OVERLAND TO MARTIN'S BAY.

Evening Star, Issue 3328, 20 October 1873, Page 2

OVERLAND TO MARTIN'S BAY.

The Government see the necessity for opening through the Province a practical route to the West Coast. They desire to obtain a share of the trade that is springing up in that direction, and tenders are being called for to improve, we understand, the Lake Harris route on its western side, and that Mr Beetham proceeds attain to report upon a line ef foot-track condemned by every person who has passed over it. The reckless folly of the Government in so obstinately adhering to a work proved to be ail but worthless demands almost an inquiry in lunacy. They display such an obstinacy of purpose in this matter that it approaches almost to a craze. It was only this week we were talking to one who helped to make this precious Lake Harris track, or whatever it is, and who at the period of its commencement considered it px-acticable to make a pack-horse track, but whose views now are, by experience, completely changed. He says “it will never be a passably good track for a foot traveller, and never tit as a pack-horse one.” If any person is capable of forming a judgment of a practical nature our informant is. We accept as being more correct Mr Williamson’s statement, made in a recent number of this journal, that it would “ take more than the Vogel loan to make a fair passable road via Lake Harris.” We contrast this statement and many others with the flattering report made last year to the Government, and say there is something radically wrong at work. If a road to the West Coast was not of so much importance to the Province at large, and more especially to the interests of this district, we might be silent on the subject and allow the Government to blunder away iu their engineering attemps and squandering of the public revenue. After the letter of “ A Squatter on the Greenstone” that appeared in this journal in June last, we should have thought that the Government or those concerned would have paused and re-considered their action. Our correspondent’s letter at the time entered into the whole matter upon its merits. The position is unchanged. Have the sarcastic touches it contained, the manifest errors it ridiculed, encouraged a spirit of obstinacy—of head-strong determination? It looks very like it. Here is the Greenstone Valley, capable of settlement, and more beneficial to Martin’s Bay than the Lake Harris route, completely ignored. Here is his Honor the Superintendent, anxious to open up the country in the direction of Milford and other sounds, ignoring also the practical means of doing so. We shall watch with interest what further steps will be proposed by the renewed expedition. —Wukatip Mail.