NORTH ISLAND MAIN TRUNK RAILWAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 247, 17 October 1891, Page 2

NORTH ISLAND MAIN TRUNK RAILWAY.

(To the Editor.)

Sin, —Horror to relate! I lincl on this Central route there is not only 80 miles of glaring pumice, butthere isa veritable desert of loose rocks. For raising crops could you imagine anything worse than our island of Rangitoto? Well, this island is not a circumstance to the Rangipo desert, an extensive plain of scoria boulders which bounds for many miles the Central route.

From a description given to me by a a surveyor who recently traversed the Rangipo desert it reminds me of that portion of tho State of Maine where a Yankee traveller in passing through was exercised at the antics of a domestic cat which kept dashing its head against the boulders prevailing everywhere about. Upon inquiring of the miserable owner as to the cause of the cab's madness, he was told it was rather clean and particular for theso parts, and was going mad for the want of a little soil for sanitary par-

poses. I propose, Mr Editor, the rival routos should be known as the clean cat v. the dirty cat. The papa soil and limestone formation on the Stratford route would be a veritable paradise for tho clean tabby.— lam, etc., Old Tom.