Taxipo natives from going to the "Waitara meeting in March next, when they might get entangled in some policy adverse to the present Government. The natives have finished their tangi over the remains of their chief Reweti Te Kume. The days and still evenings have been disturbed by doleful cries, as is the custom of "ye savage/ On the other side of the river, one of the mourners used to give a yell — Bismillah ! it would have have done credit to a howling der vish j but now, thanks to a scarcity of grog and hai, all is hushed, and native matters are quiet. At Messrs Munro and M'Donald's shearing is now finished ; they have got a fair dip, but I am sorry to say that their lambing season was not first class. Messrs Munro and M'Donald have been amongst the earliest successful sheep farmers in this district, and their career presents a marked contrast to the miser* able failures met with by some of the former runholders in their attempts to settle the Taupo country. Messrs Munro and Oo.'s run contains some 40,000 acres, extending from Runanga to Mohaka, and adjoining the Tauhara blocks on the west. The mutton raised on the run has long been pronounced by connoisseurs to be the . best along the Taupo line, while the wool, I hear, has fetched a better price than any of the Sawke's Bay staples in the home market. These are encouraging facts for intending lessees of the several extensive blocks of country which the Government have lately acquired around this district, and which should shortly be in the market. Our doctors have lately been kept hard at work owing to sickness amongst the native children, among whom whooping cough has been very prevalent.
