THE CHEVIOT ESTATE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIX, Issue 9935, 14 January 1893, Page 3

THE CHEVIOT ESTATE.

[PBOM A SPECIAL COP.KKSI’ONDENT.]

The Cheviot County—for the estate is the county' in the eyes. of the public, so much does it domininate it—lies in the south-eastern corner of the old Nelson Provincial District, is bounded on the north by the river Waiau, on the south by the river Hurunui, on the west by the low range of hills that separates’it from the Waiau Plains and on the east by the ocean. In shape it may, speaking roughly, be said to be a parallelogram, with the eastern and western sides nearly twice as long as the river frontages. The first white occupier under the Crown was Mr Caverhill, who, in the middle of the fifties, entertained unawares a modem Caleb or Joshua sent down to spy out the land for the late Mr Robinson, and the report was such that the fiats and best portions were selected and purchased. Mr Caverhill then made the best terms he could, and exchanged his Crown license of Cheviot with Mr Robinson for Hawkeswood, which property Mr Robinson had purchased from Captain Woolcombe, who lived for many years at Timaru. In those days Mr Edward Lee was, I believe, their nearest neighbour, at Parnassus. Mr Robinson had then j ust come over from South Australia, and he made a profitable bargain with the hard-up Nelson Government; in fact, it was understood that the whole property, nearly 85,000 acres, was acquired at a price between five and sis shillings per acre. He then stocked it with the best sheep ha could buy from the Wairau. Half the allotted lifetime of man has passed since then, and with it the astute maker of Cheviot. And he did make it; for by the plough and fencing and wisely improving he brought up the carrying capacity to about 80,000 good sheep. He spent between aud .£30,000 in buildings. Ke made for himself almost the finest country house in the island, aud built woolsheus, cottages, stables, a boiling- down establishment and stores, and provided a splendid shipping apparatus, with which no railway could compete iu getting freight to Lyttelton. No better monument could be raised to him than Cheviot.

The homestead is situated nearly in the centre o£ the property, about thirty-eight miles from the railway at Waipara, amidst splendid masses of plantations. The flats, aa they are called, round the homestead were covered originally with heavy flas and toi-toi. Now, there ore Bnglishlooking fields with Buglish trees about them. The quality of the land is told in the trouble the owners have bad with that sheep scourge, foot-rot, and it strikes mo the Government would not have had the chance do resume the property had it not been for foot-rot and rabbits, for the late owner’s valuation of four years ago is practically the same as the last assessment. Sheep-owners know the worry and the trouble of foot-rot, and that it means changing the stock for some sheep from moist land ; Romneys, for instance. But who can see the end of the last rabbit ? The late owner put up a defensive fence on his Waiau boundary, coating over =£2so per mile, over five times the price of ordinary fencing, and yet there are a good many odd rabbits over the property—more chan enough to make the experienced anxious, for many worthy and wealthy men have lost their all through the agency of this harmless-looking little rodent. That this is no idle fear is shown by the drug that large pastoral estates are in the market, and the lavish defensive expenditure going on in the Amuri to-day. The configuration of this estate is very favourable to subdivision. A fair road runs through nice, low-lying, gently undulating flats the length of the property, from Parnassus to the Hnrunui bridge, towards the construction of whioh the late owner contributed about =£sooo. Prom these flats right aud left tho country can be cut up over the low bills to the sea and to tho Amuri divide, giving wheat and turnip-growing land to a relative amount of hills; and it must bo remembered that these hills are well fronted to the sea, of low altitude, say, up to 2000 ft, and take English, grasses, and would carry crossbred sheep well.

If the Government conclude the bargain and take over the property, the first step must be a topographical survey—reading and fencing on suitable lines, and not after the idiotic, checker-board fashion, that fruitful source of litigation. As before stated, Cheviot haa a port that no railway can compete with. There are also a telegraph station and a good coach road. All that is “required is from one to two hundred go-ahead settlers, given a liberal land law, optional perpetual lease or freehold. They will require some capital, but with that and good energies such aa the maker of Cheviot had, they will nearly double the present productive capacity, making the country gain through Customs and trade what it will lose through Land tax. And this is the only final settlement of the rabbit question here and elsewhere.