THE EAST AND WEST COAST RAILWAY.

Kumara Times, Issue 3022, 10 July 1886, Page 2

THE EAST AND WEST COAST RAILWAY.

Mr Alan Scott, who was chiefly instrumental in inducing the syndicate in London to take up the East and West Coast Railway, has been interviewed by a Pall Mall Gazette representative. Mr Scott was particularly severe on Mr Froude for his detractions of New Zealand, FTe found still yet another name for the East and West Coast Rai'way, as he said it might be poetically but truthfol[y called “ The marriage ring of a great colony.” Of what is expected of the line Mr Scott said ;—“ It will unite in fruitful bonds the two opposite sides of the Southern Island, bring the wood upland of the north-west into immediate communication with the treeless plains of the south-east, and convert into one harmonious and flourishing whole two districts, each of which languishes for want of means of communication with tbe other. The richest mineral country in the Antipodes, if not in the whole world, lies to the north-west. It is covered with timber—some samples of which you may see at the Exhibitionnow almost valueless, but which, touched by the magic wand of a railway, will at once become an asset of enormous value. Below the roots of forest trees lie vast deposits of the best coal in the Austral world, and which can easily be worked, and which only needs means of communication to command the market all over the southern seas. Nor is it only commodities in which there is need for exchange. Still more is there need for the exchange of labor. In clearing the forest and in the mines there will be a constant demand for the surplus labor of the pastoral districts, which is naturally liable to slack times when shearing and harvest are over. All along the Midland Line, which will unite the railway system on both sides of the island, fresh settlements will spring up, creating that class of yeoman for whom Mr Froude sighs, but whose evolution he has done what he can to check by damming the credit of the colony.”