THE EMPIRE CITY.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 28 May 1880, Page 2

THE EMPIRE CITY.

» A former resident in Ballarat in a letter to a friend, gives the following extraordinary description of Wellington city :— • Of all (he backward, dirty holes I have been in, tin's beats them all. I know no road in Victoria, excepting one close to Mount Warrenheip, in as bad a condition as the principal street in WeK j lingion. The mud is tvo inches thick, and to have to cyoss the street on foot

requires a large amount of moral coursge to nerve one for the task. The public conveyances are about the best thiogs in the place, as they are nearly all either carnages or broughams, but you never can get one if you want it before 10 a.m., or after 8 p.m., aDd even between hours you may Lave to walk nearly a m.letooneof th c « Btands/ A tra carnage runs erery twenty minutes durin« the day «p to 6 p.m., i n which you can r.Je a distance of four m \h s f or threepence. The best musical peop i c 5n the city are two old Ballarat men, Mes Brs8 rs M. King and Caddy, the former a nepbew of Mr T. King, and the other related to Mr Cadden, at one time market inspector in B.llarat. The only vocalist worth mentioning is Mrs George UotteriU (Miss Carandini). There is very little to blow about the place, but it would not do to say so «o the inhabitants, as they look upon Wellington as being vastly superior to any other place south of the line, al. though there is but one decent building in the whole city, and that is Jacob Joseph's warehoase. There is no t a square or garden in the whole place, and no probability of there ever being one, since no room can be found for it, Wellington being built at the foot of a ridge I of hills in the shape of a h rse-shoe. Occasionally they reclaim a few yards of the shore from the sea. It is, without doubt, 200 years behind the age, and has the most useless, good«for-nothing City I Council I ever knew of. They do noth-> ing, but want to do everything; they ! must have sole con'rol over everything ; they are the committee of the Hospital and Benevolent Asylum, &c, and Harbor Board Commissioners, and yet they are nothing in reality.'