The Invercargill Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1863.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 107, 28 October 1863, Page 2

The Invercargill Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1863.

Every man has his peculiarity. Uriah Heap witli his " umbleaess,'' wiig'gles his way through th*** world into number 27, while his neighbor Mr Littimer reaches number 28 by a different road. Honesty, we are told, is the best policy, and yet how many men are seen in high places, whose worst enemy cannot accuse them of any weakness for that virtue. Some men have a natural turn for deceit ; take a particular pleasure in weaving " A thread of candour, with a web of lies," and do it through life with such ability that they carry the sympathy and respect of the masses ; and a virtuous policy finds a fit resting p'ace in Westminster Abbey. His Excellency Sir George G". ej, is a remarkable instance of this species of human spider, and his despatch to the Duke of Newcastle, which will be found in another column, is a very good sample of the web he spins. There is a degree of truth in the whole, bnt it is so worded as to create a false impression in the minds of those unacquainted with the circumstances, as we will endeavor to show by quoting from the despatch. **•* Katatore's people destroyed a £eld of wheat which had recently been sown by a chief named Rawiri, on his own land, which he had cultivated for several years. Rawiri, who was provoked by this, and was the weaker party, and wanted aid, determined to sell the very piece of land to the Government, which Katatore had always intended to retain," &c. "The Government lent itself to Kawiri's design and agreed to buy the land." It would appear from this that the Government bad bought purposely Katatore's land from Rawiri, instead of Rawiri's own, which was not the case. " The result was that Rawiri . and other natives persisted in obedience to the orders of the Government, in their attempts to cut the boundary line of this particular piece of land, and Rawiri and six of his men were shot by Katatore and some of his people." This again is'untrue, the Government nevt-r ordered them to cut the boundary, but Bierely stated, that if they wanted to sell any ground, they must define the boundaries. " The slayers of Rawi-i, the friend of the Government who fell in o' eying their orders, became thus o r friends and allies'" This is a very neat web. It is true that Katatore, killed Rawiii — true that Rawiri was the friend of the Government — true that Katatore became the friend and ally of the Government, but untrue that Rawiri was killed while obeying the ordeis of the Government. " And Katatore having come iu as the new man, sold the Government a block of about 40,000 acres of land, andbeing under their influence was one day Sent for by the Government to como into New Plymouth. He was forbidden to bring his arms with him, and being thus betrayed, unarmed, into the power of his enemies, was by them, with one of his people, murdered by an ambush on our land, on the highway.'' Here is a distinct charge of base treachery on the part of the Government, no pains being spared to show it in its worst light; the words "and beingunder their influence" are skilfu'lj introduced, though in what wayKatatore was under the influence of the Government we cannot s-ee, unless he had been mesmerised, which we believe was not the case. The facts are thes * : — The Government did send for Katatore, as they wanted to confer with him personally, and did not forbi', I ut suggest d that to prevent the possibility of a disturbance he should come unarmed. While Katatore was still in the garrison, there arose some suspicion that he would meet with foul play if he left that evening. He was consequently warned oi his danger, and implored to remain in the garrison that night. This he refused, proudly replying, in the words of Danton, "They dare not kill me 5" and fell a victim to over-confidence, and not to the treachery of the Government. This much of the despatch relates to Colonel Wynyard's government, and not to Colonel Browne's, as might be imagined — though, doubtless,[it was the intention of the writer toconvey that impression. (i It would, I think, have been supposed that Katatore, haviug thus been murdered, when he tvas, as il were, an unarmed guest, and was on our own land, we should, under no circumstances, have become the allies of those who had murdered our new friend.'' This sentence is skillfully worded to tell in the following one, which seems to accuse Colonel Browne of having purchased the Waitara Block. "But Te Teira, , a relative of Ibai and Tamati j Tiraurau, having offered to sell us aj piece of land at the Waitara, on which William King and about 250 of his people had been more than twelve years located, regarding the land as their own, Te Teira's claim to this land was nominally purchased by the Governor ; William King and his people were turned off by force of arms, and we ended by being the allies of Katatore's murderers."" Iu the first place, however much William King regarded the land as his own, it was, we believe, pretty clearly proved that he had only a permissive right from Te Teira, who was the real owner of the land. As to

