FEILDING.

Manawatu Times, Volume II, Issue 25, 13 January 1877, Page 3

FEILDING.

[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] The Christmas and New Year holidays have come and gone since I recorded any of the doings of our little world; (if I may except the Boxing Day recreations), but if my pen has been idle for some time it has not been so altogether for want of material to weave into a correspondent's letter. The traveller coming by rail into Feilding will notice a very rough piece of railway, as he nears Bunnythorpe, which is not very creditable to whoever is responsible for its being in its present condition. Also at the railway platform which does duty at Bunnythorpe for a station, is an erection which shows a thorough want of taste in the designer. Instead of erecting something that would not offend the eye of the travelling public to support the painted signboard indicating the name of the station, some piece of dirty, rough planking has been rudely trimined with an axe and erected as the visible sign of a station. It is a small matter, but it is an indication of the taste of the Engineer. The railway from Bunnythorpe to Feilding seems to be a well-finished piece of work, if one may judge from the easy, smooth travelling along it, and it is deserving of notice that your townsmen, Messrs Richter, Nannestad, and Co., are erecting their new saw mills, I believe on the Government Reserve, to enable them to execute their large contract for railway sleepers ; and the railway authorities are laying down a new shunting place opposite the new sawmills. At Feilding Station itself, I have to notice a large increase in the amount of business doing there lately ; and perhaps the most gratifying part of it is the quantity of exports in wool, as indicating one of the resources of the district, inasmuch as none of the wool has been brought any great distance to the station. As for the business doing in Feilding, it is quieter lately as may be expected, now that the holidays are over ; and besides there is comparative dulness all over the colony this year. The E. and C. Aid Corporation have just completed another section of the railway for which they were the contractors, in order, as I understand, to find employment for some of the small settlers in the district that are making their homesteads their own freeholds. The work seems well-finished and well ballasted. The weather has been truly delightful lately, dry and favourable for harvest operations, which are being carried on in the district, although from the infancy of the settlement cultivation is yet on a limited scale here. I notice great activity in the neighbourhood of the rising township of Halcombe in buildings and road-making ; and notwithstanding the large niunber of two-roomed cottages built there by the E. and C. Aid Corporation, there are a considerable number of working men living in tents. Halcombe has the advantage of an undulating soil, which cannot fail to make it healthy, as every shower of rain will act as a scavenger to prevent the accumulation of unwholesome matter in the soil, which rests on a clay subsoil. But if one may judge from the formation of the place and the clayey nature of the subsoil, there will not be much underground drainage to supply water abundantly, without bringing it some distance or storing it, which could easily be done on that subsoil with its fine surface drainage. What a fine view one gets of the surrounding country after leaving Feilding on the road to Halcombe ! It has been well said that it is distance. lends enchantment to the view, and the very fine scenery visible from the great backbone of this island is sufficiently distant to shew it to great advantage. In no place that I have seen in the colony is there anything that pleases me so well,

the thought which gives it a special charm being that the extent of open country everywhere around, gives promise that the time is not far distant when many thousand people will find homes within the circle of which Mr. Gillett's finely-situated house is the centre. The land between Feilding and Halcombe, which is now used for pastoral purposes chiefly, is more fit for cultivating cereals, as it is mostly a heavy clay and there is abundance of lime to be had at no great distance ; whenever the railway opens through the Gorge to enable it to be cheaply conveyed. Such land gives far greater employment to a number of people than lighter soils, the latter paying best when laid down in permanent pastures. But before such heavy lands can be productive, the district will require a manufactory for drain-pipes ; and it would be well for the proprietors of such lands to reflect that their heavy soil requires underground drainage. No work, in my opinion, will be of more importance to this district, if well supported, than a drain-pipe manufactory, which might be commenced by some enterprising gentleman on a small scale at first, until the owners of clay lands would come to realize the advantages; of using them. I notice that the Manchester Highway Board is about mending its ways, or rather making new ones, as well as a number of bridges, for which they have called tenders by notices within the districts where the work is to be executed. As the matter will be settled by the time this appears, I am not giving them an advertisement by noticing it in my letter ; but I think this work comes timely just now, as the Feilding section of the railway is finished. It will give employment to some of those whose services are being dispensed with on the railway.