INTER-PROVINCIAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 224, 6 September 1875, Page 2

INTER-PROVINCIAL.

Dunkdin, Monday. A fire occurred at the Phosnix warehouse in Stafford and Hope-sfcreet3. The premises in front were totally destroyed, and ia the rear partially. The value of the stock .dest'oyed is £2000, which is insured for £1500— Ttoal, £750; Liverpool, Lonlon, and Globe, £750. The whole loss is estimated at £4G«O The otizin o! the fire is supposed to he from lighted ashes in a wooden box at the rear of tbe building. Hokitika, Monday. The manager of t he Freight Company has written to the Borough Council, intimating that the Company has resolved on towing vessels in ballast for this port free of charge. The Council decided that all tug boats belonging to the port when towing in ve»sels in ballast "will b > free of port charges. It is understood that the sawmiil proprietors hare agreed to subsidise the Tug Company by £1000 per annum lor towage for vessels with ballast inwards and timber outward*.

regard to fcjhe so-called Nelson and Foxhill railway. It is a somewhat wearisome subject, and; one upon which it is anything but a pleasure to write, but it is a matter in which we are all deeply interested, inasmuch as it will affect our financial position toacpnsiderableextent. In a few months we shall have handed over to us a line of railway for which we never asked, do not want, and, in fact, would be far better without, if it is to be cut short at both ends as at present contemplated by the Government. It will, when completed, have cost something like £100,000; and the interest to be paid upon it by the province, or provincial district, will amount to at least £6000 a year. When the people of Nelson asked for the construction of the railway they were actuated in doing so, first, by the consideration that it was to be but the first instalment of a line that ultimately was to extend to the "West Coast, and secondly, by the conviction that, if carried out as they desired and believed it would be^ it would at least pay interest and working expenses. Their calculations, however, were based upon the assumption that all such farm and other produce as was intended for shipment would be conveyed direct to the wharf, aad that a large quantity of timber, fencing, and firewood would be conveyed by rail to the town and port. As it is, however, no Waimea farmer who has sold his grain upon the condition that it is to be delivered at the wharf will think of forwarding it by a railway, the terminus of which is a mile away from the shipping port, thus necessitating the employment of the town carters to convey it to its destination, when he can send his own draya direct to the spot at which delivery is to be made. And again, with regard to the timber trade, which was looked to as one of the principal sources of remuneration. The larger portion of the timber, it was always calculated, would come from Foxhill, but if the "Nelson and Foxhill Railway" is to commence in the outskirts of the town at one end, and to stop between two and three miles short of Foxhill at the other, the anticipated receipts irom the carriage of timber will have found their way into the original calculation under false pretences. At present, in the neighborhood of Foxhill there are four sawmills at work, turning out on the average some 40,000 feet of timber weekly. Qne of these establishments, we happen to know, keeps twelve horses fully employed in conveying its produce to the market, and the others, it is only fair to presume, are equally well provided with horse power. If the railway ran, as it was always supposed it would do, in reality as well as in name, to FoxhiJl, the necessity for keeping these large teams would be done away with, as the timber could be run down to the line on the tramways which now connect the mills with the trunk road, but if, after arriving at this point, it has to be placed on wagons, and hauled between two or three miles to the railway station, a large number of horses would still have to be employed and when, in addition to this, the expense of unloading and placing on the railway trucks has to be incurred, the cost of thus conveying it to Nelson would be actually greater than that of carting it the whole way, while all chance of creating an export trade would be entirely done away with by the re-loading and additional expense of removing it from the mudflat terminus to the port. The mills at Foxhill are situated in a district where there is a large extent of forest capable of yielding many years' supply at the rate we have mentioned, namely, 40,000 feet per week, and if the railway is made available for delivering their produce in Nelson, which is the principal market, an income of £1500 per annum would be derived j from this source alone, supposing the j charge for carriage to be eighteenpence per hundred. Besides this, there is even now a large demand for firewood and fencing in the town and the Waimeas, and to what extent that would increase if facilities for carriage were afforded it is impossible to say. The expense of extending the line to a point somewhere in the neighborhood of the Bell Grove Inn would certainly be above the average price per mile, owing to the necessity of erecting a bridge over the Wai-iti, but it certainly would not exceed £20,000, if, indeed, it reached that figure, which is extremely doubtful, but the additional receipts would be far in excess of the interest upon that sum. Then, to come to the other necessary extension from the present out-of-the-way terminus to the port. Of what the cost of the addition would be we are unable just now to say, but, seeing that the distance is only a mile, and that the sea wall that woald be required in widening the Haven road need b« of a very inexpensive character, as there is no probability of a heavy sea to contend against, it could not possibly be very large. The argument made use of by the Minister of Public Works against the proposed extension in his reply to Mr Luckie appears to us to have two edges, that in favor of the work being by far the sharper of the two. The substance of it was that, the distance being so short, the extension was unnecessary. Now, what we conceive to be the really practical and business-like light in which to view the matter is something to this effect : — Here is a line of railway which at present is utterly useless to the country people for export purposes, seeing that in order to transmit produce for shipment from the farm or the forest there must of necessity be a large amount of loading and unloading, and unnecessary cartage. By the construction of one additional mile of a not

: very expensive character this very I serious objection to making use of the ! railway will be obviated. The very fact of the distance being so short, taken in connection with the increased traffic to which tha extension must necessarily j give rise, is quite sufficient to authorise i the work being undertaken without any I further delay. That is our impression, and, with all deference to Mr Richardson's superior professional knowledge, we will undertake to say that it is the correct one, and that, when the railway is once in working order, it will force itself upon the authorities, fight against it as they may. Put shortly, the matter stands thus — As it is, the railway must prove an unmitigated and I costly failure; buc by the expenditure of a comparatively small additional sum it may be made to rank with those lines which are being worked at a profit. | The only reason that we can see why the extensions — the advantages of which must be patent to all but the wilfully blind — are not made, is that the railway is in the province of Nelson, which is invariably neglected and ignored. However, it rests with ourselves to show that we are not going to quietly submit to sucK treatment. The residents in Waimea South have made a move in the right direction. They have determined to petition the legislature, and we trust that they will be careful to set forth all the facts of the case in a plain and unmistakeable manner. Now, let the town follow suit. We have more than once endeavored to impress upon the Inland Communication Committee that, considering the functions they have assumed, it is their duty to meet and frame a petition to the House of Representatives asking that justice may be done to Nelson, but as yet they have made no sign. Possibly they may have felt crushed and depressed by the many rebuffs that Nelson haa hitherto received, but let them take heart from the example set them by the Waimea residents, and once more come to the front in advocating a good cause. Let them show that they are not dead, but have only been sleeping for a while. Above all, let them remember that Nelson will have to pay the interest upon the cost of a line that, if left as it is, must inevitably lose a large sum of | money every year.