NOTES FROM LYTTELTON.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 834, 24 February 1877, Page 3

NOTES FROM LYTTELTON.

We did not have our cricket match on Thursday, which is a great sell for me, as it would have been something to write about. By the way, when one comes to thiur, there must have been some little mu (Idle, or more matches would have been played. ■ heard of challenges being sent by I don t know how may clubs, and all that Portonians have done is to nave one rough and tumble game with “Our Boys,’’ and play the Sunnyside match. We shan’t do much good if we don’t show more energy than this, and subscribers next year will be few and far between.

Swimming in the harbour is very refreshing in the Lot weather, and no one questions the fact that the authorities should encourage it as much as they possibly can, as no doubt sea bathing means health to many people Mild approval, however, is all the help that our authorities give, and I wish some energetic person would go in for a crusade for this purpose. Why should not Lyttelton have its “ Ohoukiczee. Junior,” as well as Christchurch I for all sorts of nastiness flow into Lyttelton harbour as well as into the Avon ; and, although we have not pot a hospiial, there is a sewer belching all its horrible contents into the sea only a few yards from the bathing place. Then, again, Christchurch has no sharks, but Lyttelton has, and some fine day I expect to hear of a terrible accident, lor the tiger of the sea has been seen inside the breakwaters several times, and, in that opaque water, who is to see him ? His dorsal tin is above water, is it? Yes, but in Dampier’s Bay, where thousands of pieces of stick are floating about, it might be easily taken for timber. Who has not read Victor Hugo’s “ Toilers of the Sea,” ai d been bonified with that fearful description of the devil fish ? Don’t think for a moment that these hideous creatures ave only to be found near the Channel Islands ; there are plenty of them in Lyttelton harbour ; why I saw one that was caught last Wednesday that could have held a strong man in its hideous embrace and drowned him. Fancy a creature with slimy arms three or four feet long, each arm such a perfect mass of suckers that •when in clings to anything you may cut it into a thousand pieces, and each piece still clings like a hull dog. Imagine taking a dive and being embraced in those hideous ribbons and drawn to the horrible mouth in the centre, and tho juices of your body sucked into its terrible throat. Such a fate as that is worse even than swallowing drainage from a dead house, and yet it is risked every day. The remedy seems so simple too; surely it cannot be any very great expense to have a part of the sea fenced in ; its only the driving a few stakes five or six inches apart, and then wc could bid defiance to sharks and medusae too. Now cannot we Portonians do something at once in this matter. Many of us have children who are bathing every day. All arc more or less interested, and surely each would give his mite. Let some one start a subscription list; I believe the Council will help. Any one with time on their hands, who could carry this through, and provide a secure bathing place for ourselves, and our children, would deserve, and I believe would get, hearty thanks from all Portonians.

Our new inspector of public buildings, in hia report to the Council at their last meeting as to the fitness of the Colonists’ Hall to be licensed as a place where public entertainment could be given, called attention to the insufficient means of egress in case of lire. He ad vised that increased facilities for exit should be constructed at the back of the stage. Ido not agree with him in this matter. There certainly should be increased facilities for getting out, but why at the back ? There are seldom more than a dozen people behind the scones, and I am sure they could get down the present staircase very speedily. It is in the audience the crush would be, and why should not the old plan of having an open staircase leading from the side of the hall, next Jto the school ground, be carried out. If such a staircase were built it could be closed except on rare occasions. By the way, I wonder when the inspector was looking round he did not notice that there was something wrong with the ventilation. It is evident to me he has not been in the hall when it was full, or he would have spoken of this defect also. The Colonists’ Hill is ventilated according to Tobin’s method, which is as follows -. Get a number of pipes, open at both ends, stick one end in and the other outside the apartment you want ventilated, and there you are. lam told this system has succeeded admirably elsewhere, but whether it is that we only half understand it here, and made some mistake in putting in the pipes, f don’t know, but I do know that Shadracli, Meshach, and Abcdnego, would shrink from having to go through that hall on a hot night when it was fairly filled. Tobin has had a good trial, and is a dead failure. Let’s try some one else. Those persevering citizens who, wihout helping to support that institution by subscribing, come and have an inexpensive read once or twice a day are still to the fore, and look with the greatest indignation at one of the members of the society if he dares to keep the evening paper for more more than a minute or two.

The committee of the Colonists’ Society have resolved to give the president (whoever he may ho for the time being) the right to exercise the vote to which they are entitled for paying rates for the hall. I take it that this will be rather a difficult privilege to work to the satisfaction of the whole committee. Surely they will not be all of the same political opinions and in the case of a hotly contesteel election some will bitterly regret and others exult at the privilege having been granted. I have always looked on the committee of the Colonists’ Society as so many benign philosophers, who “ Far from the moddening crowd’s ignoble strife,” calmly deliberated on the intellectual and moral welfare of all Portonians, and whose warmest discussions were on the advisablencss of excluding Ouida’s works from the library, in order that by their coarseness and ]nw tone of morality they might not disgrace the shelves occupied by such pure Pritish classics as “Tristan Shandy,” “Roderick Random,” “Tom Jones,” or “Cullivcr’s Travels.” Surely the introduction of the wind of politics will stir the leaves somewhat roughly in these academic shades, and might upon occasions transform these Solons and I'lutos into combative Vogels and Macaudrcws. A loud report startled those Porlouians that reside in the neighbourhood of Oxford ptreet, on Thursday night last, and it is

feared some dreadful tragedy baa been enacted. Several bones and lota of dirty rags have been found in part of St David Effect, but whether they have anything to dc with thi mystery has not yet been ascertained by our vigilant policemen. The two angels that formerly resided at the Episcopal palace have returned to our midst, and are now ready to be conciliated. On Fiiday we had another nice homely Monkey-town squabble laid bare, If one of tho parties was a barker, the other was a talker, with a vengeance. After the case vvac over the husband of one of the disputants made a proposition to the Bench that struck me as a good one ; it was, that all the belligerent parties should be locked up in a cell together, for a week, to fight it out. If it had been carried out, Ido not think there would have been many frag meats of them left to sweep out of the gaol when the time was up. PORTONIAN.