IN THE KING COUNTRY. ITS PROSPECTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 09, 11 January 1908, Page 5

IN THE KING COUNTRY. ITS PROSPECTS.

[Ur Telegraph.— -Special to The Post.] AUCKLAND, This Day. The writer of a series of articles on ' the King CounttTy now appearing in the Herald gives some interesting particulars of the progr-ess now being made by settlement in that long-benighted region. "It is only," ho says, "a little- while ago when the saleyards were established in Te Kuiti, and it was thought then that they were ahead of their time, and far too laTge for the district. They aretoo small already. I saw over 2500 head of cattle penned there on one day, and there . are entries of over 30,000 sheep for the sale to bo held this month. The King Country will vie "with Poverty Bay for sheep in the course of time ; it is just beginning its career as the land of the golden fleece-. In 1906 its flocks numbered 40,428; in 1907 tney numbered 68,148, an increase of over 50 per cent. In cold figures these totals do not seem great, but the sheep industry is but of to-day. Wait until these hundreds of thousands of acres of rolling downs conntry come under turnips andi rape — then the King Country will count its flooka by millions." The wiiter adds: ''There is practically no settlement east of the Main Trunk line at Te Kuiti, but theTe is any amount of land suitable for settlement. The Maori-owned Rangitoto-Tuaha. block of 603,335 acres is largely intact, but the timber miller, the forerunner to the settler, is puishing his tiamways towards the Waikato and Taupo Moana, and we~ can expect even with the inadequate legislation now at our disposal to see settlement pushing eastward of Te Kuiti within a few years. Just now there arc no roads, and only a few miles of tracks eastward of the Main Trunk line for a 6tretch of nearly seventy miles."