THE OHURA ROAD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 182, 24 July 1900, Page 3

THE OHURA ROAD.

TO THE EDITOR, Sie, Knowing that your paper reaches almost all settlers in and around Stratford and Toko, I thought you would be good enough to give me a small space in it for comment on the road from Stratford to Toko. The road in question is a perfect disgrace to any district) and to the Road Board that has it under control, To-day, I had occasion to go into Toko by the mail coach, or rather buggy, for the mail contractor cannot get through with the coach, and one can hardly believe that a body of men whose first duty is to look to the upkeep of the roads in this district, could allow this road to get into such a frightful and disgusting state of repair. For a full half mile the road is one sheet of liquid mud abont eighteen inches deep, and in places the holes are fully four feet deep with this muck, and utterly impassible. We passed a large waggon stuck hard and fast in a hole of this kind, and seven good upstanding horses could not shift it. At this particular spot, the timber waggons have to have on some foutteen horses to drag them through, and this exists on one of our main country roads that carries perhaps as much traffice as any. Still wotse than this, some distance past Toko to-day, a pack horse, carrying Her Majesty's Mail got bogged on the road, and sank till the mud was over its back, and it took some three hours to get the animal out again. From : what I can gather these are but daily occurrences on the road, and I wonder the settlers do not apply to the Government to compel the .Board to keep the road in better repair. During the summer the road was metalled I believe right into Toko, with the exception of this half mile, and it seems ridiculous for the Board to have left what would at the time cost forty or fifty pounds, to become so bad that it will now need about two hundred pounds to repair. When the road first began to get bad, I believe the waggonthe

I services and their teams free of cost to cart motal until it was repaired, but I understand the Board would not supply the metal. Surely this is a had state of aflairs, and one cannot understand this kind of thing where the good of the district is at stake, and surely it is, for nothing is so heartbreaking and discouraging ,to settlement as roads that i are impassable for wheeled traffiee.—l am, etc.,