NORMANBY.

Patea Mail, 31 January 1882, Page 3

NORMANBY.

(fro 31 OUK CORRESPONDENT.) Resuming my remarks on the New Plymouth breakwater, and the effect of recent gales, a temporary immunity from unusually high seas has enabled the Board to make some progress lately, but we may expect to hear of more serious despoliation on the usual reyisitation of the winter storms. The recent billows are described as tumbling in to the height of 14 feet upon the unfinished works, and the carrying away of only 100 yards of cement (a great under-statement) is advanced as a proof of the stability of the structure and its solid foundations. But 14 feet are by no means the known maximum to which these billows are known to rise on that coast, for it is no exaggeration to say that the sea in front of this open roadstead frequently presents a sight which is perfectly appalling. The same may no donbt be said of other coasts, but the simplest reader will easily imagine the destruction that may ensue when—poetical as it may appear—the waves of the ocean rear their ambitions heads to meet the clouds.

But even these, formidable as they really are, are not an insuperable barrier to the construction of the harbor. A harbor, and a really good one, can be made, but in estimating its cost, Sir John Coode must have been misled as to the destructive tempests to which the coast at Taranaki is periodically exposed ; but it will never be completed on the amount which he states, much less on the absurdly small one of Mr Blackett.

Looking dispassionately at the whole undertaking ray contention is that the harbor works at New Plymouth are of too colossal a character to be saddled upon the already overburdened ratepayers of this district, and that they must be made colonial if Government insists that they shall be prosecuted to the bitter end. Their great importance as an outlet to the ocean is heartily acknowledged ; hut the opening up of the country and the construction and metalling of highways are matters of more immediate and pressing consequence. Wo cannot go on for ever tumbling about through hundreds of miles of mud, and get nothing for our money but rollicking descriptions of the u grandeur and sublimity of the ocean.” The brilliancy of maritime eloquence is cordially conceded to our Taranaki friends, though the verities of the situation arc assigned a charming latitude.

‘•'At speaking truth tliey.arc perhaps less clever But draw the long bow better now than ever.’’