THE WEST COASTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20375, 2 October 1929, Page 14

THE WEST COASTERS.

Sir, —Since the picks of the first miners broke the silence of the primeval forest two generations have passed away. Today the third generation (fortified by importations and immigrants from Europe, who are not real "Coasters"), are the inhabitants. The pioneers, representing every race in Europe, found nature in her sternest mood, and isolation and environment had a distinct effect, so that visitors quickly realised that the "Coasters" were a people in themselves. Generosity was so outstanding that visitors could hardly credit that a people living in a selfish age should have retained an attribute elsewhere extinct. There is moro "natural" religion on tlio West Coast than in any other part of New Zealand. Anyone who has lived there can testify that hypocrisy is practically unknown. Rationalism has invaded the Coast—but then London teems with Rationalists, and so does Auckland. Rationalist funerals arc to be met with all over the world. The intelligence of the West Coasters is proverbial throughout New Zealand. It was quite within the accepted order of things that the greatest colonial Premier should have been associated with the West Coast. It is rather late in the day to have to defend the descendants of those wonderful pioneers—"the kingly race of men" —as Bracken calls them. It is not what a man believes, but how ho lives that matters, and I know of no more manly men or womanly women than the people called "West Coasters." It would be a good thing for New Zealand if the rest of the people of tho Dominion were as generous and unconventional as the people of tho "rugged west." Herbert Mulvihill.