merchant of the future, travelling tii&t'Class from town to the pore, will point out to his children the gnnrled gum-treea and ruined chimneys on the left of the Hue, tell ng them that that was the site of Whan-f.-aui, the deserted village. Be this as it i:i:>y,Kamo and tbe railway have absorbed all the surplus labour in the place, and when our district board lately called for tenders' for road work, very little was tendered for, and that only at extreme rates. The high price of kauri s,uni no doubt tends to the same end, and although tho rangts in the neighbourhood have been dug over by successive waves of gum-diggera during tho last ten years, still there seems to be plenty left, aud steady, hard-working men are making great wages at it; eight and ten shilliugs a day. Many thousand pounds worth of gum must iiave been taken from those ranges, and as in former tiine3 tho greater part of the price was generally invested in rum or brandy, the original cost of the land has probably been altogether recouped to the Government thiough tho medium of the Customs revenue, so that there in some good in " strong drink."—[Ov. r n Correspondent. ]