JACKSON BAY SETTLEMENT

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10625, 2 June 1897, Page 4

JACKSON BAY SETTLEMENT

Tbe recent drowning oaeo ia Welling" ton Harbor, wbeteby Mr Cenol, of the Post and Telegraph Department, loat his life, recalls ti> a correspondent of tbe Cbtlslchmch Press tbe days ol the attempted Bettlemeut of Jackson Bay, Mt Cenoi was one of tbe Italian immigrants bionghb out by the Now Zealand Gavern* meut It) the middle seventies, when tbe Immigration policy won at Irs height, and when Polo*, Scandinavians, Swiss, tSernvinc, aud meu of ottier European nationalities were being Invited and ateibtit-.d 10 come out and nettle In this colony. Some of those foreigners proved to be good sntiletß, but others found tbe change fcotn the life thoy were accustomed to to one of hard manual work and rough living to be too trying At the time wo are alluding to preat hopes were onterblned of making Jaekcon Hay the centre of a tbrivlug find well-settled dl«---trlcb, and a great deal of money was sank In the endeavor to effeot this object. It is lnterediug at this date to look back over old Parliamentary papers aud redid the glowing repurts which were drown up as to the possibilities of the district. Tbe timber of the forests, the teeming wealth ot tbe fisheries, the fertility of the doep j rioh 8011, the mnrblo quanicß in Ca>well Sound, and the copper mines in Dusky Sound were to prove the ruaklDg of tbe piece, which only >or(ttircd ssttlementi to become :lch and proappiouß, How were these proriistiuns verlfifd ? The present condiiion of Jaokson Buy, with lbs handlal of eebtlere. in unswer to the qnestion. luotead of a popalons and thriving centre id ia now hardly evnr heard of. The history of the settlement has yet to be written, and when (tint is done lo shonld be one of the most interesting chapters in tbe history of New Zealand colonisation, but so far as ; we gather from Parliamentary paperß the place never was much of a buocobb. Some of the Bottlers, to begin <vlth, were the wrong sort. There Is one memorandum in whloh the ohlef aurveyor speakß with icorn of visiting one man's but at half-pset 10 on a floe morning and finding him Just getting out of bed and preparing to walk up to the settlement for some milk for bie breakfast. One can imagine that that man's day's work did not take much out of him. In another dooument Borne Government official speaks of the Invincible objeotlon to work possessed by some of the Bettleru, At the same timo Id must not be supposed that there were no good workers among them, for some proved worthy pioneers of a new country. But the infant settlement labored under adveree circumstances, For three sucaeseive years the rainfall was something extraordinary, even for Southern Westland, _md the absence of a wharf was a great hindrance to the progress of the place, So the immigrants gradually drifted baok to more olvillßßd parti, and Jaokion Bay resumed much of its primeval peacefnlness.