FIFTY YEARS AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15550, 6 March 1914, Page 9

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

MISSING WATER CARTS.

TALK 'OF A FERRY SERVICE.

(Front the KEiALD of March 6, 1864.)

A great d«al of excitement was occasioned i on Friday and Saturday by the momentary expectation of seeing the new water-carts make their first appearance m tie streets. Small city Arabs ran into the streets and covered one another with the pleasant powder of scoria ash, and vegetable refuse which lies ready, at the first rising of the wind, to become part of the air we breathe —determined to avail themselves of the last opportunity they might ever hare of enjoying their usual sport, Friday and Saturday wore on, however, and the promised water-carts made no appearance— people no longer ran to their shop doors to see if the new cart would bo as prettily painted as the new pump, and the small toys broke off on Saturday afternoon to bore gimblet holes in the market house to peep surreptitiously at the exhibition of the wild horse, expecting at the least to see Professor Belew dancing a hornpipe on his back. The carts were to be at work on Friday, at latest. Saturday is past, and there is no sign of them as yet. Perhaps it is thought that there are some citizens left who have not as yet eaten their allotted "peck of dirt." We very much doubt there being any such individual in Auckland, unless, indeed, it be one of the passengers who arrived in the emigrant vessel yesterday. We see that there is an advertisement of a meeting to be held at the Auckland hotel this day, of parties interested in the establishment of a steam ferry between the city and the North Shore. As the Auckland public generally are deeply interested iu the immediate establishment of an efficient ferry, we should hope that this will in every sense of the word be a public meeting, and that we shall speedily see some result in the shape of easy and comfortable communication with our neighbours on. the North Shore, a visit to whom now is really a day's journey, and the experience of much discomfort, and sometimes not a little peril.