"THE ROADLESS NORTH."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 195, 16 August 1907, Page 4

"THE ROADLESS NORTH."

It is a gTea.t pity that some of the Southern member? who occasionally try i to raise a laugh in the House by what | they presumably intend for satire about j the needs of the North Island, cannot I take a trip through the Northern Penin- :l sula just about this time of year. Auck- ' land has already had more than its fair I share of rain for the season, and what I this means to our outlying- ba.ck-bloeks i no one who has not had personal experi- '■ ence of them can have any possible con- j ception. Anywhere and everywhere in j the claylands and the loose volcanic soil j that form so large a proportion of our ! rural areas, roads in the rainy season I practically cease to exist. That is to ! say. as mean? of transport or fvi=n of coramunication they are to all intents and purposes useless. Travellers on !

foot or horseback roar slowly and pain- i fully find their way along these fathom- I' less quagmires; but for wheeled traffic I \ x thsjj become absoiuteijr - imjassiWe, h

And when our members* and our newspapers cry out about the •'Roadless North,'* they are not using a figure of speech, but stating the plain and literal truth in terms that ought to evoke offers of sympathy and aid even from Otago and Canterbury if they were not blinded by jealousy and local prejudice to the deplorable nature of our position and the genuine urgency of our needs. ( ; « i i < t i i i t c t i t 1

I For. as we have said, there ;5 no- ■ thing in the local experience of I Southern members that remotely su^-

?"" lr >p fate endured by our hapiesj. settlers in the "isolated hackblocks of "Roadless North."

j What does Mr Hardy, of Rakaia. know about the miserable state of things that prevails in the Northern Peninsula? Mr I Hardy has lived for many years in the i centre of a well-drained and absolutely level shingly plain, traversed in every ■ direction by carefully laid and splendidjly metalled roads. Mr Hardy is one of the many thousands who have profited by the wis-e forethought the founders jof Canterbury settlement displayed in devoting to the making of roads a large i fraction of the priep received for every acre of land that the colonists bought: , with the result that by the time^the I Provincial Councils disappeared in 1576. there were close on 10.000 miles of made and metalled roads in Canterbury- district alone. AVhen the pood people of ■Canterbury or Otago complain about bad roads they mean that a few patches nave been worn on the surface, and that a little road metal is needed' Ito mend them. But they have never h.id occasion to understand what is meant by bad roads in country where loose or undraiaed soil absorbs water iike a sponge, and wnere Nature has made no bountiful provision of rock or shingle ready :o hand for repairs. And as they cannot realise what we mean by bad roads, they utterly fail to comprehend the effect produced by them upon the lives and lortunp.s 'of our settlers. The hopeless isolation, the stagnation of existence, the stunting and thwarting of progress that have formed -a largr- a portion of colonial experience at this end of the colony or* , simply unthinkable to gentlemen so" fortunately situated as Mr. Hardy, of ftakaia. Living in the middle of a stretch of closely s<ttW country, where every township and village is connected with every other centre of population by countless splendid roads, we can well understand why Mr. Hardy nas not yet come to believe iii the reality and justice of oar complaint. But a probation of even on? rainy season passed m the Northern Peninsula would be amply sufficient to convince even the most obdurate of our Southern critk-s that nothing but their OTin extreme ignorance of the truth coula ev,->r justify the ridicule and contempt with which so many Olago and <. anterburv politician? have greeted the demands of the -Roadle-ss North" for the redress of its intolerable grievance;.

Tenders are called for the erection of