OUR ANNIVERSARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 904, 27 March 1869, Page 1

OUR ANNIVERSARY.

Twenty-one years ago, on the 23rd of March, the ship John Wycliffe dropped her anchor within Otago Heads. She brought with her the first instalment of those Free Church settlers who, if not the first comers here, were none the less the real founders of the Province of Otago. There was already a small European population here. The late Mr Jones had some years before *led a colony' to Waikouaiti, and others had settled near the heads of our harbour and at Purakanui. But the work of the Otago Association was something of a different stamp to these beginnings of colonization. It was a deliberate and long prepared scheme for planting, in what was then a wilderness, a civilized community, complete in all its parts. The aim of the founders of this settlement was not merely to better the condition of a handful of men. They desired to found a State, to plant a nation at these uttermost parts of the earth which should be a model of all that, according to their ideal, a Christian nation ought to be. The original promoters of the settlement of Otago were sanguine men. Had they not been so, all the rebuffs and wearying delays which occurred before the first two shiploads of emigrants were gathered tog-ether 1 , could not but have daunted them. It was through no ordinary difficulties that they had to persevere. A mere project of business enterprise could not have sur- : vived these. They were carried away by an enthusiasm, and before it all difficulties vanished one* by one until, on the 23rd March, 18-iS, the dream of ; years was realised, and a Free Church ; colony was planted in Otago.

We have spoken of the members of the-j old Otago Association as sanguine men. Yet iiad any one ventured to draw for them a prophetic picture of the Otago of 1869 at all near to the truth of what we see before our eyes this day, how little credence would they have given to him ! In regard to its population and material prosperity, Otago has gone, out of all measure, beyond anything which they dared to anticipate. With what trouble were a few hundreds induced to join in founding this settlement, some who are still amongst us could tell. When Bishop Selwyn passed through Otago, soon after the first settlers arrived from Scotland, he found them living in tents, miserable and disheartened, hardly knowing what future ■was before them. To-day we have a handsome city, half a score of inland towns, nearly two hundred thousand acres brought under cultivation, and fifty thousand thriving colonists scattered over the land. Any one who had talked of such results twenty-one years ago would have been deemed a madman. And not without reason. The seedling 1 colony planned in 1848, could not have grown unaided to its present dimensions. The circumstances which have promoted its growth have not been such as could have been foreseen. Almost before the news of the safe landing of tfye pioneers had been received by their friend^, accounts of the new El Dorado ia the western ivorld had initiated a new era in the history of colonization. Whatever the spirit of adventure which first led Columbus and his earlier followers across the ocean, it was the gold mines of the new world thus opened for European enterprise that ■drew so njany on the same track and saade the great Continent of America an appanage of Western Europe, The way once opened, an ever increasing stream, of colonists flowed from the old world to the new. The same auri sacra fames has, since 1848, opened another ' jiew world ' to the overcrowded populations of Europe. It foas converted that California which Scoiy spoke of as the land ot ( path*

*ess -woods' into a populous country, the most steadily prospei*ous perhaps of any on the face of the earth. A little later, to use the often quoted -words of Earl Russell, ' precipitated into nations' the British settlements on the neighbouring 4 Continent of Australia. Long before Otago was known as a land of gold, she felt the effects of that great emigration which the discovery of gold in Victoria and New South Wales induced. Her straggles, her days of feebleness and infancy, were ended long before Gabriel Read prospected in the gully which now bears his name, and reaped the first reward of his sagacity in a few pounds worth of gold washed out in his tin dish. When her pastoral capabilities attracted the notice of Australian sheep farmers, her fortunes became assured. What Otago might have become in these twenty-one years, had there been no gold discoveries, first in Australia and then amid her own hills, it is now impossible to conjecture. The settlement passed through more than one period of great gloom before it was, so to speak, re-colonised from Australia. Since that time, with the exception of the quite temporary retrogression which followed the first rush to the goldfields, its career has been one of steady prosperity. Thus all that could have been hoped for her by the promoters of the Free Church settlement in the way of material prosperity, has been far eclipsed by the reality which we see before us and around us to-day. How far have their other aspirations in regard to Otago been realised 1 Are the people of Otago in 1869 such a community as they aimed at planting on these phores? We may be afflicted with that blindness which consists in not seeing ourselves as others see us, but we are disposed to think that in this respect also the hopes of the first founders of this settlement have not been frustrated. The provision that exists amongst us for the education of the people may be far from perfect, but we may compare it with that of other young countries with a well-founded pride. We find detractors even amongst ourselves, yet we may safely challenge the Empire to point out a more decorous and God-fearing population than the fifty thousand who people the hills and vales of Otago. Substantial proofs exist, to which we may point in corroboration of our boast. The numberless institutions for promoting the intellectual, moral, and religious development of the people, and for the relief of human distress in every form in which it can present itself, fall under this category. The results of these institutions are apparent in the small amount of crime in proportion to the population. The comparative immunity we enjoy from that war which the criminal classes of the human race are always waging against their fellow-men, and the readiness with which every project for the intellectual and moral culture of the people is supported, are unmistakeable proofs that the leaven which was the special characteristic of the scheme for ' the first settlement of Otago, has ' leavened the whole lump.' It is to nothing adventitious that this is owing*. Unforeseen circumstances may have caused the material prosperity of the Province to be something to which the first settlers could '. not venture to look forward. But all the best characteristics of Otago were implanted upon jt in its earliest days . by men, too many of whom have already ', gone to their last home, but whose ' works remain.