THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 117, 19 May 1877, Page 2

THE WEEK.

We really are most unfortunate people in Nelson. All we have to do is to set our hearts upoa anything when, hey, presto! the chance of obtaining it is gone at once. Just look at that wretched little mile of railway which we want to run from the secluded spot on which the present terniinua stands to the port. Surveys on surveys multiplied have been made of the little bit of ground which intervenes between the two places, engineers with their staffs have been kept amused there at various times for days together, hut although the latest date on which the route was traversed was so far back as January no results have yet followed, and the chance of any appeared to be as remote as ever when that impatient Mayor of oars wrote to the heed of the Works Department craving for information on the subject. The reply he received was just what might have been expected, and he got properly snubbed for his pains. "Your railway to the port 1 " was the tenor of the reply— l don'fc profess to quote the exact words of the official document, but only the meaning it conveyed to my unofficial mini— "Your railway to the port I Now how can you reasonably expect ua to devote any attention to so miserably small a matter as that at the present time? It is true that we were in possession of the result of the survey long since, but what do you suppose is the use of the pigeon holes with which our offices are lined except for the reception of papers of that kind, whose proper destination they are? And now you have the impudence to ask for further information just at the time when Mr Carruthers is up north, and Mr Higginson down south, and we are bothered to death with useless engineering worksat Greymouth! Confound your Port line Mr Mayor! You've only got Mr Curtis, and Mr Sharp, and Mr Richmond, and Mr Baigent, and Mr Hursthouse, and Mr Gibbs to look after your interests — and as for the two latter I imagine that they don't care one straw about the matter — while Auckland, and Wellington, and Canterbury, and Otago have ever so many more votes in the House, and all and each of these are clamoring for works in their districts. Do you thigk, S?r, that we are tomfools, noodles, asses, in the Public Works Department? No, Sir, I can tell you that the estimate you appear to have formed of us is a lamentably incorrect one as you will yet learn.— "l have the honor to be, &c." That's the gist of the Under-Secretary's reply. And all we do is to laugh and look as though we appreciated the joke. So there were not 40,000 Russians killed. in that attack upon Batoura or some other place the other day. I fancied when first I read the telegram that there was an onght or two too many in the number of the slain, but it is not yet shown that I was correct in my supposition, because although the Russians disclaim so gigantic a loss, they seem disposed to insinuate that there are at least so many Turks the less in this world since that engagement, whenever it took place. That's the chief merit of the Russian accounts. They make insinuations — not allegations. The Turks stupidly committed themselves to forty thousand as the exact number of Russian bears that t went down before their rifles and big guns. The Russians in their contradiction deal in generalities. They merely say "Our loss was small, that of the Turks very large," leading the puzzled telegram readers in the antipodes to [suppose that if there were 40,000 killed they must have been Turks. I can't see what good all these lies and exaggerations can do to either side, for surely the temporary prestige to be gained by such silly falsehoods cannot avail much. However, wide of the truth as they have been, I take upon myself to predict that the telegrams already to hftnd are, in their unreliability, nothing to what we shall yet receive before "this cruel war" is over. lam naturally of a sympathetic disposition, and never hear of a misfortune having fallen upon a friend without feeling it keenly; So it happened that yesterday on meetiug a sheep-farming acquaintance who I knew had wool in the Ocean Mail I said, « Well old fellow I really am very sorry to hear of this sad disaster; had you much wool on board?" ' With an equanimity that was surprising under the circumstances, and with the air of one who was endeavoring to bear his troubles manfully he replied, "Not much, only twenty bales." " Right glad am Ito hear it," said ' I, H"I was afraid your whole clip was on board." It was a rude shock to me to hear him reply, "I wish to goodness it had been. Don t you see it was insured for .£2O a bale, a price that it is not likely to realise at home m the present state of the market." Seeing that my sympathies were wasted in this direction, I have since bee i bottling them up for the Insurance A J ents, but these gentlemen look so horribly lugubrious, and wince so perceptibly and sigh so deeply whenever the Ocean Mail is mentio led that hitherto I have not dared to address them on the subject. F