270
transmitted in which, having reference Your Grace's opinion as to the undue expenditure on Public Works, Roads &c.
I propose reducing it from $205,900 to $107,000. This is only effected at a sacrifice of increased water supply, and the intended drainage improvements in the Chinese quarter of the city which at present is the principal focus of disease.
It involves also the abandonment of the plan for erecting a new Civil Hospital in the room of the present structure, which is condemned as not worth repairing and is situated at the extremity instead of the centre of the town.
139. The March at Bowrington, to the pestilential character of which neighbourhood the Colonial Surgeon has recently called attention, must also be left undrained, and there will be no funds to meet those sudden exigencies which occasionally arise, as for example damage done by a Typhoon.
In illustration of this I transmit a report by the Surveyor General received yesterday of the damage amounting to many thousand dollars caused by the Typhoon on the 8th instant.
You, Your Grace, ere this, will have learned the necessity for repairs to Government House in consequence of damage done by white Ants, a misfortune, which I understand is shared by the Government Offices, another very fine building.
I cannot bring myself to think...