434
late years. Certain persons in the Colony demanding that the Board should have a majority of elected members. I found the Board as at present constituted working steadily and well, and I am not anxious to re-open the vexed question by proposing an ordinance to enable the Governor to appoint representatives of the Navy and Army on the Board, even were I to consider, as I do not, that such an addition to the Board is necessary.
If the town is in such a filthy and insanitary condition as has been reported to Major-General Gascoigne, especially in the neighbourhood of the Military Barracks, it seems extraordinary that no complaints of any specified nuisances have been made to the Sanitary Board by either the Naval or Military authorities. Such reports would, as a matter of course, have secured immediate attention.
4. It is unfortunate that the Murray and Macgregor Barracks, and the Ordnance Department should be situated at sea level and in the centre of the town. I understand from Major-General Gascoigne that at this moment the women and children in the Ordnance buildings are suffering seriously from fever. Yet this is apparently one of the best sites in the city, having a large open space to the west, and being surrounded by the Naval dockyard and Military barracks on all other sides. Everything about the place being presumably in as sanitary a condition as the Naval and Military authorities can secure.
5.