INTENDING IMMIGRANTS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 122, 15 June 1881, Page 4

INTENDING IMMIGRANTS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAB.

Sib, — You may or may not have beard of the wretched existence our unfortunate race have lately been enduring in the south of this cdlony ; but so it is, and at last it has become unendurable. For many years, we had a merry time of.it in those sunny regions. We lived on the fat of the land, we increased and we multiplied, and there were none to hinder us. Those were good times, indeed j and we did astonish the yokels, too. One big squatocrat we very soon made reduce his flock of 40,000 sheep by 15,000 ; while another had to content himself with 700 miserable lambs from 16,000 more miserable ewes. And all their cattle were skeletons, while we were sleek and happy. But, nout avont change tout cela. (I have a French strain in my composition, you see). Now we are hunted by those half-starved " unemployed" with their packs of yelping curs, we are poisoned, shot, trapped, and starved out, our skins are sold in England for a paltry three-penny-bit, and our bodies are left for the birds of the air to devour. No wonder, then, that I, in pity for my suffering subjects, should have long been planning an expedition in search of fresh fields and pastures new. Well, I chanced to read in your paper a short time ago 41 The lay of the last porker," and the dying pig's lament seemed to reach me at the right time to revive my hopes. Babbits might live where porkers ceased to tread. Madame Doe and myself (Grant and Foster, our friends, dubbed us) have therefore been on a tour of inspection through the district to see for ourselves if all that has been said about it be true, and we both admit that we have at last entered those Elysian fields we have so often dreamt of. Your succulent grasses are just what we enjoy, and the young trees of the forest are our special delight. Our •claws, which are worn out burrowing into the hard clay of Otago, will find relief in penetrating your soft volcanic «oils, and for those of us who delight in the purer air of heaven, those gorse hedges are the very thing. But talk about " ten million boars or more !" That is not a circumstance to what 1 hope our numbers will be in a few years. I will guarantee that from every pair of us, if all the youngsters Hye (and why shouldn't thef), iWe Will be a million and a quarter in four years. It is, therefore, only a proportion sum for you two-legged animals (I am myself bad at figures) to calculate, when I have transplanted my small colony here, how many we shall be when the New Plymouth harbor works are finished. So here's jour jolly good health, and look out f

The Old Buck.