BUSH SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5733, 31 October 1905, Page 6

BUSH SETTLEMENT.

THE DREAM OF THE PIONEER

DEAD LOGS. TUB PALL OP TARANAKI. WHEX TUP, BERRIES RIPEN, Yeoman has been mustering his cattle ;m<! counting tins losses. He Ims -jpcnl a lonelv day amongst the blackened logs. seeing nobody, saying nothing, eating 'little. lie scrambler home in tbo pouring rain, turns out ids horse amongst the vtmnps. and pushes ojicu Hie door of his -vharc. The lain is running down the iddinney of corrugated iron, soaking tin; V'le of charcoal ashes in the wide fireplace, Jle slim np the ashes, and finds a (lame-, boils the billy, and sits down •alone to’a meal of lea, bread and butter and wild honey. Throws on logs (o conifer! the long evening, hangs Ids hat and pools on a wire to dry; rends a paper four weeks old, every siekly sentimental veirs , every advertisement and imprint. There is no footstep or voice, except, perhaps, when the rain hangs off for a moment, and the fragment of a bullock s trumpeting in carried down the gully an answered by the dogs. Die figures in a nofebook the result ol (lie nui-toring: ko many dead or missing; so many belonging to somebody else. He yawns, stares at the flame, and flunks those thoughts that, people the campfire •nf loneliness. There j,y a photograph tacked on the wall, witli the corner broken ■ulf and spots of grease over it. It is a oof I ego football team. lie lias spent a lonely day amongst the logs. selling n-abmlv, saying nothing, eating little. Lilt oh. what a lot of people his schoolmates have been seeing! How many soft thing,s they have been sayingl What meals they have been eating, meals Hint would make him biliour). It is not because they hare earned hotter tilings; not because they have deserved bettor of their country: Suit because thev have chosen easier ways. It is the old story, written in tho history of ovory generation;

Ami the first ono struck for tho world's wide way, find sought tho hub of the storm-fiend's play, And an armour wrought of the deep-sea ■spray For the deep sea's angry fifiht. And the ono that courted tho pleasing tide. Circled about in its stagnant pride With a tender fear lest stress betide. And dread of a harbour night. .Some day all those logs will have vanished. All this loneliness will bo gone. Tho voices of men will be heard from Taranaki to the Wanganui; the faces of /non will glow with the pride of having broken tho hind to fruitfulness. There will be seven ages of younger people playing about the homestead in the history of civilisation—none able to wield an axe—listening to his pioneer tales with tired indulgence. Some day there may be a county council, and ho may b'n chairman. Ho will dress in broad tweeds, ami bo met at the railway station; attend agricultural shows, and reply to tho toast of “The Breeders." Then he may think of the men on tho bark sections who have gone under, while those who have been riding lighter have taken up tho burden. But to-night he is just thinking of hia own section, of 'mustering his stock, and getting them out when the roads mend. Why should ho think of his schoolmates when his mind is so full of his own affairs? Why should ho dream* of the world at all when nobody lias passed his door for three weeks? His world is his section. It was so in the first days. Once upon a time Taranaki and Canterbury and Otago and Wellington all went to school together as little boys. • wondering. And now they are grown men—this with the vloek gloss of ease and luxury, the other with tho grizzled head and hornv hand of struggle. For has not Taranaki been always a Garden of Sorrow? From the earliest times it has been a refuge for fear. In tho first days of all, when William the Frenchman seized upon the land of the Saxons, the fertile fields of Waitara were undreamed. And in unrecorded times the youthful Taranaki, quarrelling with Tongariro for iovo of a lady mountain east, tore up the roots in the Garden of Mountains and blazed a path of sorrow to tho sea. And *bout the hospitable loins grew the richness of Waitara and Tataraimaka. to which the fierce Ngatiawa, jostled south by the firearms of Ngapuhi and Waikato, *lung adoringly in their dreams. Ami yet the richness of Waitara has been shrouded in doubt as Taranaki hid his face in a veil of shame. Men say that his glittering youthful cheek is at hand, so- close that one can feel its icy breath; and yet for days he hides his face as if uncertain that the evil days of Taranaki arc at an end. When tho pioneers of Devon and Cornwall landed under the shade of Egmont, penned close to tho shore by heavy bush, they did not guess that thi'ty years of war would separate them fr-jin peaceful industry. When the pall lifted from the brow of Taranaki in the summer sun they threw up their palms and praised the richness of tho bush-covered folds that had drawn Ngatiawa and Ngatitaraa to them. Tho plough and the axe were put in and the blossoms burst. But there were other storms, and a lurid pall of blood, like the blasting mantle ”of Athila, was cast over tho land from Kuahinc to Taranaki. The axo lay up against the wall; the seed • sproutecl and rotted in the bags. The men of Taranaki were in tho saddle, working in the Garden of Sorrow. One after another tho other little boys, ploughing their bloodless plains, emerged from their troubles and waxed fat. Tho men of Taranaki marched to nnd fro in a fruitless furrow, and unbidden fruits sprang up and choked the hidden, and mocked the men who coveted peace.

Taranaki was the battlefield of Xcw Zealand, bathed in blood. Canterbury ami Taieri fallowed and gave forth fatnow. Men became comfortable, easy, rich, and insolent. Brothers whose ways 101 lin easy places turned their faces from brothers in sorrow. The men of Taranaki crouched in the ditch with set teeth; the men of Canterbury and Otago chafed to call them brothers. Brokenhearts foil out of the struggle, and atoutcr came in. Year after year Taranaki writhed in blood. The soil became richer; the berries fatter and redder. And men longed to pick them. At Inst the pall was raised. The harvest yellowed, and was gathered. And men that had turned the face away, said “Hail, brotherT' and rushed to pick the fat. rod berries; and to plant turf on the graves. The track that history blazed is over-

grown : The pas that Hongi built aro overthrown; Tainui’s anchor but a weathered stono Upon the sands of time. And to-dav, the vcomen of the back s\ro in the ditch, struggling and forgotten, as Taranaki was forgotten bv her brothers in the dnya of her sorrow, before the berries fattened and became red.