The Taranaki Herald PUBLISHED DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1890.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8954, 10 December 1890, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald PUBLISHED DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1890.

The first visit of His Excellency Lord Onslow to New Plymouth has been an unostentatious one. There has been no banquetting — no speechifying — no display of any kind; but his reception by the people on arrival was as hearty as if they had erected evergreen arches of welcome and made other outward displays. The Governor's visit is a semi-official one. His desire is to see this part of the country, of which he, no doubt, has heard so much, and to meet the people in their " every day attire,'' — that he may know them rather as they are, than got up " artificially" for a special occasion. It was by thus I j mixing with the community that Lord Carrington became such a favourite in New South Wales, and by following in the same course our present Governor, when his term of office expires, will be as popular. There are many apota inTaranaki worth a visit, dither for the beauty of tb» fctiwy ortho biitoriwl wQcUtW;

anl before His Excellency leavos the colony he will not have failed to have seen most-x>f them. Mount Egmont will be ascended, Bell's Falls visited, and the Kaitaki ranges explored. A visit will no doubt be made to the Mokau, and in canoeing up the river it will enable Lord Onslow to see some exquisite scenery in all its primeval vegetation — a fair sample, we believe, of what New Zealand was, as a whole, before the white man spied out this fair land and converted ita "fertile soil to his own use. Then there are spots to see which have been mju^e historical by war. There is the Waitara where, thirty yeprs ngo, the feud with" the natives commenced ; and where the* first shot was fired, which led up to a ton years' war, during which the settlers had their previous twenty years' work of settlement destroyed. Many a good settler lost his life during that sad period. Houses were^ burnt, cultivations destroyed, and thriving settlements swept away, leaving nothing but sorrow and desolation behind. There is Waireka to visit — a spot where the New. Zealand Volunteers so bravely met their foe; in fact, there are few places in Taranaki which have not home interesting record. His Excellency will thus be able to see that, noth withstanding the number of drawbacks the settlers have had to encounter, now that peace between the two races is restored, the country is progressing with " leaps and bounds." Lord Onslow's sta/ on the present occasion will be short, but the weather being fine,' he will be able to enjoy the exquisite climate we possess, and we ! sincerely hope his visit will be a pleasant one.

A column of interesting extract matter will be found on our fourth page. There were 61 tons 18 cwt 1 qr 231 bof butter exported from the breakwater for the four weeks ended December 6. The Volunteers paraded on Tuesday night. The Band was also on parade, and played tho Company to the Poverty Flat drill ground. A painful accident befel Mr Charles Rogers, the chief agent of the Government Insurance Department, while riding near Inglewood on Tuesday. Mr Rogers was in the vicinity of Brown's mill, when his horse suddenly bucked, throwing the rider on to the hard metal, whereon he had the misfortune to alight on his nose, which was smashed, and his face sustained considerable abrasions. Dr. Chrißtie arrived in the township shortly afterwards, and attended the sufferer, who subsequently returned to town, in Mr Corkill's wagonette. Mr Booth, the Petroleum Syndicate's expert, with two of his assistants, spent Tuesday in prospecting some of the streams in the Moa Block, where indications of oil were believed to exist. The search was entirely unsuccessful, only oxide of iron being noticeable. Messrs Percy and Reginald Bayley, and Mr Corkill accompanied the prospectors. It would seem that Mr H. M. Stanley can tell " big yarns" about what he saw in Africa. Amongst other things he tells a j little fish story, which certainly takes the cake for a traveller's tale. " I saw," said Stanley, "one of our men catch a fish which had another fish inside him, and that fish had a big fish inside him also, so we caught three fish at once." " Was it a large fish ?" we said. " Oh, yes, a big fellow." "As big as that trout ?' pointing to a 101 b Thames trout in a glass case which hangs on our office wall. " Larger than that" said Mr Stanley. "My dear sir, if wo each had had fishing rods and lines, instead of losing as many men as we did we should have lost all." A non-angling friend who was" present suggested that a net might have been useful. "Ah " said Mr S. "if we only had a big net and a big crane fastened over the river, we should have had some big hauls of fish, doubtless." A private letter received from Robert Louis Stevenson, by a friend of his in London gives an interesting description of an accident happening to his effects during the trip between Samoa and Auckland, which nearly resulted in a serious loss. The vessel in which Stevenson was a passenger caught fire in the cabin. ( The sailors seized upon the movable articles that had become ignitoi and hastened to pitch them overboard. Mrs Stevenson, who was standing on deck watching the progress of the fire and preparing to leave the vessel when necessary, saw two of the crew dragging from below a large burning box and prepare to hurl it into the sea. Recognising it in an instant as a box belonging to her husband, Mrs Stevenson 6prang forward with a cry of dismay, seized the nearest man by the arm and begged him to drop it. He did so, and after being deluged with water the box was saved. It contained all of Stevenson's unfinished manuscripts, the result of many months' •hard work, among them being a story he has written by order for a prominent magazine, and for which he is to receive £4000, as well as a great portion of the history of Samoa.