NELSON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1369, 7 March 1865, Page 3

NELSON.

We have papers from this province to the 2nd instant. We take the following from the Examiner :— Passengers Regulations.—By some extraordinary oversight, while steamers making coasting trips are subjected to regulations which determine the number of passengers they may carry, sailing vessels may carry with impunity as many passengers as they please. A few weeks ago, the Collector of Customs prevented the Nelson, a new steamer of eighty-one tons, from proceeding to Okitiki, on the West Coast, with seventy passengers on board, because she had fifteen in excess of her licensed number, notwithstanding that the duration of the passage could be safely calculated; while this week he is powerless to prevent the Mary, a schooner of less than thirty tons, and about twelve or fifteen years old, from leaving our port with _ sixty-four passengers for the same place, and which passag# may occupy her such a time as to exceed a reasonable calculation, and, as. has before happened to the same, or a similar vessel, subject all on board to a scarcity of provisions or water. Let it be understood that we make no complaint against our Collector of Customs, who but performed his duty in compliance with the law; but it is a grievous evil that, in the fever of a gold rush, any person should be permitted, for the love of gain, to place in peril the lives of upward of sixty of his fellow-beings, who may be willing blindly to encounter a danger the extent of which they are unacquainted with. The schooner Mary, of twenty-nine tons, laden with timber, and not having three feet between her cargo and her deck, actually shipped, as •we are told, sixty-four passengers for Okitiki, on Monday last. The master at first refused to proceed to sea, and then some ten or fifteen passengers had to be landed; but sail she actually did on the day following, with over fifty passengers on board of her. In the adjacent colonies of Australia no vessel under tlfty tons register is allowed to carry passengers at all. Though we would not advocate the adoption of this rule in New Zealand, it is high time that the Legislature should interfere, to prevent the heedless risk of life which must arise from the overcrowding of such ill-fitted vessels, particularly on a coast the most dangerous in the colony, and which affords no single harbour of shelter between West Wanganui and Milford Sound, a distance of nearly three hundred miles. Since the above was in type the Mary has returned to port, the master having found, before he got out of the Bay, that the provisions put on board by the charterer were inadequate for the voyage, and he therefore wisely put back while he could do so without subjecting his passengers to any straits. The charterer, who is a stranger in Nelson, had calculated that the passage would occupy the schooner 1 about fifty hours, while a week is about the average period of a trip for a vessel of her class, and even this time maybe greatly extended. On the vessel reaching Nelson last evening, after having been at sea thirty hours, only about thirty pounds of meat remained unconsumed. We understand that a fresh supply of provisions will be placed on board this morning, when the schooner will again proceed to sea, and we shall be glad to hear of her safe arrival at her destination.

The Swebintendenot.—There are now three candidates in the field for the Superintendence, Mr.

Barnicoat, Mr. Alfred Saunders, and Mr. Oliver. The two first-named gentlemen are well known to the electors of the province, as both have been in public life for several years, and their qualifications for the office of Superintendent will, no doubt, be very fully canvassed by the electors. Mr. Oliver, on the contrary, is but little known beyond his own district of Motueka Valley ; but we believe him to be a gentleman of education and intelligence ; and, from the manner in which he has occasionally in our columns advocated the interests of his district, we are sure that he is calculated to become a useful public man, if he will undertake the duties. Concerning the chances of success of the three candidates, it is difficult to speak. Mr. Saunders will rely, we presume, on the support of many of the party he has led for the last eight years, which means the party who have governed the province during that period of time. If a majority of Uie electors are unfriendly to any change in the policy pursued by the Government, of which Mr. Saunders has for some time been a member, and which he has uniformly supported, they will naturally give him their votes ; but, if the electors are of opinion that a change of men as well as of measures is desirable, they w ill support either Mr. Barnicoat or Mr. Oliver, whichever may go to the poll, for we can scarcely suppose that these gentlemen, with views so nearly similar, will divide the support which either would undoubtedly receive, and thereby make Mr. Saunder's election a certainty, which, otherwise, we regard as being more than doubtful. The names attached to Mr. Saunder's requisition—number one hundred and sixty-seven; but then the canvass has been most active, and has extended to all the Waimeas, the Motueka, and the city and adjacent districts. Mr. Barnicoat's requisition has one hundred and fifty-one signatures attached to it, but the canvass for him has been confined to the city and the Waimeas East and South, and has nowhere been actively undertaken. Mr. Oliver has comparatively few names to his requisition, and those principally from persons in his own district; but, had he been in the field earlier, he would, we believe, have received a large amount of support throughout the province. The nomination takes place to-mor-row, in the Provincial Hall, when the electors will have an opportunity of hearing the candidates state their respective intentions if elected.