SWAMP RFCLAMATION THE WAIKATO DISTRICT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6534, 26 October 1882, Page 6

SWAMP RFCLAMATION THE WAIKATO DISTRICT.

[from a cokrrspondext.]

The very larj;e amount of swamp reclamation at present goiagon in the Waikato, Piako, and Waitoa- districts must in the course of the nest few years tell ita Ule in the progress of this portion of the provincial district, by giving so many more thousands oc acres into the hands of the tillers of the soil, which at the present moment produce nothing better than flax, tea-tree, and rushes. Ia the Waitoa district tha Auckland Agricultural Association are actively engigej in reclaiming a swamp some IS.OdO ajr«.-s in extent, the drains in winch are b-_-ing run systematically, under proper enjineering supervision, ptut experience having fully-Memonstrated the-fact, that the olet happy-g."j-lujky style of draining, which consisted ia suuply looking at a itramp ami putting the outfall in where the j surface looked lo.v, does not pay at any price. Very many miles of drains have already been run, and tenders are now being called for some £3000 worth of j work in addition. It is intended, I believe, to sell this estate in' small section? when thoroughly reclaimed, and with this object ia view ths proprietary are making roads at the sides of several of the main drain', with stufY frorr. tiie bottom, of J the same and from the dry l.i ids which crop "■ up in several pHces through the sw:mp. Inis Waitoa sivatnp-iiii'irs considerably from most swamps in Waikito, being nearly so deep, a:i 1 consejj'-.i.-ntly :- eiaier to dry, ' and a large portion ui it will undoubtedly be of excellent ijualny fur gr.iz ng purposes. A large stop bank h-.'- b'.'en pu: up here to prevent the river W.uto.i ovtrrrlowina the low lying lands, but l.nt win'er'-s :100 is demonstrated the fact th it it is neit .ur long enough nor high enough, the water having washed it away once or Tnis f auit will no denbt bi remedied befor?-the next wet season. A larg-; area of wet lunU :;r- b---i:ig brought in by the Graut and Koater settlers, and by the settlers on tiie irvvciii'iinic JtmisatTe Aroha and further exfc nsive oi«ratio:is are mentioned at fcluug.i ,tiu:i;a an 1 Waiharakeke, and many people are of opinion that in the course o! tiie next t«u years a swamp in thia district will liea rarity. Xex: in order, going towards Piaku, cu.-nei tho swamp of Mussra. J. & C. Gould, which i< of good quality and which is coming in by d -grees, but very lit'le work has been done in the way of systematic drainage. Mr. W. A. Murriy posseioe-j a large extent of swamp, and ia reclaiming it slowly, but surely, and to see his paddocks from the road as you ride along shows hoiv excellent the land is. Tiiey look splendid, and he ua3 had wonder.'ullv good crops off them of o.ita, turoip3, &c. Tiiat time is one of the great esseu'Ula to 3tramp draining has been proved by this geiitltrmiu, who tried to grow crops ou the swamp immediately ou its coming in, but in some did not get anything worth harvesting. Now the same land ia Al. Messrs. Murnti and Studholme are paying attention to swampland now, and will toon reap the benefit of it, as a large portion of it is fir3t-claa3. Mr. Jeutius, who purchased his land from the Messrs. Morriu, owns one of the best bits of swamp iu the country. He ua3 drained a large portion of it, and is bringing more in eTerv vear. NVxt door to this land comes the Waikato Lmd Association, better known ai the finkoStvamp Company, which by the way w;is always a great misnomer, a3 nowhere their property even touch on the Piako Kiveror Fiako district proper. They possess tiie largest swamp in the provincial district, I suppose, it being eom.; sixteen milea long ami pertiaps eight wide. This swamp ha 3 become a household word iu our midst, ami the amount of work done on it is perfectly astounding, considering that it has only foien going on some seven years, or a little over. Scores of miles oi draui3 of all sizes have been cut, many of which have almost disappeared with the gradual subsidence of the surface, and in places one U shown a depression in the ground, and told that that wa3 originally a four toot or a six foot drain.fancy a drain nine miles long, running into another which continues on some five or sir miles further, and then i.iicy several of these, with smaller arm 3 stretching