WITHOUT PREJUDICE.

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 118, 12 February 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE.

NOTES AT RANDOM!

(By 1

T.D.H.)

If .Sunday trains arc taken off, as the'-/ Christchurch Presbytery requests, thecee . will be nothing for it but to buy.' aJ motor-car.

The politicians’ latest cure for Britain’s social ills is a Birth Control Bill, to enable the population to give up being born.

The search for four missing men in the Jackson’s Bay district is a reminder that this forty-mile stretch of country extending up the coast from Milford Sound to Jadison’s Bay is to-day New Zealand’s furthest “out back.” It is a piece of countryside full of mountains, canyons, lakes, rivers, and glaciers, and long reputed to be rich in gold, nickel, platinum, and other valuable minerals. For a long time, too, there were legends of a lost tribe of Maoris buried somewhere in its wilds. In bygone years two brothers lived at Martin’s Bay, driving cattle out to Lumsden once a year, and to any rare visitor who penetrated to the bay in the interim their standing question was “What’s been happening? Any wars, or anything?”

Once upon a time high hopes were held of the future of this part of New Zealand. In the gold rush 'days prospectors in twos and threes pushed right down the coast-line from Westland into the various bays,' going straddle-legs ■along the ridges in places to reach, them, so it used to De said. Messis. Timothy Carey and Robert Hyndman, two such prospectors, made a report on the district for the Government forty years ago. Mr. Carey, while speaking in glowing terms of the “splendid land” in the area, also related that the prospectors who had gone to Martin’s Bay had left in disappointment, finding that so far from being able to obtain food supplies from the few settlers the settlers could “scarcely manage to provide for their own wants ”

“In my opinion,” said Mr. Carey, in closing his report on the mining possibilities of the Martin’s Bay district, “this is one of the richest districts in the Australasian colonies, and only requires to be systematically prospected. If this is ■done I am perfectly confident that before long there will be a bigger rush to it than there is now to the Kimberley Goldfields.” Mr., Hyndman added a note supporting Mr.Carey’s conclusions. In the Government “Handbook of Mines, l’ published twenty years ago, it was stated that minerals of value had been found in the Martin’s Bay area, and that the country would repay the attention of the prospector. But, the book added, “it is of little use looking along the coast line. These places have all been worked . . .but there is room for men with some capital who would systetnaticallv prospect the inland country.” There'seems to be exactly the same amount of room in 1926 as there was in 1906.

Forty years ago men prospecting on the beach at Big Bay, just north of Martin’s Say, were making wages _ of £6 and £8 a week, although, according to Mr. Carey, they had only a poor way of working. Supplies apparently were obtained from Jackson’s Bay, ■which in those days was the scene of a special settlement under Mr. Duncan Macfarlane, and was believed to be a rising town destined one day to become the outlet for produce from Central Otago via the low Haast Pass.. Jackson’s Bay fell flat, and the BigBay miners did very well until a cloud of depression fell 'on the community in consequence of the drowning of most of them when returning in an • open boat from a shopping expedition to Jackson’s Bay. After that the remainder seem to have moved to somewhere nearer a grocery store. Otago’s hinterland was explored, very, islowlv. Although Dunedin was founded in 1848. it was not until 1860 that Messrs. W. G. Rees and von Tunzlemann. in searching for new sheep country, discovered Lake Wakatipu. The existence of the lake had ,been known from the Maoris, and had once been seen distinctly from a mountain, and put on tHe map as a circular body of water twenty miles in diameter, but Messrs. Rees and von Tunzlemann were the first to reach it, and explored its treacherous waters on a fragile raft made of drift-wood and lashed together with flax.* * , *

The shore of Lake Te Anau is said to have been reached at one point by Mr. John Mackay about 1851, but it was not until about 1860, that the lake was again visited and explored. As recently as 1904 a holiday party discovered several new lakes .between Te Anau and the West Coast, . including one six miles long and hitherto entirelv unknown. It was m 1888 that Messrs. Quinton McKinnon and E. A. Mitchell found a practicable route overland from Te Anau to Milford Sound, via the McKinnon Pass. A few years later Mr. McKinnon was drowned in Lake Te Anau. «

The phantom Maori tribe of the West Coast sounds are the supposed remnants of the Ngatimamoe, who were settled on the southern and eastern shores of Te Anau when attacked by the Ngaitahu. They had been retreating before the other tribes for years, and when the Ngaitahu attacked them at Te Anau they were unable to flee across the lake until they had built more rafts. Most of the Ngatimamoe were killed, including their chief, and survivors disappeared into the gloom or the forests. In 1842 a sealing schooner, under Captain Howell, sailed into Bligh Sound and saw fires on the beach in the night. In the morning traces, of recent Maori occupation were found, and tracks into the bush. No pursuit was made, as an ambuscade was feared, and from that date to this no one has seen the Ngatimamoe.

“Wliv don’t you go to our church?” asked one little boy of another. ‘ Because we belong to a different abomination,” was tfee answer.

Friend (borrowing . another book) : “You don’t have to blow’ the dust off that—l don’t mind.” Booklover (sadly) : “I’m not—l’m killing it good-bye.” good-bye.”

“WE WHO HAVE LOVED.” ’ We who have loved, alasl may not be friends, . Too faint, or yet too fierce, the stifled fire, — , , A random spark—and lo! our dead desire Leaps into flame, as tno to make amends . For chill, blank days, and with strange furv rends The dying embers of Love s funeral Electric, charged anew, the living wire A burning message through our torpor sends. Could we but pledge, with loyal hearts and eyes, . A friendship worthy of the fair, full Now mutilate, and lost beyond recall Then might a Phoenix from its ashes rise , . , Fit for soul-fighting; but we find, Love must be nothing if not all in all! —Corinne Roosevelt Robinson.