LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLING CORRESPONDENT.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 195, 12 August 1874, Page 2

LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLING CORRESPONDENT.

No. 5 We come now to the brief consideration of the great, Harbor Works. It is proposed, amongst other matters in this direction, as you are probably aware, to erect a break-water at Ahuriri, so as to afford more secure anchorage for shipping. But here again we are met by endless differences of opinion both professional and non-professioual. Some say one thing, ami some another. A declares that if the break-water is ever made it will be useless, while R is perfectly certain that if properly completed it will make the fortune of every man, woman, and child, within a hundred miles of it. On the other hand Csays that it can’t be done for the monej’ named, and if it is done it won’t stand. But in the midst of all this hubbub, the “ still small voice” which is whispering in the ears of those who court political support, hisses. “ borrow, borrow.” I give you my own opinion upon this important matter ; and it, of course, will be taken for what it is worth, and it is this: that from the peculiar geological formation of Hawke’s Bay, the shifting beaches, the furious gales, and the direction of the fiercest of those gales, as also of the ebb and flow of tide, superadded to the tremendous quantities of silt brought down by each flood every year, the chances are that if this break-water ever is completed, it will silt up in the course of years, and produce within its enclosure precisely the same state of things which obtains now under the lea of the Ahuriri Bluff. And then again as to cost. I doubt much whether a work of such magnitude can be executed for the comparatively insignificant sum of £250,000. But at any rate since the money is to be borrowed upon the same amazingly elastic principle, as all these moneys are borrowed by us, why of course it will have to be spent, and somebody must get the benefit of it, even if no one in particular pays ; and it may as well be expended in making a possibly good harbor for so fine a district as Hawke’s Bay, as upon anything else. Turning now from the contemplation (upon paper) of this magnificent harbor in embryo let us for a few lines direct our attention to the, at present, vague idea which haunts men’s minds about the preservation of the low lands of Hawke’s Bay from the frightful periodical devastation occasioned by the floods. As in the case of the two previous works of magnitude we have just discussed, so in the case of these river diverting works ; much difference of opinion obtains. I will not, however, stop to discuss the pro* and cons of those opinions, for it will be quite enough to say that such is the alarm in men’s minds as to the future course of the Ngaruroro and other rivers running through the Ahuriri plains, that any suggestion that bears even the most remote semblance of feasibility, is received with cordiality at all events for the moment. During my late stay in Napier a mighty flood arose, and great was the destruction caused thereby; a vast extent of country was laid under water and since the memorable flood of 1867 nothing like it has been seen. Such is the eccentric course of that large river, the Ngaruroro, that it has, under the influence of this last great flood, began to bore itself a new channel, in the direction of the Tutaekuri, and supposing it does force its way into that river, the fate of the Meeanee is sealed; as it is, that flat is unusually submerged to a greater or less extent. I remember well 20 years ago that the Ngaruroro ran swiftly betweenhigh lands from a little above the present village of Havelock to the sea at Waipureku, and that at Pakowhai it was joined by a small stream running out of the swamp at Omaho. That stream, so small in those days, is now the actual and living course of the river; the old bed is fast silting up, and nearly dry in summer. If then so great and unexpected a change has been effected in the course of the last 20 years, what may we not expect within the next 20, or even 10 years? We may make railways, we may even make a wall to break the force of the eternal waves of the sea. The hands of man are cunning ; and powerful; his brain is full of great and wonderful thoughts; he can grasp the lightning in one hand, and rule the fury of the ocean with the other. But who amongst the children of men shall rise up and say to the tremendous floods that rush irresistibly from the mountain tops upon the valleys below, “ thus far shaft thou go and no farther ?” I give it up. The combined work of hundreds of years has succeeded in taming the wild rivers in some countries, but I am afraid Ahuriri plains cannot be counted to last so long as that into the future, if something cannot be clone to curb the turbulent and ever-varying current of the rivers flowing through that country.