PELORUS GUARDIAN FRIDAY, 19th. MAY, 1893. Sawmills and Settlement.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 4, Issue 38, 19 May 1893, Page 2

PELORUS GUARDIAN FRIDAY, 19th. MAY, 1893. Sawmills and Settlement.

Our friend, “ Gold Miner,” has nearly hit the mark in his last letter when referring to the land belonging to Messrs Seymour and Collins, in the Rai Valley, not being purchased for settlement, in the way he advocates — namely, to immediately fell and distroy all the valuable timber on the section, but their idea was to dispose of the timber, and thus make a better farm in the end. Besides, we must remember that until the last few years, there was no decent road, no frozen mutton industry, or dairy exports to encourage or assist the small settlers to gain a living in such an outlying district, and these have been the principal stimulants in fostering settlement. The great difficulty our small settlers had to contend with in this isolated place was not only to fatten their stock, but to find a satisfactory market for them when they were ripe, for many years they had to accept very low prices, or winter them only to get poor again. We are very glad to see that the Horae market now rules the colonial one, and we hope it will long continue. So we say, let the past bury its dead, but let us learn wisdom from experience and deal with the public estate as it seems best in the interests of all concerned to-day. No one can endorse “ Gold Miner’s” sentiment more heartily than we do when he says, “I simply protest against immense arears being locked up indefinitely to the. detriment of settlement,” our only difference is in what way we should proceed to gain the same end, and as a final answer, re the benefit of sawmills, we publish the following extract from the New Zealand Times of the 13th inst., under the heading of our own correspondent—namely, “ Carterton used to run at one time between 20 and 80 sawmills, now there are only three or four here. The land, however, is left and there is no town in New Zealand, probably, surrounded as this is with small farms. Ic was the sawmilling industry that enabled people to settle on the land, for most of the mill hands took up sections and gradually cleared them during their spare hours. These men now have their own freeholds, and although the majority were heavily handicapped in having to pay big interests on their investments, they have struggled on until now, and, thanks greatly to the improvement in the dairy trade, they have most of them got their holdings clear. Most of the mills have gone into the Forty-mile Bush, and their original owners are now flourishing sheep farmers here. There are the Booth’s, Price’s, Stevens’, Udy’s, Fairbrother’s, Hooker’s, and many others.” Now we hope the Government will not delay matters, but deal with the task allotted to them at once, in a broad national spirit.