HASTINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1199, 22 February 1895, Page 20

HASTINGS.

Hastings people were quite elated when the two long trains crowded with country youngsters passed through on Saturday morning, and the opinion was freely expressed that cheap fares of that kind were a step in the right direction. An excursion in the opposite direction as far as Makotuku will take place on Saturday week, and given a fine day there will be a very large number or patrons from this end of the line. The preparations for the comic operetta • £ Phyllis '\ are approaching completion. There will be new dresses, scenery, and other appointments, with a chorus of forty Toices. . . , ■ The fire brigade had a fine practice with the steam engine last week, deluging all the shops in the main street in a fashion which proved conclusively that it is next to impossible for there ever to be another fire of any magnitude. This being so it is remarkable that an insurance ring should be allowed to levy blackmail as high as sixty-seven shillings per cent, when the rates in Auckland, where fires occur almost every day, are only seven and sixpence ! What are the people thinking about to submit to such a state of things/ Are there no foreign companies of undoubted stability that would taUe the risks at half the iniquitous rates now levied ? A small yearly levy on each ratepayer would cover all the fire losses and establish a large fund in a few years. ... A very amusing thing in connection with the brigade's last practice was that next morning an important deputation waited on the officers of the fire brigade, and pointed out the iniquity of pumping sewer water over over the town again. The smell, they said, •was simply awful. The firemen took the lecture quite calmly without reply. The fact is that the water was drawn from an 18,000 gallon tank near the flour mill, the water in which is renewed everyday, but it would have spoiled the joke to have told the deputation so. The Council have put down another sluice gate below the theatre, and made other improvements which enable the fire brigade to concentrate the whole supply of the swimming, baths, 70,(300 gallons, besides some thirty artesian wells, in any part of the main thoroughfare as far as,the.Catholic church, fully a quarter of, a -mile, from which they could tackle any fire within two thousand feet of the main road on either side, and they can within this area pour 600 gallons of water per minute whenever it is wanted. At last practice a hose was taken to the top of O'Reilly's hotel and: a stream from a one and a half inch nozzle thrown as far as Caulton's hotel, five chains away. It is also a fact that the water was driven through the wall of the Bank of New* Zealand, the water pressure at the tjnje being 160 per square inch. Now we want Our insurance pre mi urns reduced, and we are going to have it done too. (_Owing to pressure on our space we are obliged to hold over a portion of our correspondent's letter—Ed.]