TOWN AND COUNTRY NEWS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1087, 11 April 1863, Page 4

TOWN AND COUNTRY NEWS.

A Bank for Akaroa.—The Bank of New Zealand opened an agency in Akaroa on Monday last.

The Weather at Akaroa.—A great change has taken place in the weather here. On Good Friday the air was suffocatingly hot from the north-west ; to-day and yesterday, it has been blowing hard and piercingly cold from the south-west, accompanied with hail and sleet. Extremes in weather very nearly meet in New Zealand.

L\ ttelton Ciiurcii.—At the annual vestry meeting held at the Church on Monday evening, for the purpose of electirtg officers for the ensuing year, Messrs. Donald and M'Kellar were elected Churchwardens. Irooi's for New Zealaxd. — The following changes will take place in the military force at present stationed in New Zealand. The 2nd Battallion of the 18th Regiment are ordered out to relieve the 65th Regiment; and the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Regiment to relieve the 70th Regiment.

Ltttklton Dancing Class.—A number of gentlemen have agreed to hold assemblies at the Town Hall, every 1 uesday evening for promoting this exhilerating amusement. There appears plenty of room for improvement, from the repeated failures through incompetency, visible at some of ourpublic balls. The committee of management, from their respectability and the number of members already enrolled, promise to ensure the success of the movement, and especially that it will be properly conducted.

Lyttelton Volunteer Prize Cup.—We wish to draw the attention of the members intending to compete for the Prize Champion Cup (second year) to the fact that it will be fired for during the month of May, and that the names must be sent in to the Captain-commanding on or before the first day of May. The cup is held at present by Private George Tombs, and if he should be so .foftunate as to

register the highest score this year, the cup will become his own property.

Birning Grass. —During the ljtte dry season our Port town had two or three narrow escapes from destruction by fire, in consequence of careless and selfish persons setting fire to the grass and scrub on the surrounding runs. The other day an information was heard before the Resident Magistrate, under the Police Ordinance, for a similar offence. The particulars of the case appear in our police report, and, irrespective of the dismissal of the information, it is very desirable the public generally should be made acquainted with the particulars of the clauses of the Ordinance under which people, often inadvertently, render themselves liable to be prosecuted. The fifth clause, section 2, recites that "Everyperson who shall wilfully fire the bush, scrub, grass, fern, flax, or other vegetation, on land within the boundaries of any town, would render himself liable to a penalty of £5." The limits of the town are restricted to the plan or map defined by the Chief Surveyor of the province. The seventh clause, section 6, recited

—" That every person who shall set on fire, or cause to be set on fire, any bush, scrub, grass, fern, flax, or other vegetation on land not in his own occupation, will be liable to a penalty of £20."

Racing Boats and the next Regatta.—The improvement resulting from the last regatta, as to racing boats, is likely to be further extended. Some gentlemen lovers of aquatic sports, who have purchased the fine boat brought out from England in the Derwentwater, by Captain Thomson, intend to offer to race her against all comers for a good round sum, and are open to make a match any day, at the Universal Hotel, Lyttelton. We would suggest to the officers for our next New Year's Day Regatta, now that our watermen own a number of good and safe boats, that in making the regulations, their attention should be directed to the desirability of classifying the boat races, thus obviating the objections raised in previous years from this want, which, in many instances, caused much dissatisfaction among those who had gone to great expense to promote the sports of the day.

Death at Kaiapoi ueder Suspicious circumstances. —A report has reached us that the body of a man, named David Mears, was found on the island, Ivaiapoi, on Friday morning last. Deceased's head was severely bruised, leading to the inference that he had met with foul play. An inquest was held on the body yesterday, but we have not been informed of the results. It is only right to mention that the police at Christchurch had received no information on the subject, though we believe our informant to be correct in the facts stated.

Gazettes.—A gazette of the 25th March notifies the return of Samuel Bealey, Esq., superintendent of the province of Canterbury. In the same we observe that the warehouse belonging to the late firm of Cookson, Bowler, and Co., now owned by Mr. J. Drummond Macpherson, is appointed a bonding warehouse for all dutiable articles, except sugar. Deserters.—Desertion from H.M. forces seems to be a prevailing fashion in this colony. A recent ' Gazette,' dated 12th March, contains no less than twenty-five pages closely printed with the names and descriptions of deserters from the army and navy. Fire at Akaroa.—A small cottage, belonging to a Frenchman, in German Bay, Akaroa, was burnt down on Friday last. The owner was from home at the time, so it is not known in what way the fire originated. The whole of the contents of the cottage were destroyed.

