Our Dudedin Letter

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 3174, 19 June 1900, Page 5

Our Du dedin Letter

■ — i — ; — >— e>- ; (Fbom Oub Own Oobbbspondkkt.)" Dunedia, Moaday morning. The plague commissioners recommend the City Council to cause many more buildings to be demolished. A visitor from the country, aay, may very well be pardoned if, when they nextpay us a visit, they ba temporarily deluded into the belief that Dunedin has recently suffered from a disastrous cyclone. If he is not further enlightened, before he makes a more minute investigation, he will be strengthened in this idea by the fact that the missing buildings which for so maoy years formed a landmark in the place were all ancient structures, and of course they were the ones that might be supposed to succumb to a cyclone, especially if it be of the ferocious type manufactured in the wild west of America. That it could only have been a cyclone will be further attested to by the erratic course it pursued, and a peculiar phase of its character will be revealed in our country cousin's mind by reason of the marked antipathy it manifested cowards our Chinese fellow citizens, for most of the. malodorous tenements that formerly sheltered the yellow men are now stacks of timber in assorted stages of smelifulness and decay. .Lest, then, any of your readera might be led astray when he visits Walker street, for instance, and finds half the wooden structures, which had lined it on either side for half a century or more, are now conspicuous by their absence, be it known that they were demolished because the medical advisers of the city had reported that having carefully examined them, they found them, in terms of the law of the land, " unfit j!or occupation and use, ' and "dangerous to public health/ Where the aliuond-eye, yellow-skinned " sons of the sun " are next going to settle I do not know, but Lunedin would smell more wholesome if they ! took up their residence on White Island, and the wind was blowing the other way. After a mountain of opposition the new tram line to the Kaikorai Valley has been completed — completed f«»r the present at any rate, for opposition following it to the last prevented it from going down to Princes street, but made it stop right behind JBobby Burn** brazen effigy. And if the cars come down with a run some night, as they did on a certaia memorable occasion on another line, Bobby will be liable to pitch at the Rev. Dr Burns's monument in a fashion far from what is seemly and becoming. The company intended to come down to Princes street, but one man objected to the lines in rounding the Octagon curve coming within six feet of the curve. Six feet, forsooth, when the footboard of. the opposition cars come so near the toot path as to threaten to sweep off every unwary padestrian it passes. But the directors of the new company say that ; they will overcome this objection like they have done all others, and are preparing now for an Order-in-Council authorising them to come right down to the main thoroughfare. i Trooper Seelye, of the First Contingent, is the hero of the hour. He has i been invalided home. I saw a letter his parents got not long ago, in which the young fellow said that he had been sent to the hospital near where the troops were operating, and afterwards to the Capetown Hospital. He deplored his luck at being laid aside, but hoped to be recovered in time for " The march past at Pretoria." The next his people heard of him was his arrival at MeJ bourne. Seelye said he was ordered home at an hour's notice, and he has duly arrived, and when he made his appearance in the street on the day of his arriva\, attired in a faded khaki suit, a rather battered looking slouch hat, and a crumpled, dust soiled, well worn over coat, he was the cynosure of all eyes. Whenever he stopped to shake hands with a friend, which he did at every few steps, a crowd immediately gathered around him, and he was followed up the street by a crowd of small boys and office youths, who promptly forgot all their errands when they caught sight of one of the contingent boys home again. Seelye is not a man of big physique, but he is made of bell metal. He has seen a lot of fighting, and the whole town is glad that he has

come back (a little pulled down perhaps with exposure, hardship, and insufficient food and illness), but with a whole «km and in fairly good form, The Church Council have, with a monotony that is wearying to the flesh, always applied to the military authorities lor a •• part "in the demonstrations connected with the war, but with an equally wearying monotony the request has been declined. The Council have had no show to Shine at all, but they are determined to have "one on their own" when the peace celebrations come around. When the Pretoria night function was taking place the Council ran an opposition attraction, and claim that it was a great success, and they are now, I understand, preparing for a bigger opposition gathering when the day fixed for the peace jubilations comes round. Mr ¥. Mallard was again on the B*nch at the Polic Court on Saturday, and as is usual when he fills the august role of a dispenser of justice, the proceedings lengthened out considerably. The audience which usually gathers to witness Saturday's court is invariably a scanty one, and fastidious to boot, for at length when most of cases were disposed of, and Mr Mallard not evincing any desire to leave his seat, commenced one of those speeches to the public which has gained for him no little notoriety, there was a general rush for the door. Mr Mallard pointed out his sentiments on the rights of Justices of the Peace upon the lengthened heads of the clerks of the court, and the Subinspector of Police. The Otago Harbor Board, we are informed, are making great progress in scooping but a sufficient depth of water in the steamer's basin to enable the large steamers to move about in that enclosed area with greater freedom. The Board's method of working strikes the lay mind as being peculiar, to say the least of it. How do you think they are deepening the basin ? Two dredges are at work. One of them, the big bucket dredge 222, scoops out the mud from the bottom and dumps it all out again, and then the other dredge, a suction dredge, draws it up once more. What the suction dredge does with it, I cannot say, but it is to be presumed, as there is no third dredge, that the spoil goes somewhere else than into the water again. This method of dredging seems to be delightfully simple and inexpensive, and it is one that some of our gold dredging companies, "who have got more money than they know what to do with, might adopt. Meantime the ratepayers are paying for the pleasant little pastime of dredging holes and having them filled up again.