COOK MEMORIAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1548, 2 September 1905, Page 4

COOK MEMORIAL.

[(To tlie Editor Gisborne Timc»<

Sir, —Your correspondent “W ” was not far out ia his recommonding tho Native cemetery onKniti as a suitable site for Cook’s monolith, for this reason: tho Natives who have relations interred thore are contemplating an immediate disinterment of the remains prior to reinterment in another locality. That being m, would it not be good business for the borough to acquire the ontire plot from the Native owners; this property occupies the portion of the frontage of the liaiti plateau looking westward, from the Kopuawlmkapata creok to the base of Titirangi ? I bis could bo made a beauty spot, small, but commanding. Thanks to the Lo:d of the soil: — the surroundings of tho site where some would have the Cook cenotaph erected, are not calculated to make, a thing of beauty such as one thousand pounds worth of ornamentation should make of it—a joy for ever. Captain Tucker, who made use of the proverb of the cat’s jumping at a late meeting of the Borough Council, has with a kindliness to poor folk, indigenous to himself, leased a scrap of friable yellow clay, scarcely at the clinging angle, on which a mansion of iron together with ranges of offices, protective shedifices, etc., necessary to the establishment of a fisherman’s calling are in course of erection ; just beyond the two chains limit of highwater mark reserve. Toward the South tho hill face is broken, presenting a yellow clay, no chalk nor lime, a loosely heaped, disintegrating mass without boulders: these faces are from a few feet to sixty feet or more in almost perpendicular height. This charming feature affords in summer time a sorry shelter, to our field crickets, but in the glorious winter rains of June and July this canyon is in wild nilarity i spluttering, and swishing in whirling torrents of mud which expand at the base of the Cook memorial—that is, where ten hundred, pounds worth of science and of art are thinking of im--1 mortalising the good taste and the splendid conceptions of the Cook Memorial Committee.

Twenty-seven years ago, long before the advent of Soapy Tom, the talus on whjch stands Rev Williams’ hopse a ruin—a melancholy mate for the Cook stone—extended a good distance further seaward than it does to-day. An isolated papa reef cropped up at that time marked by a survey peg, an iron cylinder, the rock has disappeared ; the superincumbent clay is fraying away, leaving sand uncovered and washing away by the sea. The sea front of this talus on which the thousand pound granite pillar is to stand —must be. protected from the encroaching of the seai So you have the ceaseless action of water on tb» rear on either side, and on the trout of your projected wisdom.. A road way round this beach! never! To maintain, such, natural features sternly forbid; to keep it open, open for what ? - Why for traffic! Fudge, what traffic?: To keep it open would demand the entire income of the Borough and a big. overdraft by way of a solatium. There is, there was no reason, why the people .who scraped together 1 a few sticks and rags to build, as many did, a shelter for themselves and their splendid offspring on these beaches should be driven out to seek a burrow elsewhere. It did me good to saunter those beaches and, while the > kids were in scores, to notice their athletic physique. Some childless fellows whose own luxurious home, destitute of the true furniture of Home, children, grew envious, became peevish, and never ceased complaining, until indeed the whole picture became what it is now, loathsome. Bnt the lord I of the soil, thanks to him, has pro-1 vided a remedy. That being so—the | adjuncts of the Cook cenotaph will be I squalor.—l am, etc., I G.H.W.