The Evening Mail. THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1877

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 380, 12 July 1877, Page 2

The Evening Mail. THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1877

The dull'-To brought against its " Oamaru contemporaries by the Utajo iJo.ibj i iuics of studiously ignoring '* the great difficulties which will be encountered in constructing a line to jNastby from Oamaru by way of the Pass" is totally unfounded, and, considering the position it has taken up in reference to the matter, comes with very bad grace from that journal. We are told that " it would have been milch better had their remarks tended to show some reasonable mode of overcoming those obstacles, instead of attributing the reported facilities of railway construction by the Strath-Taieri route to the personal motives o: tUe members of the Taici'i

County, ami to the ignorance or deception of its engineer." Our coiitemporary hiis viewed the Oamaru-]Saseby route through a phce of murky glass, whilst he has looked at the Strath-Taieri route through a p: of rosy tint. As we have previous- t-aid, the dilierence between the report ot Messrs. Dcll and Thornton and that <>f Mr. Hay, is that in the one case independent and able surveyors were appointed, and in the other a servant of the Taieri County Council, whose earnestness and z.al to serve his masters faithfully ami well were not at all unlikely to leave traces of colouring in l is report. We deny, in toto, that there are any difficulties on the OamaruOsascby route, other than th'-ne mentioned in the report. The Oanuiru Railway Committee asked for reliable data, and Messrs. Dcll and Tuoknton are willing to stake their reputation on the accuracy of their survey, and of the report thereon ; whilst, ■we presume, the surveyor of the Taieri County Council has served his employers equally well by smothering difficulties and creating advantages in his report of the Strath-Taieri route. We do not blame him either. It was well known by some of the Taieri County Councillors and other advocates of the opposition line that difficulties did exist, for some of them know the country that would be tra- . .versed, well ; and it was their best policy not to employ outsiders who would not

be so docile as their own serAant, and who might "let the cat out of the bag." All the engineering difficulties that actually occur on the Oamaru-Naseby line are now known to the public through the channel of an unbiassed and able report. Although we would not willingly mislead in order to gain an advantage over our opponents, we do not exactly see the philosophy of creating difficulties that we may cope with them, even for the satisfaction of the Otago Daily Times. Nothing has been cloaked by us, for we are fully alive to the fact that following other people's example, and indulging in misrepresentation would only weaken our cause as much as it is weakening theirs. The unblushing effrontery of the Times in charging us with studiously avoiding difficulties that it says exist on our line will be apparent to the public when we state the facts of the ease. As regards distances, we have carefully measured them on several maps in order to be able to write positively, and we find that thev are as follow Oamaru-jNaseby route : Naseby to Dunti'oon, 40 miles; Duntroon to Awamoko, 22 miles ; Awamoko to Oamaru, G miles. Strath-Taieri route : Dunedin to Mosgiol, 10 miles ; Mosgiel to Greytown, 5 miles ; Grey town to Outran), 5 miles ; Outram to Blair-Taieri, 2:) miles ; Blair-Taieri to Naseby, 40 miles. We challenge our contemporary to deny the correctness of the foregoing figures. We have rather understated than overstated the distance from BlairTaieri to Naseby, for, as the erow flies, the mileage between those two places is exactly 33 miles, and we have, therefore, only allowed five miles for deviations. Now, as the total distance in a straight line from Oamaru to Naseby is only 40 miles, and the estimate we have given of the length of the proposed OamaruNascbv line is G8 milus, it will easily be seen that the length of a railway line from Blair-Taieri to Naseby is more likely to lie' 10 or I~> mihs over the estimate than unuer. We are quite aware that we are lighting under disadvantageous circum-

stances with our huge contemporary. The Times is supposed to be an influential journal, and to preach gospel. Well, if the amount of waste paper our contemporary provides for fishmongers and others be any test of journalistic ascendancy, it occupies that proud position, and is quite welcome to it. We might continue contradicting the falsehoods of our contemporary till doom's-day, but it would never have the honor to acknowledge itself beaten, although it might feel it, as it does now. We, however, challenge our contempory —in a sum of L2O. to be given in equal amounts to the Oamaru and Dunedin Hospitals—to prove th:- untruthful assertions contained in a suu-article on the railway question in its ssu3 of July 10.