LOOKING BACKWARD.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 301, 17 December 1912, Page 11

LOOKING BACKWARD.

jjgjj CANTERBURY PILGRIMS. EAKLY SETTLERS" HARDSHIPS, j (By Teieeraph. —Own Correspondent.) CHEISTCHURCH, this day. Every year when the calendar reaches December 16 there arrives for the survivors oi the pioneers in opportunity to pause and look back over the years to Ihe jjjne when the iirst four ships parted the waters of Port Cooper and awakened the of the new land with the clamour of the anchor cables as the settlement of I the provinces under the auspices of the i Canterbury Association began. There was a large attendance of early j .gjtjerg at the annua! gathering to-day. I and Fecofleetions of the settlement of ; fj-mterbury were recounted by men and | grey-haired and aped, who had j heai strong and sturdy in the virility of i youth when they steppe-d ashore from the j decks of the first four ships. Sir Charles Bowen proposed the I of the settlers who had been ir. I the province prior to the arrival of the four ships. Referring to the Deans and j tfje Rhodes families he remarked that no one present at the luncheon would regret ftat the two families had hern In possession of land when the first shipment of settlers arrived. He spoke of the v.eljojue oiven the newly arrived settlers bytire two pioneer families. Jfr. A. E. G. Rhodes, responding to the toast, said that his father had landed in Canterbury and settled in I'urau mnr rears before the arrival of the iirst four skips, and had had a hard struggle to win file hmd to cultivation. Recently in London at a public dinner, he said, a lady had referred with expressions of delight to tie bursting up of large estates, and had inferred that, as the early settlers got their land for nothing, the Government should resume it without recompense. Certainly his family had gained a few hundred acres of land for nothing, but in fbe difficulties of the early days the pioneer families, by their self-sacrifice, had more than paid for what they received. Mr. Rhodes said that he arrived lift the first four ships, though not in {hem. A glance in his father's diary had __to>xn him that he was born on the day the first ship anchored in Lyttelton. ■____. John Deans said that his family had no* obtained any land for nothing. Hie early settlers had come out to a bad to win it from savagery, and their straggle had been a hard one. The tendency of the present day was to take life too easily, asking some one else to do flre things they should do themselves. people were too dependent on the Government. In the early days people did gongs for themselves, and if they could not get what they wanted by their own efforts they did 'without. Having won ererythißg by their own efforts they enjoyed the fruits of their toil the more. He thought that the younger generation was inclined to forget the struggles and fie hardships of the early pilgrims and neglect fe example set by them.