SANITARY STATE OF DUNEDIN.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 113, 17 September 1864, Page 3

SANITARY STATE OF DUNEDIN.

[From the Daily Times, September I.]

If any of our readers are curious to understand how, through a patient unswerving observance of the conditions laid down by nature, disease may be manufactured in any quantity and of the most deadly quality, under circumstances which might have been supposed most favourable to health, let him visit a few of tho courts, and allies, and rights of way leading, for instance, down from George-street. We will, at all events, guarantee him a " sensation effect" of the highest character. He must, however, be good at a water jump, and even then we recommend him to equip himself with his stoutest and highest boots or he will scarcely penetrate into the interior. Perhaps his best base of operations will be Great King-street : let him adventure boldly behind its thin screen of decent houses and he will find himself in a marsh, covered with flax bushes, and irrigated by several streams as black as Styx ; let him then choose any one of these waters, and push boldly into the interior. He has but to follow his nose, and most assuredly he will need no other guide. The extensive middens which surround every flax bush on either side will afford him an interesting study if he ia curious in vegetable and animal matter in an advanced stage of decomposition. With unremitting energy the inhabitants of the neighbourhood have converted every one of them into a magazine of disease, capable of decimating a moderately-sized village ; and with the greatest foresight have plentifully provided these storehouses of typhus and scarlatina, with cast raiment and old boots, which, though useless for the purpose of attire, are still admirably adapted for retaining the most subtle seeds of disease which, otherwise, the wind and rain might disperse, and possibly drown. Our traveller will, if he persevere, soon find himself among some rieketty weatherboard constructions, perched in a forlorn manner on the drier portions of the swamp, round which groups of joyless children are wearily engaged in the manufacture of dirt pies. As they look listlessly up at the unwonted apparition of a stranger, he will have an opportunity of comparing the palor of their flabby faces, with the chubby cheeks which possibly he has left at home, and he may convince himself of the complete success which has attended the precautions so judiciously employed to foster disease and prepare the patient for its reception. But he is not yet at his journey's end. The copious black stream he has been tracing to its source has, however, shrunk into a narrow ditch of a yellowish green and extremely fetid filth, which flows sluggishly over a quaking black morass, into which a walking-stick may be thrust to the handle without finding bottom. He must now carefully pick his way on the crazy board bridges, or rather rafts, which conduct to the home of the Otago working man. A moment's reflection will assure him that there arc floating paths of this description leading to every inhabited house, otherwise the house would be simply inaccessible, though the paths are frequently hidden in black slush. The rafts will probably bear him, but he must be careful to put his foot well in the middle of each board. Let him advance a few steps further, he will find a garbage paved walk, with houses on either side ; the streamlet still oozes along beside it, forming a pool opposite each doorway for the reception of its contributions to the yellow wave ; a step more, and he will be at the head waters. Like the Nile, they will be found in a marsh; unlike in this respect, however, that the parent bogs bear neither reeds nor indeed any vegetables, but a loathsome green slime. The foun-tain-head is claimed, by the inhabitants of a wooden hut, to be immediately under their bedchamber, and the appearance of the inmates, especially of the dulleyed, parchment-skinned children, who have neither strength nor energy even to make dirt pies, fully justifies the assumption; but though a considerable portion of the streamlet does flow from the green pool on which their cottage floats, we should prefer, on chemical grounds, to consider the " convenience " which stands beside the floating hut as the true source. ~

The geographical inquiry having been thus satisfactorily disposed of, we should recommend the intrepid voyager to pause awhile in this charming spot, aud here, if his stomach will allow him, meditate — surely there can be no fitter spot for the speculation — on the charms and advantages, sanitary and otherwise, of the laissez faire system. By it the owner of the property is enabled to extract a considerable revenue from land, which, if it were situated in a country where a despotic centralization enforced sanitary precautions, would probably be wholly unproductive. The man who makes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before is a benefactor to his country. It is true no grass will grow here now, but the time must come when the present population will have died off and new tenants will fail to come forward, and then where he found a barren swamp he will leave a fertile marketgarden admirably situated, with an unfathomable soil of the richest manure. The ineffectual attempts of magistrates and inspectors of nuisances to interfere with these arrangements, are a pleasant foil to tlio pictixre. If our adventurer be still unexhausted by hiß toils, we can recommend several of the cutß in Georgestreet to his attention. That which we explored presents, to the casual observer, the appearance of a lane, but is, in reality, a canal of semi-liquid nightsoil ; along the side of which may be noticed the raft-bridge arrangement before described, which forcibly carries back the mind to the lake-dwellings of primitive Europe — so strikingly do the latest products of civilization resemble the dawning efforts of human intelligence. Our savage progenitors, however, appeared to have, for unknown reasons, preferred lakes to bogs, and are not known to have evinced any decided preference for bad smells. What we have attempted to describe we have seen, and we have indeed, perforce, suppressed the most loathsome {details. That foul water — green, yellow, and black — is our only safeguard. A few weeks' dry weather may at any time breed a pestilence, compared to which the present mortality, heavier though it be than that of any English city, will be as nothing. We have seen, as yet, but the " green tree ;" — what will happen "in the dry " remains yet to be seen.

All disease arising from such causes as those which we have indicated is to be prevented, therefore every death occasioned by them is, if not murder, at least culpable homicide. Fining the unfortunate inhabitants of these deadly swamps is worse than useless. They can pay no fines, and they go to jail, leaving their unfortunate wiveß and children to combat the malaria on an impoverished diet. Fining the owners is legal, and might do much good, but the owners can not always be reached. One is sorely tempted to wish for a few hours of a vigorous despotism, unshackled by any respect whatever for vested interests.

Scotch and Shakspeariana. — D'ye ken why my neck-handkerchief is like one of Master Shakspeare's plays ? Hoot to-it. Ye dinna ken ? Varra weel; then I'll just tell ye : ma neck-handerchief ia like one of his plays, because it's a Tie-mon.

The Income-Tax. — For the first eleven years after the introduction of the income-tax by Sir. R. Peel in 1842 it was always at the same rate ; in the second eleven years it has been changed as often as Jacob's wages. But with all its changes it will now for the first time stand at sixpence. Until 1853 it was constantly sevenpence in the pound, the attempt of Lord John Russell's administration to raise it in 1848 being relinquished for good and sufficient reasons. In 1853 Mr. Gladstone carried his Bill for continuing it at sevenpence until 1855, then reducing it to six x - nee, and in 1827 to fivepence for three years more. It never, however, really reached even the reduction to sixpence, but in the very next year, 1854, owing to the Crimean war, it was raised to fourteenpence — that is to say, doubled ; and in 1855 it was advanced to sixpence until the return of peace. In 1857, peace having come, it was reduced not to Mr. Gladstone's fivepence, but to the old sevenpence again. In 1859 it was raised to ninepence, and in 1860 to tenpence ; in 1861 it was again ninepence, in 1863 to the old sevenpence. It is now come down to sixpence, which will be the lowest rate to which it has yet descended. All the changes date from the 6th of April in the year in which they w*r« made*