OUR RESOURCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2004, 21 July 1892, Page 33

OUR RESOURCES.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE TAUTUKU FOIIEST. Br Apahata Renata. The Tautnku forest is one of the big forests of New Zealand, and till lately was only known to a few adventurous spirits and hardy settlers, and at present is only imperfectly known to anyone but a few surveyors and survey hands. Among the latter there are a few who do take an interest in their sniroundingp, but they never venture to give their experiences a place in any newspaper or journal. They are often amused by the writings of excursionists, who as a rule get most of their information second-hand from come romancing settler or bushman. I have often been asked to correct errors by writing as a buahman, but think it better to write a few facts that may be interesting >nd leave my predecessors who have written on the subject alone. The forest contains over 300,000 acres. The soil of which is mostly inferior. The good soil is generally surrounded by inferior and bad land. In about 20,000 acres over which I have been there is not any continuous piece of good land of 500 acres, and from all the information of others who have been born in the forest and seen most of it, I learn that there is not a patch of 1000 acres of firstclass land to be found in the whole forest. There are many patches of 100 acres or more of good bash land, and these will always be good grazing farms, and are the backbone of the settlement. One of these will do as a description of the lot. 1 shall take the one lately sold by Mr Roberts on the sonth-east side of the Mackenzie creek. The greater part has been cleared of the smaller trees, and totara, matai, remu, and miro are the pines left standing. Looking through these pines from the road to Waikawa the homestead is seen in the background from about five to eight chains off. This is of fern tree trunks, and looks a pretty dark brown surrounded by fresh green paddocks. The fences lound these paddocks are substantial and well put up. Barb wire and plain are both employed in the construction. The grass is healthy, and is of mixed varieties. The cattle are fat and strong. Wa'cr is plentiful, and shelter from any wind can be found. Firewood and good fencing timber is over plentiful. The land is not too steep nor too flat, and lies well to the mid-day sun. Altogether, for a dairy farm it can be made perfect, and a hardworking man can make a comfortable living off it with ease. All necessary fruits and vegetables can be grown to perfection. Fire or six years ago this was waste land, condemned as almost worthless, and given away for the survey fee. Of courss the difficulties of transit even four years ago made the place unfit for human occupation. A pioneer settler alone can tell tho fearful times he had in getting to and from this place. The bush tracks even two years ago were lagoons and pools of mud, and only bullocks could pack on them. The roads are certainly better now, but cannot be called good, and they fchould be metalled without delay. The Government have sold the land faster than it can be surveyed. This fact should be quite sufficient to induce them to have the roads formed and put into working order as 6oon as the land has found a purchaser. To return to our place on the Waikawa road and look at the land on the opposite side of the Mackenzie creek. It does not look i, promising place for a farm, but once the hill top is passed it will be found a sunny location. The soil can never be compared to that on Roberts' place, nor will it ever be so easily farmed. Fencing timber is cot so plentiful on it. No doubt this farm, too, will make a good home for some hard-work-ing pioneer ; still it will take a lot of making. All the farms on tbe south-east side of the Waikawa track for two or three miles from the Catlins lake towards Waikawa are fairly good, and some on the north-west side, after the Mackenzie creek falls are past, are good. The land up the Catlins river on the south side is similar to that about the Mackenzie ' creek. Totara and matai are not so plentiful, still every other farm on this side can be classed as containing good land. Provided decent roads are formed soon the Tautuku forest will be a thriving grazing district, with villages and farms from one end to the other, and the community there will be of healthy, strong men and women and their robust children. Farming in the forest will lead to matrimony, as no one could stand the loneliness of a bush farm without a suitable companion. That this great fore=t has a future before it no one can doubt, and it will be quite a novel way of spending a holiday to go and visit it and its lonely and scattered inhabitants in the near future. The varieties of timber and trees of the forest are very namerous. The pines are the remu, miro, totara, matai or black pine, and white pine. A very common and useless tree is the kahamai (Quiminia terrata), a sure indicator of poor, inferior land. It is used for posts only. Tbe wood is soft and brittle,andthetreesravely sound. The3tumps left of this tree are an everlasting nuisante to the settler, as they take half a century to rot away. Tbe silver birch is common on faome of the river fiat?. Rata, or ironwood (Metrosideios robusta), grows to a great size, and is plentiful on some hill tops. It als-o denotes poor Foil. liinahina is found in patches, and is a sure sigu of first-class laud, although it is of'en found in stony plaoes. Broadleaf, white turpsntine, lima tree, mapau, and fuschia are also plentiful. Coprosmas, or mikimiki=, are very plentiful, including the stinkwood of tho settler (Coprosma foetid isi ma). Fu?chia is a sign of good land. Should there be much of it where tbe busb has been felled, there will be a very poor chance of it beiDg burnt off in the usual manner. In felling fuschia bush, to get a successful burn it should be heaped in the old style, and then fired in Eummer or autumn. Kowhai is plentiful only in Eome places. The largest kowhai tre3 I have seen in 25 years of bu«h life was one at the north side of the Purakanui creek, on tbe coa^t line of the forest. This was over 4ft through. My companions were natives of New Zealand, and none of them could call to mind having seen a larger one in girth. Mokonioko(Aristofeliaracsraosa) is common, especially on old saw-mill workings.

