NORTH ISLAND RURAL LETTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2981, 3 May 1911, Page 16

NORTH ISLAND RURAL LETTER.

By John Spens.

NEW ZEALAND'S GARDEN PROVINCE UNDER THE SPELL OF THE SEER OR SORCERER. We will assume that Maui stood on the Ka'ikoura Mountains and threw out his fishing line towards the rising sun. Splash it went into the sea. Presently there was a bite at the bait on the fish-hook, Maui gave a long pull and a strong pull, and up oaime "Ko te ika roa a Maui"—the long fish of Maui. Slowly it rose above the waves, a great hideous flabby mass. It was too big to out up and eat. The thought struck him that it might be turned into a home and place of abode for lesser mortals. The demi-god was. a person of vast resources, and he had more interests in life than that of fisherman. He shot out his long arm and caught the sun, the moon, and the stars and suspended them in the heavens. He ordered them to set to work on this great -fish. The sun pulled up the waters from the ocean and poured them over the fish. The waters scored and furrowed, the fish from backbone to .the lapping waves of the ocean. The stars scattered seeds all over, and the moon nursed, them till they sprouted,. and the sun in l turn sprayed, their young leaves with rain and warmed them with his beams. The slimy, hideous, flabby fish became a thing of beauty and joy. The morning stars sang together as they,beheld the carpet of greenery and gaiety, spreading itself over ridge and vale and mount and hillside. The winds of heaven kissed and caressed the foliage of fern and tree and. shrub, and wafted the fragrance of the flowers to the bowers of the evening stars. It was a place without movement or music or song, so the evening stars caught birds in the bowers of Paradise and let them loose in Maui's woodlands. Alas, Maui, like the Greek gods, was by no means perfect; neither wa9 he much of a workman, so instead of tilling the ground he gave himself up to playing pranks and tricks upon his' old grandmother. This led to his undoing. The great Aitua smote him with death and called a race of mortals from the sunny' climes of Hawaiki to come and till this land of Aotearoa. Those new arrivals set to work and cultivated the soil. Now, dear reader, this is not all poetical and imaginative, for has not Mr Percy Smith told us that the later migrants spoke of the original colonists from Polynesia as tangata-whenua,- ,or "men of the land." The phrase has a dual meaning. Those early emigrants appear to have slaved and toiled on the land, and life may have been a continual struggle. But it was healthy and. conducive to peace and quietness, and probably ambition and war were unknown. The later migrants from Polynesia brought with them the kumara, taro, and other edibles perhaps. Life possibly became lees strenuous. The new colonists became the leading people. Mr Percy Smith considers that the introduction of the kumara arid the taro led to considerable changes in the mode of living of the people, thereby rendering- it possible to store up provisions for winter use, by which means distant predatory expeditions of a warlike character became more easy of accomplishment. The later arrivals made a conquest of the original settlers, and instead of being content with a vegetable and a fish diet, they took to cannibalism. The poetical and pleasant' land of Maui became the scene of cruelty, rapine, and bloodshed. The western fin of Maui's fish was the very garden—the Eden of Aotearoa; yet this pleasant and fruitful portion of New Zealand became a veritable hell. Taranaki in the early days o? the British was thickly studded with fortified pas and ancient and ruined stockades. Innumerable were the stories of fights and cannibalistic feasts. In many parts, especially between Waitara and Mokau, the skulls and bones of the victims lay unburled in my day. I am afraid that I am not a man of mv word. In my last letter I started off with the idea of writing up my early rural experiences in Tara.rraki. but I found it would involve the bringing into publicity some of my dear old friends, either personally or in that of their children. Some day, if spared, I mav do it in another form than that of a bald newspaper letter. When I was younger I merely looked on the outside of life; now I dig into the heart of things,. To me nothing is more delightful than descriptive -writing, but Taranaki on my recent visit has provided me with so much food for thought that I feel I must greatly curtain mere description and write more of deduction.

I wondi&r wow if we Anglo-Saxon Celts are going to profit by the myths, legends, and history of this oountry whiioh we have been privileged by God to occupy. "You notice that the dim and distent history of New Zealand as introduced in my opening ■paragraphs has a powerful lesson for us. Read it aprain, and also please read between the lines. -Read into it our own past and draw your own conclusions as to what our future shall be. I aim of the opinion that Tara-

naki is going to teach us the rudiments of nation-making or nation-breaking. Very soon it may ring with the evangel of a new Socialism. It has led the way in dairying, and it's probably going to lead in democracy. I don't mind giving you the plot of my novel. Taranaki is a land of 'small farmers. A great many of them are leaseholders, and the most of them are working on borrowed oapital. Its bush is being felled, and its cows are being milked by the eternal mortgage. Its towns and its townships harbour a goodly percentage of those who neither toil nor spin. Once they or their fathers and mothers did both. Once they lived and worked on the land. Now they are aristocrats. They are not a bloated nobility, though some of the youngers stand a good chance of becoming bleached nonentities. That's pretty strong. I happen l to know exactly where I stand. I am on the watch tower. I invariably have guns in reserve.

