SOUTHLAND V. TUAPEKA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 146, 24 November 1870, Page 7

SOUTHLAND V. TUAPEKA.

The primary object of the undertaking is to connect Lake Wakatipu with the capital, and to carry it ojut by Tuapeka would be to court engineering difficulties far in advance of our engineering skill, Leaving the money consideration out of the question, such places as the Round Hill, Waitahuna facings, the Devil's Backbone, the Ruggety Ridge Dunstan, and Kawaru Grorges are barriers which could not be readily overcome. The plans of the Committee were laid with a good deal of deliberation. One project was to enlist the co-operation of Dunstan, Cromwell, and Queenstown. Now if any place was interested in seconding the movement, it must be the Dunstan. The Southland line cannot possibly be taken nearer to it than the foot of Lake Wakatipu, whereas the condition offered by the Tuapeka project was to bring it right through the township. The physical impossibility of the proposal appears at once to have been recognised by the Dunstan residents. Hence the Tuapeka bait, with all its blandishments, is rejected with stolid indifference, while the last issue to hand of the " Dunstan Times" works out the problem of increased facility to be secured to its district by the completion of the Winton line, The Wakatipu representations made on the subject are equally explicit, so that the " Tuapeka Progress Committee " has no reason to congratulate itself on the progress it has made in these directions.

On the part of Tuapeka the agitation is not a genuine one, but rather the offspring of asinister motive, particulars of which are furnished by the local correspondent of a Tokomairiro paper. Dating from Lawrence, he says: — " Those wha have allotments af either end of the town, at all eligible for a terminus for the railway in expectancy, have at once endowed them with a fictitions and romantic value, which no doubt they anticipate realising. In the absence of all other excitable matter this harmless mania wdl result in no evil, and I have no doubt the occupants of quarteracres will find an amusing pleasure in mentally calculating their expected ' piles.' " This seems to be the pith of the whole proceeding, a proceeding which, put into conventional phraseology, reads thus : — We, the electors of Tuapeka, being registered owners of certain quarter-acre sections suitable for railway purposes, pledge our suffrage in consideration of certain facilities to dispose of these sections by way of imposition on the public ex~ chequer. Such a compact is repugnant to British instinct, and instead of being countenanced by the public authorities, it should be rated as the criminal conversion of private rights,

[The above is an extract from an article bearing the above heading frhich appears in the "Southland Weekly Times "of the sth inst 1 ; The novel route for the Tuapeka railway which exists in the imagination of our contemporary will be highly amusing to our readers. This extract satisfactorily proves the utter ignorance of our contemporary of the projected line of railway to Lawrence. The road described is one which has been abandoned for ordinary trrflic for several years.

The " Southland Times " must have received its information from some person who resided in Tuapeka seven or eight years ago, and imagines that, like Southland, Tuapeka has remained, in a state of coma since that time. Not so ; every year works great im, provements amongst an energetic community such as we have in the Tuapeka district.

With regard to the article in the " Dun stan Times," we have reason to know that the sentiments therein expreased are not shared by any person in the Dunstan excepting the writer of the article, if indeed he can be fool enough to believe in the absurd scberae he advocates.

The random writing of the Lawrence Correspondent, referred to in the above extract, may read well, but for our contemporaries information we may state that the survey of the railway to Lawrence does not come within two or three hnndred yardp of any quarter-acre town section. — -Ed,

A numerous meeting of merchants was also held od the Bourse, and an address to rhe King was drawn up and unanimously adopted, similar in purport to that pagsed by the merchants of Berlin, and especially begging His Majesty to decline any foreign intervention in the event of negotationg b£mg opened for the conclusion of peace.