THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1872.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1130, 12 March 1872, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1872.

The references to the name of Nelson, to the Government whose "seat" is the city of that name, and to the people by whom that Government is surrounded, are so frequent in these columns that they may well nauseate our readers, and provoke the suggestion that it is from lack of subjects, and from the prevalence of intense local feeling, that a place of such humble pretensions is made the constant theme of animadversion and admonition. We can well sympathise with our readers, aud wish that local attention were more often and more closely given to mere local administration of our local affairs, or that we could be lifted from mere local considerations by the prevalence of a public spirit which could afford to contemn Nelson or anything associated with its name. But the relationships between the two places are in some respects so close, while their sympathies may be so divergent, that references to a Government situated there, and to a people governed here, are often irresistible and unavoidable. The necessity for this reference is enhanced by the fact that the Nelson Press, while persistently advocating the maintenance of these relationships, so ignores the sympathies which should exist between the two places that one is forced to believe that the Nelson people are much more inimical than friendly, and that there is nothing for it but to fight them "tooth and nail." It is the fact that, if one wishes to find in newspaper columns any information regarding the Nelson South- West Gold Fields, it is not by a perusal of the Nelson papers that that wish will be satisfied ; it is the fact, and for Nelson a lamentable fact, that, while every city in the Colony sympathised with Greymouth readily, heartily, and practically, on the occasion of the recent and greatest occasion of disaster, Nelson said and did nothing ; and it is as unfortunately the fact that a newspaper published in that place, and supposed to represent the views of the Provincial Government, on almost every occasion chooses to decry public movements and public works in a district upon the prosperity of which Nelson itself is eminently dependent. The latest and most egregious example of this is the appearance in the columns of the Examiner oi an article which, while it displays not more than the average ignorance of the situation and the circumstances, is animated by a spirit intensely 1 Nelsonian, and at variance with the spirit which should guide everyone who is privileged to join in the representation or administration of the resources or interests of the Colony. Recently the contents of the column*

of the Examiner were diversified by the publication of some statements on the Greymouth and Brunnerton Railway which were signed by a gentleman of the" name of Garside. Accustomed to the übo of figures, possessing some amount of personal leisure, and probably having seme sympathy with the proprietors of coal-barges, this gentleman represented at some length his, no doubt, honest belief that, for the coal-carrying trade of Greymouth, barges, not railways, were the desideratum. He accumulated figures in that shape and fashion in which legislators frame those Acts through which metaphorical coaches-and-six are most easily driven, but which nevertheless look well until circumstances bring about that contingency—a contingency which, we have every hope, will yet occur, though the instrument which will demolish the figures will be a railway, and not the traditional coach -and-six. Upon these figures the Examiner pretends to base an article antagonistic to the development of the Grey Valley coal mine, but in reality it k only a pretence, for in the moral of the article is found its pure purpose — the advocacy of the interests of Oollingwood at the cost,. of Greyraonth. With the Examiner it is Collingwood versus Greymouth—" Codlin is your friend, not Short." Disguising this purpose pretty well, the Examiner cannot, however, disguise its ignorance of the present, to say nothing of the probable, extent and value of the property and'-trade represented by the Grey valley coal mine. And its ignorance in this respect is only equalled by the ignorance which it displays as to the character of the port with which Nelson steamers are in almost daily communication. It will, no doubt, be refreshing for those who have, in many and different ways, been associated with the industry of coal exportation from Greymouth, and with the aiding of that industry by the construction of a railway, to be told that the whole thing is a dream of Dr Hector's. Nay, it is not only a dream, but a "craze." Immaculate in everything else, in connection with the Grey Valley coal deposits Dr Hector is crazy, and they place such implicit faith in this crazy man that the Government— generally presumed by the Examiner to be particularly crazy — are about to carry out a scheme the plans of which " bad better by far be deposited in the Wellington Mußeura as curiosities of the past," to say nothing of what should happen to Dr Hectdr as a candidate for presentation to the Nelson Lunatic Asylum. It is in the following extremely crazy fashion that the Examiner delivers itself, in " dilletante style," upon this subject :—

"Dr Hector is the life and soul of this business, and though other Government officers may have been associated with him in reporting upon it, and the Colonial Industries Committee may have signified its approval, it will be to him that we ahall mainly owe whatever may come of this development. With the highest opinion of Dr Hector, we venture to doubt whether it is safe to abandon the management and direction of so important a matter to a merely scientific man, a geologist with an absorbing craze, which is, that the Grey coal h the 'purest bituminous coal ever known.' Like the little girl in the poem who still insisted that there were seven of them, brothers and sisters, although some had been laid in the church -yard, we can fanny- *>», --■Hootorj—m-hcu 4U» hopes . 6f substituting Grey coal for that of Newcastle have long been buried, still insisting and exclaiming — 'nay, but it is the purest bituminous coal in the world !' Something more is necessary to the success of this scheme, and it will be too bad if the interests of New Zealaud are to be sacrificed to a mere sentiment. The question is one that requires the careful decision of thorough business men, rather than of geologists or even engineers, and unless the former are prepared to take it up, with such aid as the Government can afford them without risk, the plans for the development of the Grey coal field had better by far be deposited in the Wellington Museum as curiosities of the past, than that Dr Hector should be permitted to ride his hobby to death to the tune of many thousands of pounds."

