WELLINGTON.

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 389, 24 September 1880, Page 15

WELLINGTON.

(From our own Correspondent.) Wellington, September 20, 1880. My last letter to you seems to have miscarried, and if it has reached you the news will be stale. Since I wrote, the Bimutaka accident has been the only thing that stirred the dead level of dullness here. The first accounts were terrifying in their vagueness, and when the truth came in a feeling of annoyance was blended with our belief. The accident has only brought into clear relief the fact that from the making of our lines to the building of our railway carriages, the first thought has been political log rolling, and the last, the usefulness of the road, or the safety of the passengers. The Rimutaka line was confessedly made to buy up a few prominent politicians who have property in the Hutt and Wairarapa districts. It climbs precipices and skirts ravines where the breaking of a coupling or a tyre, or the presence of a single loose rail, may mean death to all 'on board. No ordinary engine can work up it. Every journey entails a stoppage and change of engines at each side of the range. Extra mileage is charged for the short distance. The amount so charged would pay the interest on the sum necessary to construct a safe road round by the coast and lake. And now in addition to all this, if all the machinery works correctly, the whole train may be blown away by a nor'-wester. The " Hau " politicians who forced the construction of this road as the price of their votes ef course, care little for a score or so of lives lost by their corrupt action. And as if this were not enough the carriages are so flimsy that a heavy jolt sends them to pieces. A friend not long out from home remarked to me that in all his remembrance of railway accidents there, he never heard of the whole upper part of a carriage coming sheer away from the flooring before. Remember, that when the carriages were blown off the line, they did not fall down the incline, as they were held by the engine, but the whole upper part of them came right off and spilt the unfortunate passengers down the gully. Remember, that if those carriages had been properly built, those people would not have been shot down a precipice to be mangled and slaughtered in their fearful Ml. No doubt they would have been inside shaken, perhaps badly shaken. The plain fact remains that the Rimutaka deaths lie equally at the doors of the log-rollers, who made money on what the limani Herald properly calls " tightrope engineering," and the people who built and passed gingerbread carriages which come asunder with a shake. There has been no ; proper inquiry into the accident yet. The Neve Zealand Mad has contrived to turn the accident into utter ridicule by what it terms " a full page illustration " of it. To describe this production is impossible ; but if you give any four year old child, who has seen an engine and carriages, a slate and pencil he will probably produce a far superior sketch. The engine has one wheel on each side. Some of the passengers are falling upwards out of the carriages. There are a number of strokes in the background, which may be either strokes of exclamation, rockets just goiug off, or a squint-eyed man's ideas of drawing tree trunks. There are a few people clinging to the central rail, who, in proportion to the rails and engine, must be about thirteen feet high ; the Hue itself is on a gradient of forty-five degrees. There is a boy " turning the Catherine wheel," and with his thumb at his nose and hands derisively extended at a lady, who seems to be dancing on an invisible tight-rope ; the carriages seem to be copied actual size from the wooden ones in a German toy box, and the whole thing is truly worthy of the most intensely asinine paper in the southern hemisphere. In plagiarism of Mr. Bracken's Wellington correspondent, this journal has started a series of epistles from " Mrs. Murphy,"' and the ideas of its contributor on Irish provincialism may be gathered from the fact that in the last issue he spells " thought " tltotv, " dunce " dons ; and invents a new bit of Irish which he calls " xhoul agra." He has some hazy idea of what we pronouuee shule, but he does not know its meaning, and drags it into a line which is as devoid of sense as its writer. When I add that the purport of the latter part of this passage of gratuitous inanity and insolent gibberish is that Mrs. Murphy is making love to a volunteer, and has entered a divorce suit against her husband, that she may marry the " guardsman," it will be seen what a thorough acquaintance with the character of Irishwomen the prurient and gooseberry-brained fool has who contributes the '• letter." The " unco godly " here are flattering themselves that in. the coming Governor we shall have a man who will be of their own stamp, and that with his help the happy Dunedin days will be restored when anybody not sitting under Mac Howler, and serving on committees with Henderson will be banished. " Bill Hutchison, my boy Bill," is active in preparing a civic reception, and horresoo rcferens it is said he has engaged a dancing master to teach him how to bow. But such a making friends with the mammon of iniquity ab that is disbelieved in by most people. If " Bill " would only get out of the way and allow some persons of decent capacity to pull this city out of the sluugh of debt and dirt, he and his have brought it into, it would be a blessing. We owe nearly half a, million ; and for it we have streets not paved but very badly macadamised, a system of sewers that would disgrace Little Peddlington ; sewers that are choked with every heavy shower, and which, running in many places open, and in most badly trapped, convey stench aud disease all over the town. We have stieets ill-lighted, or with an occasional lamp only intensifying the surrounding gloom, and we have a municipality which seems incapable of doing anything but bandying bad language and accumulating debt. The Irish news which Eeutcr purveys for us is remarkable for its invemou of facts and gross ignorance. It furnished a paragraph lately about Davitt, Killen, Brennan, and Daly, of which it inverted the two former completely, and its latest performance is to create some place called " Kingston," a mile from " Dublin." This remarkable place must have sprung up within the past few months. First I thought it meant Kingstown, but as that is over six miles from Dublin^ I saw I was wrong.