PROGRESS OF THE RAILWAY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume V, Issue 287, 1 August 1855, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE RAILWAY.

Maker 6.—The weather has been extremely mild and fine. The nights are clear, and the moon shines so brightly that it is not easy to ca.ry on, without being1 observed, the works win oh lire usually performed during a siege at niglii time. Nevertheless, certain important alterations and amendments have taken place in the construction of our offensive line, and our defensive Hue over Balakkiva has jbeen greatly strengthened, and. its outwoiks and batteries have been altered and amended considerably.. Everything round us bears marks of improvement. The health of the troops is better, mortality and sickness decrease, the spirits of the meu are good. The wreck we made at Balaklava is shovelled away or is in the course of removal, and is shot into the sea to form piers, or beaten down to make roads, and stores of barracks of wood are rising up in its place. The oldest inhabitants will not know the place on his return. If war is a great destroyer, it is also a great creator. The Czar is indebted to it for a railway in the Crimea, and for new roads between Balakiava," Kamiesch, and Sebastopo'i. The hill-tops are adorned with clean wooden huts, the flats have been drained, the watercourses dammed up and deepened, and all this has been done in a few days by the newly awakened energies of labour. The noise of hammen and anvil, and the roll of the railway train are heard in these remote regions in nooks of land a century before their time. Can anything be more suggestive of county magistracy and poor-laws, and order and peace, than stone breaking ? Here it goes on daily, and parties of red coated soldiery are to be seen contentedly hammering away at the limestone rock, satisfied with a few pence extra pay. Men are now given freely wherever there is work to be done.