CLYDE CORRESPONDENTS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 244, 14 July 1874, Page 5

CLYDE CORRESPONDENTS.

To the Editor of the Cromwell Argus. Sir, —Could you not invent a murder or a robbery that would be committed in the Tuapeka -or Teviot district, or in even an imaginary district in some close proximity to Clyde—(on the eastern side of that town)—so as to give the correspondent of the Southern Mercury some other theme to write on than unfortunate Cromwell, The fact of Cromwell being brought into notoriety by the late epidemic, by the town going in for an Hospital for their own district, and by the member for Kawarau being made Goldfields Secretary, he (the Clyde correspondent) could swallow ; but this last pill, viz,, having Cromwell made the official residence of the Goldfields Secretary, has been too much altogether for him. I think the Mercury correspondent grows ironical when he alludes to Cromwell as being the centre of the world. Without doubt it is of the goldfields, and as such quite a fit and proper residence for the Goldfields Secretary ; and I trust that ere long what appears to this correspondent a mystery, if not an impossibility, may be solved.

As 1 am a plain man, I generally go in for cause and effect, and do my best to judge of the results. This I notice, that the Clyde correspondent takes a great interest in Cromwell ; and though our town was once in the bondage of Clyde, we by our natural position as regards situation, and assisted by our mineral wealth, have freed ourselves from such dependence, and the Clyde correspondent appears to me rather afraid that Cromwell now purposes ringing the change on Clyde. And very possibly what he dreads will happen. One thing in his letter appears curious. The Clyde correspondent is quite aufnitm officialdom, and even knows something about Government. Then why does he not write a private code for the information and guidance of the gentleman for whom the office in question appears to hhn to have been expressly made? Another thing I have noticed : Clyde, by her newspaper and correspondents, has been hitherto held up as the centre of the goldfields ; and for what reason ? They (the Dnnstan) cannot produce gold themselves, —vide last escort-returns ; and even when we send them gold for safe custody, thev are not always able to keep it (remember the celebrated gold escort robbery ) Their Hour mill scheme seems only to flourish in the Dunstan Times, although a paragraph in the last issue of that paper certainly gives it a sign of weakness. 1 should take up too much of your valuable space, Mr Editor, should I go in to show the gradual rise of Cromwell and the decadence of Clyde; and as I am only a middle-aged man, and science is advancing so rapidly, I am not altogether without hope that I shall yet see the remains of what was once the celebrated Dunstan exhibited in the Provincial Museum, in a manner somewhat similar to that in which the remains of the first Atlantic cable were shown and sold in the old country ; and in the course of a few years further, these same remains will be equally as valuable as the remains of a Dodo or a live Moa.

Altogether, I sum the following up :—Cromwell is now the premier Goldfield in the Province, and as such deserves a great deal more consideration at the hands of Government, both General and Provincial, than she has hitherto received, and for the future she intends to demand it. Clyde has been, hut is not, and therefore must take a hack seat if she is wise, and endeavour to court the protection and assistance of her richer and more powerful rival. But the way to do so is not to abuse and run that rival down by means of “Our own Correspondents.” I am, &c., Not an Orpheus C. Kerr. Cromwell, July 13, 1874.