To whose intelligence and taste do we owe it that Rough Ridge in Central Otago is henceforth to be "Oturehua"?
What is the matter with "Rough Ridge" as a name? And what is the merit of "Oturehua"?
These are rhetorical questions merely, I expect no answer.
Not the less, however, shall I proceed to pass judgement in default.
The name "Rough Ridge", like the neighbour name "Rock and Pillar", is descriptive.
Name and place fit each other as hand and glove.
Rough Ridge, Rock and Pillar, the Remarkables and Old Man Range, where a solitary monolith on the sky line is the Old Man, are about the only picturesque names on the Otago map.
For which reason they are the worthiest.
Your fancy names, Mount Ida, Ben Lomond, and the like, are without defence.
Maori names may pass, if they are the names we found.
But "Oturehua" is not a name we found; it is a name invented by some evil-disposed person or persons unknown.
It is bastard Maori; it is meaningless, ugly, next door to unpronounceable.
And here comes in Mr Macpherson, M. P., otherwise member for Mount Ida, who seems to have concerned himself in this matter on the principle of Dr Watts's one immortal couplet: Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.
Mr Macpherson, M. P., having consulted the Maori M. P.s now in Wellington, all idle hands together, informs the public that "Oturehua" conveys "to a large extent the same meaning as Rough Ridge, only in a more classical and dignified way."
Gracious! Since when have we come to take our notions of the classical and the dignified from Mr Macpherson M. P.?
If as member for Mount Ida this decorative artist wants a job with the paint brush, let him first attend to scandals lying more immediately under his aesthetic nose, the Wetherburn, the Eweburn, the Kyeburn, the Hogburn, the Sowburn, the Swineburn, the Mareburn, the Fillyburn.
Having imparted a classical and dignified character to the details of what used to be called Jemmy Thompson's Farmyard, Thompson being, as I understand, the surveyor that invented these horrors, he may be forgiven his felonies and, I hope, futile assault on Rough Ridge. - Civis.
• Owing to the depth of snow on the line, trains on the Otago Central line will not get beyond Ranfurly today. - ODT, 18.7.1908.
