CENTRAL OTAGO.

Evening Star, Issue 9688, 4 May 1895, Page 4 (Supplement)

CENTRAL OTAGO.

TO THE EDITOR.. ora, —I see by the newspapers that there has been a great deal said upon the above subject lately, but mo it of your readers will be astonished when I tell them that I was the first to turn a sod in that part of the country. I started gardening there in the year 1862—the same year as Hartley and Rilley’s rush took place. I picked a , Pi?° e of ground eight miles above the Duustan just about halfway between Clyde and Cromwell-. After fencing it in with a sod fence I bought seed potatoes m the Dunstan, for which I paid Is 6d per lb, and' had to carry them on my back for eight miles. I then brought in a water race two miles to irrigate the ground, as everything must be done in that sort of way, as the land and the climate are quite different from what they are down here, the land being ' more sandy and porous, and the climate very hot in the summer, while very hard black frosts occur in the winter; in fact, I have seen the thermometer register ISOdeg in the sun, and in the winter time I have sem the frost as hard as I have ever seen it in Scotland. or . a lf those reverses of climate you did not feel it the same as you do down here, as the air there is so clear and the sun so strong'through the winter in the daytime. Speaking of the clearness of the air, I may mention that X have known in the morning when the sun rose the atmosphere to be so clear that you would imagine you could lay your hand on mountains forty miles away. Everything grows splendidly in this fine region. More auon.— 1 am, etc., John Graham. Dunedin, May 2.