THE LYELL.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 30 January 1880, Page 2

THE LYELL.

(FfIOJI,, qTJBjyWN CoBBBsPONDENT ) The dispute bejween the Alpine Company and tbe contractors for suppljing stone bus been settled without having to resort to the usual costly system of litigation. The contractor has compounded with his men for lls 6d in the £, the men took this amount believing in the old maxim that half wages is better than none. At a meeting of the directors of the Alpine Company, it was decided to reduce the wages paid by the company to the men employed in tbe mine froji four pounds to three pounds ten shillings per week. The men refused to submit to tbe reduction, and have struck work. Th? general opinion is that it is worth a pound a week more for working thjs tniae than any oiher in the district owing to the claim being an exceptionally-wet one. Byan's punfc is again in working order. It is a slur upon the Lyell people to allow their children to grow up like so many young savages, without any regard to their education. There are between twenty and thirty children in Lyell and Zalatown, and no public or private school to educate them at—surely this could be remedied if the inhabitants were to bestir themselves in the matter. The last two days rain caused a heavy flood in the Inaogahuu and Buller rirers,

and brought down some heavy land slips on the Buller road, which will probably delay the upward mail for a day or two.

Several parties have gone on a pros' pecting tour from the Inangahua Junction across the country towards the head of Mackley and New Creeks. A few bush tracks are badly wanted to be cut, which would only cost a few pounds, and would materially assist prospecting parties in opening up the country.

A miner named Miller narrowly escaped being killed last week, he was working in the caves below the Inangahua Junction when a large boulder dropped from the roof— the man escaped with some ugly bruises. Some of the Junction m* habitants mustered and carried the man down to one of the roadside houses, « here he was forwarded to the Westporf Hospital. Some of the residents living not an hundred miles from the Junction refused to assist in so heathenish an undertaking, as that of oarrying a crushed miner down a precipitous mountain on a ■Sunday, and yet those people would religously turn up their noses at some of ihe petty follies of their sinful neighbour, who are always ready to render practical assistance to suffering humanity when required*— such is life. Lyell, 24th January, 1880.