CORRESPONDENCE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 5, 23 November 1906, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—To many of the uninitiated the name " King Country " conveys but a vague notion of a region, wild and uncivilised, a region where teeto-talism-run-rampant holds sway, and a district that will drop out of notice when the Main Trunk troubles are over ; to be glanced at occasionally by weary tourists languidly gazing out of the carriage windows. This is not an exaggerated conception of the ideas of the misinformed, for our dailies have little space for the out-back districts, save in the way of very vague general information. To come straight to my point, then, allow me to heartily congratulate your district upon having produced such a newsy publication as the Chronicle. My astonishment was great, when on picking up a copy I learnt of the scope of business ; of conquest of difficulties incidental to pioneering, and of the divers,adjuncts of civilisation generally, all connected with your King Country. By no other agent, save that of the newspaper, can neighbouring districts learn of the progress, life, difficulties, trials and pastimes of kith and kin, whose homes are " across the border." If I may quote slang, your journal " fills the bill." A cycle club at Taumarunui! (I thought that Taumarunui consisted of forest, with a thin streak of railway through it!) Raurimu with shops, and a twelve hundred population! " Raurimu," to me, represented a temporary encampment of bearded, thirsty navvies! As for Hangatiki, Ohura, Mairoa, etc., places formerly quite lout of my ken, I now learn something of their social life as well as of their potentialities, and I learn something of their citizens, for I read paragraphs of English, well-writ and lucid, emanating from their representatives. Well done, I King Country, and well done, Chronicle ! Long life to you, and may the latter ever serve to voice the sentiments of its patrons, and to let the outside world know what can be done by our colonists — our men of British blood and bone and brain. Would that Kier Hardie could spend a year learning sense among such Britishers, and he would return a wiser man. And now let me reverse the order of the toasts, and as this is the Ninth, may I echo the universal prayer, "God save the King."— I am, etc., G.T.H. Te Mata, Raglan, 9/11/06