Stop! Look out for the Engine.

Southland Times, Issue 4483, 22 November 1882, Page 2

Stop ! Look out for the Engine.

■: ♦ ■ TO THE EDITOB. Sm,— What '^ satirical^tiirn: of tnipd must the engineer have had who ordered ' those two white posts to bo erected on the Lumsden and Mararoa line of railway, „ three miles from any metals or means of » locomotion! With theao words of dire warning painted in large letters thereon* he must have been a bit of a prophet, or > po-sessed with a familiar spirit or some vein of mischief far out of the 'common run, to be able to poke fun at' -'us a year or two ahead of him, as it were. We, the inhabitants who have taken _up lq,nd and settled in the district on the strength of the Government promises, have obeyed him to the letter, and have stopped, and are literally looking out for the engine still. It was an unfortunate blunder naming the line the^Lumsden and -Mararoa railway ; it should have been the Lumsden and Bound Hill, because the name of Mararoa savours of squat terdom some— what, which makes it odoriferous and dietasteful to all right thinking liberals. And why should we settlers of Hiimiltonburn, Round Hill, and Centre Hill have the sins of 'the squatters visited upon us ? And beside?,, the Round Hill in far enough for any practical objects "for the raHwaj to extend to for many years to come. This hatred and jealousy of squatters is a - si range anomaly of colonial life. I believe that faith in it and the sin of the unearned increment are to form two of the 3339 articles o£ the new religion to be taught in our State schools in the not very far distant future. That is, \yhen by being* tacitly ignored and openly discountenanced by Government all traces of the different creeds formed from tho teaching of what onr fathers ; ware unenlightened enough to " reverence as the good old Book have vanished. But I;antnot;gping iinto^o' ; deep a question . What we want irter rail way to Round Hill, and, the;, fails laid on that part of the line already formed, before the grain season, has set in. I hear talk of a petition for that object being ' got up, but we might as well petition Mount Cook as the Govern mant,, unless backed by a live momber with t> vote, or just before an ejection. The money, lam told, for laying those three miles of tails vas voted > some time previous to the new Loan Bill being passed. ; ! What has become of it rio-i ; body knows — swallowed by sonie district with a memljer, most probably; The most" practjoal use to which we can put that palnted.,wjoojden satire on the use we made of pur extended franchise, would "be convert it into a gibbet whereon ■to hang / the three question-putHrig small-grievaDC*- 7 raongering roUwbobbling nonentities who represe^n j; us in Parlianaenr, for trahid'^ly ;> thawing, us add tho whole district ; o£ Southland overboard last, session. 'Irefer .' , to the vote; of- £35,000, redaced to nobody knows what Whh what gusto the wilj qld m^wbor for Mataura would come to

the tat*cdd6^^*^hiß rmrondam allies .1 For, if I mistake not, Ke T^httle gypipa; tb/with^ach a* they' when Aey cease tc