South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1895.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 8131, 15 January 1895, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1895.

The Mount Cook Hermitage is in a queer street indeed. There is a person in charge who, we believe, holds an accommodation license for the premises, the conditions of which require or should require, that the holder shall provide accommodation for man and beast. Yet it is matter of common report, and matter of a special report published in in another column, that “ while Mr Adamson is willing and would do his best to accommodate visitors, he is not permitted nor has he the stores to do so.” The owner of the property appears to be trying to force the Government to make a bid for the place, in order to carry it on, or else offer a subsidy to them. A strong protest should be made against the continuance of the present muddle. The Government are issuing tickets to tourists to carry them through to our icy wonderland, and when they get there they may camp out under the scrub and eat roots, unless they provide for themselves,as Haast the explorer did. It is clear that the Hermitage itself does not pay,but it is probable that, when the railway business is taken into account, it would pay the Government to take it over and carry it on, as they have taken the Hanmer Springs and the Rotorua Sanatorium. The Government have many ways of pushing the business that private persons or a company cannot make use of, and the tourist business is really more of national than of local concern. It would be extremely stupid to allow the Tasman valley to be cut out of the tourist field for the sake of a few hundreds a year. The tourist would make it up in some way or other.

The approaching election of the Harbour Board is creating more real- interest among the ratepayers of the district than any previous one, and it is to be hoped that, as Mr George J. Wreathall suggested in his letter, the ratepayers should approach the whole question in a calm judicial spirit. It is to be hoped, too, that they will understand the term “ calm and judicial spirit” in a different sense from that of Mr Wreathall, so that instead of, as he does, condemning one Board and praising another on imaginary grounds, they will read up the proceedings on which to judge the boards, and ascertain the facts as a means of forming a judgment as to what should be done. Mr Wreathall’s letter is mild in tone, but it is one of the most misleading that has ever been published, in its calm treatment of his imaginations as if they were generally admitted and absolute truths. And finally he repeats the mistake which was made at the last election, in asserting that it is for the ratepayers to decide upon a line of action. This is multiplying the amateur engineers with a vengeance, and it can only lead to nothing useful being done.