PRESENT-DAY PIONEERING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 79

PRESENT-DAY PIONEERING.

By C. G. Nicol.

IN THE ROADLESS NORTH.

It is an established truism, particularly of New Zealand, that hitman nature, in its reverence of the men and things of the past, is prone to overlook or under-value the men and things of the present. And there is some excuse for it in this country, where yet exists the chain that binds us directly to the early days and the lirst pioneers whose memory grows more green as the chain grows shorter. Young New Zealand is taught, and rightly so, to revere these sturdy old pioneers and appreciate to the full their stupendous achievements. Long may their memory be kent green but, in our veneration of them let us not forget the pioneers of the present.

In the towns and settled portions of the Dominion too little is known of that big-hearted and picturesque character; too many of the dwellers of the towns are totally ignorant of the men—and women, who, at the present moment are doing as mighty pioneering feats as did the original forerunners of settlement. To them the bushman and the bush settler has no particular significance. They know that there are virgin lands in the roadless north being settled ; they have seen pictures of roads which are best described as 12ft wide and oft deep ; they know that people live in those places, and that their life is not the proverbial bed of roses, but unless they have seen—have been “out back,' as the bush folk say—they can have no conception of the stern war being waged by a big-hearted few against Nature hi the rough. So, probably will it continue to be until a modern Brete Unite arises and naints with deft and understanding touch the bush character and the bush. Soon may such a one arise, for this part of our history in all its grimness and grandeur, its pathos and nictureequeness, its heroism and Herculean effort, must not be lost to posterity. Perhaps the .city dweller’s lack of knowledge and interest in the subject is because the wanderings of journalists have not taken them “out back.” The beaten track leads not where roads are roads only in name, where bridle tracks and pack saddles are matters of living interest, and where schools do not exist. The unexploited fields for able pens are vast, and possibly this production from a. humble pen may send some discerning soul to explore them. But let him not hope to get there without some inconvenience. He must be prepared for journcyings to the “back o bevond” on a sure-footed bush “brumbie,” over tracks not fit for goats, and over places where tracks once were before carried by landslips to the bottoms of unspeakable gorges. He must go where wool is “brought out” on pack horses, where men forget, if they ever knew, the superficialities and appendages of modern life, where a stranger finds the truest hospitality in a road-maker's camp or a rude hush whare.

That place is found in many parts of the hinterland of Taranaki—the real hinterland, that vast, rough bush region stretching between the rich grass country of New Zealand’s dairy farm and the upper readies of the Wanganui River. This country, it may be safely affirmed, comprises some of the roughest land that ever the stout heart of the pioneer has attempted to subdue. Few can claim to know the whole of it—none, .perhaps, except a few surveyors and Government i-oad overseers. Perhaps not even they. But what can be said of one part applies to the whole, and the reader may gather something of its vastness and awfulness by a few facts about the part with which the writer has some acquaintance. Mataimoana, Moeawatea. Omona, Kapara, Ngamatapouri, and Kaimanuka are names not found on maps, and New Zealand geography does not teach them. MTien the average person conies across them in obscure newspaper paragraphs his only thought is why should jaw-breaking names should be so persistently used. Their euphonious sound when spoken in true Maori accent, and their oit-times beautiful meaning, do not appeal to them. But these places’ exist in stern reality, and form the, arena in which men. armed ■with axe and fire, war with giant Nature and win—at a price. How to describe that mighty load! Imagine viewing from a height an expanse of dense bush stretching to the sky-line and beyond ! Picture it a series of razorbacked ridges, which one could almost straddle. Imagine those ridges as precipitous in places that the straight-trunked forest monarehs growing a hundred feet down the slope rear their heads over the track on which- yon stand. With the eyes of your mind look down into those terrible gorges, the bottoms of which are a thousand feet and more below you, and imagine, if you can, the track on which you stand covering three winding, sinuous miles before it reaches the bottom. Think of those ridges and gorges extending in unbroken succession for miles and miles until neither the tap of the axe nor the crackle of the bush “burn” is heard, where the wood pigeons find a sanctuary among the rata blossoms, and where the wild pigs with which this forest abounds have never beard the bark of a dog or the crack of a rifle. That is the arena. You gaze, and as you gaze you become filled with a feeling of awe at the magnificence and immensity of the sight. “Big country,” remarks the hard, brown, keen-eyed bushman nt your side, in tones of the matter'-of-fael. Big country it is. Then you look for evidences of the primeval combat in this nmurai arena. At first glance it would appear that the eternal human in w of progress and conquest has left not a sign of its activity; blit a more careful survey slmwo here and there little breaks, just discernible in that sea of green, the unmistakable sign that the white man has taken up his burden. A blue haze in the atmos-

phere and a column of smoke arising in the distance, like a great white cloud beckoning men on to a promised land, shows that a “burn” is in progress, and that another defacement of the landscape will soon be added to those already existing. But their total area is a mere drop in the ocean, a mere beginning of the work of decades.

