The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1878-10-22 00:00:00

WEYXOIITII.

Pitts anb tints.

Is our "meson" closed, or has the promise of fine
weather in October been as yet unexhausted So
little of it is left that our Local Board have been
drawn into the question of stinks-anduwage, and the
charming subject has found enthusiaata as devoted
almost as the phlluophers of Lapnta. Mrs. Malaprop
would not have blundered in this cue, had she
declined to judge between tne eloquent boardsmen
with the remark—" comparisons are odorous," and aa
the meetings were held with all the reporters anent
and encouraged to go to any length in scribbling—not
pump water eloquence, but sewage speeches, the
result was an awful overflow in some of the Wey-
mouth columns of the newspapers, and readers who
look to the Pram for "sweetness and light will
certainly eschew Local Bend reports for some months.
True, the debate was relieved by such an enquiry as—
" How many sausages may be made out of a tom
cat r but these were evidently the speculations of a
mind too enterprising to be confined to the subject in
hand. There was also something like a falling-out
between two most respected members as to what—
Somebody told me that somebody said,"
And this added uselessly to the length of this practice-
meeting of our Municipal Elocution Class. Others
demonstrated that somebody else had been wrong,
especially Sir John Goode, a matter which might be
taken as granted with the beet results, in fact, we
might all conjugate the tense commencing—" I have
been wrong," down to "They have been wrong," and
if anyone contended he had been right throughout,
%would be only the latest instance of "another good
man wrong." The discovery that sewage irrigation is
unsuited to clay land is at the bottom of this eaPiZ
and all that remains to be done is to make the belti ol
the mistakes we were all led into by the "little know.
ledge—dangerous thing l" The Local Board have
ordered certain nuisances to be abased; now let than,
by their officers, drive to its own place the offensive
thing, from Argyle-terrace to Conygar-lane. The
fine charge the ratepayers have to deliver to the
Nuisance Authority is—" Do as thou heat said." But
the Local Board will not, or must not, stop there. In
the upper Backwater they have a subaqueous inertias
' which must be dealt with by strong means, and I
recal the statement of Mr. George Crickmay before
Mr. Harrison—" I thought the Backwater should be
(tat" Although in presence of Mr. Harrison Mr.
ty withdrew In favour of the Dun, that
statement of his belief, yet I 'appear, most
thoughtful people will by this time admit that Mr.
vrickmay.s first idea was the right one and that Mr.
Harrison's recommendation to the Board, to make land
in the Backwater, ought to be carried out. lam In-
formed that, whereas Radipol• Lake ought to be •
pleasant boating place, it often happens that the ooze
strike upon a bed of soft ooze whence proceed vapours
requiring the eau of the seventy-stinked city of
Cologne to overcome them. The natural tendency in
the Backwater ij to form mud by tilting up, or
"warping" an it is termed. The question then is
whether this tilting-up precool is to be allowed to go
on slowly and irregularly, resulting In a marsh from
which, as Mr. Thomas said, smells may be expected as
naturally as from the " lagoons of Italy or marshes
of India"—or whether they will divide the water
from the land, by letting the first be gathered to one
place, and the dry land appear. Were the channel of
the river Wey (u high as the Corporation boundary)
deepened and widened continually by dredging, the
Corporation would acquire on the shores of the Back.
water strips of land, or would make in the middle of
it islands, by depositing the dredged materials to •
height safely above the highest spring tides. The
ground should be planted with such vegetation as
would flourish, and thus would continually be growing
that great want of Weymouth—a spacious pleasure-
garden. For, of course, it would be folly to repeat
tbe blunder of the Park, and allow houses of any
clue to be built on such low land, to increase the
difficulties which the Park entails. Scores, I=itg
say a hundred, of acres in the Backwater are iin
to be raised to a level which should be dry in summer,
and they could and should be Intersected by broad
water-channels and " washes," to allow of boating
visits and relieve sadden storm overflows. A pretty
bridge or two would by-and-bye be thrown across the
double channel and wash, to give amiss to all parts of
the New Perk— a real Park, which shoukl save as from
the joke so dama to as—that our very Park is a
loiLce_of low building land and a washerwomen's
ground. The new Park, preserved from
;Fr:4se peed, and having no buildings except light
summer-houses, or a curator's cottage on the highest
part, would be made a glory of the borough and •
Ivisitor's delight. What have we now in the Badipol•
Lake ?

IYears ago, at a certain agitation meeting on the other
side of the water, was the principle laid down that the
sewage of the town should be put into the ebb tide,
and carried out to tea. No great engineer, if I except
Colonel Akers, LIL, attended that meeting, and of the
inhabitants the principal names I remember besides
were Mr. B. Gaakell, Mr. T. S. Wallis, and Mr.
Lovell, the led of whom urged that if put into the ebb
tide, the sewage would be carried beyond the Bask.
water and never SIM any more. That mooting woo
thought very little of at tho thin, oxoopt seen Amor.