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the ‘squatter’ members of the board and that most of the other roads were still thick with tussocks. School children walking along them after rain became thoroughly wet, and strangers lost their way.

During the early 1890s, when much Crown land was being sold in the district, the government paid one-third of the purchase money to boards for roading. Wright alleged that the Rangitata Board used these ‘thirds’ to help to reduce the rates instead of for good roads for the new settlers. He therefore obtained petitions from recent settlers and secured the ‘thirds’ to the County Council for use in improving the water supply. This action caused a feud between Harper and Wright. The latter wrote: ‘It is a notorious fact that Mr Harper and his friends did their utmost to keep me out of Parliament at the last election, alleging (very justly) that I should put a stop to their nefarious designs upon these ‘thirds’, which they were seeking to appropriate in lieu of payments out of their own pockets for ordinary rates’.^[1] This appears to be the only occasion on which the county authorities interfered with the freedom of the road boards.

Another controversy and legal action revealed how unsatisfactory were some of the most used roads in the Mount Hutt district. Here the cause was bad drainage. Stormwater poured on to the highways and made them virtually impassable to pedestrians and cyclists. Part of the difficulty was the Dry Creek which, in wet weather, acted as a drain without an outlet. The self-important Mount Hutt Board, which so often demanded its independence, was not prepared to face the cost of providing one. In December 1895 it appealed to the County Council, asking for the cutting of an expensive channel to the Rakaia River. Members of a deputation met an unsympathetic Wright, who read them a lecture on their duties. At this time the same board was involved in a newspaper controversy arising indirectly from its refusal to make drains. Farmers interfered with the natural drainage of the region in order to protect their properties and, in 1895, the board brought a Supreme Court action against Arthur Ingram Dent, who apparently held out longer than others against its orders to remove obstructions to storm water. It engaged Sir Robert Stout, soon to become Chief Justice, and apparently paid £600 to obtain £200 damages and the clearing away of the dam. The correspondence which followed in the Ashburton Guardian throughout December 1895 revealed, on this as on other occasions involving the boards,