THE EVENING MAIL MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1877.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 347, 4 June 1877, Page 2

THE EVENING MAIL MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1877.

We have been surfeited with arguments for and against the three routes proposed to be adopted for a railway to open up the interior. Some of these have been passably reasonable, but they were advanced by newspapers whose writers had taken the trouble to think out the questionevidently with the aid of some authentic data. Not so, however, in the case of

one journal, whose pretentious appearance would lead one to expect better things. The writer (we should think an escaped inmate of Mr. Hume's establishment), evidently with the wrong map before him —probably that of the war in Europe—essays to offer an opinion on the question. He absolutely turns the district of Otago upside down in his clumsy attempts to adduce ai'guments in favour of the route that would confer the greatest advantages on the community in which the paper in question is issued. It would be the height of absurdity to suppose that people cannot see the motives that actuated the publication of such literary garbage. We do not blame the Otago Daily Times for upholding any other route b\it that of Oamaru. This, perhaps, is pardonable : but let it not attempt to gain an unfair advantage by misrepresentation, which is highly reprehensible, f.ltliough it may be the result of ignorance. There is no necessity for shilly-shallying on such a question. Dunedin would, of course, like to hav • direct communication with the in-t-ji .• —even if the line passed through a desert. It would not be sufficient that it should be constructed by way of Oamaru, and so let the two mai'kcts and ports of shipment stand on their own merits. That would be far too hazardous. It is not likely that the settlers of the vast fertile plains that are sought to be opened up by this railway would send their wool, produce, &c, all the way to Dunedin when they could find a good market and shipping port at Oamaru. The fact is that the Oamaru and Xaseby route and those by way of On tram and StrathTaieri are very different things. No one acquainted with the country that would be opened up by either of the proposed routes would doubt the desirability of adopting them all if the country could afford the expense. This, of course, is impossible, and the next best thing is to be satisfied with one of them. We shall express no decided opinion until professional information is to hand as to the merits of the three routes proposed, lest we fall into the same errors as those committed by the writer in the Times.

Since writing the above, we have received information by wire that Mr. Blair, the District Engineer, lias been instructed by the Government to make a reconnaisance survey of the several routes proposed for the railway into the interior. This looks like business, and shows more promptitude than almost anything else we have known the Government to do. All we ask is that Mr. Blair will be careful that the Government official be not transferred into the political partisan. We shall await the result with considerable interest.