ANNIVERSARY OF TARANAKI.

Otago Witness, Issue 490, 20 April 1861, Page 10

ANNIVERSARY OF TARANAKI.

The week has been filled with anniversaries. This day twenty years ago the William Bryan, the first emigrant ship that ever sailed for New Plymouth, dropped anchor off Moturoa. Her passengers housed themselves in a shed built by Barrett the whaler, near the pa, and in tents along the coast from the Sugar Loaves to the Henui. To these people (many of whom still call this place their home) as they gazed on the symmetrical cone of Egmont, the luxuriant fern, where now are rich pastures, and the lovely copses of low delicate trees, such as now are found in the narrow valley of the Waiwakahio river, the idea can hardly have occurred that twenty years would find many of them as houseless as on their first landing. At that date an hundred poor trembling creatures were all that represented the quarrelsome and once bold tribe of Ngatiawa ; and these welcomed the settlers as protectors, and protectors they really were. The feebleness of Governor after Governor, and the universal panic consequent upon the Wairau massacre, changed this sense of" dependence in the returning fugitives into contempt, and now at the end of the twentieth year of the history of Taranaki, we have harvested the full fruit of that feebleness.

On Thursday was the anniversary of the fight at Waireka, which showed the colony and the natives that an altered relation was to grow up. Gentlemen wearied with a monotonous, inglorious campaign at Waitara may pronounce the Maori unconquerable, and recommend "diplomacy" for adjusting our differences ; but those who took part in the fight, the colony at large, and the Governor (who was all but a witness of the affair of the 28th March), received then a different impression, and one which makes the result of the pending negotiation hopeful. Last year's fight gave to the settlers and the Governor that confidence in case of extremity which, when combined with a hearty desire for peace, makes negotiation manly and dignified. The tweutieth anniversary of the foundation of New Plymouth we may fairly hope will be the first day of an era when the energies of the settlers and the wonderful natural advantages of the land will no more be cramped and frustrated by the reign of imbecility or barbarism.

The 31st March, 1860, saw the first of our families leave for a place of greater security. We may hope that the tide has changed — that the long dreary ebb is at an end ; and that not long hence, no place of greater security than Taranaki will be found on the surface of the globe.

The above had scarcely been written. when the Airedale arrived bringing Major-General Cameron to take charge of the war, a coincidence which it is not in human nature not to look upon as a happy omen. — Herald, April 6.