TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION WITH NEW PLYMOUTH.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4151, 10 July 1874, Page 3

TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION WITH NEW PLYMOUTH.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —Erom your remarks on my question to the Government respecting the completion of the line of telegraph to New Plymouth, it appears to me that you misunderstood the question, and the reply of the Premier. I now, therefore, with your permission, the actual position of telegraphic communication with the chief town of the Province of Taranaki.

The line from Wellington, via Wanganui, has for some time been extended along the coast to Opunaki, a small township on the southern side of Cape Egmont. At this place the Natives of the Taranaki tribe, who are guided in their policy by the leading chief, Ti Whiti, objected to the line being taken through the territory claimed by them, extending from Opunaki to Stoney River, the southern boundary of land occupied by military settlers or their successors. From Stoney 'River to New Plymouth the line is completed, and the break in the lino of some twenty-three or twenty-five miles is temporarily connected by horsemen, who leave each station at noon daily, and exchange their respective’ mails midway. The reason this break is not connected by wire is not as you state in consequence of the narrowness of the track, for the intervening country is open coast land, but because it is thought that the Natives would still object to the line being constructed. The alternative line to which the Premier referred is the new road cut through the forest inland of Mount Egmont. This line would branch off the present telegraphic line at Hawera, and proceed in nearly a straight direction to New Plymouth. This road is cut through the forest over a chain wide at present, and is the narrow track to which the Premier referred. To the construction of a line of telegraph along this inland road there is no Native opposition whatever, and the Government have got the choice of filling up the gap of twenty-five miles on the coast line in the face, perhaps, of some Native opposition, or of constructing a new line of fifty miles from Hawera to New Plymouth, by the inland road, subject only to the natural difficulties, easily obviated, of falling trees and atmospheric moisture referred to. There is a third course open of effecting communication by laying a cable of some 200 miles from Nelson. This would, no doubt, get rid of the difficulty of falling trees and atmospheric moisture. But as the Provincial Government wishes to widen the inland road through the forest to ton chains, one of the difficulties will ho removed, and as the country is very level throughout, the difficulties of constructing or working cannot be very formidable, certainly not sufficient to justify the exclusion of the Province from direct communication with the rest of the Colony. Thomas Kelly, M.H.B. House of Representatives, July 8,