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Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 43

A T is but 10 years since, on March 23, T 1898, that the people of Otago, with 1= thankful hearts, paid an enthusiastic A. and fitting tribute to the pioneers of * Otago settlement and commemorated the jubilee, or fiftieth anniversary, of the arrival of the first ship at Port Chalmers. The proceedings on that occasion were marked by a deep sense of the obligation the present generation were under to the noble men and women who had left tleir homes in the Old Country, and all the old associations surrounding their lives, to come out to a new and untried land to lay the foundations of another branch of our common Empire, and, perchance, to build up a community happy, prosperous, and peaceful. Next week we shall come to the close of another decade in our history, and, looking back, we see stretched out behind, 60 years of progress from the day when the John Wickliffe first dropped her anchors in Otago Harbour, and the pioneer band of pilgrim fathers first let their gaze wander over the outlines of the home of their adoption. And to-day, as 10 years ago, Otago, to an individual, is as ready to uncover the head in gratefulness to the wisdom, foresight, and industry of those who put their manhood and womanhood into the task cf truifcforming the forest-clad hills and flaxcovered plains into one of the most prosperous and habitable portions of the Britain Across the Seas. The story of how this great feat was accomplished, of the trials and tribulations suffered by the early settlers, of the untiring energy of the leaders of the settlement, was very fully given in the

jubilee number of the Otago Witness 10 years ago, and at the same time was also narrated the early history of New Zealand prior to European settlement, the advent of the whaler, the great colonisation services of the New Zealand Ccmpany, headed by the indomitable Colonel Wakefield, and the formation and successful fruition of the Otago Association, which had for its object the settlement of Otago under the auspices of the Free Church of Scotland. All these facts v/ere given in detail, and were accompanied by concise statements of the methods adopted by the early pioneers, ample justice, within the confines of the available space, being given to the leaders and prominent personages connected with the converting of our province from its state of wild and primitive nature to what it is today. Such being the case, it would be superfluous on our part were we, after a lapse of 10 short years, to reproduce what in its main essentials is enshrined in the memories of all who take an interest in, or care to know, the history of our development. From the arrival of the John Wickliffe and Phillip Laing, the two pioneer ships, in March and April respectively of 1848, to the present day, the history of Otago is summed 1 up in the one word — "progress," and that this is so is due in no small measure to the ability and selfsacrificing energies of the men and women who applied themselves with a wholehearted devotion to the work of building up here a community of people well-cared for spiritually and intellectually, with freedom of thought and action, and without the distinctions of class and heredity which had constituted 60 uncongenial a

feature of the life in the Homeland which they had left benind them. The services rendered by that noble band of pioneers can never be outlived. As years follow on, the lustre that surrounds them to-day will shine with a greater brilliance, 01A on New Zealand's scroll of fame, holding an ihonourable place, will ever be inscribed the names of the fathers of settlement not only of Otago, but of the other portions of the Dominion. Of our foundations as a nation it can, with all certitude, be said that they are "well and truly laid 5" the stability of the superstructure depends upon the wisdom and foresight of curselves and those who come after us.