A Sample of the Bush Settler

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 103, 21 February 1891, Page 3

A Sample of the Bush Settler

(By A. Tramp, Esq., Auckland Herald The weekly pat of butter dumped drivv at the stores' of this little village (Ingli wood) amounts to about ten tons, and : all hand made. The district has not y< realised the advantages of the dairy fa( tory. The Inglewoodian walks Jslowh and the price is five pe.;CB per lb. Thi is where the iron enters the soul of th farmer deepest. Butter ab " fi'pence " h considers the greatest calamity of all, an declares he cannot live at the price Deaths from this cause, howeyer, are no on record. Those who thrive best ar the foreigners, whose severe habits o thrift keeps their wants within the limit of their means. As a sample of hoy scores live and thrive, take the" case o one Valentine Belski, a Tyrolese. Hi started on a deferred payment section o 50 acres with nothing, gathering fungui to keep himself and family in food whil< he felled, fenced, planted and sowed ar opening patch to live on. Gr.tss seed wor him a cow, and by the sale of his butter c gs, and surplus vegetables he acquirec a itw sheep. He shod his family with clogs of his own make, and I-is wife with spinning-jinny— probably her ma:riage portion— spnn and wove the wool and clothed them from, cap to sock comfortably and decently. His store till for tea and sugar will not amount to more than £12 per- annum, while his revenue from the sa?e of his surplus products will ayeref.e fully .£SO yearly, and now he hv.a money to lend. Thus it is these people live, eating their own flour, meat, poultry, butter, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and many drinking their own wine or home-brewed beer, and smoking their own tobacco, selling their surplus produce, and paying their taxes without a murmur, and living in happy ignorance as to who is king— Csesar or Pompeyv It is even more than likely that the. half of them never heard of E. M. Smith. The English-speaking portion of the farming population do not thrive so well. Tiieir wants are not so easily satisfied, and, as a rule, they more than iiye up to their means. Colonel Trimble icame to settle in this district with £6000, Now he has to be " proyided for," like his chief, Sir Harry Atkinson, by the State. Had the Tyrolese peasant failed in his farming operations he would have been "provided for "by the Charitable Aid Board. But ex-chairmen of English Chambers of Commerce and ex- Premiers, who have essayed without success to live on butter at fivepence a lb, and made a general mess of their own and' other people's affairs, have to be provided for in ; another way. The services-T-past and present — rendered by'Mr Belski are of more value' to the "State than the united services of both Sir Harry and the Colonel, but he was not even : thought of when the J. P. ships were being so freely distributed. Bat let the valiant Valentine remember' virtue hath its own reward. Where there is no virtue the reward must come from some other source. It has been rather an unfortanate circumstance that Messrs Atkinson and Trimble: were not born Swiss , yodelers-— singing Lul-I-I-lul lu]- :- lahee b o-o: The native population down this way think so at all events. I am told as a-positive fact that while Sir Harry was donning the Speaker's robes he was humming the old tohg, '• We've aye been provided for, and sac will we yet."