FROM THE EAST COAST TO THE WEST.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 4099, 24 January 1878, Page 2

FROM THE EAST COAST TO THE WEST.

Part V. WANGANUI AGAIN. — WINE MAKING. To do the West Coast properly it wou^ require at least as many weeks as I ha d days to spend there. Wanganui, however, is only a good day's journey distant from us now. Ope can leave Napier on Monday morning and be there on Tuesday, before mid-day. It is vithin the bounds of reasonable hope therefore that your reporter may be able, before very long, to pay that part of the country another visit, and to supplement the account of what he saw with an account of what is to be seen in some of the neighboring districts, above all in the recently settled Patea country, the land rf promise to so many Hawke's Bay settlers, and of fulfilment to so many others. Before leaving Wanganui, it is worth while to notice one at any rate of its local industries, to which we have not anything similar here, viz., the wine manufacture. There are tw^ wine-making establishments in the town, Mr Soler's and Mr Todd's. Mr Soler has a vineyard about 2?r acres in extent, situated in the suburbs, not two minutes' walk from the principal hotels. He made 100 quarter-casks of wine of various kinds last year, all from his own grapes, aud he will make considerably more this year. Its selling value averages £17 per quarter-cask, and he has a demand for twice or three times as much as he can make at that price, without attempting to push his business outside the district. This represents an annual return from the vineyard of about £680 per acre. Is there any way of using the same extent of land by which the same amount of money could be made out of it? It required many years waiting, however, before anything at all, worth speaking of as a return, could be obtained. For three or four years, after they were planted, the vines of course bore little or nothing, and for three or four years more, the wine had to be kept. None is sold that has not been, at least, two years in hand. It may be calculated that it takes ten years to get a vineyard into full working and paying order ; but then, if the vigneron has luck and skill, it becomes a piece of truly auriferous land for him. Mr Soler, apparently, has had both. He hails from Rheims, the capital of the Champagne country, where he learnt the art of making sparkling wines, an art of which there are very few proficients on this side of the line. Mr Allen, the great Adelaide wine man, visitedhisestablishmentrecently and expressed his astonishment at his success in this department. They have hardly if, at all, attempted the manufacture of sparkling wines in South Australia. Mr Todd's wine-making establishment is, I think, a larger concern than Mr Soler's, and the wine from it is very highly spoken of. Mr Todd, however, was out of town when I called on him, so that I had not the same opportunity of obtaining particulars as in the case of the former. Unlike Mr Soler, he buys all the grapes that he uses. Many of them are supplied by the natives, who bring great quantities down the Wanganui River from their settlements in the interior. Others are purchased from the settlers of the surrounding district. The abundance of fruit in Wanganui must strike anyone who pays the town a visit. I noticed about half a dozen shops — and I dare say they were more — the windows of which made a picturesque and enticing display, with baskets of plums, green gages, strawberries of gigantic size and tempting freshness, currants black, white, and red, gooseberries, raspberries, &c. We never see such a thing in Napier. That is the natural difference, I suppose, between the chief town of a farming district and the port of a sheep country. JIB JOHN HESLOP'S, WAIORA, WESTMBRB. An old Hawke's Bay man, Mr John Heslop, junr., resides about ten miles out from town, in the Kai Iwi direction. The day after our arrival, we took a buggy and made for his place, where we met with a warm and cordial welcome. A traveller suddenly set down on Mr Heslop's verandah might readily believe himself in the English midland counties. Around him, on all sides, he sees homesteads with their gardens and orchards, hayfields divided from each other by hedges of hawthorn or gorse, sleek cattle and horses luxuriating in an abundance of English grass, and perhaps rosy children luxuriating in an abundance of milk, butter, cream, honey, and all the good things that bounteous nature in her kindliest humor can bestow. The view of the undulating downs with the forest in the distance, recalls ' ividly the view of Bagley Wood from the ' river below Oxford, to those to whom that scene is familiar. To others, there are other English scenes which no doubt it would recall with greater vividness. Alongside of Mr Heslop's property is the Waiora Farm, which is, or was, advertised for sale in your columns by Mr Freeman Jackson, the principal auctioneer and stock and station agent in Wanganui. The sale, I believe, takes place next month. The property is about 50) acres in extent. Rather more than half of it is open and almost level, and has been for several years under cultivation. It is now in grass. The rest is bush clad, and more or less broken, but would pay well to clear. The bush, indeed, would be worth a good deal for firewood. There is a good house and a large orchard on the farm. The sale is a forced one under an order of the Court, so there can be no reserve. It is thought probable that the property Avill fetch about £10 per acre all round. To judge by Hawke's Bay values, one would think that the open land would be worth