COLLINS PICKS.-No. 8.

Cromwell Argus, Volume VII, Issue 331, 14 March 1876, Page 5

COLLINS PICKS.-No. 8.

Collins Piok's Tkaykls. ( Continued.)

From this bluff we could see the Remarkables, Mount Nicholas, and Ben Lomond, and, as a relief to the eye, the picturesque valleys dotted with farm-houses, and acres of well-cultivated land with healthy-looking crops. My friend here drew my attention to the spot at which the telegraph wires crossed the Kawarau, stating that for a long time past the people of the Lakes district have been urging the building of a bridge across the river there, which he believed would cost £12,000. " But it is feared," he said,." that the offer to put one across two miles further up the river at about £3500 will avail." " Scarcely to be wondered at," T remarked, when he interrupted me with, "Wait, and judge for yourself." 1 did so, and long before we reached the place indicated I was convinced of the folly of spending £3500 in a bridge, when it would cost £1.0,000 in making (I should say, cutting and paving) an unsatisfactory road and approaches on both sides. I agreed with my friend that it would be necessary to cut out of a white sand drift, one mile in length, a block averaging twenty feet in height and eighteen feet in width; to macadamise, crown, and gravel the road at a depth of four feet in the centre and eighteen feet wide, the material ,to be carted two miles ; and on. the. north side of the river anew road with a safe gradient on to Morven Hill terrace would cost £ISOO. ''This is not all," he remarked ; "it would require one man's labor all the year round to keep the road in order, whereas £12,000 expended on a bridge and approaches at the bluff would be all that would be necessary ; and the main trunk line for road or railway to Wakatip would be complete, with three miles of. abominable white sand drift avoided, and that distance lessened between Cromwell and Queenstown." We nowreached another accommodation house which would not be im-Peached by the strictest Good Tern • plar in the country, for many a weary and benighted traveller has rejoiced to see the light shining there after his solitary walk of ten miles, and many a horseman also when the river at flood time has been impassable. Llewellan, the proprietor, an "ancient Briton," I was informed was one of the shrewdest and most intelligent men in the Wakatip. My companion, who appeared to have known him about twenty years, 'fcoW, me he had undergone the most extraordinary vicissitudes of life ; full of pluck and energy, an expert in quartz reefs and copper lodes, farmer and, boatbuilder ; , that this was the fourth punt he had constructed in the Province, and they had all answered admirably, in a double sense. With this remark he suggested I had better make Llewellan's acquaintance, as he could give me some information about the reefs up-country. I took the hint, and found myself in a comfortable little sitting-room, a table in the centre covered with books and the latest newspapers. I was very glad to have a chat with Llewellan, for he gave me a great deal of information in a few words. On parting he said, "Excuse me, Mr Pick, but if you are going to invest in the reefs, just bear in mind that a 'silent tongue makes a wise head.' Steer clear of land sharks. They generally have white shirt fronts, colored neckties, and part their hair in the. middle. If any of these gentry buttonhole you, just. you. say, right off, f Please can you tell me where an honest man, rather short of cash, can get work to do up this way ?' They will drop you like & hot potato at once." I thanked him for his good advice ; and off we started again to try the buoyancy of his punt, about which I had heard so much. ( To be continued.)

Collins Pick's. Apology and Thomas Shovel's Ditto,

Cape Squally, Kawarau, March 8, 1876. Sir,—Poor Tom, who has recovered from his recent illness, appears much distressed that his poetry, dedicated toa highly-remited author of conundrums in the Otago Witness (and who publishes an address,: Victoria. Bridge), should have; given offence to some friend, assumed or real (it is hard to say which), to the object of his lay. I have tried to console him with the suggestion that he may be a rival (in literature) aroused into a spirit of competition, and that I was to blame for sending it for your perusal; but he insists on sending an apology. I therefore enclose it. I have no local news for your columns this week, not even a sensational earthquake, for which let us be thankful, as some of those huge boulders up the range behind us look as if they only required just the slightest shock to start them rolling down. The consequence, you can imagine, would be the annihilation of our hut, and perhaps ourselves also.—So no more from yours truly, - . t-.■■-'■ ■•■..■■'•■ ,r ' Collins Pick. ''■'■'■ ■ : Tom's Letter,

Deer Sir,—Will you tell the Capt'in I'm so sorry that Collins sent ray verses to'your paper ; but as it is all out, I must eonfes they were not intirely ray own composure. A gen til - man of Welsh desent helped me, and called them odes (Collins says I mean odious). Plees tell the gentilman that I don't know the meening of all his long words, but then I'm not a scholard like he. He says something about restriction of discusion on public matters, and Collins say 3 that ineens I may rite about the roads—(but what is the use? they never get any better)—and about Sir Julius Vogel and Bismark; they are public matters. Collins says that the Capttn callin my pourty scurrilous trash is like Mrs Squeers calling Nicholas Niekleby a "turned-up nose peacock." 'Cos

neither Nicholas nor a peacock had turned-up 'loses ; and ,'is scurrilous meens grossly abusive, t could not be applied to respectful and perlite langage like ray pourty. Collins says the Captin is quite right in calling me morbid. I was dreadfully morbid, but the doctor says 1 have got over that; and it was not; kind of the Captiu to talk about my iinaginashuns. Collins says I need not be dishartened about my pourty, for if Robert Roberts will go on teaching me, by-and-by my verses may become as eddifyiug to your readers as coimnd uins. And -when, the Captin says it will not raise the tone of your paper, Collins says he is right, for it don't want raising ; it is considered the besb organ for information and readable articles on the Goldfiel ! s. Collins Says that all these words —"libellous effusions" and "nonsensical"—aro like the turned-up nose peacocks, simply inappropriate 'interpolated pleonasms, whatever they meen. Collins says the Captin d6esn't spare your fe-alins, for if you were at home you are accused of want of sense in putting them in ; and if you were away, your manager receives half a brick at his hed. Flees tell him if you discharge him on aco mnt of it we will give him £1 a week and his tucker to work the garden, and rite discussions on public measures for us. Collins doesn't think the Captin's pourty is his own, but says if it is it is much superior to mine.

Plees excuse this long scrawl, and tell the Captin that I am sorry that the verses ever came to lite, for one reason only, and that is that they displeesed and offended one person, and that was the Captin. And Tom Shovel is not the man to willingly vex or hurt the feelings of any man, and if that is .morbi lity he admits the desease. Jones Jones has seen mv letter, and says it wants something else to make it compleet, and that is a bit of borrowed pourty of Welsh distraction, so he has written some in for me : Y Brodyr os god lived lir clyn ar ryw fai chwychwi y rhai ysprydol adgvweriwch y cyf ryw uu.mewn yspryd addfroyuder gan dy ysiyried dy hun rhag dy demtio dithan. Oblegid os tybia neb ei fod yn rhyw beth ac yntau heb fod yn ddim y mae efe yn ei dwylio ei hun. Your humbel sirvent, Thomas Shovel.