SWITZERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 276, 15 May 1873, Page 6

SWITZERS.

(From our ovm Correspondent.) The Hospital Committee at their last meeting went carefully into the question of retrenchment, the financial position not being all that could be desired. A good many of last year's promised subscriptions are not yet forthcoming, and for the present year subscriptions are coming in but slowly. The Secretary was directed to intimate to the surgeon, that a reduction of £40 a year in bis salary must be made, but if, at the end of the financial year, the commiltee was in a position to do the liberal, his salary should be brought back to something near the original standard. The hospital has lost a kind patron and liberal supporter, in Mr. Chapman of Hyde Home Station. The Mining Association have discussed the question of the administration of the goldflelds by the General Government. The question turned more upon which of the two governments had the most (if any) in their component parts ; the picture, in truth was a sorry one, and the more examined the less admired. The following resolution on the subject was ordered to be forwarded by the Secretary to the Central Committee :—: — " After a careful consideration of the propriety of transferring the management of the goldfields to the General Government, this committee fails to ! see at present wherein the country j would be benefited by the change." A man named John Robinson was admitted into the hospital on Friday, suffering from two broken ribs and severe contusions, the effects of a fall of earth in his claim on lower Waikaia. The Warden ia on his periodical visit to Orepuki, the latest accounts from which are that all the available water (without going to any heavy cutting) is brought in. There are about LOO men on the diggings, most of whom are partially interested in the water rights, and are likely to be fairly remunerated for their labor for a long time to come. His HoDor when in Switzers, amongst other good tilings, which are unhappily yet in the womb of futurity, promised us a foot-bridge across the Winding Creek, in about a direct line with Frenehmans Hill and Welshmans Gully, the coat not to exceed £100. A surveyor has been here and laid off a bridge a mils further down the creek, and parallel with / an imaginary new roid to Frenchman's Hil. The proposed bridge I hear would cost £300 or £400, and be of no earthly utility. The surveyor — a good easy man, seems to imagine that foot passengers between the two places will go round his prospective new road — a distance of something like 5 miles — when that by the direct track is about 1£ mile; the consequence is, if we don't make a row, we'll get no bridge at all. "A Switzers Correspondent" with more geal than discretion, rashes into

your columns to prove that the mail coach carries no more than two or three passengers per trip. I can't see that it is my business to find the contractor passengers, but it is his business if be contracts to carry them in a given time to fulfil his contract. On the occasion to which I very mildly referred in my last, one of the passengers managed to scramble into Switzers on a very dark night, somewhere between 9 and 10 o'clock — this was nothing ; but a lady passenger who was obliged to walk half the way before the coach finally broke down, had then, in the darkness of night, to wade for miles through bogs, creeks and morasses, and at last, found the friendly shelter of a shepherd's hut, finally arriving at her destination 18 hours after the contract time. Your correspondent further objects to my quotation from an English author ; permit me to add one for bis edification from a colonial authority of no mean order. His Honor Judge Chapman gave a lecture here sometime in November last, in aid of the school funds. In concluding, His Honor observed he wished to retire early, and have a good night's rest, as he had to travel to Tuapeka in the morning, in "that apology for a coach."