A DAY ON THE TERRACES.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 707, 6 September 1870, Page 2

A DAY ON THE TERRACES.

(BY A CIBCUIIEXCAVATORAMBTJLATIIfG COEEESPOKDENT.)

You were kind enough to compliment me, Mr Editor, by stating that in your privai e opinion' I would find more congenial employment in discussing Barrett's twist 'in the huts or tunnels of the Terraces than in debating with you the advantages or disadvantages derivable by the Colony generally from a Six Million Loan; and you suggested that, if it suited me, it suited you that I should absent myself from your society for twenty-four hours. I took the compliment, the hint, a glass of beer, and the road within the next five minutes. I shook from off my feet the dust of "Westport. I kept shaking the same article from off these same feet for a mile further —even unto the Orawaiti. There is enough dust and sand there to accommodate a colony of Shakers, and my humble opinion of it, after an afternoon's shaking, is that the sooner a tramway is there constructed the better it will be for shoe-leather. There may be a difference of opinion as to making the waste places glad and the desert to rejoice by the cultivation of thyme, and chamomile, and yarrow; there might be a reduction in the pleasure of horses given to rolling in the sand, or in the pride of packers who do now excite admiration or alarm in the bosoms of the nurserymaids of the suburbs; but there can bo but one opinion as to the general utility of a tramway. May we soon see it, and ride over it, and pay for the pleasure until it prove profitable to the speculative genius who will undertake its construction. Given, a tramway, instead of a mile of ankle-deep dust, and who would not prefer to patronise it ? "What visions of suburban villas, of holiday excursions, of cheapened firewood to the town, and of cheaper tucker to the Terraces! What pictures of pleasure and prosperity ! Will nobody pay me to write a prospectus ? Next to paying the printer, there is nothing more necessary for the success of any scheme than the publication of a|pathetic prospectus. The virtue of Parr's life pills lies chiefly in per-

using the literature which encloses them. So is it with tramways. To be patronised they must ho " puffed." I need not say that, to pay, theymustalso be well patronised ; but depend upon it, Mr Courtney, that there is nothing to be done now-a-days without a company and a prospectus—in poetry, if possible. • The sensations of the sand were somewhat alleviated by the scenery. The sun was setting. He does that sort of thing very well on the West Coast, and I like him best setting. He usually rises at hours inconveniently early. His rays gave a fine russet hue to the hill-sides, and seemed to gild the Bnow-clad summits. The houses on the Terraces "looked to advantage" —in the distance. Under other circumstances they unfortunately fail to do so. The bush blended sunshine and shadiness as you see them occasionally blended in early evening, before shade becomes predominant, and sunshine betakes itself to bed. The striking features of the foreground comprised —as contemptible contrasts —about as ugly an excrescence as an architect could add to an otherwise seemly little chapel; a stable on what was once presumed to be a public reserve ; a fence around the Warden's residence after the fashion of i the fences of cattle-yards; and a humble clerical cot, the humility of which, for a Government building, is enhanced by the absence of even a single coat of paint on the outer walls. The contrast to the sublimity of the surroundings was decidedly marked, if not particularly pleasing. Simplicity is a favorite feature of these Governmental buildings. There are no shrubberies for the sun to smile upon, Nature having been more bountiful in its supply of shingle than of soil; and flowers are at a discount. On more generous soil or sand, however, a suburban resident, Mr Falla, has made an ingenious attempt to communicate to a small area the aspect of an Italian garden by the formation of devious walks and the growth of shrubbery in variety ; and the primitive prettiness of the example of Trent Cottage has infected its northern neighbors. What was, only a few seasons ago, a waste of weeds, rudely and partially enclosed by a fence indicative of Maori architecture, is now, in part, neatly fenced paddocks, with incipient poplar trees showing their first buds • and what was formerly, and by the extremest courtesy, called a race-course, is divided, enclosed, and boasts, besides the skeleton of the once " grand" stand, dwelling-houses whose occupants are monarchs of all the sand they survey. With every house occupied along this half-hour's walk—with promise of others being erected—with general tokens of settlement, and order, and cultivation—the Buburbs of Westport, notwithstanding the recent ravages of the sea, have really a more cheerful aspect than they presented at times when prosperity was presumed to be more prevalent. Given, more prosperity, and less sand, and I should be satisfied. Even admitting the existence of sand as inevitable, there is no evil without its accompanying good. If there is sand, there is also shandy-gaff at Gibson's. If there is no tramway, there is Jones's trap. If there is an utter absence of beauty in the aspect of Westport itself, there is always the Orawaiti as a source of contrast ; and, for a little patch of the picturesque, recommend me to some of the varied views which may be had from any point within a few hundred yards of the Orawaiti bridge. If there is, behind the picture, a superabundance of swamp, there is always, under such circumstances, the noble example of Mr Mark Tapley to be admired and imitated.

Bridges, like windmills, have in themselves the elements of picturesqueness. People take a liking to bridges, as they occasionally do to Bridgets. Painters invariably introduce them—as a plank, as a fallen log, or as a humpbacked structure of the ancient style ; and the grand structures of these days —the suspension, the high level, the tubular—are all mighty fine things to look at and to study. I like even the Orawaiti bridge—either to look at, or to 101 l over, or to throw dogs from. He has a poor conception of the ingredients of human happiness who has not realised the pleasure of lolling over a bridge, dangling his legs on one side of the parapet, and gazing vacantly, on the other side, into space, or at the little fishes as they swim below. I should like the Orawaiti bridge much better if there was no toll to pay. It is a source of irritation to read that in England, in one day, five hundred tollgates were abolished, and to know that it takes months to accomplish the abolition of a single toll in these remote parts, after the money has been voted, and the fact agreed upon. Eive hundred poor pike-keepers whose occupation went in one day, no doubt, deserve commiseration, but Jones also deserve? some sympathy in the occasional enforcement of what is, in his instance, a perfectly fair and legitimate charge, but what to the ordinary human mind and pocket is exceedingly obnoxious. But the good time is coming, no doubt—if we wait a little longer. "There is an end of all things," and the time will come when there will be no more tribulation about this toll, but a wholesome increase in the consumption of beer. Be it so " Freedom and whisky gang thegither" —and so it is likely to be at the Orawaiti. Apropos, if the Government would be wise in time, they should accompany the purchase of this bridge j with a coating of coal-tar to the structure itself. Pitch, like tho proverbial I

stitch, saves nine repetitions, if applied in time. Beyond the bridgo there is a bar, I wot. I wait. I wet.