Who is to Blame ?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 654, 1 September 1891, Page 2

Who is to Blame ?

[to the editor. Sia, —Persons reading the account of yonr own " Ormond ” correspondent, might suppose that the treatment of the remains of the unfortunate man Walker was suoh ag to outrage humanity. Now, the simple facts were that no other plan of bringing tha body into the nearest burying ground was possible or attainable under the clroumstances. Those who did their best feel but little satisfaction at the public expression of adverse comment on the way in which they performed a duty accidentally forced upon them. The feeling of those who did what they did for the best have ae much right to be considered as those of a mere scribbler, who derived his knowledge of the affair through his own colored spectacles from the shelter of hie own house. Men engaged as we wore in the rough experiences of bush life have neither time or sympathy to waste on such would-be humanitarians. Prompt, if rough, remedies are best where no others are available. Our own sorrow for a lost comrade needed not this uncalled for addition to it. Neither was the pack horse lame, nor were the remains otherwise treated in any other way than circumstances demanded. We conveyed the body to the nearest graveyard, not the nearest publio house. Rightly or wrongly we did our level beat. Bear in mind that mnch of the road to Poututa Is impassable or nearly so, and any one who has been there knows this perfectly well.—l am, etc., Olives Gold.ictth.

[Every reader will endorse Mr Goldsmith's remark that the men who undertook this painful work are spacially entitled to oonsideration, but he does not touch on the point as to a vehicle being offered tor use in bringing the body into the town. The men who came from the bush would probably not know this at the time, but surely the Constable ought to have had authority to makG better arrangements,— Ed.J