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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 65

Its Growth

Its Growth.

The hindrance to the rapid advance of the Southland district in the past arose, as it does now, more from the sparseness of the population than from any other cause. The early efforts of the Provincial Government of Southland to promote the settlement and prosperity of the district were, I believe, honorably conceived, and this, although mistakes may have been made [unclear: is] adopting experimental undertakings, such as the wooden railway to the Makarewa, and possibly, at such an early period, the Invercargill-Bluff railway, instead of husbanding the means of the province until its financial resources were more fully de- page 3 veloped: or perhaps better still, of improving, with the funds available, the Port of Invercargill. Still these were points upon which a divergence of opinion would almost at any time inevitably arise. The Bluff-Invercargill railway is doubtless necessary for the ocean-borne traffic, and is a work that sooner or later would have been constructed; still, if half the amount expended at that time, on that undertaking, had been expended in improving the waterway from Foveaux Straits to Puni Creek, the ships which now discharge at the Bluff wharves would be unloading off Tay street or by the railway station, whilst the Bluff-lnvercargill line would certainly have been constructed under the Colonial Public Works Policy.