NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16922, 30 July 1915, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Townspeople who complain if Cathedral Square is a trifle less clean than, usual theso winter mornings and whe write indignant letters to tho editor if the slightest thing goes wrong with their roads or their means of transport, should rend and consider these extracts from tho letter of a bush woman. The story of strugglo and privation, even danger of disappointment, and isolation which in the last becomes terrifying and nervewrecking, which is revealed in tho bitter lines penned by a settler's wife, who for eight dreary years has been shut off from neighbours and from every form of social relaxation audi change, should at least make our snugliving citizens, surrounded by all tho comforts and pleasures of life, give a compassionate thought to the mud-in-sulated and bush-beleaguered people of tha wild back country. Tho letter isi from a. woman n the South Kawhiai district, in tho northern part of tho King Country, shut off by the Hauturu ranges, nearly all densely wooded, from thj open part of tho Rohepotao, through which the Main Trunk Railway runs. In something like despera-> tion she has written to Mr William) Jennings, the member for Taumarunui, to tell him what life is like in her lonely, unroaded, unbridged part of newest New Zealand.

The nearest settlement to this bush family is Hauturu, which is on ono of tho tidal creeks of Kawhia Harbour, but tho home is cut off from even this spot of civilisation by seven miles pf forest and range and /gully, except for a difficult and dangerous horse track, along which it is only just possible to take a sledgo in (summer weather. "Every time my husband goes out for tho mail," the wife writes, " I spend a day of fearful anxiety, wondering if ho will meet- with some accident 'before ho gets back. You can only imagine you cannot realise—what my position is. Even in. tho fow good summer months, when I may go out a couple of times, we have to take the children on a sledge, and it is quite a common occurrence to see tho little things turned off the sledge.' There is no pleasure in it for me, and, besides, it is risking lives, so I have to stay at home, and yearn for tho time when our road will be completed, so that I can get out a bit and see other women and take my little ones to sea other children." Theso poor little bush children—tho oldest is only six—never know what it is to have a play with children other than themselves.

In woman's extremity the eternal bush is a nightmare. " The last two occasions I have been obliged to go out from hero for confinerrent I have been obliged to go on a sledge. One© the sledge went over tho .side of the road. My husband caught mo, but my boxes all went into tho bottom of a gully. This happened two weeks before the birth of one of my children. Last time my husband had to take an axe and. cut trees off the road, so that I could get out to To Rau-a-nioa to get tho coach for To Awamutu. On this occasion I was only out a week before the birth of my child." This woman is fortunate, however, by comparison with soino of h<M- bush sisters in the north. AVomen who have come out from the back country for hospital treatment have been known to commit suicide sooner than go hack to tho dreaded life- of loneliness, mud-clogged, aud for ever shut in by the unroaded or only half-roaded. ranges.

Roads, always roads, or rather tho want of them, aro the one groat source of anxiety and misery. These small set tlere, a typo of hundreds of families, aro often without money simply because they cannot get their farm output to tho market when it is ready. The settl-u-, .--ay, lias a bale or two of wool. Ho has to sledge it out for miles over a track a few feet wide, and has to use axe and shovel to got it to the nearest civilised road, a task that may take days. For months oven the sledge can scarcely be used on the woist parts, and floods such as have prevailed during tho last few weeks effectually imprison the settler and tho products on which he relies to get food and clothes for his family.

When the nearest roading authority is appealed to the reply is: " How can wo keep tho road open with no moroy?" "That is all the satisfaction we get," to quote the letter-writer once more. "It is most deplorable. I feel that I cannot stand tho strain of it much longer. If things are not soon altered, I shall have to leave my home, or I will lose my reason. You carnot imagine the anxiety, the worry, tho heartaches and loneliness that I have gone through since I came to live here eight long years ago. And that seven miles of road is the cause of it all." This i.=- the talo year after year, and the settlor's on© hope lies in his member, upon whom ho relies to make some stir about it at Wellington. The settlers' members, to give them credit, certainly do not neglect their duty. Tho remissness lies higher up; and in tho meantime the bush farmer and his wife too often drag out life under conditions such as are described in the foregoing.