PRELIMINARY ENGINEERING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5683, 17 June 1879, Page 3

PRELIMINARY ENGINEERING.

(From the Lyttelton Times.) We thought that when the time came for turning the first sod of the Otago Central Railway, the time would also come for a magnificent oration from Mr. Vincent Pyke. Now that the ceremony and the rhetorical effort have passed, it is abundantly evident that the latter very fully deserved the predicted epithet. The sun smiled upan Mr. Pyke, as vve learn from the written account of the proceedings, and Mr. Pyke smiled upon the company in a manner not less beaming, gracious, and splendid, as the reporters, not feeling equal to the important task of description, have considerately allowed us to imagine for ourselves. And in the matter of Mr. Fyke’s power of smiling on auspicious occasions there is very free scope for a tolerably wild imagination to disport itself, without striking against the limits that separate the region of sober fact from the unsubstantial realms of exaggeration. The occasion was a great one in the life of every preliminary engineer. It was the only occasion on which the preliminary engineer actually comes publicly into contact with the real engineer, preparatory to handing over to him the material and grosser portion of their joint work. Mr. Pyke comported himself in a manner iu every way suitable to tins great occasion. Descending from the airy regions whence he commands such noble views of"the distant future, he reached the earth, where, having met his colleague, the engineer of everyday life, he proceeded in graceful compliment, we presume, to the calling of that humble individual to “ assume the navvy,” and with bared arms performed the necessary operation with the wheelbarrow in a style most workmanlike, as we are credibly informed. The meeting of the engineers having been duly recorded for the benefit of posterity by the exercise of the photographer’s art, Mr. Pyke took leave of the tools of the materialist, and returned to the upper regions, where he enjoys so good a view of prospects. Safe in that congenial eminence the great_ preliminary engineer exhausted himself in an effort of combined vision and description, which very properly far transcended anything achieved by him on previous and less important occasions in the colony of New Zealand. Of course, his heart was too full for utterance ; and equally as a matter of course it had to be permitted to overflow before the stream of eloquence could be sent forth on its flashing course of wondrous prophecy. But he dried his eyes with a reference to the inception of “ the most stupendous work south of the line,” at which he too bad been present—by which he stamped the prophecies he was about to make with the stamp of authority—and he completed the operation by a reference to the pride which succeeding generations of his family will take in the heir-loom—that day presented to him—by which he relieved his overwrought feelings. All this it must be confessed is far better than those dry barren preliminary ooughmgs beard on so many platforms. The speech that followed was amazing. Mioawber in Australia, when that worthy man had grown prosperous in the country of his adoption, never said anything more glowingly magnificent. What a stupendous country it is that the speaker asked us to behold 1 The view was cut off by a barren mountain, it is true, but the speaker had been over that mountain, and a great many more on the route, and he was at that moment at a commanding elevation for gazing into futurity, so he could tell us all about what the country was and what it would be. Such millions of acres it comprises, such a climate it has, such a prodigious fertility of soil ! What a wondrous region ! appearing to get better iu proportion to its distance, but stupendous nevertheless. A prosaic country it seems to he near to the spot where the great orator was talking of its glories, but growing in good qualities, till at the; further end, even the great orator’s powers were insufficient —he candidly said so to do justice to its real excellence. He tried hard notwithstanding. He marshalled his adjectives with great skill ; he hurdled them ou the indescribable with great courage and in vast masses, glittering with tho beams of his resplendent oratory. Scraps of poetry gleamed athwart the advance ; noble sentiments led it like chivalrous captains ; the thunders of oratorical great guns covered it ; the volleys of epithetical small arms were murderous in support of it, and the smoke of indistinctness never hung over the assault. But the gallant effort was only partially successful. The indescribable remains undcscribed. We have no adequate notion of the country in that favored region. Wo only know now that the speaker has ceased, that all the fruits of the earth will one day grow in that happy valley ; that flocks and herds will likewise bo there in countless thousands; that every minei-al known to civilisation will be found

there, and wo have a suspicion that some new kinds must inevitably be discovered in its less explored fastne-so.' l . Population will be there of course in great abundance, and the unearned increment in great profusion, and many other things equally desirable and more easy of comprehension. But if the description of all this was necessarily inadequate, it established one thing very clearly, and that is that till now the true El Dorado has never been discovered. Men have wandered and are wandering in search of it amongst ruthless savages, and wild beasts hardly more ruthless, and under tropical suns, with their attendant hardships and fevers ; but if they only knew what we know the upper Clutha Valley would be to them what the magnet is to the iron filings, in the experiment. Mr. Pyke ended his description before he ended his speech. The description was a farewell to his greatness as the preliminary engineer of the Otago Central. What followed was the first note warning of another great work. “There is but one natural gateway,” said Mr. Pyke “to the West Coast for railway communication." This is a sign to all men that this indefatigable man is about to begin an agitation, skilful, far spreading, and ceaselessly remorseless for the continuation of the Otago Central by the Wanaka Lake and the Makarora Valley. How charmingly bo introduces his intention ! He got tired of cutting his way through supplejacks with a tomahawk on the Haast Pass in 1865. Hence, we have a road in 1879, constructed by the enterprise of the counties of Vincent and Westland on which a man may gallop - without drawing rein an untold number of miles. Mr. Pyke will get tired in the course of time of galloping without drawing rein, and of admiring the enterprise of Vincent and other counties, when of course there will be a railroad. For he will want a railroad, and what he wants Mr. Pyke contrives generally to get, and he gets glory as well. When that railroad is begun we may expect another speech descriptive of countries too remote for present acquaintance. There is no doubt that these will be then be seen in surprising lights.