turning. William King off by force of .arms, it is very questionable whether he did not turn us off; at any rate, it would appear that William King has it now, but the skillful way in which ; the last sentence is introduced is worthy of attention — " And we ended '-. by being the , allies of Katatore's murderers,'' mixing up the Waitava question with the murder bf Katatore. fits Excellency thus charges his predecessors with lending themselves to a quarrel between Rawiri and Katatore, buying with a perfect knowledge of the facts, land from the former which belonged to the latter ; ordering Rawiri to cut the boundaries, in obeying which he lost his life ; deserting his party to make friends with Katatore ; basely betraying him into the hands of his enemies ; becoming allies of those enemies, and purchasing land from them which belonged to William King, the avenger of our betrayed ally ; and all this to enable us to get hold of two pieces of land. He concludes by statinjj : — "lt is under such circumstances as t&pe that the natives now evince a great want of confidence in our persistence in any settled line of action, and show a distrust of us, which I fear it will require some time to remove." We have shown that every one of the charges made is untrue, aud we fancy the confidence of the natives in our persistence in any settled line of action will not be strengthened by the abandonment of the Waitara block after so mueh money and blood have been spent in acquiring it. Doubtless, the whole matter will be thor'-ughly sifted, and the charges rebutted, by those whose acquaintance with the facts of the case will enable them to come to a juster decision than his Grace the Duke of Newcastle. Even our contemporary, tbe Otago Daily Times, in his leader of the 2 1st inst., has fallen into the intended error of supposing the charge of treachery towards Katatore is made against the Government of Governor Browne, instead of the Governor acting at the time — Colonel Wynyard. . o , Now that the Town Board of Invercargill have, through the charity of the Provincial Government and the merciful consideration of the Bank of New South Wale?, resumed that ha- py status which in slang language is designated by the adjective " flush," it becomes almost a duty to throw out an occasional suggestion as to how the money may be laid out with greater good to the inhabitants than in the past time of a full municipal exchequer. The paving and completing of the roads and streets of the town demand, of course, the most pressing consideration, inasmuch as, if these works are longer delayed, population will flow away into other and better channels ; but whilst grating, pitching, and metalling are being pushed forward with the impetus derivable from fresh funds — and, we hope, newborn energy — uisquite,;ossib\ t >,at the same time, pay some slight attention to details, such as sanitary improvements, which will, so to speak, plaster the crevices of a rough hewn progress, and without which we may have to grieve over labor thrown aw y. It would be vain to construct a city of even the most excellent proportions, with streets macadamised, and Regent Street pavements, if the lives of its inhabitants were perilled by the non- , existence of a system of drainage to carry away stagnant exhaling pools, ani by the absence of those cleansing facilities through which alone the* health of the masses can be kept up— public baths. Without these tvvo desiderata, InvercargiU — -though made an architect's E'ys"um — would be a people's grave. The Town Board can, we should imagine, be scarcely aware of the serious responsibility devolving upon them, or they would have already — hampered though they have , been— taken steps towards preserving that public health for which they are answerable. Tbey have still, however, the hopeful consolation of the optimist, if they will only accept of it — " Better late than never.'' Hand in hand with the progress of formation of each street, it must be their duty to link the means of having the inhabitants protected from disease. Each street must have its branch sewer connected with main sewers, emptying where cause of offensiveness cannot arise. In addition, the deodorisation of sewage by the use of carbolic acid, or some such antiseptic, should be looked to ; and we may remark, in passing, that for deodorisation, carbolic acid obtained by the distillation of pit coal, has been used to great advantage in the sewage of Carlisle and Exeter, and other towns in the home country. Again, as to pullic baths. There is scarcely a country town in the i Australian colonies but has now its baths, and in England they have been fostered by Acts of Parliament. A sound state of either body or mind is impossible unless frequent ablutions are practised, and ablutions beyond those that are afforded by the slop-basins of lodging houses. But we need not be didactic, or bring forward arguments in favor of this proposition, accepted hundreds of years ago, before Christianity was. We need not urge that if Pagan Rome thought it necessary to build palaces for bathing purposes — to wash itself in the gorgeous baths of Titus and Dioclesian — that we should at least erect a wooden framework, under cover of which to lave away the incrustations of Invercargill dust and mud. The Town Board should not require (granted that they understood it) a highflown precedent to supply this want, or at any rate to partially supply it by a subsidy. In the New River, baths might be erected on the same principle as those at St. Kilda at a moderate cost ; or on a principle that we suggested nearly a year ago, viz ; an enclosure not roofed in, the

interior excavated, and laid down with fine gravel, and the sides boarded. Were the Town Board to even contribute a small sum, we are confident that subscriptions .would* soon enable the inhabitants to come back daily from tho New River cleaner, if not better men. Should our municipal legislators feel inclined to show that they are wise ; that they have got beyond that stage of existence, when the.chiefest joy .is to revel in the unpleasant pastry known as mud pies, and that J they prefer the rates of mortality to be kept down — ihey must see speedily about baths. Unless the town and the people are sani arily attended to, we may blot Invercargill out of the map of the province.