HAAST PASS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22833, 18 March 1936, Page 7

HAAST PASS

, TO THE EDITOR Sir, —I am surprised to read in last Saturday’s Times the account of C. H. Gordon of Dr Von Haast’s visit from Lake Wanaka to the sea coast through the Haast Pass. It is the first time I have ever seen it in print and I feel that there is some mistake. Dr Van Haast came down the West Coast with his crew in an open boat and crossed the Haast Bar and tracked the boat as far as the Burke Junction, and then returned by the same route. I was acquainted with some of his crew on that trip and that is what I was told in the early seventies. Again, Mr Vincent Pyke crossed the Haast Pass as far as Mule \alley and had to turn back ns it was impossible to make a track for Hie mules in Haast Pass. In 1878 I was with Mr Wilsou, who surveyed the present Haast Pass road, and we used some of Mr Vincent Pyke’s old track through Mule Valley. Again it is not correct to say that the Haast River empties into Jackson’s Bay. Jackson’s Bay i? 25 miles from the mouth cf the Haast River. The Arawata River empties into Jackson’s Bay about four miles across the bay from Jackson’s head. The extensive plain that is mentioned correctly is from Arawata to Maori River.. not Arnot Point. This so-called plain is mostly a swamp. There is a dense forest of good milling timber. At the same time there are thousands of acres of morass over which a person could but walk. There are along the several different rivers about seven or eight families, and they occupy all the land that is available for settlement in this very large area, which Mr C. H. Gordon describes as a plain. I am writing in the hope that we shall have the pleasure of reading some interesting accounts of the early pioneers, as I am an old pioneer myself and one of the Jackson Bay pioneers.—I am, etc., Harry J. Cuttance. Otokia, March 16.