THE AWAKENING NORTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12194, 13 February 1903, Page 4

THE AWAKENING NORTH.

It is to be regretted that those of our legislators who think so little of New Zealand that they are wasting the revenue of the colony in constructing railways into the barren wastes of Central Otago could not be travelling with our special reporter in that Far North which they affect to despise. Undoubtedly there is poor land north of Auckland as south of Wellington, but, as our readers will agree, there is also land in the North far more suited and promising for close settlement than the most prolific wheat-lands of Canterbury. For the Far North has genial and fostering seasons, bright sunshine as well as abundant rain, temperate summers and as temperate winters. Where the land is good, and there are millions of acres of splendid land still idling there, it is as desirable settlement land as there is in the world. Around Hokianga, the district described by our special reporter in this issue, lie large tracts- of fine country which yield abundantly every form of subtropical produce and only need development to add enormously to our national wealth. That is the crying need—development. Properly opened up, properly advertised, taken hold of by energetic men with sufficient capital and the necessary intelligence, no country would be more prosperous and no railway service more profitable than the North of Auckland. But- it must apparently wait until the Government has railwayed and settled the bleak valleys of Central Otago, for which no honest South Islander has a good word to say. t