double that amount, though the bush land would not of course be worth so much, perhaps, by a half. As to the commercial question, how much per annum is to be made out of such a property, 1 do not profess to offer an opinion. I can think of no place, however, where a man with money enough to buy it and stock it could lead a more enviable life, or one among pleasanter surroundings. It does not suit all of us to become pioneers, to. go into the wilds, and, perhaps, sacrifice the best years of life even for the certainty of becoming rich, eventually. On our way back to Wanganui, we drove down a by-road as far as the Westmere Lake, from which, as I mentioned formerly, the town is now supplied with water, and beside which is situated the homestead of Messrs Taylor and Watt's magnificent property. The lake is a prettily-situated sheet of water among the hills — hills that are all ploughed and in grass or crop. There are swans," white and black, sailing about on it. The Australians cut as miserable a figure beside their European congeners as a gin would beside the Duchess of Sutherland

or the Empress Eugenic. The property is about 4000 acres in extent, a figure which does not sound very large beside the Brobdignagian acreages of our Hawke's Bay freehold runs. There are very few of them, however, I venture to say, which yield a larger annual return, and not many which could be knocked down by auction for a higher figure. The Westmore property, like most of the properties in the neighborhood of Wanganui and to the north of it, is a grazing farm. There is just enough done on it in the way of cropping to supply the requirements of the station and no more. Leicesters are the breed of sheep most affected. Nearly everyone else in the district has Lincolns. Farming operations are carried on on it, with all the most improved appliances. It is in every respect a splendid " model farm." Between it and the sea is a property belonging to Messrs Peat and Alexander, gentlemen who are related to each other, an<Lwho have a number of relatives in Hawke's Bay. It is 1600 acres in extent, almost all first-rate land. The stock from it carried away a great many of the prizes at the Wanganui Pastoral and Agricultural Society's Exhibition last year. It has just been let on lease — I forget for how long a term— at an annual rental of £1000. That does not sound so large as things run here. THE PATEA DISTRICT. — OLD HAWKE'S BAY SETTLERS. A little to the north of Kai Iwi, that is to say, some ten miles to the north of Wanganui, a limestone formation begins, and extends as far as Taranaki or further. The soil has the reputation of being much more productive than that nearer Wanganui. That, however, may bejmore or less of a delusion. Its newness, no doubt, accounts largely for its apparent superiority. Some of the blocks about Hawera fetched as much as £6 per acre at the Crown lands sale. They have all been taken up in blocks of moderate size, and by settlers of the right class, settlers whose object is to make homes for themselves and their families on them, not to make a living out of them and reside in Europe. Among these settlers are several old Hawke's Bay men. The names of Mr J. D. Powdrell, Mr W. Parsons, and Mr Hector Peacock, and who are all of them owners of farms varying from three to five hundred acres in extent, are familiar to all. Besides them, there are Messrs Livingstone and MacMichael — the latter, I believe, has just sold out — and quite recently Mr David Hunter and Mr Frederick Chapman. Others could be mentioned whose names have escaped my memory at present. They are highly spoken of everywhere, and are looked upon as the very best men in the district. Not being overshadowed by men of broader acres, they naturally take their places, some of them on the Commission of the Peace, others as leading members of local governing bodies, agricultural societies, jockey clubs, and so on. If there is^ an aristocracy in the district, indeed, it consists of them, and of neighbors who are similarly situated to them. Mr Bryce, one of the members for Wanganui, who possesses the confidence of his constituents in a larger measure than any of the other representatives in that part of the country, is a man of similar stamp, though, of course, he adds to his qualifications as a practical and substantial farmer, that of much political ability now, of very considerable political experience. It ia far from improbable that we may see some of our late Hawke's Bay friends representing West Coast constituencies in Parliament yet. I heard when in Wanganui that there was a " Mr Podrell" who was looked upon as the most likely man to run against Major Atkinson for Egmont. This, of course, was no other than Mr J. D. Powdrell. I hear since, however, that Mr Powdrell's aspirations do not lie in this direction. There is, at the same time, at Patea one who will run and will beat the honorable and gallant gentleman referred to — that is Mr Sherwood, Chairman of the Patea Harbor Board, Town Board, County Council, and indeed of everything that he will allow himself to be made chairman of. He has thrown up the County Council lately, I believe, finding that the three billets occupy too much of his time. He has been a very long time in the district, and would receive considerable support in the Taranaki part of it. Major Atkinson has been so taken up with more exalted matters that he has not been a good local representative. There is a road laid out from New Plymouth to Patea, along which substantial bridges have been built over all the rivers, but as nothing has been done to the intervening portion, there