CLOSING ADDRESS. MARCH 6, 1863.

MR. SPEAKER AND GENTLEMEN OF THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

The business of this Session having now drawn to a close, it will be my duty to transmit to His Excellency the Governor the following Bills which you have passed, with the expression of my own concurrence therewith, viz—

1. The Interpretation Ordinance, 1862, Amendment Ordinance,
2. The Marine Boards Ordinance,
3. The Town Board Ordinance,
4. Bluff and Invercargill Railway Ordinance,
5. Debentures Ordinance,
6. Diversion of Roads Ordinance,
7. Appropriation Ordinance,
8. Sheep Ordinance, 1862, Amendment Ordinance.
9. Roads Ordinance, 1862, as amended.

Whenever the assent of the Governor shall have been given to the Railway and Loan Bills, immediate steps will be taken by the Provincial Government to commence the work without delay. In the meanwhile, no time is lost, as the engineering staff will be—for sometime engaged in elaborating the details of the preliminary work.

As you have, after due deliberation, agreed that it is not advisable to lay a Tramway on the North Road, it will be the duty of the Government to use every effort to put the North Road in the best state of repair that the time and circumstances will permit, in conformity with your resolution on the subject.

I have to thank you for the care and consideration with which you have gone through the business of the Session. The unwearied attention you have devoted to the measures submitted to you, shows that you appreciate the importance of their bearing on the future of the Province; and I entertain a confident hope that our mutual anticipations of their beneficial effect will be fully realised.

I have now, Gentlemen, to release you from further attendance, and to declare that this Council is prorogued.

THE CHIEF SURVEYOR’S PROGRESS REPORT ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD.

Survey Office, Southland,
20th January, 1863.

SIR,—
The various works on the Great North Road designed by me, and contracted for by the Provincial Government, were calculated only to make the line viable throughout, and, as preliminary to the regular detail of road-making, which would, in any case, have become necessary from time to time as the traffic increased; it was then contemplated that at first almost the only traffic would have been the drays from the sheep stations, and that forming and gravelling would only have been very gradually required as portions became poached, but even had an immediate necessity then existed for making good the road throughout, it would have been hardly possible to have properly specified the work until after the forest lines had been cleared of timber and the streams and swamps bridged and drained.

From circumstances connected with the advance of the gold-fields, these works have been delayed far beyond the time limited to the contractors: but as they are now all advancing to completion, and since Lake Wakatipu commerce promises to become of first-rate importance, it is now necessary to provide not merely for immediately opening this as an available track, but, if possible, for making it a good road, safe to endure the wear and tear of heavy traffic through the winter.

As the line for about thirty miles runs on level land with good alluvial soil, it is clear that this can only be done by forming and metalling it throughout or by works equivalent to this; the drier plains where the natural surface would stand traffic being so inconsiderable and so detached that it is hardly worth while to accept them, since on these also, the same operation would become necessary a little later.

Still some portions require this improvement more urgently than others. A contract has accordingly been set for forming the road in the Winton Bush, about 100 chains, and a specification has been drawn for forming it across the Winton Flat, nearly four miles; it is also immediately needed on the Limestone Flat, north of Winton Bush, about five miles in all, but of which about one or one and a half miles might for the present be omitted, and one other portion—about one and a half miles in length—north of the Limestone range, on Mr. M’Lean’s run, is quite impassable until so improved.

A cutting in siding will also be required at the northern extremity of the middle bush cutting (on the south flank of the Limestone Range), and several other jobs may be required in these bush cuttings which it is impossible to specify until the clearing is complete, which will not be less than two or three weeks.

These are the only portions of the road which are at all bad now; but it is impossible to forget that no part south of the Dipton Flat will stand any heavy winter traffic without metal, and that even the now excellent road from the Waihopai Bridge to Wallace Town, and from the Tomoporakau on to the Winton Flat, would, under such a trial, become an adhesive bog in the months of August or September.

Now, the gravelling alone of these two portions would probably cost fully as much as draining, forming, and gravelling the parts