PROPOSED SETTLEMENT OF PENSIONERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8149, 21 April 1887, Page 5

PROPOSED SETTLEMENT OF PENSIONERS.

[Per Press Association.] AUCKLAND, April 20. Colonel Forbes, Commissioner of the Faizabad Division of the Province of Oudh, is now in Auckland, with a view of settling shortly in the Colony, and states that the soldiery at the military stations in India are eagerly reading the copies of the New Zealand Handbook, official papers, newspapers, &c., which have been sent to all the barracks and cantonments in India. Captain Daveney also publishes a letter received from Major Gascoigne, aide-de-camp to Lord Carrington, the Governor of Now South Wales, who has recently spent a month in the King Ooanfay, and traversed the Northern Trunk Railway. The letter speaks highly of the central districts of the North Island for such colonisation as Captain Daveney had proposed, especially that part of Wanganui from five miles below Taumarini to the Ongaruho river to Waimehae. The crops produced by the Natives were of the best quality, and he thought very well of the soil and climate. The letter closes as follows-: —" I feel sure that if the excellent quality of this district were better known to the British soldier when he takes hia discharge, there would be many men who would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity of settling down here, on the very liberal terms on which the land is about to be offered to military immigrants by the New Zealand Government. Captain Daveney, it is stated, has obtained the assent of the Hon Mr Ballance to his scheme."