RAILWAY EXTENSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7647, 26 May 1886, Page 3

RAILWAY EXTENSION.

TO TUB KDITOR. Sir,-One is glad to learn from the newspapers that the Committee of tha Chamber of Commerce is taking action in reference to this matter. It is hights ime that the weak talk continued year after year should be followed by earnest effort to secure first of all, the continuation and completion of the Helensviiie line. No other public work promised so long and SO repeatedly has been left in such uttet neglect. This postponement is all the more voxatioua because there is every prospect o£ its becoming; immediately remunerative. It! is not one of those lines that may pay when trade shall be created years after they are finished. The timber business alone would make it at once successful. There is good! forest country from Helensviiie to Wellaford, and from K&iwaka onwards unknown million! of kauri, such as no other part of the colony can show. Beside which, wood of every other kind is found in rioh abundance. I say this from perfect knowledge, having walked from Heleasville along all the line through all the places named before roads and bridges were made. Surely at last this long-neglected work v n " be accomplished. Bat it should now done with all speed. As the £20,00 C on the estimate last year was struck out in such an unjust manner, a sum should now bo fixed that will allow the line to proceed in several places at the same time. Mr. Hobba is reported to have said in the House recently that £10,000 proposed for this work will be regarded as insolent. Certainly, justice and the unparalleled resources of wealth north of Auckland demand an adequate appropriation. No other part in the world so much resembles the Holy Land when in its palmiest daya as Auckland North, either for soil or fruits or forests ; yet thia portion of the colony has been most disregarded. Let the Chamber of Commerce and all Aucklanders unite with the northern settlers and ask in trumpet tones the reason of this disgrace caet on the fairest portion of the colony.—l am, &c, Oku Who Knows,