CHRISTCHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 8, 18 June 1886, Page 23

CHRISTCHURCH.

(From our own Correspondent.) June 7, 1886. The railway pervades us like a pleasant dream— needless to say, I refer to the Midland. Every item of news that comes to us about it at present falls like a sugar plum on the public palate. The new conditions of the contract, the Enabling Bill required to give them effect, the praiseworthy exertions of Mr. Scott the delegate, the promptitude of the Agent-general and the Government, the exertions ! of the League, and the exhaustiveness of the League pamphlet — all these things are in our mouths and minds, from morning till night. The intelligence that the Canterbury, Nelson, and Westland members intend to make common cause with the Government until the Enabling Bill is passed, is much to our taste. The division list on that motion, which gives a solid block of 25 to these members, shows that there is something in the report of their firm intention. The collapse of opposition in Parliament makes the Enabling Bill sure, and the deposit of the £5000 of the Canterbury Company makes the contract safe. The preference for the company to proceed by debentures, having itself only half a million of share capital, is satisfactory, inasmuch as that method involves a less squeezing of profits oat of the country, and last not least, the immediate selection of the lands of the company reduces the admixture of the undesirable (inseparable from all syndicates') to a miuimum. The southerly gales of the last week have made our Northern steamers late, and the late disasters on the Australian coast and our own have made our travelling public fearful. Fears were entertained for the safety cf the Kaikoura, Rotorua, and Hinemoa, all of which, patting out from Wellington on Friday, were overdue at Lyttelton on Saturday. The sea outside was one of the heaviest ever experienced. The Kaifeoura, having a tremendous length and great power, as is natural in a vessel which can maintain an average of 14 knots on the Home voyage, arrived about four in the afternoon of Saturday. The Rotorua got down five hours later, after threshing against a tremendous head sea for thirty hours, and the Hinemoa turned up on Sunday, having spent Friday night comfortably in Worser Bay, under the lee of Cape Terawhiti. The Rotorua is the same vessel which about a fortnight ago was compelled, in a similar storm, to run under the shelter of (Jape Campbell on the mn up to Wellington. It is not generally known that the Te Anau on that occasion bad a narrow escape on her voyage down from Napier. She had passed Cape Palliser, and, while making fur the Wellington Heads, found herself off Cape Campbell, pretty near the lighthouse. Instead of rtmaining quietly under the I. c of that headland, as the Rotorua did, Captain M'lntosh made for Wellington, and was a second time unable to fiud tee entrance, and made Cape Palliser on the other side, which was for a time mistaken for Cape Terawhiti. Such are the perils which those encounter who go down to the sea in ships. Our Volunteer force has been reduced by the disbandmeot of the Woolston rifles, a proceeding that looks unpatriotic on the face of it. But there is no want of patriotism. The corps was got up during the war scare as an honorary corps ; though honorary it did good work with number one battalion for many months. In const quence of its desire to be placed on ' the same footing as its fellow-companies of the battalion, misunderstandings aiose. Angry correspondence followed, the thing got into the newspapers, the fatal stage of publication was reached, and things got from bad to worse until the angry company disobeyed the general order to parade on the Queen's Birthday, and was at once disbanded by order of the efficer commanding the district. The liberality of great associations is something inconceivable. Inspector lender's conduct of the famous severed hand case has saved those a&souiat.ons £2400, and they have clubbed together and paid him fifteen. It is a most unheard of t-tretch of generosity. As if 10 show that the generous spirit still survived that tremendous effort, the mana^eis recommended Mr. Pender to the Government as a most deserving officer. The Government, I hope, will remember in consequence that when Mr. Pender received his well deserved and long de.ayed promotion IS months ago, they, with a generosity nearly equal to that of the great associations, forgot all about the salary of the new poeition.

June 15, 1886. Nothing but volcanoes and subterranean eruptions goes down with us now. The terrible calamity of last Thursday has set us all thinking of the days when our peninsula was a nest of volcanoes , Lyttelton Harbour, Pigeon Bay, Akajoa and a dozen other craters m wild commotion. Traditions, myths, legends, and fables of the Maori time are current from mouth to mouth, theories learned and unlearned form the staple of conversation, and in some qvarters the talk borders on the spiritual. In relation to the last, you have probably observed that in the earlier account of the Tarawera catastrophe, mention was made of the appearance of what the Maoris were pleased to call the " Taipo canoe," what we should style a phantom canoe, after the manner of the novelist who immortalised the great Vander Decken. The story was that about the time of some disturbances in the waters of Lake Tarawera, a party of tourists and Maoris on their way by canoe to Rotomahana saw a large canoe paddled by Maoris in the ancient fashion, nearly parallel with them on the waters of Lake Tarawera. The strange canoe was one of those with raised stern like the ordinary war caDoe, the rowers in the tourist boat hailed, but without effect. There was no disturbance of the atmosphere, the air being clear, the sun bright, and the sky cloudless, so that there was no possibility of any illusion or reflection from a distance. When the tourist turned towards Rotomahana the stranger kept straight on and was soon lost to sight. When the party returned to Wairoa, it was established by all the Maori and resident European testimony, that no canoe of the fashion seen exists anywhere in the district. Hence the Maori mind was disturbed. " Taipo canoe " they concluded, and remarking on certain disturbances which had been lately taking place, they observed that the end of the world waa at hand. This story waa regarded pretty generally as one of the numerous class which gets itself invented unconsciously after ftll great disasters. But the curious thing about it is that it has received very ample corroboration. The Wellington correspondent of one of our morning pppers telegraphed that he has seen some of the tourists who were present, and vouch for every one of the facts I have just put together — the appearance of the canoe, the apparent racing, the silence of the paddlers, the ancient manner of paddling, the absence of any such canoe in the district, the consequent terror of the Natives, the impossibility of optical illusion. Their explanation is that the Tohungas (Maori priests) mu&t have had a canoe of the old fashion stowed away in some tapv scrub-hidden inlet for masquerading purposes. But this is a byesubject, on which I forbear to proceed further. Many in Christchurch aver that they heard the explosions in the small hours of Thursday morning. lamat a loss to know whether this story is as well-founded as, let ub say, the Maori belief that the aforesaid canoe was a warning phamtom sent to the doomed liapus as a portent of coming disaster by their departed friends in the great unknown Taipo country. We are all glad here (by we, I mean the people of Celtic blood) to see that an address of sympathy has been cabled to Mr. Gladstone by fifty members of the Legislature. When we first heard that such a thing was in progress, we were inclined to wonder why the thing was not carried through by the majority (50) in the open House as a Parliamentary resolution. But the Dames having been reviewed, we find the reason : seven out of the fifty signatures are those of Legislative Councillors, consequently a minority of the Lower House signed. The only method open was by private action; The Canterbury contingent is as follows : Hon. W. Reeves, M.L.C., Messrs. Montgomery, Holmes, Ivess, Reese, Steward, Taylor, Turnbull— eight out of a possible 27 : six Honourable, and 21 of the other House. You will see the amount of sympathy at a glance among our representative men for Ireland and Home Rule of the kind offered by Mr. Gladstone. The census returns are, to us Canterbury people, a disappointment. Our electorates have gone ahead slowly, as a rule, but a few have retrograded . Districts like Coleridge and Belwyn are among the latter, also Waimate and Timaiu. Thia demonstrates the depression of the agricultural interest, and, to some extent, the evil to the cause of settlement which lies in large holdings. Kimbeiley still exercises a fascination for ug, greater than ever the West Coast Railway ixerciscd, and the excitement, from all I can see, is increasing.