Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 94, 2 March 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1863.

The principal subject for consideration which will come before the Provincial Council will of course be the eoads. Roads are the arteries of a country through which flows its life-blood, and from which it derives all its vitality, and without which the finest country in the world 13 but a howling wilderness. Where good roads are, tliere will be found trade and commerce, and all the other results of human industry, in a flourishing and vigorous state. There can be no more civilizing influence brought to bear upon a race of savages than road-making, and nothing that can come -within the power or scope of man’s intellect can compare in its effects upon an advancing people with the increasing by all known means the facilities of passage from one part to another. Notwithstanding tiiat this Province has spent upon the Roads and other Public Works at different times enormous sums of money, it is now more than likely that there is not a Province in New Zealand which is at this moment in a more backward condition than we are in this matter; for not only are the lines chosen not the shortest or the best in many instances, but those lines have been constructed with so little care that they are by this time in parts entirely in ruins. We have noticed frequently in our passage up and down the country that the road goes along very well indeed, and promises to all appearance a speedy end to the journey, until it happens to come to a difficult and dangerous place, when it immediately dies away, and leaves the deluded traveller to get over the obstruction as best he can. Thousands of pounds are spent in making some miles of road, which, as far as they go, are -well enough, but which are frequently, from the want of an additional fifty pounds, utterly neutralised in their benefit. Just take an example in point—the road from the Meanee Bridge to Puketapu. After getting over the “ Willow Reach,” you come at the end of Mr. Tit Ten’s paddocks to a sharp angle, that having with skill successfully turned, you find yourself suddenly plunged into a “slough of despond,” which, although a material obstacle to the dray or cart, could be very easily filled up for A 5. Having got over the hill, the traveller jogs along over the two very good little causeways constructed acrossa couple of bad gullies, which so far promises well, but instantly on passing number two causeway, he is brought up all standing by another very bad gully, to avoid which he is. compelled to make a detour to the right, into the private domain of our most disinterested of Land Commissioners, which domain, by the bye, accompanies you pretty nearly all the way from Meanee to Puketapu. And =£lo, or say ,£ls, would be quite sufficient to stop up this gap, and thus render the-road tolerably passable. But to do anything properly was quite out of the reach of our late esteemed but parsimonious Superintendent, who was really, without any exception, the veriest screw of a Superintendent that we ever heard of.

Turn now again towards the North, the bridle track from Tongohio to Mohaka is a mere pit-fall, and a bye-word and a reproach, rendering the passage during wet weather a matter of anxiety, and peril to life of man and life of horse, for any false step would precipitate the unfortunate animals down to depths ; and yet, although winter is rapidly approaching, and although every shower of rain which falls adds to the labour and expense of repairing the road, it still remains in a state of corruption and decay which beggars description. The Province is fortunate in having such an active, able, and gentlemanly Engineer at

the head of the road department as Mr. Weber, and we do not, therefore, cast any reflections upon him ; his hands are tied by the parsimony of an impoverished government, and he must cut his coat (or his roads) according to his cloth. But we strongly blame the Provincial Government for not getting lines of road opened up as the works go on, and not leave them in patches here and patches there perfectly impassable, and at best but indifferently finished. Penny wise was Captain Carter’s great maxim, and by consequence his administration has nothing to show but a languid and exhausted condition pervading all branches of the public service, and a generally debilitated state of the whole of the Province. Nothing could by possibility equal the care with which the late Superintendent husbanded his resources, such as they were, and the wretched, niggardly manner in which he doled out the miserable pittance allotted for each specific piece of public business, never for one moment suspecting that his wisdom not being above coppers, was very likely to bring the whole Province down to that level, and reduce us to a condition little better than that of those tribes in Africa who value a copper halfpenny vastly more than a golden pound.

However, nothing substantial or permanent can be done in the making of roads until some regulations affecting the width of the tire of dray wheels are devised and put into force. The tire now in use is so sharp and so very fine, and the load put upon the dray is so enormously heavy, that no known method of constructing roads short of solid blocks of granite -would be able to supply one of sufficient strength to resist the tremendous pressure, and consequently destructive effects of the passage of one of these machines.