CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 143, 23 June 1871, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor op the Nelson Evening Mail. Sir — I have read with much interest the letters and articles that have recently appeared iv the Evening Mail on the question of the settlement of the country but am not altogether disposed to agree with the view of ihe questiou that you have adopted. While it is, doubtless, true that much more might be effected were the settlers to double their exertions, I do not see that auy newspaper articles or legislative measures ever infuse a particle more energy into any iudividual. As to making roads and bridges, although of course they are indispensable, and the Provincial authorities have accordingly laid out very large sums annually on them, much of the money has been expended fruitlessly. Ido not refer to the lines of communication having been injudiciously selected — which may or may not be the case— but to the fact that the construction of roads into remote districts induces men to spread themselves out and take up new land iustead of bringing what was already cleared and fenced into profitable cultivation. Then these roads entail an annual charge to keep them up. I have good authority for sayiDg that in some cases the o.ost of these little-used roads (let alone their up-keep) is greater than the fee simple of the whole land served by them. The proper plan seems to me, while devoting a fair amount of the public money to improve the old roads and making new ones, to take some pain* to iucrease the inducements to thoroughly* cultivate the already acquired farms and pastures. So long as the profits of farming are swallowed up by the euormous cost of transport, the farmers cannot make money, and, of course, the farther they retire into the interior the less chance they have of sending their produce to market with any profit at all to themselves. Where railways are to be made they realise this object for the narrow strip of country on either side of them, but a far more extensive benefit would be attained by road steamers, and at a very much less cost, for it has been found in other countries that roads which are not good enough for carts are quite fit for these steamers, and that they do their work much more cheaply. In a country watered by navigable rivers the want of cheap land is, of course, not felt, but in our own province which is wholly devoid of internal water carriage I am convinced that no progress will be made until freights by land are reduced by the means I have adverted to. I am, &c, A. Farmer.

High Watee at Nelson; Morn. Afternoon. Friday June 23 ... 1.10 125 Saturday „ 24 ... 1.40 2 6 Sunday „ 25 ... 2.16 2.34 Monday „ 26 ... 245 3.10 Tuesday „ 27 ... 3.35 4 11 Wednesday „ 28 ... 4.39 5.27* Thursday „ 29 ... 6.0 6.37 X \