STEWART ISLAND NOTES. (From Our Own Correspondent).

Otago Witness, Issue 2664, 5 April 1905, Page 29

STEWART ISLAND NOTES. (From Our Own Correspondent).

HALFMOON BAY,

March 29.

i have tho honour to inform the Government-, or us Nauvc Land Purchase Department, that on or about August. 1860, Stewart Island was purchased for a sum of £6000. Of that amount £2000 or so vva» retained us a fund to provide for the island medicinally. Out of that fund a few rough-and-tumble medicines — chiefly Epsora salts — have from tune to time, been supplied, but nothing certainly to serious! v trench on the fuixl. The lime has arrived when the. question of providing the island with a resident medical gentleman should be. seriously taken up, and in view thereof attention is directed to the fund. The island population is too small and the general health too good to expect that any man could live on the fees to be earnec. so that extraneous aid is imperative. If sanatorium retreats are to be utilised a duly qualified medical officer becomes an absolute necessity. Apart from its tourist traffic the island has a considerable industrial population — men engaged in precarious pursuits, such as sawmilling. fishing, etc - The. appointment — already too long delayed— demands prompt attention, and with the above-named pecuniary resource ihere ought to be no difficulty experienced m giving effect thereto.

We have had a sps'l of dirty weather to contend with. High blustering winds set in on the evening of the 21st. and between that and the evening of the. following day thfy came away in a stiff westerly «- a le The result was that the weekly mail steamer, timed to arrive on Wednesday, did not manage to cross the. strait till Friday. Even then tho distributing mail oraft coula not leave Halfmoon Bay. and it was not until late on Saturday " that outside mail matter reached its final destination. Even vo w the weather is far from being settled, and " ructions " may be- looked for at any moment. Happily ±ho storm was not a sudden outbreak. It gave timely warning of its approach, and. so far as is known, the island craft were able to reach inside shelters. The only accident made known was one occasioned by the upsetting of a boat in Golden Bay." The "master of a craft lying at anchor was making either 1 to or from the shore when his boat — a flat - bottomed dingey — swamped. He managed to hold on until assistance reached him. Had the assistance rendered not been, prompt the accident must hnv» proved fatal.

The Native event of the season — mnttc birdies; — has been fairly entered upon, and within the next few weeks the lonely inlands of the sea off South Cape will be "alive and kicking " up the " death flurries." The cutter Water Lily, with a miscellaneous assortment of mutton-birders— men, women -Bluff. Sho left the latter place on Saturday afternoon, reaching Paterson Inlet early next morning. There she shipped IJW j\eek contingents. She registers not more than 25 ton? burden, and yet sho loaded not fewer than 40 persons, together with baggage by no means inconsiderable t mi'-s+m i'-5+ have been a very tight fit At *LX p\; \ tld t- Haulin S on a wind off mmm iiino to anchor for the. night. TTnlesi s li« managed to shelter somewhere a most uni° rt S n >S ht ™M be spent in tL open. The craft makes for what is charted Boat group " at the entrance to JW Harbour The mutton-birders reckon tb> S na rl ng of there islands will occupy til" w? into the month of May. It is a priory of New Zealand south that torn _*s wpII as fair weather produces grand «eemo effects. Hitherto I have looked upon this statement more in the liaht of poetical effusion than actual fact. Wednesday last mental reservations were rudely disturbed. It was a bright blustering day. Mad dogs foaming .jit^he- moxith worried round the inlet to such an extent that it« waters became a seething mass. The wind was blowing; more than a three-fourths gale in the south-west, making cloudland exceedingly lively on its legs. Light, shadow, and sunshine in collaboration wakened up inorganic Nature into organic force. Penumbra ehot across the. sin-fiee of the sea like spirits moving on the face of troubled waters. Paterson Inlet made a grand panorama of ihe soft idyllic worked up in angry passions to a white lioat. I look upon it? T7lv.. IsVe as a fine-lv ilet-eloped feature in the picturesque. On the occasion named it bpoaine a profound study. H?fl it been, placed behind footlights it would have been a shifting scone— a moving panornma with. transitions so «uddon and sublime one oor>l 1 scare ply credit iho evidence »of his own