THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MARCH 25,1922 AFTER SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18513, 25 March 1922, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MARCH 25,1922 AFTER SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS.

The traditions which cluster round the history of the settlement of Otago and are very properly treasured by the association which exists to preserve in grance the memory of the pioneers are entirely honourable and praiseworthy. Those early settlers who overcame difficulties beside which those of the present day are insignificant merit the admiration and respect of all who can appreciate the qualities of courage and resourcefulness. Their foresight in making provision for the education and recreation of those who were to follow them made their children and their children’s children their debtors, but their claims to remembrance rest chiefly on the fact that their lives exemplified the traits which make truly great men and women. Seventy-four years constitute a short period only in the history of a nation, but in this city and in Otago they have been productive of a transformation such as can never have suggested itself to the most vivid imagination in 1848. The early settlers laid the foundation of Dunedin on a marshy foreshore, and industry and enterprise have carried the limits of the city over the hills and valleys and have made of it one of the most beautiful of all the cities in the Southern Hemisphere. It is possible that the beauties of Dunedin are not fully realised by all who live here, but no person who has travelled far and wide can fail to return to this city without a very lively sense of appreciation of its great natural .advantages. Very fittingly Sir Robert Stout has laid emphasis this week on the virtues of the early pioneers, while he has also insisted upon the .importance of industxy and economy as factors in the future fulfilment of the dominion’s destiny. It may h© that in a few individual cases the enterprise of the early settlers made the lot of their successors easy, but the progress of the human family in material affairs rests on the exercise of the qualities which the Chief Justice applauded. Unity, peace, and mutual goodwill are also most desirable, and in a land which is prodigal in its gifts to mankind there should not be much room for the begetter of strife and ill-will. “There "were men,” said Sir Robert Stout, "who were sowing the seeds of discord and doing the devil’s work.” These are neither early settlers nor, it may safely be affirmed, the descendants of early settlers; in many cases they come to the donunion depressed with the burden of Old World ills. The hardy race of which the early settlors were the founders will multiply and increase, and the lessons of the lives of the pioneers will live long after them. In tjie substantial hall in this city, with its collection of relics designed to maintain in healthy existence the traditions of the settlement, there exists a monument worthy of the people, and it may be hoped that within those walls gatherings such as that of Anniversary Day may be long continued,

saddened only by the Inevitable passing of those who assumed the earliest burden of the great work of colonisation in this part of the dominion.