Auckland Jottings.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXII, Issue 3681, 30 March 1904, Page 2

Auckland Jottings.

{By jar Travelling llcpoxlcr). HAMILTON AND NGARUAWAHIA. The Auckland station is a busy place between half-past nine and ten in the morning. The main train of the clay, the South express, is getting ready to leave then. It is a long train, the forward ears being marked “ Thames,” and the hinder ones “ Rotorua.” As it steams out of the station one is impressed with the thought that Auckland ought to have been a good place to draw a contingent for Bomb Africa from, for it is full of rocks and kopjes. Ail over the country they are scattered, li'.tle round sugar-loaf hills, while the country is covered with rocks the outcrop of what is lying n few inches below the surface. Yet the grass is green enough. In many places the stones on the surface have been used to make fences for the paddocks, which gives them quite an Old Country appearance. Turning off from the Onehunga line at Penrose Junction, the line runs south past Eukikohi and M*rcer, where the Waikato River come.into view—a noble river confined between close banks, and not spread out like the Manawatu. Eangirhi is a name on a little flag station, bu it brings up many a thought of old time history. At iluntly we .pass an erection that almost looks like a mill at first, till the trucks of coal show it to be the shaft-head of a coal mine. At Ngaruawahia the river comes into view again, and as we cross it we can see from iht biidgo the Waipa flowing into it. Another twenty minutes and we reach the main junction of the line, Frankbou.

Here the passengers for the main south hue change, and we leave them behind. bo far they have travelled express, coming eighty four miles in three hours and twenty minutes; now they are to go on In an ordinary mixed train, and it will take them six h mra and a-hah' to travel the remaining ninety-om. miles to Taumanmui. The express train turns east for Botorua aad the Thames, and a leisurely stroll of a mile brings it to Hamilton. Hamilton is marked on the time-table as a idace where the express will stop '* i: required,” but, as a Fraukton official remarked to me, “ ITs a queer train that does not stop there. It is the biggest place in tno Waikato.” And. as every train does stop there, they might as well be properly limed on the time-table.

Hamilton is a bright pleaaantown of about fourteen or fifteen hundred people. It has an area of 1000 acres against. WoodviU’a 1210. It is like Woodville in that the business of the town is in one main street, and nearly all of it on one side at that, although the second side is filling up. At the back of the sections on that tide, the Wa-kato is flowing at the bottom of a cliff. The railway station is just at Intend of the street, but as the railway bridge is just beyond the street no shunting across it can be dons, so that it does not get blocked like our McLean Bt. The street is" a chain and a-haU wide, with a chain roadway, and the business blocks raacb for about .thirty chains, against the fifteen of Vogel St. .At the lower end of the street the Waikat-o is crossed by a traffic bridge, which is likely tc be a source of trouble to the Borough, for it has been condemned as unsafe for loads of over four tons. And to build a five chain bridge over a deep river running five miles an hour will be an expensive job. Across the river there is a large residential part of the town, with a few small shops. Although there is a large number of shops in the main street, there are not many really good ones, and none that would equal the best Woodville ones. Behind the main street the hills rise pretty closely, and on the top of them is the reservoir, so much like the Woodville one that it suggests that Mr Metcalfe must have designed it. In a dip in the hills -'resides a pretty little lake, where the Hamilton people do tlu ir boating, for the river is too treacherous to be trusted. A little beyond is the hospital, a nice looking building. Values are rising in Hamilton. ’ About thirty years or so ago the trustees of the Wesleyan Church were given an acre in the main street, and it was valued at £lO. About twenty years ago they shifted their church to the back and tried to lease the front for building sites, but could not get them taken up farsome time. After a while they let the corner at £G a year. Now they are about to resume possession, and intend to build a block of six shops, and expect to get £8 10s a week for the corner one, £3 10s for the one al ihe other end, aad 25s a week for each of the others. This will enable them to pay interest and sinking fund, and to provide a valuable endowment for the church by and by.

A fi attire of Hamilton is the number of bonding houses there. There are four holds, but they are not enough for the accommodation required, apparently, ant] the demand has been met by the erection of houses that give accommodation quite equal to that suppli.d by tliQ ordinary hotel, and better than many, so that the old saying, “ you crt’fc got good uocominoda-tioa without hocuses ” is refuted at ore. 1 . [to ns continued] .