OLD AUCKLAND

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 254, 25 October 1919, Page 23

OLD AUCKLAND

rSTEP-ESTTSG EEMINISCENCES.

(By F. G. BWESIGTON.)

"Should anld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mm'? Should anld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' auld hmg syne?" Tie winter is past, T>irds are singing, trees are blossoming- and flowers appear; but last winter carried over to tlie great majority many old settlers who. helped to lay well and truly four square on Justice, Liberty, Charity, and Toleration the foundations of the national, municipal, social, and religious life of New Zealand. The political Constitution is on paper; but it was firrf. of all inscribed in the noble hearts of our pioneers. It was cut and engraved there hy experiences that would make the present generation prize their memories more if they only knew more of early New Zealanders, their sorsows, aspirations, and almost incredible toil. If, as the poet says, there is: "A chink in the floor of heaven. Where they see what we're doing below." ! the fathers and mothers of those 91,04-T. heroic young >Tew Zealand volunteers, out of 100,444, who went and fought for liberty, honour, the sanctity of treaties, and our place in the family of nations, must, have rejoiced over the valour of their sons. They proved themselves chips of the old blocks at Callipoli, the Somme, Messdnes, and Paschendaele, where no fewer than ?6,000 of our brave ones fell in four battles, and paid in blood the price of our freedom from an awful tyranny.

It is well, therefore, to think of the past "lest we forget." Will our young men and women whose lives have fasllen upon pleasant places project themselves in imagination into the past, cay 1962, before Auckland had railway., telegraphs, the "Star"' newspaper, or "tHerald," and many things now so familiar and indispensable? The principal post office then was a cottage in PrinceS Street -where the Auckland Institute now stands. A hundred or more newly arrived immigrants might then be seen standing in a queue across Princes Street and top of Shortland Street waiting to apply one at a time for letters. In 1863 Mr. Harry Tuck started the first express cart for parcel delivery, and Mr. Wm. Crowther imported from America several two-wheeled vehicles as an earnest ot four-wheeled cabs to follow. 'Fish was hawked through the city in a wheelbarrow, and the seller acquired a competence. Maoris also sold fish—a bundle for a shilling. We never expected to see fish rise to present prices. But what can we say? Whose pen is adequate to depict the labours and trials of those almost forgotten worthies—the brave women who accompanied their heroic husbands into the back-blocks? In those days rivers were bridgeless, roads were mere unmetalled. and sometimes daagrerous tracks. With stout heart's they went into the virgin forests and swamp area~ north and south of Auckland City, and endured hardness patiently, like good soldiers. They felled the tree*, drained swamps, made the desert attractive with green fields and prosperous farms, but not until they had wrought for many years and paid a fearful price. Strenuous toil, great deprivations, native d-angers, child-bearing without medical aid, the women and men carrying food and necessaries on their backs over hills and through treacherous creeks. There were few schools in tho*e days, and none in many places, so that mothers after hard work had to j teach their children a* best they could. I Seldom, at first, did a minister of religion reach them, and but for their own mental and spiritual comfort which personal religion supplies, they would have lost heart, and been overcome.

Kever did Pilgrim Fathers at New Plymouth nor soldiers in the tented field show .braver hearts and more nusiibdued spirit- than our pioneers. The women were verily, in the best sen»e. helpmeets for the men. Well may we uncover our heads and excuse the moistened eye and Adam's apple in our throat as we think of the labours and trials of the pioneer mothers of present day New Zealanders. Only think of it! Their scant clothing augmented with washed and made up flour bags and other things now thrown on the waste heap: their food often of the coarsest kind, and sometimes inadequate, their dwelling house unlined. and with wooden chimney, conspicuous for draughts, furniture most meagre, medical attendance in ca6e of accidents costly and almost impossible to nrocure, and the conditions of toil hard, almost unceasing and very monotonous, and their life was very lonely. But they wrought and fought and endured, and did not complain, and only some of them lived to see the good resuits of railways, steamers, telegraphs, telephones, and modern roads. Yes, settlers' wives anil missionaries' wives in early Northern New Zealand proved themselves worthy of the love and esteem and confidence of the husbands who went out into the baekblocks to reclaim the earth for us and for our children. And they are worthy of our esteem, and they will not be New Zealand's forgotten worthies; but they shall live in our hearts and minds, and this thriEing

story shall find its place in the cottage

and public libraries of the Dominion. A Maud Peacock or a William Lane will some day tell with ready pen how the Robinson's, Morgans, Easterns, Comries, and other pioneer settlers of East Pukekohe. and the Chrieps of Mauku,' and others around Drury, were driven from their homes during the Maori war in lSf)3-4, and had to abandon everything and come to Auckland. On returning to their farms they found great destruction wrought, but with lioniiearts they restored waste places and reaped plenty and peace at last. A few of the undaunted old pilgrims

gratefully recall the 6trenuous past as they see their great-grandchildren around them, and they are ready, in the best and true sense, to say for the last time

on earth their !Xunc Dimittis, and depart in peace from the life that now is to the higher life that is to come.