Diocesan Stnod.—On Wednesday last, Mr. J. S. Williams was elected a member of the Diocesan Synod for the parish of Lower Heathcote with Sumner. The same gentleman was also nominated by the Curate, and with Mr. C. E. Cooper was elected Church Property Trustee for the ensuing year for the above parish.

Mineral Land Reserves at Nelson.—The following extract from the ' Nelson Examiner' shews that the Government do not intend to suffer their mineral lands on the West Coast to pass into other hands prematurely and without due consideration: — " We have been informed that an important resolution has been come to by the Waste Lands Board, at their last meeting, which it may save some trouble to make public. They have decided that the land about the rivers known to contain gold must be presumed to be auriferous, and cannot, under the Land Regulations, be leased for mining purposes. Such districts may, no doubt, be legally reserved as 'necessary to be constituted into gold districts,' although hereafter they may not prove to contain gold in paying quantity. It is an obviously necessary step, in the present state of our knowledge of the coal and gold fields, to interpose every legal check on the alienation of this land. We trust, however, that the progress of exploration, and the maturing and carrying out of plans for opening the western and southern parts of the province, may allow enterprise full play, at no distant day."

Plain Speaking.—ln an article on the present state of native affairs, the ' Nelson Examiner' gives its opinion of Sir George Grey's political character in the following plain terms: —"Among Sir George Grey's virtues or weaknesses, frank generosity is not one, and this will prove one cause and a main cause of his failure in a temporising policy. He is unloyal and uncandid. His constant care to hedge round his own personal position, his habit of fencing with facts and their names, proclaim the absence of that nobleness and earnestness which is proper, and all but essential for the leader of free, intelligent people. They equally disqualify him for gaining the permanent confidence of a suspicious, semi-barbarous race. We are bold tq say, notwithstanding his marked cleverness and high attainments, that a more signally unfit man for Governor of New Zealand at the present moment could hardly have been selected among those who could have any pretensions to such a station. A diplomatist is the last person to checkmate men who, like the Maoris, are all diplomatists, and from whom no securities can be taken except bonds on their affections and personal fears. A military or autocratic Governor must show rare genius in an emergency to enlist the hearty co-oper-ation of intelligent persons. Sir George Grey habitually uses language as a cloke for his thought. His assiduous efforts to understand the ways of thinking, and acquire the forms of speech of the Maori, falling in with his natural bent, seem to have lowered his habits of dealing to the level of Maori cunning, instead of helping to raise the race to the level of Christian frankness and loyalty. At Taranaki, in receiving a deputation of settlers, he has given the colony an exhibition of this, the bad side of his character, which is ghastly in contrast with the earnestness of his interlocutors, and the reality of the ruin

they came to talk of. On this and other occasions lie professed ignorance, almost disbelief in the possibility of facts the most notorious in the late and present troubles. The condition of the settlement, the audacity of the natives, the bungling of the former military commanders, were matters of astonishment to the man chosen as our physician, after eighteen months of pulse-feeling. Of course he does not expect or wish to be believed in the colony. We know that no man here is better informed in the case than he. He is a student, and there are voluminous blue-books and the files of the Native Office; he is a master of the art of cross-examination, and has had men of all sorts in the witness-box, from the Maori tatua to the late Governor; he has advisers, some of them actors in the former policy, all of them crammed with details of the late transactions. It is only official ignorance he is professing. But the levity, the petty art, or the utter contempt of his fellow-men shown in such discourse strikes one with a sort of despair. This is not the way to mould a people to forbearance, or to win the disaffected to confidence. And if he cannot do these things his policy must break down. One is loth to believe that there is any idea of making excuses to a remote tribunal by such affectation. It will be as incredible at home as here, that a very clever and zealous officer, on the spot, is less informed on his own special business than an obscure writer in an English newspaper. It is, most likely, only a marked instance of a most pernicious habit that we see in the Taranaki interview. The Governor is more plastic than the natives; he came to impress them—they have moulded him. He is more than a half-caste in the art of

evasion."

