MY VISIT TO WAIRARAPA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4251, 4 November 1874, Page 3

MY VISIT TO WAIRARAPA.

[Bv a Bohemian.] No. 2. I intend leaving Greytown immediately, and before I go I will give my further opinion of the place and what is doing there. The morning of my visit was as fine a one as it is possible to conceive of : the sun pleasantly warm, the sky bright and clear, and the wind just humming through the forest and other trees. That ill-conducted river, the Waiohine, had displayed a fresh eccentricity during the night by flooding a few acres of land, and washing across the main street at the pace of a millstream. But the placidity of the people was not disturbed. “ Let it rip,” said one; and “It can't rise much more,” said another. I strolled into what, by courtesy, has been termed a Court-house. Externally, it resembles the Maori Chapel in Wellington, just off Taranaki-street, and internally it is about as well found. The reporters sit anywhere—just where they can come to an anchor—and write with their note-books on their knees. The proceedings, whilst I was there, consisted of an argument, expostulation, and touching appeal from the B.M. —the late Mr. Warded, as he is jocularly termed on account of his punctuality—to an interesting individual who has been incarcerated in solitary confinement during the preceding night in what does duty for a cell at the Court-house. Punctuality, I hear, is looked upon in Greytown as the eighth deadly sin. The Court, instead of opening at 11 o’clock, commenced business at 12 o’clock. If there be a public meeting summoned for 7 o’clock in the evening, go at eight and you will find people preparing to go to work at 9 o’clock. Thence, on the principle that a very little of such a mimicry of a Police Court might go a long way, I went to the Institute. Here the people of Greytown have something to be proud of. It is a fine building, and is, moreover, free. The stranger and the wayfaring man may read newspapers and books, of both of which there is a capital selection “without money and without price.” Young ladies, apparently employed in shops and otherwise, spend a portion of their raidday hour at the Institute. It seemed- to be a trysting place for comers from the country. You cannot boast of such an institution in Wellington. Not that it ia the only place of tryst. The arrivals from the country during the day seem to be on a very large scale, and as each man seems to bring some money in his pocket to spend, trade is, I have no doubt, lively. But the amount of indiscriminate drinking there appears to be over the bai», would grieve the righteous soul of Mr. Pox. The settler comes in, after a week’s absence and abstinence, and ho does not confine himself to one nobbier. And there is a good deal of drinking on the part of the Maoris. A native arrives from the country, generally on some old screw—for natives do not appear, here at least, to have the knowledge of a horse said to he possessed intuitively by an Englishman. He first < moistens his clay,” and then comes out of the jar with a cigar stuck in his mouth. Respecting these Maoris, they appear rather a better jamplo than you get in Wellington. A few of them hang about the coach offices, and their ‘ Y’s sir,” is-as sharply articulated as that of a London groom. They answer any question as smartly, and I did think that if I required an -rrand performed I would sooner trust some of t-ese Maoris than their far more stolid-looking Etropean cousins. On the whole, I am convitted Greytown, notwithstanding some draw*

backs, is a-flourishing place, and it will go on and prosper. Some of the people are afflicted with earthquake-mania —-far worse than anyone I have met with in Wellington—but they will get over this. The wayward river will, although it now meanders whither it listeth, in time have a course determined for it, I doubt not. And they will establish some foim of municipal government, when then 1 highways and byways will be better regulated.