DRAINAGE OF LAKE ELLESMERE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 594, 24 March 1882, Page 2

DRAINAGE OF LAKE ELLESMERE.

To ihe Editor

Sir.—Your correspondent, Mr F. Gread, is quite welcome to all his Heaven born genius, so far as lam concerned. I would inform him though, that I do not require any convincing by going to Tamutu on horse back in a south-west gale to run the chance of getting a salt water bath gratis, as I have been there a dozen times, and stayed there for the night, in my route to Harts creek, long before he ever saw the place, or before he left Danbury ; and I am as much interested in seeing Lake Ellesmere drained notwithstanding his wail over this wonderful scheme. I fail to see anything in his letter that throws any light on the subject sufficient to guide any body of men, or for me to alter my opinion. Lake Elle--mere when allowed to rise as it used to do some years back, was little short of being a fresh water lake, as in travelling round at those times my horse would drink the water anywhere.

According to the evidence collected by the committee, if the sea could be kept from coming into the lake at Tamutu, evaporation alone would keep the lake down. If so, why not the bank without the flood gates V They also say that the lake is most affected by the sea in a wet stormy sou-wester, and not by a dry sou-west wind. Now, a south-west wind travels at an angle along the beach from the direction of Timaru, and in a heavy rain the sea is not near so high in rollers as in a storm}* dry south wind, because it is direct on to ihe beach, and is not beaten down by the action of heavy rain, and that would bo the time when the salt water would run over the shingle bank into the lake, if it could, but it is only spray.—Yours, etc.,

W. COOP,