FEILDING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5062, 14 June 1877, Page 3

FEILDING.

(from our own correspondent.) Having alluded in a recent communication to changes of a progressive character that have taken place in this district since the election of Mr. Walter Johnston to represent it in Parliament, and to the desirability of a non-resident representative paying an occasional visit to see for himself what progress is making, and what are the views and feelings of the different sections of his constituents on matters likely to engage his attention as a member of Parliament, I wish to note that there is a section in the community who wish to receive a visit from their member for the purpose of hearing his views on the questions of the day. But I may say that I agree with those among us who wish to hear and weigh what a candidate’s expressed opinions are before his election, and wish their representative after his election to hear and weigh the opinions of different sections of his constituents. But to be able learn the opinions of a constituency, and to see for himself the progress that his district is making or might have made if impediments to progress were moved out of the way, there is no need for a member visiting his district to call a meeting to hear him speak; but rather for an absentee member to see representative individuals among his constituents in each locality, and hear their views. I have to record a visit to this district from the member for the adjoining district of Rangitikei, who came through this place during the present week; and as he was supposed to have a strong bias against the wishes of the two northern ridings of the county of Manawatu, how could our own member be able to advocate its claims with effect should his Foxton friend in the Manawatu Council bring their heavy guns to bear on him, if they were supported by the member for Rangitikei, who has made himself acquainted with a question at issue ? It will be in the recollection of your readers that a few months ago a sale of Crown Lands took place, the maps of the land for sale being marked Sandon. There were then over twenty thousand acres of the finest land in the colony sold in the Kiwitea, which is covered with light bush, but there was no access to it by any road except for pack-horses ; but the Government some time ago offered to the Manawatu County Council nearly £-100 to open a road to the land which is known as the Kiwitea Block; but the County Council, for some reason or other, refused to expend the money for the Government in giving access to this new settlement. Mr, Macarthur, who is the representative of the Kiwitea Riding in the Council, subsequently to this refusal applied to the Government in March last (as 1 notice from the published correspondence) requesting Government to again place the amount at the disposal of the County Council ; and this was done at the last meeting of the Council, which was held on the 30th May, The Council passed a resolution, placing the amount of the Government grant at the disposal of the Manchester Highways Board. The Board on the following day took steps to have the work done at once in small contracts, so as to get a road to Kiwitea opened promptly, and I learn that in less than a week from the Council placing the matter in the hands of the Board a great portion of the work was let in small sections, and is now in course of speedy execution. The only pity is that the circumlocution office should have allowed the fine weather to pass before getting this Government grant expended on such a necessary work. X had occasion lately to comment on the impediment to railway traffic cieated by the trespass of live stock on the railway. Since then our local paper has expressed an opinion that the Government ought to fence in the railway lines, as is done in some places elsewhere. But sometning more dangerous to railway travelling than live stock trespass has been shown to exist at the points turning into sidings. Your telegrams will have advised you of the accident on Wednesday to the train proceeding to Feilding. There must be something very wrong in the management of these points to cause such an accident. Why are the points not always locked until the guard of the train opens them ? Points placed at such side lines should never be open except when a train is at the siding, and in that case the guard of the train only should have a key to open them, where there is no railway servant or pointsman who is responsible for the working of the point?. In the case of this accident the damage done has been only trifling, thanks to the coolness of the engine driver and his assistant, who stuck to their post, in trying to break the force of the inevitable collision. In the matter of hotel accommodation I have seen no place in this province where hotels are so commodious and complete as with us in Feilding. But how will it fare under Mr. Stout’s Local Option Bill, should it become law, after the expression of opinion elicited in its favor at Lunedin last week ?

We of Feilding hope for much in the future, when the fertile land in the neighborhood becomes more occupied than it is by a class of yeomen ; and there is plenty of room for such to settle among us, either on laud that now belongs to the Crown at Kiwitea, or on the E. and O. A. Corporation lands ; and when an improved Act is passed for enabling settlors to purchase land from the Maoris, there will be a chance of getting some of the finest land in New Zealand from them in this neighborhood. It appears to me that the best way to deal with the Maori land question is to pass an Act to simplify the granting of titles to individual Maoris for a portion of the lands they now hold under tribal rights on a communist principle. In fact it should, I think, be the steady policy of the Government to extinguish communism in land among the Maori race as soon as possible, as there can be no improvements effected on such lands until they become individual properties. The weather has been rather severe for the past week, although it may be considered as seasonable for the month of June. I have to

note that the southerly winds never blow so severely cold on this side of the Tararua Ranges as they do on the other, and as the prevailing winds here come up fresh from the sea without any hills to dry the air in passing over them, the grass throughout the Manawatu district is beautifully green, when it is dried up with summer winds in many other parts of the colony, which is generally the ease on the eastern side of our mountains more than on the western side. Plantations of the gum trees

between this place and the sea coast would be found good in several ways. I notice a nursery of gum trees near Palmerston North, and it is astonishing to see them grow so much iu the first year after sowing the seed. Having seen the mature forest gum trees grow large straight trunks exceeding 200 ft. iu length aud over Cft, iu diameter, I hope to see our settlers plant them as breakwiucls for their farms and as a means of stopping the shifting sand near the sea coast.