The department will proceed in the future to fulfil various commitments entered into and, when this has been done, will deal with other applications from different parts of the dominion in the order of their receipt.
Among the commitments are batches of dwellings for Gisborne, Masterton, Te Puki, Hamilton, and Willowbridge (near Waimate). The last-named undertaking is of special interest, as it is the first series of dwellings to be erected for rural workers.
Each home will be built on a five-acre section.
As the soil in this locality is very rich, the workers taking up the homes should be able to add considerably to their income by potato-growing, and in the busy season should have no difficulty in obtaining employment on the wheat farms of Waimate district.
• The Commercial Agent for the New South Wales Government in America, Mr Quinn, in a recent report to the Government, mentions that California oil is the principal fuel for locomotives as far north as Washington and across the Sierra and the Cascade Range, its freedom from sparks serving as a protection against forest fires, as compared with coal or wood fuel.
It is used almost exclusively on inland and coast-wise steamers, and to a increasing extent by the trans-Pacific steamers.
It has even displaced coal on Puget Sound, many of the Canadian-Pacific fleet plying between Vancouver, Victoria, and other points having been equipped for oil burning.
Many of the ships coming to the Pacific Coast on the completion of the canal as a commercial waterway will doubtless be oil burners, or alternately oil and coal burners.
The Panama Canal thus coincides fortunately with the enormous oil production of California, which is answerable for 40 per cent of the total oil production of the United States. Delivered at the ship's side in San Francisco oil costs 80 cents per barrel.
Three barrels and a-half, the equivalent of one ton of coal, would thus cost $2.80, as against British Columbia coal $6, and Australian coal $7 each per ton. When to this economy is added the remarkable economy of the stokehold, and other advantages, the future of oil fuel is not a matter of conjecture.
• The death has occurred at Carterton of a well-known Maori, Tuta Nihoniho, who was a chief of the Ngati-Porou tribe of the East Coast district.
He fought on the British side during the suppression of the Hauhau revolt and the disturbances caused by Te Kooti, greatly distinguishing himself in several engagements (says the Masterton correspondent of the Lyttelton Times).
For his services he was thanked by the Government, awarded the New Zealand war medal, and presented with a sword of honour.
He was for several years captain of the Ngati-Porou Native Rifles. As a fighting man, Tuta's reputation extended all over the North Island, and by European officers with whom he served he was held in great esteem.
- ODT, 13.1.1914.
