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Waipawa Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2502, 6 September 1890, Page 2

Mr George Hunter's candidature for Waipawa is announced by advertisement in this issue. He has thus the advantage of being first in the field. It is not expected that he will be unopposed, and therefore his friends should lose no time in sending in their claims for enrolment, if they have not already done bo. There is no probability, however, of votes being split up as on the occasion of the last general election, when four candidates were in the field.

It is notified by advertisement that the Waipawa Road Board intend to strike a rate of £d in the £. A meeting of the Finance Committee of the Waipawa County Council was held to-day, Crs Herrick and Harding being present. Payments amounting to £425 9s were authorised.

3At the R.M. Court this morning, before A. St. C. Inglis Esq., Patrick Connell was charged with drunkenness. As he had been locked up since yesterday, he was discharged with a caution. We are indebted to Mr R. Harding for the following record of rainfall at Mount Vernon for the month of Angust :—The greatest fall occurred on the 13th, amounting to £ inch. Total rainfall for the month, 093 inches. Rain fell on nine days. At the meeting of firewood cutters at Makotuku, reported in our last issue, Mr Packer proposed, and Mr Gasson seconded, that no firewood be split for less than 6s 6d a cord in future.—Carried. Messrs. Packer and Baines were added to the Committee already formed. At the Committee meeting Mr Russell was elected chairman. No other business will be done till they hear from Danevirke. Says the Post :—The London agent of the Press Association might certainly find better employment than cabling out the insinuation of some nameless correspondent to a London paper, who has through its columns ventured to make most offensive and utterly groundless charges against the integrity' of the leaders and officers of the Labor Unions in Australia. We are astonished at such an item being cabled.

We have received from the New Zealand Steam Shipping Company a well compiled table showing the export trade of the colony for the year to June 30th last. As might be expected, the most striking feature of the report is the frozen meat cargoes, which represented 1,489,829 carcases. That shows a steady increase in this important branch of our exports. Of this amount Canterbury was the largest exporter with 507,159 carcases, and Hawke’s Bay is credited with 292,140 carcases. Wellington comas next with 258,780 carcases. Wellington is the largest exporter of beef, having sent 36,687 pieces. Hawke’s Bay comes next with 9,455 pieces.

The Waste Lands Committee have reported on the petition of A. Brightwell and 26 others. They state that they are village settlers at Wood ville, but that tneir holdings are not large enough to live upon ; that by the village settlement rules they are debarred from acquiring more land, and they pray for legislation for their relief. The committee report that the petition should be referred to the Government for consideration. With respect to the difficulty with the railway hands at Westport, the Railway Commissioners explain that no duties have been asked or done other than those ordinarily performed by the railway, and the railway service eo&aists in taking coal trucks alongside ships at „ the wharf and emptying them by opening hopper doors iu the bottom of the trucks, and in ad justing the staiths which form part of the railway wharf. The Commissioners have given orders to their officers to be careful to adhere strictly to the ordinary duties devolving upon them, and not to undertake anything beyond the usual railway practice.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph has no belief in the silver boom lasting, and recom mends those mines already. Opened up to smelt every ton of ore in sight and sell up every ounce of silver obtainable. Opening up a mine may be very interesting work from a mining- manager’s point of view, but in the majority of cases more smelting and less mining would pay the shareholders better. When the silver boom bursts there will be as little profit in most of our silver deposits as there is now iu working our copper mines.

The Prince of Monaco is investigating the deep sea life to be found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. His researches have hitherto been conducted on board a yacht belonging to Professor Hermau Fol, but the Prince is now having a vessel built especially for the purpose, and fitted up with all the latest scientific apparatus for the prosecution of his investigations. He has discovered some new varieties of the centrophorus squammosus and of the acanthephyra. Many of the forms of life dreoged from the bottom of the sea have been brought to the surface in a condition of full vitality, which has not been the case with those obtained in the Atlantic.