If a set-back to the high prices for butter and cheese came, one or two would be turned out of' their farms, but let the slump become acute and the milkers of Taranaki to a man would combine and set the landlords at defiance. To my mind the future is full of' rapid potentialities! in the matter of contingency clauses in mortgage deeds. I rather tickled some men by the questions I put to theni. Combination put butter and cheese on the commercial highway. The land will follow as sure as the sun each morning climbs the eastern sky. Nothing to me is more easy than to describe Taranaki —nothing more difficult than to dissect the garden of New Zealand and divine its future. The garden is ever the place whore either God or the devil reigns. Go down to the root of the matter and you'll find butter and cheese are the products of a poor people. Thev imply labour and a certain amount of drudgery—even with your milking machine. The high price of land signifies a jwofitable investment to someone; it means also bard work to its nominal owner or its renter. The fortunate early settlers or their descendants, who live in town or township, have turned: their backs on drudgery. The womenfolk have taken to games and afternoon calls, and the young men to banks and business. I have no fault to find with either; I only point out that the trend of farming in the richer areas is all in the direction of the leaseholder, the mortgagor, the share-milker, the labourer, and the ■ man with scant capital. What does this all amount unto? Well, I am of the ouinion that this garden of New Zealand is already hatching a mild revolution. Wisely guided', it will bring a boon and a blessing to mankind; throttle it or let the agitator take it up, and he will sour the teeth of the dragon. Our last session of Parliament had a, lesson in how free and forcible a bush representative can become.

That's one phase of the trend of life in Tanana.ki. There is another feature, and that is the mercantile spirit' which is rapidly extending- over the whole of the garden province. There are some district® where speculation in land is all but impossible. There are numbers who still live on and hold the old 1 or original farm, but the vast majority have either sold or leased. In the town of New Plymouth one gentleman high in the service of the Crown assured me "that he was almost the only individual who held the original town section g-ranl, or whatever was equivalent to it. This gentleman took rather a serious view of the future of the Anglo-Saxon race, as somewhat receding from its love of the land and its characteristic- of halting and holding to a particular spot. I pointed out that we had been wrenched from the parent stock, just as our ancestors who migrated from the Hindu Cush or Orient had, and that possibly love of country would yet come to our children. He shooked his head 1 , and seemed to think that we were drifting into Americanism in the north; at the same time be quoted Sir Charles Dillae's observations on Otago. Would it make you too proud and iself-conceited if I wrote all he said in you in the south ? We receive a good many knocks in life,, but I will tell you this, that wherever I went and disclosed myself as the representative of the Witness I listened to some very nice little speeches in appreciation- of you southern settlers. One gentleman went as far as to say. that tne heart as well as brain of the Dominion lay in the south. This reminds me that one of our northern M.P.'S in a recent address to his constituents spoke of the present Ministry as a South Island Cabinet. Mr W. J. Penn, editor of- the Taranaki Herald, is one of the most intelligent," accomplished, and far-seeinos of northern provincial pressmen, so I made it my duty to briefly interview him on the question of the possible future of the race in Taranaki. Mr Penn must have a true heart, for he has an honest and a steadfast eye, and his is the hope of a main with a big soul. No, he did not quite like certain signs, but the present is a transitional stage. The speculative fever will work itself out. Young communities, like children, have attacks of juvenile complaints. The peace and quiet of the old settler's life had been broken, and' the strands of the new life were somewhat difficult to pick up, and the hand for the time being might be a little unsteady. A new era was dawning, and a new life would be evolved. I descended the stairs of the fine new Herald office with a lighter heart. I felt I had been in the presence of a man who would not, like Palinurus, the pilot of fall asleep at the helm and tumble into the sea.

Commercial life is perhaps a, little less conservative in the north than it is in the south. Young men who have been trained in business in tihe south very soon make their mark up here. I met one or two who have struck out for themselves, and they are doing well. One or two from the south,, who are engaged in the higher walks of education, speak of the north as not quite having its eyes opened to art to any great ©ytent. A gentleman from Dunedin, who comparatively recently took up his quarters in Taranaki, considers that youth in the north has too much liberty, and that parental oversight is somewhat laxer than down south.

Personally I beheld considerable progression in town and country, and expressed myself as delighted with all I had seen. One beautiful young lady ventured the remark that I had kissed the Blarney Stone. My reply was that I had ■no recollection of having so done, but I had felt a temptation in another direction.

I am right glad New -Zealand has a Canterbury, an Otagp, and a Southland. Make provision ' for your youth and your rising generation. Some will drift north, but keep aa many youtiha as you oan.

The eternal grass and the everlasting drumming along the road to the creamery or ihe" ohees factory is not a very wide world, and that's the world of the Taranaki man for nine- or ten months of the year. JRuskin. with ail _ his . slavery of word-painting, had a deep insight . into life—deeper, perhaps, than he himself ever realised. "To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare, to read, to love, to gray, are the things that make men happy.