The Bushwan.

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 369, 27 July 1907, Page 13

The Bushwan.

Cheerily oil the axe of labour Let the sunbeams danoe, Better than the flash of sabre Or the gleam of lance 1 Strike! With every blow is given Freer sun and isky, And the long-hid earth to heaven. Looks with wondering eyeLoud behind us grow the murmurs Of the age to come : Clang of smiths and tread of farmers Bearing harvest home! Here her virgin lap with treasures Stall the green earth fill : Waving wheat and golden maize-elans Crown each beech-en hil'll Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer For thy breath of snow, And 1 our tread 1 is all the firmer For the rocks below. Freedom, hand in hand with Labour, Walketh strong and brave; On the forehead of his nexghbouir No man writeth "Slave!* — J. G. Whittier.

3Jhe sure and solid contracting firm of John McLean and bons have just put up another record, and this time it is a colonial one. The Arthur's Pass tunnel contract, on the Midland railway, for which their tender of £599,000 has just been accepted, is the largest work ever let south of the Line — largest in price, and it follows that it is largest in magnitude. The tunnel is to be five and a quarter miles long, and, when completed, will be one of the five biggest tunnels in the world. • * • There was only one other tender — that of an English firm — and the Messrs. McLean and Sons have got the work at their own price, and, as 'tis whispered the engineer's estimate was just under the half million, the enterprising contractors, with reasonable luck, stand to make a cool hundred thousand over the deal. This is not the only pot they have on the fire. There is the Wellington dock contract, which represents about a quarter of a million, and there is a reclamation contract in Auckland harbour, besides some smaller jobs here and there. • • • It needs great organising power and no small generalship to keep all these going in apple-pie order, but those who know Murdoch and Neil McLean best feel not the smallest particle of doubt as to their pulling off successfully anything they undertake. On dit that Murdoch, the senior partner, proceeds Home at once to engage a first-class engineer, one who has gained experience in the construction of tunnels bearing some approximation to the one required at Arthur's Pass. • • * The -firm of John McLean and Sons had its modest beginnings m Auckland, where Murdoch and Neil grew up as boys and received their schooling. John McLean, the head of the firm, was a stalwart Nova Scotian, who had started life as a shipwright, and had all the manly grit and independence of the strenuous race from which he sprang. When his two boys were able to join him in the battle of life, he launched out as a contractor and, as any work the father undertook was marked by solidity, and he was never found behind-hand and his word was as good as his bond, he soon began to widen his sphere of operations. • • • The same sterling qualities marked the sons just as strongly, and when, in the course of years, the father retired after a laborious life, the firm was soundly established. Between them, Murdoch and Neil have carried its operations to a far more extensive scale than the founder ever dreamed of and some of the largest public works in the colony stand a<= monuments to .their contracting; skill and thoroughness. For the last ten years or more Mr. Neil McLean has directed the firm's operations in and about Welline^on and the West Ooast, while Mr. Murdoch McLean, the elder brother, has maintained his -quarters at Auckland. "Bo+h of them are widely and deservedly popular.