The ferns are very similar to those about Dunedin in variety. But in quantity even Mount Cargill conld not compare with it. Good land has its varieties, and poor land also. There is not much undergrowth in the forest, but ferns cover practically every inch of the ground. The larger ones are covered with imaller ones and mosses. The mosses simply cover every tree and fern tree. Two years in the forest only duclosed to me, an old fern hunter, one new variety not found about Danedin. The maiden hair fern. I could neither find nor hear of anyone else who had found it. The umbrella fern is not common. There is one patch, I remember, near tbe Mackenzie Creek Falls. The fern tree or bungy (properly punga) of the settler with which cowsheds, pigsties, and houses are built is very common, and reaches 40ft in height and 2ffc in girth. They are known as the black and brown bungy by settlers, although there ate more than two varieties. The black variety is palatable in the heart, and would stay hunger and sustain life or help to do so should any one become bushed in the forest. The Todia superba is very common in damp creeks. Asplenium bulbiparum or parsley fern is common on good land. The ferns on peaty ground, which is rather too common and deep, are principally thin tree ferns. Altogether the ferns and fern trees of the forest are plentiful beyond description. They are really a picture of freshness and beauty, and are also useful in many cases to the settler.

The flowers bt the torest are a sight to gladden the eyes of the most callous admirer of nature. Some writers have written about them in glowiog terms, but quite indiscriminately, describing them as if they came out all in one week just to suit the writer's visit. The first to come out and remind one that spring is near is the graceful kowhai. On the coast line this happens in the latter part of September. Ere it is finished blooming the chaste and drooping clematis expands, and from October to December carpets tbe forest with its pure and matchless white petals. Then the white turpentine, a variety of pittosporum, scents the forest with its numerous bunches of tiny lemoncoloured blossoms. This is the flower for the wild beep, and a tree can easily be found by their gentle hum, or the noisy hum of the more vigorous bumble bee, which has become very common. Tbe hinahina, broadleaf, and fig tree now open their insignificant little flowers. Then the pink cap shaped mokomoko, which, although small, scent the air and help to feed the bees. This brings us to about the end of December, and now the pride of the forest comps in the shape of the rata, with beauty . for maa and food for birds and bees. This bold, gorgeous, crimson flower comes on a spreading tree that wants to show its rich coloured mantle to one and all. What a flare of scatlet it is, and tbe tui, kaka, and mokomoko give it life while enjoying its harvest of honey, which it offers up freely in its cups, found at the base of each flower brimful and sweet as nectar. The songs of birds and hum of bees seems to be its delight, and when a breeze comes it scatters a crimson carpet on the brown^and peaty soil on which it loves to grow. Before it has done blooming, the kahamai adds its pale pink to tbe scene, and side by side these trees vie with each other to please the lover of Nature. This brings us to the middle of February, and now the lime tree opens its white starry flowers in flat sprays, and when they fall ihe ground has a starry white pattern of these stiff little flowers. These are not all the flowers of the forest, however. The manuka and native brambles or lawyers have been scenting the air ; the orchids, such as the Earina maeronata, the Dendobrium, Ounninghami, and Earina aulumnalis, have each had their day ; — the Cunninghami, with its graceful hanging leaves, with white and purple violetshaped flowers, cannot be overlooked; the" Autumnalis, with its waxy white and richly perfumed sprays, comes out in March and lasts till the end of April ; the nohi, a flower like a snow-drop lily, is to be found on some of the flats. Along the coasb veronicas, flax, and many other plants add to the list. Altogether there is a magnificent display of wild flowers in the Tautuku forest

The Coprosma, called in error karaka by the settlers, has a very pretty berry growing in bunches like red currants only brick red. These are very plentiful up the Catlins river, and look charming dipping into and refleated in the water. The rata vine (Metrosideros scandens) has a passable little flower good for bees. Then up the Catlins the birch parasite or mfcletoo has a rich red flower which come 3 out in great bunches and has a pretty feathery look when full blown. Its shape is quite unique. It blooms in January, and is a great favourite with all who have bad the pleasure of seeing it.