At the usual monthly meeting of the Waipukurau School Committee on Monday night, there was a full attendance of members. The minutes of the previous mee'ing having been read and confirmed, a letter from the Secretary of the Board of Education was read referring to the missing sewing exhibits, some of which had turned up ; also a letter from Mr W. A. Neale, complaining of having been placed in a lower standard after an absence of five weeks from sickness. Resolved that the Chairman be asked to communicate with the head master for explanation. The report of the Visiting Committee was also read, when several necessary repairs were decided upon. An exchange says A good many of the churches in New Zealand suffer from chronic impecuniosity, a condition from which they endeavour to extricate themselves by meaaß of methods which are not always very commendable, or conducive to the objects for which churches are supposed to exist. As a new idea, wo may mention what has been recently done by a congregation in New York. The church borrowed £24,000 from a life insurance company, aud had the lives of a number of its members insured in favor of itself. Each time the holder of a policy dies, the insurance company will reduce the debt by the amount of the policy. The idea is a splendid one. The only objection to it is that some of the church authorities might be tempted to judiciously distribute a little arsenic or strychnine on the occasion of a tea-fight! The annual report on the New Zealand surveys has been presented to Parliament. The net cost of the department for the year was £73,765. The Surveyor-Gen-eral says, “ The country the department has to deal with in the future being of a more troublesome character, and more remote from roads and settlement, the cost of survey will tend rather to increase than otherwise, though at the same time this is somewhat counteracted by the larger-sized sections in which the land will necessarily be selected. The amount ol land fit for settlement which is stiil in the hands of the Grown is becoming small, notwithstanding the frequent statements to'the contrary, and settlement of country tnrough the land department must soon show a decrease in volume unless more lands are acquired from the native owners. In some districts this has become a necessity.”

News has reached Vienna from Bucharest of an atrocious crime committed near the village of Strosci, in the Rimnik dis trict. A few evenings ago a peasant named Constantin Obrocacco, returning to his home in Strosci from a neighboring village, where he had sold a calf, with 20 franca in his pocket, was set upon while passing through the woods by two other peasants, who demanded his money Obrocacco refused, and the men thereupon bound him to a tree and cut his eyes out. The unfortunate man then delivered up his money, and the robbers proceeded kill him by slow torture. They pierced his breast with a long sharp knife, and when he begged for his life in the name of his wife and children, they cut his tongue out. After the man was dead the robbers became conscience-stricken. They ran to the village justice and related the circumstances of the crime. They were put in irons ; and it was only by strategy that the authorities were able to prevent their being lynched by the people. Two youthful students who sometimes gladden the heart of the Norsewood schoolmaster by their presence have caused a little mild excitement by their erratic proceedings. On their way to school one day they espied some remarkable botanical curiosities, and sat down to investigate them fully, and took so long a time to settle the points of a dispute arising out of their find that they forgot all about school until it was nearly time to return home. A little judicious exercise in the way of leap-frog prevented the time from hanging heavily on their heads, and at the same time diverted the flow of blood—caused by excessive study—from their heads, and at the usual hour they turned up under the paternal roof-tree looking pictures of health, happiness, and—innocence. Alas for human felicity! How transient ! How soon it passes ! A tiny note known as a truant notice (oh hated name!) duly arrived, asked all too eloquently the reason why the youthful students were not at school. Awkward enquiries followed, an ominous and still more awkward silence, the calm before the storm and—whack* whack, whack, came the avenging snpplejack, while shrieks of anguish, and cries of “ it wasn’t me,” and “ won’t do it again, father,” woke the stillness of the night, and made the passing wayfarer rub the bosom of bis pants in silent sympathy. Next day the suffering juveniles were packed off to school, but tbe iron (or rather the supplejack) had entered their souls, and the fierce flame of rebellion burnt out all fear, as perfect love is said to do. They went not to school, they went on strike instead, determined that come what might, their father and the teacher should not do all the striking. Night came on, — no appearance, your worship. Stars came out, and winked at the now idle supplejack. A young moon smiled calmly down on the lonely and now anxious parents. Day succeeded night and the song of birds was hoard, but cheered not the weeping

mother or the repentant pater. The day went on, but the school knew them not that day. Evening and milking time came again, but there were not the dear boys at hand to drive home Blossom and throw stones, and at last the father relented, the feeling of repentance spread, and the conscience-stricken supple-jack fell forwards in tbe fire and committed suicide. Search was made, and mounted men rode in haste along the highways aod by-ways. On tbe borders of tbe Kopua clearing, iu a disused shed, at a time when it was difficult to pronounce which day the time belenged to, a searcher found two small boys dead—asleep, and they were promptly awakened and taken back to their forgiving parents, while the moon smiled gladly, and the stars winked merrily, and a rnorepork hopped into a stump and poured forth its hymn of thanksgiving.