But that is only one part of the picture, and one must see and know the men and the women who are living somewhere in those gorges and leading the way of settlement. They belong to a- type all by themselves—free, unfettered, elemental in many ways, living a life of stein struggle, persevering because of hope, taking from their surroundings some of its rugged grandeur and bigness. When the history of New Zealand comes to he written a big place must be set aside for these men and women, who are Empire-builders if such exist. In the Moeawatea Valley there are several families who have been there for years. They “went in” hoping that a grateful Government would give them roads and bridges within a- reasonable time; hut the years went by and little was done, and some of these settlers are still living miles beyond the end of the road which leads to the nearest township over 50 miles away. Fortunately for the settlers, a change of Government saw a sum voted for the extension of the road for two or three miles. But that is oniv a beginning, and most of the settlers still have to pack their provisions and everything else from the little patuka (store house, in this case a. tin shed) at the end of the road, a rough track itself hewn out of the faces. Wool has to be taken out by pack-horses if the sheep are not driven out to h-s shorn, an undertaking not always the, least difficult and not always possible, for eacli ram brings landslips which often cover the tracks with tons of displaced earth and trees from above or carry away the track itself. Then come periods when the hush people are shut in: hut these happenings are regarded as a matter of course, and no one loses Ins temper —it is one of the prices of settlement. A stoical patience is theirs. There are children in that wilderness who have never' seen a town or a railway At the present moment there are 14 children in the Moeawatea Valley who have never been inside a school or a church, the only tuition they receive being what their parents find time to give them. The children are paying a heavy part of the price of progress and settlement. That is oil" the tragedies of the hush The frequent hush accident provides more tragedy, and when one ponders on the deaths and injuries through this cause, one must ask the question—ls it worth while? Rarely is there a hush accident which does not entail the most frightful suffering by the victim and brings out the finest self-sacr’fice and self-forgetful-ness on the nart of his friends. Grimmest of all is when husTlmen have to carry out the body of a comrade. The writer knows of a case where one of two bushmen, who were working miles from anyone, was killed, and the other after getting aid had to carry the burden for miles to the road. The ordeal, physically and mentally, that man went through by the lime the inquest was held, was apparent in every line of his blanched face that ca-uno# he described.

It is when an accident occurs that the splendid spirit of camaraderie of the bushman is brought out, and an incident of this kind happened but a few months ago in the district 1 refer to, which must stir the hearts of every member of a pioneering race. A young giant was badly crushed through a" tree falling on him, his thigh and several ribs being broken. It was a mile from the whare, and his companions had to carry him to it over felled bush, in a silting position a stick, one holding his legs to save the jar as much as possible. Eventually they reached the whare. The sufferings and exertions of that journey can only he realised by those who took part in it, ' But it had only begun. The whare was over 30 miles from the nearest doctor—that big-hearted little hero, whose care for the bush neoule is known only to themselves—and live miles of the crudest track to the nearest house and telephone at the end of the road. One man was despatched post-haste to call up the doctor. The remaining two prepared a rough stretcher, and. with the aid of another man who arrived, commenced to carry the injured man. now almost prostrate through pain, but uncomplaining, up the narrow track. The night came on and rain began to fall, and in the pitchv blackness the water rushing down the track was like a mountain torrmt. and adding tenfold to the agonies of all. No one will ever know the hardships that party underwent—a tiudiim-n is not given to heroics. Lon" before the journey was over, bearers and borne were on the verge of collapse, hut they struggled on. Before they reached their haven, however, the doctor had ridden out the 25 miles which were fetlock do'-o in mud and me f them in time to take a share of the burden. Next day the injured man bad to travel 37 miles in the ambulance to the nearest hospital. That is a tvnical bush incident, and manv more could he told. Worst of all is when a woman, in her most- trying hmir. has to undergo such n journey as that described. Then does the bush extract its most awful price from its conquerors. There is another and more cheerful side of bush life which might be outlined—the side born of the bnshman’s sociability, and the little peccadilloes which make him human and refreshing, but space may not permit of it here or this pen do it justice. The pioneer of to-day awaits the immortalisation he deserves at the hands of a New Zealand Bret Harte.