The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, MARCH 25, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 70, 25 March 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY , MARCH 25, 1867.

At the time it was proposed to request Mr. Ogilvie to make tbe preliminary survey required to meet the wishes of Mr. Young, the Australian contractor, we stated that we considered it quite unnecessary to go so far a field for professional assistance, which ought to be found in the officers of the Provincial Government, supplemented, if necessary, by the aid that could easily be obtained from the numerous professional men who are always near at hand. We suppose it was on the principle that distauee lends enchantment to the view, that it was suggested that a surveyor be brought from Queensland, or that the work of a man ignorant of provincial and party feuds would be more reliable than that furnished by engineers susceptible of party bias. It strikes us now, as it did at the time, that the Provincial Government have gone a roundabout and unnecessarily expensive way to effect a very simple object, aud that the province will have to pay smartly for this toadying to respectability and offering incense to great uames, as well as have to endure the hope deferred that makes the heart sick; to say nothing of the probability that the survey, after having dragged its slow length along, and cost the province three times as much as was originally counted ou, will be conducted in an imperfect and feeble way, in consequence of beiug transferred to strangers to the province, who are not half so likely to do justice to it as men who know the ground, are prepared to overcome its difficulties by their local knowledge and experience, and who must feel a greater interest in the work than a staff of men hastily imported and hurried through with break-neck speed.

We are led to these remarks by the information that has reached us that Mr. Ogilvie lias paid Nelson a hasty visit, glanced at the country on tbe map, found it inconvenient to remain, and written to a subordinate in Queensland to come and make the necessary examination and report. We know not what motives influenced Mr. Ogilvie in thus giving us the cold shoulder, and handing us over to his locum tenens ; but it only serves the Provincial Government right for running about after great men to do a work for which abundance of skill and experience is found iv the province. , It is not possible to say whether the Queensland en-

gineer was appalled by the difficulties of the country, and having no desire to encounter the asperities of land which a " crow can't fly over," resolved to make tracks for the more genial clime in which his lot has cast him ; but he is certainly iv a position to parody the exclamation of the great conqueror of antiquity — " Veni, vidi, vici.'' " I came to the sleepy hollow ; I saw the pretty country on the map, and, having made things pleasant with the Provincial lYcasurer, departed for the sunny region where no engineering difficulties frighten a nervous man fjorn his propriety, aud where t' ere fire plenty of subordinates ready aud willing to tempt the perils of the New Zealand mountains on condition of sharing the emoluments which a benignant Provincial Treasurer has prepared for scientific men with great name and reputation." For all this, it remains to be proved that the province, with all its boasted economy does not resemble a good old milch cow, ready to part with its milk to any facile manipulation, and having parted with its money will be discarded as an easy aud goodnatured fool.

It strikes us that the sending for a surveyor from a distance, proceeds altogether on the assumption that the Nelson surveyors are a pack of fools, and that the Provincial Engineer is neither able nor willing to execute the necessary survey. We said at the time it wa3 proposed to send to Queensland for a surveyor, that the Provincial Engineer is the only man to be intrusted with the work. He is in possession of information which foreign engiueers will be months in acquiring, if they ever do acquire it. He is familiar with every fact and figure bearing on the nature of the country so far as its exploration and survey have gone. He is in the receipt of a handsome salary from the province, and could not object to superintend a work for which strangers are alone considered competent. It would be easy for him to surround himself by a host of competent subordinates, who would execute the survey in half the time and a quarter of the cost it will take to get men from Canton or Timbuctoo. We should like to know of what superior value tlie ipse dixit of Queensland engineers will be as contrasted with that of pur own, and what they will know of the country after draggiog themselves through its forests and quagmires, that the Provincial Engineer has not already at his finger ends. It seems to us that an unwarrantable indignity is shown to our Proviucial Engineer in ignoring his skill and experience on an occasion of such importance, and placing him in a subordinate position to men whom it will take long to learn the alphabet of the scientific provincial knowledge in which he is by virtue of his office an expert, and which the province has a right to expect he will unfold for the public benefit. We kuow the introduction cf foreign surveyors would be considered impertinent, wasteful, and foolish in a_y other place than Nelson, where the more a public man is kicked the more he is expected to smile on those avlio inflict the blow.

No Queensland or any other surveyor can give an opiniou as to the probable cost of the line until he has taken the levels, made a section of the country, and calculated the cuttings and fillings. And we should like to know if this could not be done by the Provincial Engineer's department at one-fourth of the cost it could be done by strangers, if the Provincial Engineer availed himself of practical men close at hand, who know and have travelled over a large portion of the country ? The rough preliminary survey asked for by the Australian capitalists, the lithographed plans. aud sections, could all be prepared iv Nelson by hands that have done similar •work elsewhere. The work done by local

hands, under the superintendence of our own Engineer, would not only be infinitely more expeditious au J correct, but it would be done at a. saving of perhaps thousands of pounds ; for after the Queensland surveyors have departed with well lined pockets, there is reason to fear we shall be no nearer the railway than we were ten or twenty years ago. We know that respectability keeps its gig, and that it is fashionable to depreciate local effort when brought into competition with higheounding distant names. Bears' grease from the north pole, and green cheese from the moon, will always be preferred by a class to the same commodities pro duced nearer home. No satisfactory" reason has ever been assigned why the hardly acquired experience of our provincial engineering staff should be thus summarily ignored, and the province be compelled to dance to the tune — "The way the money goes," to gratify the crotchets of a few impracticable persons.