THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1932. OTAGO IN RETROSPECT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21601, 23 March 1932, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1932. OTAGO IN RETROSPECT.

Eighty-four years ago to-day the good ship John Wickliffe dropped anchor at Port Chalmers. Twenty-four days later the company of the pilgrim fathers of Otago, as they are sometimes called, was completed with the arrival of the Philip Laing. To the young people of our own day this will all seem to have occurred very long ago. Yet though the ranks of that company are now thinned to a mere handful, survivors of it are still in our midst, and rich must be their memories. For in the history of a country there is no chapter in the retrospective survey which seems fraught with more absorbing interest than that which tells of its beginnings, especially when those beginnings are associated with bold and purposeful enterprise. Visitors to Plymouth, especially if they be Americans, go to see the Mayilower stone, marking the spot from which the Pilgrim Fathers embarked for New England more than three hundred years ago. No stone, so far as we have ever heard, marks the spot at which the voyagers by the Philip Laing embarked at Greenock, nor is there any tablet commemorating the place of their landing at Port Chalmers or Dunedin. As xor our “first ships,” including the Magnet, which lay off Waikouaiti in 1840, no man knows or seems to care Avhere their bones lie. To recapture fully the scenes of the early settlement of Otago is among the impossibilities. In their reminiscences the pioneers do not make overmuch of the hardships and discomforts which they had to face. But these were such as only resolute folk could have fronted with cheerfulness. Life in barracks, tents, and wattle and dab huts of hasty structure may have had its charms in comparison with sea-voyaging under the conditions that then obtained, but it was certainly associated with its privations. Roads in the new settlement were, of course, among the many things that were yet to be, and the climate of the promised land seemed more bracing than kindlv, but there was no looking back. The people of Dunedin of the present time are proud to be citizens of no mean city. The face of the land has been transformed. The virgin hills of eighty years ago are crowned with populous suburbs: the very waters have been driven back, so that where once ships rode at anchor great warehouses stand, or the locomotive thunders along its metal track. There is no great phenomenon, perhaps, in all this, merely a tale of what happens, or is likely to happen, wherever man sets out to conquer the wilderness and establish his civilisation in a new land. But in this case the tale happens to be our to be handed down from generation to generation, and that makes all the difference.

Concerning the progress of settlement in Otago and the growth of Dunedin the rising generation, upon which will devolve the responsibilities of the future, should be well informed. Whether it is actually so may be problematical. The Otago Early Settlers Association discharges a most praiseworthy and valuable function in preserving and displaying records and relies of the past, and in keeping green the memory of the early days and of those who figured in them, writing in their activities the history of the community from year to year. It is a fine record to look back upon, impinging on the romantic at not a few points, rich in names that are familiar, and the evidence of progress in the four-score years is there for all to behold. “ Si monumentum requiris, circumspice ” might be a not unfitting rejoinder to those who should ask why the early settlers should be particularly honoured. The pioneers built well, and left a tradition which lives strongly in our midst to-day. In contemplation of their work the pessimists of to-day may well stand abashed. In comparison with the early settlers and the conditions which they endured as a matter of course, we must really appear a somewhat spoiled and pampered community to-day, with all the amenities of modern existence to our hand, yet ready to cry out at the thought of being deprived of any of the luxuries, and amusements, and facilities, and opportunities to which we have become accustomed. The troubles of the founders of Otago, the difficult periods that have attended the growth and progress of the province, are little heard of to-day, but they were stressful enough to those who experienced them. The energy and self-reliance that overcame the prob-

lems of the past should be not the least valuable part of the inheritance of those who celebrate the eightyfourth anniversary of Otago. It was fittingly said by the Rev. Allen Stevely, in his anniversary commemoration sermon from the pulpit of the historic First Church of Otago on Sunday last: “Others before us have laboured and into their labours have we entered. The challenge to which they reacted is the clarion call to our generation: ‘ there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.’ ” The words from the Book of Joshua we may interpret according to our insight.