MONDAY, MARCH 25, 1907. AFTER FIFTY-NINE YEARS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13860, 25 March 1907, Page 4

MONDAY, MARCH 25, 1907. AFTER FIFTY-NINE YEARS.

In' the minds of a. pleasure-loving generation, Anniversary Day is chiefly associated with the Wailiola Hegatta, picnics , galore, and other of the numerous diversions with which tlio young New Zealiuider makes holiday. ' Certainly the Early Settlers" Association does yeoman service ill keeping green the memory of the. pioneer days, and it is sincerely to be hupeil tlmfc tlic interest in the doing? of this enthusiastic body will he maintained long after the rapidly-decreasing coterie of. the original settlors of Olago have passed entirely away. It is surely important that the romance and sentiment attaching to the departure from the Homeland of the- Pilgrim Fathers in the good ships John WicklifTe and Philip Laing and the arrival of the pioneer settlers at Port Chalmers should not be allowed to die out altogether. For, as Dr Hockeu remarks in his

'• Early History of New Zealand,' , | "From the Argo to the Mayflower, from the Arawn to the Tory, a romautic story or a great repnto lias always attached to those 'first' ship? and their sailors, which left the shores of Homo for some obscure and distant land. Now this sentiment has been crushed out by steam and electricity, but fifty years ago the .John Wickliffe and Philip Laing of Otago and ' the first four ships' of Canterbury wero- invested with a halo which will always surround them." To anyone looking back after a lapse of fifty-nine years, a comparison between tho Then and the Mow is fruitful of interesting and instructive facts. Take, for instance, the contrast between the, sailing vessels of those days and the splendid ocean liners of to-day. It is not too certain whether the luxury of life and the improved conditions of travel do not tend to degeneracy in the morale and physique of the New Zealander of to-day as compared with the sturdy pioneers of the first few ships. Of the John Wickliffe, when sailing in the teeth of a gale, we are toTil, tho straining of her timbers made her leakv, and as the passengers were cooped up below during tho protracted storm their lot was by no means enviable. "Clothes and bedding got soaked. There were no iiieaiis of drying them, and for a time the steerage and the berths were cold and comfortless enough." Wo. fancy that nowadays no amount of "assistance', would induce emigration were, the passengers liable to be exposed to hardships of this kind. Nor on arrival was the accommodation provided for the pioneers of the most attractive kind. "The shelters, or barracks as they were called, were situated along the beach which extended from the junction of High and Eattray streets to Dowling street. Tliey were long and low, and constructed of native grass, rushes, llax, and small timber. That built by the Scotch .immigrants was. sixty feet in length, entered by a door at ono end. The single girls occupied the upper part, the married folks the middle, and the single men the lower part." There is a special fitness, therefore, in every picnic held on Anniversary Day, for the Otago pioneers for a wliile after landing enjoyed a perpetual picnic. Owing to the primitive nature of the dwellings the codking was done outside, gipsy fashion. Fuel was abundant and to be had for the cutting. It is well, too, to be reminded of the rate of wages paid in the early days of the settlement. Captain Cargill fixed the rate for public works at 3s a day for labourers, and 5s for craftsmen. Students of the land question, anxious for arguments concerning the unearned increments, could dc worse than unearth the history of the first selections in the township of Dunedin. Dr Hoek'en makes the scene live realistically before our eyes. "Mr David Garriok was the first private individual to select in Dunediu, and, with apparent prescience, he. chose what is now.probably the most valuable sitethat quarter-acre upon which stand the Bank 'of New Zealand and adjoining buildings at the east corner of Princes and Eattray streets. Upon this he erected his frame house brought out in the John Wickliffe, which was afterwards converted into the Eoyal Hotel, long the southernmost hotel in her Majesty's dominions. As showing the remarkable increase of land value, Mr Garrick shortly afterwards sold this section to one M'Donald, the landlord, for £100, by whom it was sold to Georgo Smith for £300, who in turn sold , it in IS6I to Messrs William Can - Young and Edward M'Glashan for £1600, who disposed of a portion of it in 18G3 to the ' Bank ofr £9000. . . . The Government Insurance section was not worth selection, as it was in a hollow; nor was the site of the Grand Hotel at High street corner ' thought more of. . . . Few had the faith or courage to select iii the terra, incognita beyond the Octagon." And while transactions material in these early days teem with incidents of romance, there is a degree of sentiment clustered around the,personality of the more prominent of the pioneers—notably the Moses and Aaron of the settlement, Captain Cargill and the Eev. Thomas Burns. The pages of "Fifty Years Sine" bear eloquent witness to the esteem and reverence in which these men were held. Of Captain Cargill. Mr Chisholm remarks: "No one who saw him moving about the recently-formed streets of Dnnedin in tho early clays, making the most of his sft sin of stature by an erect bearing, with a short, firm step, and an alert kindly eye glancing under pent brows always well shaded withta Scottish blue bonnet, could l have any doubt ab6ut the interest he-took or the place he filled in tho varied life of the growing community." And of Dr Burns the same writer says: "He wasi 52 years of age, witlr the disciplined powers of a ripe manhood, when ho landed in Otago. He served the land of his adoption with a tireless devotion and a singleness of purpose that secured for him. the love and reverence of all his follow colonists. ... Ho 'always insisted that those who had been successful hero and become possessors of property, with homes where peace and plenty prevail, should not grow selfish and ease-loving, but rather make their wealth an opportunity for serving the whole community." ' There can be little doubt that ono reason why the people of Otago in.general and of Dunedin in particular respond readily when money is needed for objects ministering to the public weal is because of the wise counsels so earnestly given and so emphatically insisted upon in the beginning of things by Captain Cargill and the Eev. Dr Burns. It is well, therefore, as each succeeding Anniversary comes round, that the people of Otago and the citizens of Dunedin should thankfully remember all that they owe to the forethought and statesmanship of the loaders of the enterprise, and, while remembering, that they endeavour also to imitate in some sort the splendid spirit heroic unselfishness which possessed the men who made Otago.