THE SURVEYORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18101, 27 May 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SURVEYORS.

CARVING A COUNTRY. \

BY A.A.A.

To ordinary individuals the suggested carving of a chicken or a leg of mutton causes feelings of mild confusion and flights of fearful imaginings. Ilow tremendous the task must have been then to carve this country out of the wild and trackless condition of its virgin state and portion out to each as it were, an appetising slice of potential progress and prosperity. Yet men trained to calculate distances and to wear the " Nine League Boots," by virtue of the strange longlegged instruments of their calling, have done this great service to the nation. Dwellers in the midst of cities are unable to even imagine what determination, what endurance and self-denial have been devoted to the work of surveying this Dominion. Only those whoso lives have been cast beyond tho fringes of settlement can understand the strength and splendour of the surveyor's work. As the manufacturer takes the raw material and out of. it, brings into being some useful commodity, so the surveyors tako a country in the raw and rough and by their science help to make of it an intelligible and inhabitable land. They give locality to tho remote and indefinite and open up the avenues ot approach to the resources of hill and vale. Ahead of all they march, and if tho front line in battle is tho post of greatest honour, then the chief honours of civilisation belong to tho men who as surveyors go before the pioneers and make tho paths straight for the oncoming feet of settlement. Their work gives that security without which progress and prosperity are impossible and peace unknowable.

Maybe some day a great writer will arise in this Dominion who will adequately relato the honourable story of the modest service, heroic sufferings, and unobtrusive spirit of the surveyors. Attention has been directed to theso themes recently by the finger of death. In the passing away of great men the light of their lives often casts beams upon tho many lesser ones of their circle and emphasises the world's indebtedness to them and their work. This has been one of the effects of the death of Air. S. Percy Smith, late Surveyor-General. Of great and outstanding ability in his profession and also of a more than usually observant mind, the Dominion sustains a great loss by his death, and surveyors in general mourn the departure of a great cliief. Yet his demise brings before the community the value of the surveyor as a worker" who wages war upon tho unknown and strives with tho groat problem of tho vast spaces that call for settlement. Incarnating the spirit of order they bring to that which is "without form and void" the benefits of shape and size and therefore human significance. The Grave in the Gorge.

Away in the hinterland of North-West Taranaki, where the border touches the Auckland province, there is to be found a long stretch of broken country at one time clothed in heaviest- bush. This area provides a watershed, from which three great rivers begin their tortuous journeymgs to the far distant sea. The Waitara, the Mokau and the Wanganui rivers rise here with their heads virtually upon the same pillow. So close are they that the Maoris in earlier stressful times "would drag their light canoes across the ridges from one river to the other. In this way they travelled with a speediness that mystified the British forces. At certain points there were halting places and in time apple trees grew up, either by accident or design at many of these temporary camps. So slTp is the country thereabouts that the best word to describo it is "perpendicular." Settlers refer to it as " two-faced land " — they claim to have two sides to every acre! Travelling west, from Stratford one soon meets this undulating country, until about eighty miles inland one comes to the most impressive effort the territory makes to stand upon its head. Here about fourteen miles of piled up papa and sandstone rock form the ridges that create the magnificence of the Tongarakau Gorge. One has now to be content with one-sided views of the hillscape, as the road is narrow and the sides as steep as kirk steeples. The lovely bush rises in vernal tiers until it mingles with the vagrant amorous clouds. Tree ferns cling in unnumbered graceful clumps upon the precipitous sides of the gorge, adding, with smaller ferns, charm to the scene, even as lace does to a splendid garment. From great heights silvery falls leap down to join the coal-beH«ed stream beneath, casting hack the diamond spray upon the lower vegetation. Nearly four miles in from the Taranaki end of the Gorge the Mangapapa stream casts itself over a lovely cascade as it rushes ardently to unite with the main river. Upon the promontory formed by the confluence of these two waters, the writer was arrested in his passing by the discovery of a small picket fenced plot beside the track. Moss and lichen had covered the wood and among the mingling bracken and small scrub, an aged rosebush was found bravely struggling for life. Upon inquiry from early settlers it was found that this space was a grave —the last testing place of a pioneer surveyor who in heroic service came, in tragic circumstances, just there to " the end of the line." It was' a pathetic spot amid those everlasting bills —and yet what finer mausoleum could there be for a bush surveyor? Nature in all her splendour and strength keeping forever watch amid these silent fastnesses over this solitary grave, pressing as it. were to her bosom one of her own children, as tine winds played their requiem through the valleys! Being a sanctuary also for native birds, the till, the bellliird and a multitude of other feathered choristers foregathered morning and evening in the vast cathedral of these junctioninsr ravines to raise about, the sleeper their delightful flutings of praise.

A Surveyor's Story. The story told was about a party of surveyors who years before left the advance post of civilisation at Stratford and pushing into the unexplored regions began their ! work. Week after week they toiled and j triumphed and gradually moved their camp ! into the verv heart of,, what Bvron would all too mildly describe as " the pathless woods." Fighting their way through bewildering undergrowth and bush threaded by n multitude of creeks and ton-ents they found stores running low whet! about sixty miles from " anywhere." Lighting upon an old " apple patch." therefore, near the mouth of the Tongarakau Gorge, they were greatly cheered at the discovery of fruit. However, one of the members ate rather , too freely of the half-ripe apples and a I few miles further on became very ill. | Gradually becoming worse his mate decided | to leave him and struggle out to the | coast for medical assistance. Making the j sick man comfortable the other started on ! his task. With *' bush instinct " and I strong muscles as bis aid he fallowed Maori tracks and cut his way along streams until he came out at Tongaporutu on the west coast. Here he procured assistance and made back again. However, upon returning. the effort was proved to be unavailing for the sick surveyor alone under Stevenson's "starry skies" had put in his " last pec: and figured out his last chain." before they returned. So with_ gentle hands they wrapped him in his | friendly blanket and laid him down where he fell, like Sir John Moore, and "left him alone in his glory." No inscription was decipherable upon the decaying wooden cross, but one could not help feeling that " the unknown surveyor." had played a groat game and frort t,he wavsido of his resting continually reminded " tboce who follow after," of the miiet splendour of service rendered in faithfulness even unto death. men as these surveyors Byron wrote: — A michtier monument they .command. The mountains of their native land. J