Railways: Tiieir Cost and Profit.—The' Westminster Review' of October contains an article of great interest under this heading. We have extracted a few passages which bear more 'particularly upon our own case : —" It should be clearly understood that colonial lines are usually worked at a loss for several years. Yet the colony is enriched by them, and the fact of a loss being certain is no argument against making the lines. If an English railway run through a district wherein there are no towns, little trade, and few inhabitants, the shareholders need never hope to receive any dividends. But make a railway in a rising colony under the same conditions, and in a few years the untilled waste will laugh with harvest, the silent neighborhood become noisy with inhabitants ; the line will first create a traffic, and then profit by it. Perhaps the most unsuccessful undertaking of the day is the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. It has been made fifty years too soon for profit, but not a day too soon for the province. The Canadian Government ought either to have made the line in the first instance, or else, like the Government of Victoria, have borrowed money in the London market to purchase the line from the company. The colony of Victoria has acted with greater foresight and fairness. Nearly all the lines in that colony have been purchased by the Government. Some of them have been made at a large cost, on account of labour being scarce, the prices of imported materials high, and the engineering difficulties very great. Two hundred and fifty miles of rail have been constructed, at an outlay of thirtyfive thousand pounds per miie, including rolling stock and stations. In order to acquire and complete these lines, the colony has burdened itself with a debt of eight millions eight hundred thousand pounds, on which it has to pay five hundred and seven thousand ponnds for interest. Though the sum be a large one, yet the same amount could not have been more judiciously, and, as experience will doubtless show, more profitably expended. The late Lord Dalhousie, with a sagacity which cannot be too highly applauded, left no efforts untried to introduce a complete system of railway communication throughout India. As an inducement to private companies to take the works in hand, the Indian Government guaranteed interest at the rate of five per cent, on the capital expended by them with its sanction. There cannot be any question about the liberality of that Government, although it may be disputed whether it has alwavs acted with wisdom. We think it would have been better to have selected less costly models for these railways. In so choosing, the promoters of these railways have shown the usual fondness of Englishmen for the "grand style." As a people we are singularly averse to adopting temporary expedients, no matter how well these expedients may answer. Had the American, in place of the English system of railway been adopted for India, that country would have been covered with lines in a much shorter time, and at a much less expense than is now possible. American railways are generally admitted to be cheap, but are sneered at as being badly constructed. Yet they serve all the purposes of traffic, and, what is more, are remunerative investments. At one time they were detestable. The rails were fiat pieces of iron, spiked down on longitudinal timbers. In the course of time the spikes worked loose, and the rails became bent up at the points of connexion. These bent-up rails were commonly termed " snakes' heads," and they well deserved their nickname, for it was a frequent occurrence for the end of a rail to perforate a passing carriage, and impale an unhappy passenger. But these are things of the past, and Americans can boast of having constructed very serviceable railways at an average cost, in round numbers, of eight thousand pounds per mile. Sensible persons may retard, but cannot hinder the commencement of any undertaking in which the human race has an interest, and by which the whole world will be benefited. To complain that such persons exist, is equivalent to complaining that in all ages and climes men occupy high positions and wield large powers, who are faint-hearted, shortsighted, ignorant, and obstinate. Wherever railways are constructed, whether they cross the American continent and link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or line the banks of the Thames, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates, traverse the burning plains of Hindostan or the snows of Siberia, the maxim enunciated by Mr. Pease, of Darlington, when railways were only experiments, on the success of which he had risked his fortune, will equally hold good, and remain unquestionable evidence of his largeness of view and soundness of judgment—" Let the country but make the railroads, and the railroads will make the country."

Marlborough.—We ('Nelson Examiner,' 28th March) have been informed that Mr. Thomas Carter has been elected, by the Provincial Council of Marlborough, as Superintendent of that province. The Council met on Monday, March 25, at Picton, There were twenty members present, nine of whom voted for Mr. Carter, and four against, while three members declined to vote, and one was absent. Captain Baillie was elected Speaker.