THE CHARM OF THE BUSH

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7077, 15 March 1910, Page 10

THE CHARM OF THE BUSH

'"You have undoubtedly civilised the land, for it was a wild place down there fifty years ago. You have converted the wilderness into fertile farmlands, and generally you have managed to approximate life,in it to an astonishing likeness of life in the Old Country. But you have ruined tho be.auty of the native scenery," said Sir John Batty Tuko to an "Auckland Star" interviewer'. ' ''l looked in vain, when I was in the Wairarapa and the Manawatu, for some of tho magnificent bush that once was the marvel of the country. The valley of the Hutt is quite unrecognisable; and in a. great many cases the destruction seems to have been entirely apart from utilitarian purposes. For they have planted innumerable European and other trees foreign to the soil, that to my mind look quite incongruous and not nearly so heautiful as the New Zealand forest trees." The charm of the bush, in fact, is one of the chief recollections that our visitor has of his seven years' sojourn in the young colony in the troubled sixties. And he delighted in nothing so much as making exploratory expeditions into the interior, and so far as the pakeha was concerned, untravelled bush. On one occasion he joined an expedition which was sent toy the authorities up the Wanganui river in search of coal. But the natives blocked the way. Undeterred, however, the party set out afresh, this time journeying up the Rangitikei, and very disgusted were the natives, declared. Sir John, when the übiquitous pakehas came paddling down the Wanganui instead of up the river, having completely outflanked the unsuspecting lords of the soil. Some coal was found, of the anthracite variety, a little of which was afterwards sold in Wanganui at about £lO a ton, but the discovery or the non-discovery of coal concerned the young medical traveller less than the grand opportunity the somewhat hazardous expedition afforded of a glimpse in country up till that time practically untrodden by tho invading pakeha. It was a journey, through those splendid forests, over the ( divicsing ranges, and down the rushing Wanganui, that to Sir John Tuke stands out as a memory to this day. "Little any of us could dream as we went up and down that country then that it would within our lifetime become closely settled and dotted with busy and thriving townships. Why," he remarked, "I remember having more than once camped on the spot where Palmerston North now stands—and a* desolate spot it ■ was then."