The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 180, 3 August 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1867.

We promised in our issue of yesterday to reply to tbe objections raised by our correspondent "Candor" to the various statements made in two articles -which have recently appeared in this journal ■with reference lo Mr Stevens's Prospectus. In order to fulfil our promise as completely as our space will allow, we purpose replying to these objections seriatim. " Candor " admits that the Prospectus "might have been greatly strengthened, had the writer possessed a knowledge of the country." It certainly does appear rather strange that Mr Stevens should not have taken some little trouble to obtain some acquaintance with the country over which he proposes to carry his railway, such an acquaintance, at all events, as might have gained by travelling through it by the various roads which have been made by the Nelson Government. We have often questioned whether Mr Stevens does possess such personal acquaintance with the country. "Candor" evidently assumes that he does not. Should this be the case, we would ask how Mr Stevens will answer the various questions as to the physical features of the country which will naturally be put to him when he carries his Prospectus home to Europe ? " Candor " appears to blams us for taking pains to show by a table of distance that the railway would benefit Westport more than it would Nelson. We had always understood that one of the great objects of this railway was to connect Nelson with the West Coast, so that not only the country in the interior, but the West Coast itself, might be supplied with stores, &c, from Nelson, and the coal and other minerals conveyed back for shipment at Nelson, thus avoiding the dangerous and expensive sea voyage. Our figures seem to have convinced " Candor " that this would not he the case, and he accuses us of narrowmindedness for having pointed it out. But if Nelson is not to be the grand depot for the interior and the West Coast, we are at a loss to discover the object of taking the railway from Nelson further than the available country on this side of the watershed, as through traffic, except for passengers and light goods, cannot be anticipated. For the interior can be opened up by lines from the West Coast, and a long and expensive part of the railway would be thus entirely avoided. At some future time, when the line is paying a handsome dividend, this link might be completed. This may be a narrow view of the subject, but it will certainly be the means of opening the interior quite as effectually and at much less expense. " Candor " asks " how we know the line the proposed railway will take ?" Of course we cannot pretend to know what Mr Stevens himself never hints at in his Prospectus, except so far as he states that it is to pass through " the settled district of the Waimeas." Such being the case, we may surely presume that it would follow pretty nearly the course of the Great South Road through the Big Bush, and

thence to Lake Roto-iti and the Buller. Should it be taken up the Motueka valley, the contingency suggested by our correspondent, then the terminus would be Motueka, for it is scarcely probable that the main liue would be taken from Nelson to Motueka, for the purpose of going up that valley, when the distance from Motueka to the summit level near Lake Roto-iti is greater than from Nelson. Certainly it might be takeu through Dovedale or Pigeon Valley, but this would increase the distauce by more than 20 miles, over a very considerable elevation, which is avoided by the former route. But even supposing the line was carried up the Motueka valley, still the distauce from that valley to the coal-field on the Wangapeka and Karamea saddle is more than 20 miles, and moreover hy far the most difficult of the forty miles spoken of iu our article. Thus the main line would be taken 20 miles out of the direct route, instead of having the branch line 20 miles longer. We are delighted to hear that "good coal has been met with in other places and within a much shorter distance from Nelson" than that which is known to exist on the Wangapeka and Karamea saddles, and should our remarks on Mr Stevens's Prospectus have only elicited this one single fact (?), we shall consider ourselves amply repaid, for we feel pretty confident that up to the present time neither the Government nor the public generally have ever heard of it. " Candor" would confer a great boon on the province by publishing some particulars of this discovery, and, unless he has good and sufficient reasons for withholding the information, we shall trust to his courtesy to be enabled to lay it before our readers in our next issue. "Candor" makes us acquainted with another discovery, the immediate value of which however is not so appreciable as that to which we have fust alluded. "We certainly were not aware that a pass existed through the range of mountains in the southern part of the Province of Canterbury at a less elevation than 1500 feetj but even if this be the case, the main trunk line would scarcely pass that way, since the whole of the eastern part of the Canterbury Province would thus be avoided. " Candor" in the concluding paragraph of his letter, calls our attention to an error in the table of distances given in our last article on this subject. He is perfectly correct : a misprint did occur, which we thank him for pointing out. The distance from the Inangahua to Nelson is 113 miles, instead of 133, and the whole distance from Westport to Nelson is 13S, instead of 158 miles. We have not stopped to notice the somewhat gratuitous assertion made by " Candor," to the effect that our primary object in penning the articles at which he takes umbrage, was to " write down the proposed railway," and not simply to " criticise Mr Stevens's railway prospectus," because we have repeatedly advocated the construction of such a railway, regarding it as the measure, par excellence, which was calculated most materially to influence the future welfare and prosperity of the province, aud we had imagined that our sentiments in this regard were pretty generally understood and appreciated. The desirability, however, of possessing such a railway, and the adoption, nolens volens, of such a mass of absurdities and contradictions as Mr Stevens's Prospectus, are two very different matters, and certainly not reconcileable with our ideas of common sense or of the most ordinary prudence.