The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1866.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 681, 19 January 1866, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1866.

SPECTEMUR AGENDO. " Givo every man thine ear, hut few thy voice : \ Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Tills above all,—To thine ov.nbelf be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cunst not thon be false to any nun."

Ox looking over tlio very elcvorly got up report; of the Engineer-in-Chief on public works, for llic year ISGS, there will be found among tlio works enumerated the following : —~ ATTUKI.AKI) HARBOUR IMPROVEMENTS. Tho works which aro completed, or in progress in connec'ion with the above, are:—Custom-honse-stroet wharf ; Gore-street Jotty, at right angles from ditto ; extension of now T, Queeu'street Pier ; erection of iron store therein ; section No. I of the Breakwater; section Nos. 1 and 2 of tlio Q.ueen's "VYhnrf; stone ballasting wide' - Queen-street Pier; general repairs of timberwork of ditto. Tho completion of tho first / o::r of theso worlds has greatly relieved the Queen-btreot T'ior from its former crowded condition, and has given increased ac.ominod:ition to tho commerce of the port. This will be very materially increased on the completion of tho prosent contracts for tho wharf extensi on and breakwater. Here at least is something that we can understand, for we confess to tin utter inability to make head or tail of the major portion of tlie report. The more wc endeavour to analyse its contents the more confused we become, until we are hound to admit, with the conn! rv folks listening to a long-winded, high-sound-ing lecture, that it must be very good and clever, inasmuch as it is entirely beyond ordinary comprehension. Now, if any portion of the money expended on public works during the past year lias been more thoroughly wasted than another, it is that which has been devoted to the construction of the Gore-street jetty, as it is called, and the breakwater oil" Poini Britomart. Nor is the cost of these works the only thing we have to regret; they arc not only comparatively useless in themselves, but they are part and parcel of a plan which is fast filling up Commercial 13a} r , and hastening the time when there will bo no anchorage ground for small craft within the breakwater, and no water alongside tho (tore-street jetty for anything more than Hat bottomed dingies. "What the exigencies of the city required, and what tho late Superintendent promised to give, was wharf accommodation for the western side of tho town, but tlio construction of tho Gore-street jotty and tho proposed wliarfago accommodation to be afforded by using the breakwater as a quay still brings the traffic into Auckland through tho same funnel, Queen-street, as the original wharf would have done. Tho convenience and interest of tho western side of tho city aro still neglected and ignored. It would have cost no more to have thrown the Gore-street jetty from the foot of Albert-street, than it did io place it where it now is. It would then have been a work of public utility, not; a pier carried along a shallow mud lint becoming daily shallower, but a wharf extending into deep water, and one which would not only have relieved tho Queen-street Wharf, but Custom-house-street wharf and Lower Queen-street, both of which will be just so much the more crowded as the Gorestreet jetty creates traffic. • Among tho works also enumerated is that of filling up the Queen-street "Wharf with stono. Wc have had occasion before now to point out the extreme inutility of this piece of engineering, and the remarks wo then made, about this time last year, had the etl'ect of causing tho immediate removal of a portion of the stone, and tho construction of the " sea serpent. ' "Wo altogether miss the enumeration of this latter work from thelist contained in the report before us, and yet the " sea serpent" is not without its us'e. Originally it was constructed upon tho bed bay alongside the wharf, now it will bo found that despite the employment of an occasional day laborer, the greater portion of it lies, below tho bed of the harbour. It is a noticeable land or rather water mark. The fact Js the filling up of the Queenstreet Wharf with stone and the breakwater, together, are fast silting up Commercial Hay. and our small craft soon will bo driven to seek safe anchorage in some other part of the harbour, while only tlio extreme,end of the Queen-street "Wharf will be available for the larger kind of craft. The Ligar Canal or main sewer is made the scape-goat, and accused of being tho cause of this destruction of tho harbour, but, whether as a brick sewer or as an open glitter, the same matter, as now has been brought down to the bay by the Ligar Ca'nal from time immemorial. The difference of tho effect is, however, to bo ivc-

counted, for thus, that formerly the wash' of the tide cleared off the deposit, and. now that that wash has been done away with by the filling in of the Queen-street Wharf and the throwing out of tho breakwater, the matter brought down by the sewer becomes a solid as wojLls an aromatic deposit, which at this period of the year makes itself appreciable not only to sight but smell. "We cannot help thinking that had the Gore-street jetty been placed at the foot of Albert-street, or in Freeman's 13ay, and had the Queen-street Wharf been loft open as before, that we could have almost felt the Province might have aflorded to have rubbed its hands with satisfaction, even though the cost of superintendence of the public works had amounted —not to two and a-half three, nor yet four per cent—but even to as high as ten or i fifteen per cent, on the expenditure. One word more and we have done, with this portion of the report at least, for the present. An attempt is made to palliate the very objectionable course pursued during the last couple of years, of sending Auckland money out of Auckland for articles which would be procured equally as cheap and as good within tho Province. It is hot in the matter of hardwood alone that this suicidal policy, suicidal at least to the public interests, lias been adopted. The report goes on to say:— Tho Tasmanian timber -which is being \ised to repace tho two inch sheeting, as it becomes worn out, will last two or tlireo timea aa long as tho kauri planking, and as tho cost was about the same, I con sidcicd it my duty to use tho better rnatorinl. an inspection of the cross planking Ol the Queen-street wharf will satisfy any one that this statement is not borne out by the facts of the ease. Ik will be seon that the new" foreign." planking for which Auckland money has been sent to Tasmania, breaks up quite as quickly as kauri, though in another form; it does not chip off short, but, being of a fibrous nature, frets away into something more suitable for door matting than anything else, and some actually of the new stringy bark already requires replacing, where the old kauri alongside is as yet sound. IST or even were the kauri in some little degree inferior, which it is not, to the Tasmania!! timber, would it be cheaper to employ the latter. We had something else for the money cost of the original Queen-street wharf than the wharf itself—what wo shall never have from wharves built and repaired with timber imported into this timber growing country. We had the cost of the raw material as well as that of tho labor put in circulation within our own boundaries and among our own settlers, and more than ouo cultivated farm, in the Province of Auckland owes its present improved state to the money made by its owner from the sale of his timber in the years of 1 his lirst settlement —miles too of useful | roads, now the bye roads to farms, were made for the purpose of getting this timber i out of the forest. ; A new system has unfortunately been I introduced of lato into the matter of ' expenditure of public money iii Auck- [ land, from which this Province has severely suffered both in town and L country ; by which the Province has got . only half the value of its money. We trust , to sec tho besom of reform applied to this , evil during the term of o'Xice of the present . administration.