STRATFORD.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144777, 6 September 1915, Page 4

STRATFORD.

FIIOM OCR RESIDENT AGENT. Sept. 3.—The Bailway Department has allowed the lessee of the reserve, on which Mr. Mercer’s billiard room and hair-dressing saloon stood before the fire, to surrender the lease, which had about five years to run. The debris or the fire is now in course of removal, and the site will presumably remain vacant until the long-talked-of alteration to the railway station and rebuilding of the post office takes place. A visit just now to the remoter settlements to eastward arouses in .the minds of .dwellers in the more solidified districts two emotions, one of depression at the sight of the havoc caused by the landslips and floods, and one of admiration of the cheerful constancy of the settlers. To the unaccustomed eye I doubt it the devastation caused by war would appear more horrible than the mess that results where the hillside gives way, carrying with it logs and stumps, green bush, fences and sometimes cattle and sheep, depositing the whole as a diabolic top-dressing feet in depth on what were good grass paddocks on the flat. Yet the settlers are not downhearted., not they. A resident of Trail Bpy, W ellington, was telling me that there are on the beach thousands of tons of timber that arrived about a week after the great floods up this way in July', and had evidently come down the rivers and been carried by wind and tide down the coast, round Terawliiti, and _ at last found a. resting place in Wellington Harbour. So possibly Wellington people will be burning wood from Whangamomona. This may bo a boon to householders, but it is hardly compatible with a well-ordered scheme of things that liill-farms should bo turned upside down to supply'the city with store of logs, broken bridge timbers, stray fence and stock-yard posts, by way of fuel. A small batch of Stratford men, noncommissioned officers on probation, are leaving for camp on Monday. -Messrs. L. R. Curtis, G. D. Hunter, F. X. Fussed and Bucldor are included.