ROADING AT CATLINS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1036, 1 June 1894, Page 5

ROADING AT CATLINS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sin, — We note that orders have issued from headquarters to have the Catlins Biver railway completed to the town of Quakerfield, Owaka. Like all improvements the line had for a time to contend against the prejudice of some of our countrymen. In last week's issue of the Otago Witness " Agricola's " note 01 " Special Settlement," and the picture he has drawn of the hardships encountered by sellers on bush sections, is too vivid to be passed by lightly. What can be more heartcrushing to tho^e placed in similar positions than to see the strong and willing hands making a hopeless struggle for dear life, resulting in wasted years and a, ruined constitution, when by applying the ordinary remedy of roads and bridges it would give us a picture of health and contentment. I hold that next to the introduction of money and railroads the formation of roarls and bridges gives the greatest facility to commerce, and contributes more powerfully perhaps than anything else to the progress ..of improvement. They have been denominated, and rightly too, national veins and arteries, and the latter are not more indispensable to the lives of individuals than improved communication is to a healthy state of the public economy. Suppose that it takes two days to travel by an uneven bush track between any two places, and that by improving the track the journey may be accomplished in one day. The effect is the same as if the distance were reduced by a half, and that not only means saving of time to the bush farmer, bat also a great saving for the speedy conveyance of commodities. I look to the Government to furnish assistance towards the formation of roads and bridges when the funds required for their formation cannot otherwise be obtained. In such cases I would say that it is extremely desirable, in order to prevent the Government from being imposed upon by interested representations, that those more immediately concerned in the undertaking should be bound to contribute a portion of its expense. It is not easy for those accustomed to travel along the smooth and level roads — for which New Zealand is being made famous — to form any accurate idea of the difficulties the poor forlorn bush settler has to encoanter. Roads and bridges of one sort or another must of course be provided in every country emerged from barbarism, and are both directly and indirectly a prime source of agricultural improvement — directly by increasing the quantity and reducing the cost of conveying farm produce to the market, and indirectly bj r providing for the growth and indefinite extension of sales for agricultural produce. Everything seems gone but an atom of hope, That simply sticks to the last To every man, let him muse or mope, Till he sinks beneath the blast. Then let us be doing the best that we may, The weaker and the robust, Remember every dog has his day, And the end of it all is dust. — I am, &c, Clutiia.