The birds of the torest are nob so plentiful as one would suppose, and the weka has disappeared entirely. Tins is partly accounted for by weasel?, ferret?, and other imported curses in the shape of stoats, rats, and foreign birds. The foreign birds help to make food scarce for winter, and possibly bring diseases that although not fatal to them are deadly to our native birds. The only birds not to be found about Dunedin are the blue duck=, teals, and native thrush, which is getting very scarce. The saddle backs are plentiful on the north shore of tbe Catling, and also the South Island crow. Kakas and pigeons are plentiful ou tho river flats away from settlements ocly. Tuis, mokomoko, riroriro native canaries, wrens, robins, and ringeyes, are fairly plentiful. I noticed one writer about the bird? in Catlins call-; the mokomoko " moki," and tays it is a mocking bird. It is easy to see how this idea comes about by not knowing the true Maori name. I have known it for 35 years, and mu^ say it has always sung an original song in my presence, nor have 1 ever heard any bushnien attribute this accomplishment, to it. Certainly it does not confine itself to one song ; but I have heard every one of us numerous son2;B from the north of Auckland to Port Pegasus in Stewart3 Island, and listened to them from sunrise to sunset with real pleasure without ever having heard a borrowed note. The mutton birds breed plentifully along the coast, and penguins are plentiful in some warm places. Both the large and srcall blue varieties build not far from the famous blowhole. About half a mile south of it is the best place to find them in numbers. Their nests are easily found, as they simply go into

the stump of a decayed tree and lay two eggs, sometimes quarter of mile inland. To watch these birds ashore and in the water was a favourite pastime on a Sunday along the coast. On shore they are stupid and slow ; in the water they can beat a porpoise in speed. I have never seen anything travel at the rate they do in the water. They take a dive and come out just in one second 200 ft or 300 ft ahead, and so on till they disappear. Wild cattle and wild pigs are slowly but surely being killed out. The last pig hunt I bad resulted in tbe death of a fine young sow, and there was very little sport about it, as the two dogs just held the animal while it was despatched with a large pocket knife. I was one day in the company oE two other turvey hands going to work when we saw some wild cattle. The only dog with us was an English bull terrier, and he held a yearling bull by the nose till one of us killed it. I then went ;o to a road contractor's camp and got three or four of his men to come with dogs and rifles to assist in a hunt. This took neirly an hour, but strange to say the cattle had not gone many hundred yards. I presume they were still in hopes of being joined by the young bull we had killed. Tbe pack of dogs soon bailed a cow up and the bull terrier held on by the nose till it was shot. Two men were left to dress the beas*\ The dogs soon had another fine young cow, and tho bull terrier held on till the unfortunate beast fell into a 6luggish creek. Here it was shot, and the dogs were called in as it was thought quite unnecessary to kill any more. Altogether in a hour or two there was besf enough killed for both the survey camp and the roadmen. The excitement during the hunt was immense, and next cay more settlers went to hunt up cattle with the result that they got one more good cow and drove the mob far into the heart of the forest. A few months back a troublesome wild bull was killed near our camp. But the days of the wild cattle of the torest are numbered, and no sport of any soi t will be obtainable in the forest soon. Wild bees and bumble bees are very plentiful, and the settlers tell tales of some grand hauls of honey out of silver birches and totara, and I found and took some good hives. The honey was to my taste better than any bush or tame honey I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. All the survey camp 3 can get; more than they can use, provided they have anyone who cares to find and take the hives. The bumble bees have very strong colonies, and are increasing at a terrible rate. The settlers would do well to keep hives for home consumption. They can easily secure a wild swarm for a start on some fine summer day. The future of the forest is a curious picture to the imagination, with its scattered farms aud villages ; tbe homesteads of settlers, of punga, clay, wood, or canvas ; its grassy paddocks surrounded by forest ; its numerous roads leading to secluded and out-of-the-way valleys ; its fine sheltered orchards and fruit gardens ; its quiet little district schools, with a church here, and a dairy factory adjacent. Truly it will be a strange and interesting place for a summer ramble in a few short years. It may have a railway line through it, but not for some years. What a quiet and peaceful life its settlers will have 1 The only sounds will be the fall of a tree, the sound of the axe, and the bells of cattle. Of course good and bad settlers will be there, bub let us hope good ones will predominate and rear a hardworking race of bushmen and healthy farm lassies to mate with them, and tell the old, old story under the crimson-flowered rata and chaste white clematis.