The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1875.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 4450, 19 May 1875, Page 2

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1875.

It is not many years since every poet or novelist who had a hero he could not dispose of by shipwreck or battle-field, or any of the other ordinary quietusgivers of fiction, sent him off to New Zealand, leaving a feeling on the reader’s mind that he had done the very best for his hero that human nature could demand for such a being, that he had sent him to a happy Yalhalla, whither the, pen of the fiction-writer dare not or need not penetrate. The broadside of New Zealand poems and novels and experiences of the last ten years, has not quite done away with the practice among the skirmishers in the rear of the great army of authors. But we will effectually put a stop to it now that the Colonial Government has taken elaborate pains to disenchant our modem fiction-writers’ Yalhalla by publishing an Official Handbook. If it were only its dirty drab covers, its illegible maps, its blurred photographs of the least picturesque scenery, its primitive, artless woodcuts, the curiously inappropriate distribution of them through the volume, and the enormous number of blunders in the letter-press; the volume is .equal to at least to two Oospatrick disasters as a dissuasive from immigration. The spelling, whether it is the product of the printer or of the authors, would be enough to discredit the elaborate statements of the educational advantages which each of the provinces of New Zealand is supposed to have. But if we add in the prosaic style of the “ experienced colonists” who contribute the inordinate use of superlatives and the blazing prospects which every province has compared with £very other, our only hope for our immigration policy is that the book is too big and anybody but a reviewer to attempt. We must acknowledge that there are a few oases in the desert of barren repetitions. Mr Yogel’s Introduction is not without literary merit, and in it occurs the only approximation to humour in the whole volume. After telling the story of an extravagant young hopeful who was sent out to loaf about on a friend’s friend in the colony, he remarks : —“ Such prodigals are not suited “ to the colony. It would be better to “ kill the fatted calf on their account “ without any intervening absence.” From this, as the closest approach to liveliness or humour, the reader may guess how attractive the volume is. Close to it occurs the next most vivid piece of writing in the book. “ A short “ courtship, a brief notice to her “ employer, and another home is set up “ in New Zealand; another notice “ appears in the local papers ‘ wanted a “ nurse ’ or housemaid, cook or general “ servant, as the case may be.” Does Mr Yogel intend this as a contribution to ethnology, or what ? Is there anything peculiarly New Zealandish in the procedure ? Probably Mr Yogel wiH have by this time found out that the procedure with domestic servants is not so very different in England. The next paper of interest is one on the Native race by the Native Minister. It has all the advantages of being short, well written, and full of interesting pieces of information. The papers that lie round about this one, can he of little use or interest to any of those for whom the Handbook is intended. They are all repeated in much more attractive (or rather much less unattractive) form in the provincial papers that follow. How the British labourer, or mechanic or small fanner will come at the meaning of those dry statistics without the hardest study, is a problem to be solved only by the brilliant imaginations of the compilers. Of the provincial compilers, the one who seems to have been best up to his work, is the Otago “ experienced colonist.” He has all the fervour and descriptive power of the true emigration agent. Although his grammar is not the most strictly accurate (viz., in page 99, “ fine “ foliage trees; ” and “ the occupier of “ land on lease for grazing purposes “ must fall back before the settler, who “ has the prior and superior claim, and “ which cannot he overlooked ;”) he knows exactly the type of facts that will attract the honest, industrious men; he knows exactly the degree and manner of insisting on them, without growing tedious, or rousing the supieion of special pleading. Otago has always had the knack of showing off to the best advantage, and through this, her “ experienced colonist,” she is as successful as usual. He enumerates, or rather pictures, a very large number of actual and possible industries, and yet adds that space prevents him noticing every industry. His paragraph on “ The “ Advantages offered to Labourers and “ others,” is a model of immigration “ touting.” If the Government had hired him and the writer of the notice on “ The Manchester special Settlement,” to compose the whole Handbook, we might have had fairly attactive English, if we had had no more accurate information. The following extract from the latter article is the only piece in the volume that pretends to more than the barest statement of facts : —(page 217), “ It is difficult to leave this interesting “ subject. We may look back some “ three months, when two or three sur- “ veyors’ tents were the only evidences “ of human habitation. We see now “ some thirty wooden houses already “ risen out of the flax and grass. We “ hear the busy hum of human voices, “ of men, of women, and of children, “ unbuvthened with the cares of life. “ The ring of the axe, the echo of the “ hammer, and the crash of falling “ timber, sound everywhere. The sharp “ cracks of the drivers’ whips attract “ attention to horse and bullock drays, “ toiling along the rough flat, with “ pcoplff, or luggage, or stores, or “ timber, or gravel for the newly made “ roads. We notice a cloud of steam “ from the already fired brick-kiln —the “ earnest of future homely firesides. “Dense volumes of smoke appear, “ denoting a bush clearing made; or “ the thin spiral columns rise from 1

“ among a cluster of tents, or from “ beside the houses of mushroom “ growth, telling of family dinners in “ course of preparation. The eye is “ caught by long vistas newly cut “ through the virgin forest; and we “note the thin doable line of wooden “ rails, just laid on the fresh turned “ earth, the commencement of a snake- “ like progress, which ends only with “ the utter destruction of the beautiful “ forest, as one stately tree after another “ is brought down, and submitted to the “ mighty power represented by the huge “ unshapely boiler which lies on its side “ hard by; ” and a still more fascinating and poetical picture of the future follows. This was the man to “find sermons in stones,” and hand-“ books by the running brooks,” for Mr Yogel : what a brilliant thing he would have made of the resources and scenery of Canterbury, if he had had them to deal with! Perhaps the third in the rank of articles, as far as literary excellence is concerned, is that on Hawke’s Bay. The “experienced colonist” for that province is the only one who either dares to air his classics, or perhaps has any classics to air. He compares Napier to the Bay of Naples, and the coast line to that of “ the Tyrehenian Sea,” as he calls it. The glory of Hawke’s Bay —its artesian wells—drives him into questionable Latin. He says, “an artesian pipe is driven 50ft or “ 100 ft into the earth, and water gushes “ forth to be thenceforward like the “ springs of nature itself in omne volu- “ hilis aevum.” This will he something new for the scientific men of the old country. We are sure they did not know before that springs, either of nature or of water, were given to spinning round eternally like the earth. But perhaps there are separate laws in hydraulics for Hawke’s Bay. We will return to this subject in another article.