THE Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1869.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1967, 25 August 1869, Page 2

THE Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1869.

Dunedin, on a wet day, is a mud-hole, and a week seldom passes without one or two wet days. Of course the Corporation cannot control *the weather, but they may deal with the mud. Eight gentlemen and the Mayor have been chosen to keep the City in order, and they pay a City Surveyor and a Surveyor of Works. Yet these eleven superintendents, with a number of men under them pass up and down the principal streets daily, and take no effectual steps to have the mud removed. One would really imagine they were in. terested in dirty boots, so supremely indifferent do they seem to the sludge which lies on the surface of the ground. Perhaps we do them an injustice, for, occasionally, it does happen that mudheaps are scraped together veiy deliberately, by men who use their tools at the rate of the Corporation stroke, and left until they are again distributed by unlucky passengers setting their feet in them unwittingly, or until they are dried by the wind and sun ; when they are deliberately handed into a cart, deliberately drawn by a horse, under the care of a deliberate driver. The byelaws provide that occupiers of frontages upon the street line shall sweep or cause to be swept the footpaths adjoining their premises : and it is done. But really it is very disheartening work when the sweepers know that, in less than half-an-hour, all their painstaking will go for nothing, and the footpath be as dirty as ever through the mud that adheres to the feet of those who cross the road. City Councillors appear to get used to this, or to imagine there is no remedy. They do not seem to know that it is a most wasteful system. But it becomes a very serious expenditure when the cost of Mr Barnes’s daymen is added to the damage done to the roads by the accumulations of mud. Macadamised roads need constant attention. A good system is what is required. The mode found most effectual at Home is to divide a road into lengths and to appoint a thoroughly competent man to superintend and keep in repair each section. When the scavenging is not contracted for, in addition to filling ruts with broken stones, as they are made, he has to scrape the road and keep it free from mud. Nor need the Corporation he startled at the expense, for prevention is better than cure, and it is very much cheaper to prevent a road getting out of repair than afterwards to restore it to its proper condition. Mr B. Farey, in his evidence some years ago before a Committee of the House of Commons, speaking of muddy roads, said :—“ The “ wheels stick to the materials, in cer- “ tain states of the road, in spring and “ autumn, when it is between wet and “ dry, particularly in heavy foggy wea- “ ther, and after a frost ; by which “ sticking of the wheels the White- “ chapel road is often in a short time “ dreadfully torn and loosened up ; and “ it is for remedying this evil that I “ have, for more than eight years past, “ occasionally watered the road in “ winter. As soon as the sticking and “ tearing up of the materials is ob- “ served to have commenced, several “ water carts are employed upon those “ parts of the road, to wet the loamy “ and glutinous matters so much that “ they will no longer adhere to the “ tires of the wheels, and to allow the “ wheels and feet of the horses to “ force down and again fasten the “ stones; the traffic in the course of four “ to twenty hours after watering forms “ such a sludge on the surface as can “ be easily raked off by wooden scrapers, “ which is performed as quickly as pos- “ sible ; after which the road is hard “ and smooth.” Dunedin possesses advantages unknown to the surveyor of the Whitechapel road. The climate here is not so frosty, and consequently not so damaging to roads as in England, and, in case of need, the Water Works Company’s hose might be made to throw any needful quantity of water upon the streets. Nor need the old system of scraping the roads by means of wooden scrapers be adopted. Mr Whitworth, of Manchester, invented a much more effectual machine by which roads can be swept more rapidly and better than by scraping. No doubt most of the people of Dunedin have seen the machine in operation elsewhere, and would be very glad to see it here. A writer in one of Weale’s treatises describes it as “ a species of endless “ broom, passing round rollers attached “ to a mud-cart, and so connected by “ cogged wheels with the wheels of the “ cart that, when the latter is drawn for- “ ward, the broom is caused to revolve, “ and sweeps themud from the surface of “ the road up an inclined plane into “ the carts.” We suppose such a plan as that would be too simple and effec-

tual to find favor with the City Council, or possibly the surveyor of works would not find sufficient scope for the exercise of his genius in superintending the working of so complete a machine, x But one class, at any rate, would be ga ners by its adoption—the ratepayers ; for it would ensure them clean streets, and save its cost in the less expense of repairing the roads.