far and wide miles upon mile 3 in length, and you can form some idea of what hr»s been done. And then to think that all this work would be thrown a\v.iy as perfectly usele33 if it was not to be followed up. by even more than hxi been already done ; for notwithstanding all these drains the swamp is 'still in a perfectly waste condition, except round the outer edges, where for some little distance iu, it has commenced to consolidate. For several year 3 it was thought by many (indeed by all) that this swamp was bottomless, and that never would it be reclaimed from end to end, for it is well known that uutil solid bottom is reached, no thorough reclamation of a swamp can tike place. Fortunately for the proprietors, and fortunately, too, for the whole district, it his lately beundemonstrated that the loug-looked-f.>r bottom can be got, and that withiu a depth sufficiently reasonable to admit of the whole area toeing brought in. It is now pretty e'ear that from twelve to fourteen-fe«t drains will reach the solid clay, and the draius can be carried down to the required depth iu the course of two or three years. It must be understood by the uninitiated that it is not ju'liciou3 to go down too deep at ouc time iu these swainps. If drains are cut too deep the immense pressure of water causes them to cave in in all directions. It therefore becomes necessary to give the .swamp time to drain itself a few feet at a time, so that money shall not be wasted iu doing work over again. It is, [ understand, the-iutuatioiiof tiie company to proceed actively with th,e work of bottoming up where ready for it, anil preparing lor this where not yet ready, so that before many years are past we may expect to see the pluck and energy of the proprietors rewarded. Pluck and euorgy they certainly have shown, but all this would have been useless unless backed up with an enormous capital, and had it remained for small settlers to drain the land, neither we, our children, or evon our grandchildren would have seen what I and many others hope to s*e ere we are many years older, that is, wheeled vehicles traversing this riuondam desert from end to end. In the Moanatnatua swamp a very large araouut of work, has been done and with great success, many thousand acres having been reclaimed, and work -ftill goes on year by year, the whole face o£ the country having wonderfully altered since Messrs. Douglas and Walker rfrst took up the land, ae it then was mostly water. Iu the Kukuhiaswamp (Hon. Janiei Williamson's) a large amount of work has been done, l>u£ i; tt has not gone far enough, aud coua'.quently but a small portion of the area has beeu reclaimed. Very little, if any, drainage has been done since Mr. Cox left the district, and until the same system is carried out here as that adopted in other places of tbe same sort, that is getting the bottom and.keeping it, no tangible results will follow. "This awamp has perhaps more outfalU than any other large one in the district, but the happy-go-lucky style I mentioned above waa too much resorted to when operations were first started. A very large amount of drainage has been done in the abovo-named districts, on a smaller scale than those mentioned, the principal being, I think, at Fen Court (Auckland Agricul- ! tural Association), where seme forty miles of 'i drains exist—a good many of them too, how- | eVer, coming in under the happy-go-luoky 'head. It is the intention too, I hear, of the settlers round the Ngaroto Lakes to go ia for

towering these iikes and~reclaiming all tSeSr. svramp lands,, which are. of splsndid quality, jf dry. Air. Pj' G. Sande3, a. surveyor,"who has had a very" large experience' in, these matters, hja proposed a scheme to those interested, and ."it will Lα all probability be carried out during the coming summer under his supervision. From the foregoing it will, I think, be acknowledged that these swamp reclamations form a most important, feature in the progress of this district, whTcfh will go a long way to assist the developing of Auckland" city into what *he is eventually bound to become—the first amongst the great centres of population in New Zealand. I have, therefore, considered it sufficiently interesting to the public generally to give them a little information en a subject. which, if moist enough in farrying out the details, might by many. be. considered too dry for every day reading.