ERRORS OF IMMIGRANTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 40, 11 October 1851, Page 6

ERRORS OF IMMIGRANTS.

NO. 1. —DISAPPOINTMENT. Every gardener, almost every individual, Knows how important it is in transplanting a tree, not only that its future situation be well selected, but also that the act of placing it in that situation be performed carefully, aad with due regard to the nature of the sapling. We shall endeavour in these papers to shew the necessity of acting upon sound plans and principles, in the analogous', but far more im-, portant work of transplanting individuals, ourselves and our families, from a soil to which we are indigeneous, into one entirely new and untried. The present article is intended as the first of a series, to be continued as often as a dearth of news gives us the opportunity, or creates the necessity, of filling our columns with matter of a different kind to that which first calls for insertion in a newspaper. We shall endeavour in the series to echo, not the views of any class, but the sentiments most generally pervading the honest, industrious, truly colonizing members of the New Zealand community. The branch of the subject to be treated upon here, includes those erroneous views of the state of affairs in a colony to which the newly arrived immigrant is especially liable. Not that these are always very formidable. In many cases they are removed by a few days of closer inspection. In others, however, they form the nucleus upon which a habit of discontent and misanthropy gradually grows, the worm that gnaws at the very root of a colonist's prosperity. Not but what disappointment is often to a certain extent justifiable. Those at home who are interested in an emigration scheme, are apt to paint their pictures in the most glowing and tempting colours. Sombre tints seldom disfigure their canvas. They are very naturally addicted to the sunny side of the hedgerow, and the anticipations of the emigrant are as naturally warm and glowing also. The inconveniences ■ of the voyage out do not abate their warmth. They rise as he nears the new land, until they become almost unbearable. At length when all the realities of scarce shelter, dear provisions, long journeys, perhaps of wintry weather, force themselves upon him, and he finds, instead of the Elysium he had foolishly, aye foolishly, expected to gain, all the discomfort that maybe summed up in the term " a new colony," his heart sinks within him, his hands slacken, recollections of home come thickly over him, and though his lot there may have been hard, he almost wishes that he could re-transfer himself to his most uncomfortable position in England, so that it be only there. But if there is a spark of enterprise or perseverance in iiis nature, he will soon learn to esteem as very trifles the bugbears that first provoked his spleen, or cowed his spirit. He will begin to pride himself upon " roughing it," at the same time that he is using every possible means to surround himself with those truly English amenities and sources of satisfaction, that he still remembers and covets. Step by step he climbs the hill, stone by stone he sees the structure of his prosperity erected, or, if his progress be even slower than this, still straw by straw he removes the difliculties in his path, and bye and bye gets a fair start. In a month or two his house is water-tight, his patch of ground under cultivation, his family useful to him in a thousand ways, and if he be a good man, his heart swelling with gratitude as he casts his eye back upon hardships which he once thought would prove lifelong. Very different will be the course of some, with no greater difficulties to surmount, no fewer lifts on the road. Their first feelings of disappointment, feelings which but few are fortunate enough to escape altogether, cling to them like the evil spirit to Saul, and lure them on to ruin. They waste their first days in the colony in the indulgence of vain regrets, and the search after new sources of discontent, finally making up their minds that nothing is to be done in " suoh a hole as this," and, rambling off to some older or apparently more promising colony, exemplify once more the proverbial want of affinity for moss in a rolling stone. Here we must leave them—some may get on, but it can only be by a radical change in their temperament,"and the exercise of an assiduity, of which the following anecdote affords the best illustration at hand. " A certain vizier was imprisoned by his sultan, for some real or alleged misconduct, in an upper chamber of a high tower. His impetuous spirit could ill brook confinement, his active

mind was not long in devising the means of es-

cape. In a stolen interview with a trusty slave, he commissioned him to procure a beetle, a little ghee, or butter, a few 'yards of packthread, a cord, and a strong rope. The slave executed these orders, and appeared again at the foot of the tower. Obeying the further commands of his master, he anointed the nose of the beetle with the butter, and tied the packthread about its body. Attracted by the savoury smell, the insect began to climb the tower until it arrived at the top, draggingwith it the thread, to which the slave below attached the cord. By this cord the vizier drew up the rope, and was speedily missing from his elevated prison." This requires no comment. Its pertinence to the case of the new colonist is sufficiently clear, and the analogy it bears to the gradual attainments of the less noonied immigrant most striking. The rod of land must lead to the rood, the lease to the freehold, and honest servitude, (not serfdom), to deserved independence. It is in the reward for toil, the certain success of the persevering, that the advantages of a colony such as our own consist. Its beauties may be at present few, the first impressions it creates meagre and unsatisfactory, but its capabilities will be the boast of many a successful improver of them, years hence.

But it must not be supposed that these principles have no reference to the land-owner or the capitalist, because the remarks evolving them are directed to the warning and encouragement of the humbler immigrant. Upon them depend the future fortunes, here at any rate, of" the merchant, the storekeeper, the manufacturer, and the owner of broad acres and broad pieces of the coin of the realm. We must all possess a little of the Yankee's impetuosity, without his desperatioii, of his enterprizing spirit, without his recklessness of character, of his go-ahead-ness, without the pride and bravado that provoke angry feelings in his neighbours. The sentimentalist may be disappointed at the occasionally clouded sky, his rhapsodies may be often checked by the wet plodding journey, but the sensible immigrant will begin at once to ply the instruments, and sow the germs, that are to raise his new country to a pitch when she may not shame the land of which she is the offspring, and when she may yield him the means of obtaining the paved street, the gas lamp, the means of transit by steam, and all the other conveniences of settled communities. Colonies but little older than the colony of New Zealand have obtained these, —why may not we ?