is no getting at them. People point to this and say, "Do not have a Prime Minister as your member." There are Ministers and Ministers, however. It cannot be laid to Mr Ormond's charge that his position in the Ministry caused the neglect of his district in the way of General Government expenditure. . Such charges as he lies open to are of a very different character. THE. WEST COAST AND THE LAND QUESTION. Why was it, one naturally asks, that when the Patea Crown lands were put up to auction they went at their full value and in blocks of from three to six hundred acres in extent, whereas when such land as thePourerere block was put up, it went at about one-eighth of its value in a block of more than 20,000 acres in extent. The whole of the reasons are no doubt complicated. One very obvious reason, however, for the successful sale of the Patea lands was their situation with regard to access by roads. The district consists of a long strip, of an acreage breadth of not more than five miles, between the bush and 'the sea, running from the neighborhood of Wanganui up to Taranaki. Right through the middle of this country a road had been formed during the war time for military purposes. The country was therefore no terra incognita to intending purchasers. It was moreover available for use at once to anyone who chose to settle on it. Had it been necessary to pursue a Te Kooti or a Titokowaru from Patangata to Tautane, and to make a road direct through the intervening country for the purpose, before the land was sold, the chances are that the district would now have been infinitely better settled than it is, and that the province would have received from the sale of it ten times as much as would have paid for the construction of the original road, enough, indeed, to have constructed great numbers of similarly useful roads and bridges elsewhere. The great secret of the comparative success of the Canterbury land system, which, though perhaps not the best of possible land systems, has been a vast improvement on ours, is the maintenance of the principle of returning I to the land, in the shape of expenditure on roads and bridges, — or, if near the coast, of harbor improvements, — at least £1 out of the £2 charged for it. The secret of the Otago land system has been to withhold agricultural land altogether from sale till it could be made accessible by roads. The secret of the Provincial administration in Wellington and Hawke's Bay, by which vast estates have been acquired by private persons from the Crown for fractional parts of their value, has been to sell the land, while still inaccessible, and, for the most part, unknown, to anyone but its occupiers. District railways right through such lands might still do a good deal to open them up for settlement. The revenues, however, that the public should have got from them are gone past recovery. It is extraordinary how few enormous holdings there are altogether on the West Coast. There are some, of course. Mr W. B. Rhodes has about 27,000 acres in the Rangitikei country, bousfht for an old song with New Zealand Company's scrip. Mr Fox has obtaieed his moderate sized estate of 6000 acres in a similar manner. Both of these properties, however, are highly improved. Mr Lethbridge owns a great extent of country, which is allowed to run wild,

and looks something like a Hawke's Bay r run. If one hears any talk of over- ' \ grown properties, it is probably Mr ' ; Rhodes' or Mr Lethbridge's that is referred to. About Marton, much of the land was held at one period in much larger flocks than it is now. It has come to l^fsubdivided, as our land is beginning to be sub-divided. The township itself was a five-hundred block, which was cut up and sold by aMr Signal. Of late years, however, it is hard to say whether the tendency has been more towards consolidation or further sub-division. THE COUNTY SYSTEM In most of the districts I passed through appeared to be working fairly well. In Patea, shilling rates were imposed, but ' the expenditure was necessary and was not much grumbled at. From the conformation of the district, as explained above ' it will be seen that the main road is the road which all the settlers have a common "'■' interest in keeping in good order. In^ Wanganui County the reverse is the case. There are some half dozen roads leading into Wanganui with almost equal claims to public expenditure. Hence, naturally enough, it is left to the road boards to do all the rating and most of the work. The County Council however, have not hung up the Act 5 though they do not impose rates, they have some •■ revenues in the shape of subsidy or road board rates, public-house licenses, &c which they expend, I think, chiefly on the portion of the Patea road that is within their boundaries. In Rangitikei the state of things is somewhat similar to this. The county works the Act, but still has imposed no rates. The road boards do their work pretty satisfactorily. ' There were, at one time, a number of small road boards, such as we are blessed with here. Of late years, however, theyhave become consolidated. In Manawatu there is more clashing between thecounty and road board system than in the other counties mentioned. There was a struggle, too, between Foxtbn and Palmerston for the seat of Government, which led to a petition for sub-division. Things, however, have been working harmoniously enough of late. Sixpenny county rates are imposed. / There are a great many other matters which I should like to have posted myßjMf up about. The time, however, was sKorfc I have now exhausted my notes, and\elll say farewell to your readers.