The " plans for the development of the Grey Valley coal field," as our readers are perfectly well aware, are the construction of a railway to Greymouth, and the improvement of the port to the extent that may be desirable or necessary. They are not so well aware, however, of the marvellous conception which the Examiner has formed of the character of these two works, and the conception upon which are based its marvellous arguments. It was only the other day that we made the discovery that in the columns of the same paper, and in the columns of the Westport paper, one and the same correspondent communicated to us a severe rebuke by stating that the Greymouth Press concealed the actual facts as to the extent of the flood, because, forsooth, it might interfere with the chances of the railway terminus being erected on a sandbank—that is Greymouth. This reliable correspondent, for all we know, may have been the gentleman whom in this instance the Examiner makes its authority, though it is not easy to see why a man who believes in barges versus railways should abo believe in Cobden versus Greymouth as a railway terminus, and should state that, to spite Cobden, and support Greymouth, the local Press should conceal the truth as to the real damage done by the flood. At any rate one or other of the correspondents, if there were two of them, has influenced the imagination of the Examiner to this extent that it " supposes that the railway will now, since the experience of the floods, be carried down the right bank of the river, if made at all." But the gem of the Examiner's references to the railway and river are contained in the following sentences, and, on the fallacies contained in these are based the whole of its fallacious deductions : —

" We mention the subject of money expenditure by the Government because of the proposed alternative, namely, the employment of some new-fangled kind of vessel, such as Ruthveri's hydraulic boats, of light draught, and length too great to thread the shiuosities of tlie river, if they escaped the contingency of breaking their backs upon the bar. As no public company in its senses would ever entertain such a suggestion, until proof was "supplied to the satisfaction of the capitalists that the boats will coat no more, will carry as much, will be as sea-worthy, and can be worked as economically as the average of vessels employed in. the Newcastle trade, there is a risk winch had better be scouted at once, of the Government, beat upon carrying out a fatuous

idea, constituting itself the owner of a fleet of steam-colliers. How that would end there is no need to speculate." The mere allusion to steamers or sailing craft having " to thread the sinuosities of the Grey River," in the event of escaping spinal fracture on the bar, will be sufficient to indicate how much the writer kno7rs what he is writing about when he ventures to write, as he; has so coolly and confidently.done, unort this subj ect. The allusion is of a piece with the whole article. To prevent any mistake as to his meaning, it is well to consult Webster, and that authority explains " sinuosities" to mean " a series of bends or turns in arches or other irregular figures — a series of windings." And this is the description which is applied by this other and smaller authority to the Grey JEiiver between its bar and its coal wharf! "Comparisons are odious," but anyone who knows Nelson and Greymouth— and that is not the case with the contributor to the! Examiner — knows that there is no more "sinuosity" in approaching the wharf at Greymouth, than in approaching that at the far superior port at Nelson. It is needless to follow the writer in his theories about Rufchven's patent, and all the rest of it. Anyone acquainted with the great coal ports of England, such as Sunderland and Newcastle- upon-Tyne, knows that tho coastal coal trade has, since it was a trade, been carried on in bottoms such as now arrive, and sail weekly from this port. Steam colliers and vessels of large, carrying capacity were no more thoughVof there than they are required here. If they are "required, the exigencies are not so great that they cannot be overcome ; but what a remote probability has to do with the construction of a few lines of rail, such as abounded along the banks of the Tyne and the Wear many years ago, is difficult to be seen by anyone who does not choose to be an obstacle and an obstructive to what is altogether a very humble railway undertaking. No one can fail to agree with the philosophic utterance of the Examiner when he says that "if the Brunner Coal Mine, instead of being some five miles up the Grey, were situated near the ports of Nelson, Wellington, Lyttelton, or Dunedin, it would be a public property of great importance." This compliment to the coal mine forms the one satisfactory feature of the Examinees remarks, though even here the Examiner seems to find fault with Nature's disposition of her resources — especially as regards Nelson. If he would only be as faithful as he is fault-finding, it would be well for Nelson, and for the whole Province which it weakly governs and thus viciously contemns.