THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, April 22, 1857.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue 7, 22 April 1857, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, April 22, 1857.

Journals become more necessary as men become more equa and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that thoy serve only to secure liberty: they maintain civilization. ~ De TocanEViLLK, Of Democracy in America, vol. T.,p. 230. Once upon a time, in the days of old Romance, there was a little Town (no matter whether in Normandy or Bretagne, in Lyonnesse or Loegria), pleasantly situated between the mountains and the sea. And the inhabitants of the Town had long lived in quiet and security ; the salubrity of the air and the fineness of the climate, among other things, disposing them perhaps a little too much to careless indolence and disbelief in the possibility of any misfortune befalling them. Meanwhile, in a cavern hard by, there had been growing up, unnoticed and unseen, a terrible Dragon ; one of the loathsome monsters well known to have existed in those early times — witness the veracious history of that famous one at Wantley, or the no le3S renowned one of Rhodes, whose defeat and death are celebrated by Schiller — to say nothing of our own Maori traditions of the kindred and cousins-germans of these gentlemen, the Taniwhas. So by little and little, first one and then another, the children of our good townsfolk began to disappear, and some of their sages at last discovered the dreadful fact that they were devoured by the Dragon. But the townsfolk laughed at them, and paid no attention to their warnings. At last there arrived at the Town, in quest of adventures, one of those good Knights (Sir Bedivere, Sir Lancelot, or Sir Gawain) who existed no doubt as a l^ind of counterpoise to the Dragons, and whose whole time was spent in redressing wrongs and assisting the helpless and unfortunate. He was clad of course in complete armour, had a sharp sword and a tough spear, and two bull-necked dogs (whose very counterparts you have no doubt seen depicted by Retsch, the German artist, iv his illustrations of Schiller's "Fight with the Dragon." Of course he offered at once to attack and slay the pestilential monster that afflicted the townspeople. AH he asked was — for it is well known that Knight-errants never carried saddle-baga or valise, stocked with vulgar biscuit and bacon — that they should furnish him and his dogs with food, and himself with weapons if needful, by general contribution. But the infatuated people, so besotted and supine were they, rejected or neglected to avail themselves of his offers. Some had never seen the Dragon, or read of one, so did not believe in his existence at all : some declared their Town was too near the sea, and that sea air was notoriously unwholesome for Dragons : some thought their lungs were strong enough to defy his breath and extract good oxygen even out of his poisonous exhalations : but most were disgusted at being asked to contribute towards the maintenance of the Knight and the feed of his gturdy dogs. So he went his way, and the Dragon was left to devastate the Town as before ; or rather, as day by day his voracity increased — nay grew

the greater the greater the number of victims he was supplied with — to devour the unfortunate people more ruthlessly than ever. For those who kept out of reach of his teeth and claws or the folds of his writhing tail could not contrive to avoid his pestilential breath, which poisoned the air. So the children that were [ left, and then the women, began to grow pale and wan and thin ; even the men waxed weaker ! and weaker. Only the " leeches " (so they named the doctors of old) grew fat and flourished; more and more continually they went their rounds ; from going on foot they went on horseback, and the very hides of their steeds grew daily more sleek aud shining ; close carriages and whatever represented comfortable Broughams in those primeval times doubtless began to glitter before their excited imaginations. Yes, there was one other vocation whose members increased in prosperity and jollity amid the general gloom and despair — the Sextons. New crops of yellow graves sprung up fast in the burial-grounds, like a rank growth that throve on the thin blue haze of pestilence that hung over the devoted city. Well, so matters went on, till one fortunate day the good Knight with his dogs again made his appearance with the same offer, on the same conditions. How gladly now the pallid and wasted citizens accepted the terms ; how joyfully contributed from their store whatever was wanted to equip him for his adventure. Away he went, and was soon in mortal combat with the pestiferous enemy ; at every dig and gash into his foul sides, at every gush of his black blood, it seemed that fresh roses came into the cheeks of the reviving children, fresh courage into the hearts of the invigorated parents. So the Dragon was slain, and the Town by degrees recovered its former cheerfulness and prosperity. Foolish old twaddle ! silly old whims of our benighted forefathers ! What on earth possesses you, Mr. Editor, to waste our time and patience with such old-world common-places ! So exclaims the indignant reader. And yet, O fastidious and enlightened fellow-townsman, is there no parallel now-a-days to the stupidity of our imaginary citizens? Are there no Dragons as dreadful and destructive as those scaly reminiscences of the " monstrous Efts " (as Tennyson calls them) of the pre-Adamite world ? Call your Town, if you will, Nelson ; call your pestilential Dragon, the accumulating draff and refuse and stinking corruption thrown off from any population gathered into a small space, that goes by the name of Sewage ; call your Good Knight, Sanitary Reformer ; and his two Dogs, Ventilation and Drainage; call the contribution required a House or Property Tax, as the case may be, and you have the possibility of the recurrence and re-enacting of all the circumstances of the bygone fabulous narrative under your very eyes, and in this very town of Nelson, in New Zealand. True, your Dragon is as yet young — a chick-dragon — a cockatrice as it were. But do not imagine sea air, though not good for him, is powerful enough to destroy him : time and your increasing population will certainly nourish him into a full-grown noisome and destructive Beast. Is there any doubt of the truth of all this ? If you think no evil has as yet arisen from neglect of all the remedies against this source of sickness and death, can any one pretend to say that no evil will arise ? Are not the approaches of the evil notoriously gradual, perhaps scarcely perceptible at first, still not the less sure ? That which produces, at its height and climax, deaths by tens and hundreds, will it not produce deaths by scattered ones and twos at first — produce unhealthiness in many cases before even deaths by ones and twos? Can this be denied, or even questioned ? Has it not been proved to demonstration, certainly as anything in mathematics, and not only proved, but printed and re-printed, cried aloud from the very house-tops in a thousand ways, that exactly in proportion to the want of ventilation and drainage and sewerage in different portions of large towns is the prevalence of disease; the number of deaths in almost exact numerical inverse ratio, it may be said, to the chains and furlongs of drains and sewers, the cubic feet of fresh air; — in direct ratio to the numbers of people congregated in the houses, the number of houses crowded upon every given superficies? Have not even the epidemics least under the control of man, most apparently uncertain and capricious and fitful in their visitations and ravages, such as Influenza and Cholera, been proved statistically to exercise their destructive powers exactly in proportion to the neglect of sanitary measures in every district ? Is not this neglect the very breath of their being, the food and nourishment they thrive upon, if not the actual origin of their existence? AH this is true, and all our readers know it. Luckily, as far as space and ventilation are concerned, we are not perhaps (certainly need not be) in Nelson under any danger of being deprived of sufficient quantities of them. But the very serenity of our atmosphere, in most respects such an advantage and enjoyment, makes it more needful for our Nelson folk to keep a sharper look out, to exercise much greater vigilance in respect of other causes of

insalubrity. Drainage and sewerage is a much more important want with us than with the inhabitants of Wellington or Lyttelton for instance, where the restless breezes really act as energetic and untiring worriers and baiters of our friend the Dragon. We must supply their place with good drains and sewers, or suffer, as we certainly shall suffer, for the want of them. Let our citizens bestir themselves in the matter — let our Provincial Councillors do their duty respecting it — let those whose business it specially is put on the armour and snatch up the strong spear of our Good Knight — the Sanitary Reformer ; let all the rest cheerfully contribute their mites towards him and his dogs — especially that sharp-fanged and strongpulling one — Drainage ; then our Dragon will be stifled in his nonage, and the ravage and devastation which are the necessary concomitants of his maturer powers will be anticipated, forestalled, and prevented.