TARANAKI GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.

additional cost to the mercantile community.

If for the carrying on of our now small trade without a harbor, (and while we have but a fractional portion of our land occupied), we sink and sacrifice yearly an amount of money sufficient to pay interest and sinking fund for a sum that would enable us to construct so desirable a work; is it not right to direct attention to what most assuredly will be our returns if the salubrious and fertile district of Taranaki be peopled and brought into use. Truly our harbor returns would be immense, and for the following reasons, as well as for that which I have already adduced, viz., The town of New Plymouth is located in a position most commanding and convenient for trading with the Australian Colonies without the inconvenience of going north or south about, or making the passage of “Cook’s Strait”—it has a good roadstead perfectly free from shoals, with remarkable barrier land marks, which bound the anchorage to the west, and a convenient depth of water near shore with a fourteen feet rise of tide, at “full and change,” and no impediment exists for shipping or landing passengers and cargo at any time of tide, save stormy weather, and as a remarkable and rare facilities exist for the constructing of a first-class harbor at New Plymouth,” would it not be politic and wise to have it made at once, seeing that to the windward and exposed part of the town a reef of unquestionable strength and durability exists for the foundation and basis of the said harbor, “which promise to reduce very considerably the cost of the work.” Moreover, the proposed harbor and town of New Plymouth are so centrally situate with regard to the whole of this province that it would be impossible to select a more judicious position for carrying on the trade of the country, added to which there is not another place upon the coast of Taranaki, or indeed, upon this west coast for hundreds of miles, where a like harbor can be made to rival it, and as the province of Taranaki is larger by sixty thousand acres, than the four English Counties of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex and Hertford, and with the exception of the snow capped heights of the beautious and far-famed Mount Egmont and other small amount of picturesque “ranges,” the whole of the land of the province is available for either agricultural or pastoral farms of a first-class order, which being brought into use and fructified will necessarily create a trade which will centre at the most convenient harbor—and that harbor, sooner or later, will be at New Plymouth.

I will now only add that where the geographical position of a place is so commanding and convenient, and where the country is so extensive and good, and where the natural facilities for making a harbor for refuge and trade are so advantageous and inviting, and where such an amount of good can be effected at comparatively small cost with a certainty of large returns, as is the case at New Plymouth, it is the duty of those who have the well-being and prosperity of the community entrusted to them that they use every proper means in their power to cause so desirable a work as a harbor for refuge and trade off the town of New Plymouth to be carried out; and this, I think, may be done by the General Government aiding in the way they have already promised, and by giving a concession of the proposed harbor site to a corporate body, who would undertake to construct and keep the harbor work, subject to receiving the land to be given by the Government, and the harbor dues and tolls to be agreed upon by the Government and Parliament; at the same time, the Government to have the right to purchase at a just valuation on terms to be stated.

In closing this letter, I beg leave to say that I am urged on all sides to use my best endeavors with the General Government for the carrying out of this harbor work, and that I have more than once brought the same question before the House of Representatives, supported by a unanimous resolution of the Provincial Council, which was favorably received, and what I now ask is that the promise which was made to me on the floor of the “House” on the 14th November, 1871, “be faithfully adhered to,” together with such other aid as the Government may think a colonial work, such as I now desire to be carried out, should receive.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

FRED. A. CARRINGTON,
Superintendent.

Vide Parliamentary Debates, 4th September, 1873, pages 899, 900, 901, 902, 903.

Printed under the authority of the Government of the Province of Taranaki, by Charles Brown, of Brougham-street, New Plymouth, Printer to the Provincial Government for the time being.