South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5029, 10 June 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1889.

The accounts we have published of the —we may say the mad—rush of settlers to Oklahoma, the newly opened territory in the United States, teach this among other lessons : That there are a large number of people in the States who are not afraid to “ go upon the land,” as the phrase goes with us. From what we have read of the pioneer settlers in the new territories of the Great West, they seem to require very little capital. must in the first place have as much as will buy their cheap lotof land,

and have a few tools and a team, a bit of seed, and a stock of provisions, with perhaps a few dollars over for emergencies. With an outfit that they can take along with them, several hundred miles, it may be, over a roadless country, they prepared to tackle the jobof making new homes for themselves, and as a rule they very soon make themselves very comfortable homes. At first the majority will be content with a “ dugout ” habitation ; a hole excavated in a steeply sloping bank, roofed over with a few saplings and whatever may be found handy in the way of thatch, or in default of such material with turf. Their first duty is to get this or some other shelter; the next to set about raising food to replace the stock they have brought with them, or that which—under very favourable circumstances —they may be able to buy. A very large portion of the Great West, we understand, has been settled in this way; in a large species of “ village settlement ” such as we have in New Zealand, but there the conditions have generally been more adverse than our village settlers have found theirs to be. These pioneers go to make a home for themselves, as, probably, many of them have done before in what was then a wilderness; others are no doubt the sons and daughters of such earlier pioneers, who find it necessary to “ swarm ” from the parents’ hive, and do so with the parents’ help. When one reads travellers’ accounts of districts filled with prosperous people, entirely cut off from the rest of the world, there must be seen to be some error in the notion that prevails here, that settlement is impossible more than so many miles from a railway ; or unless there is a good metalled road leading to some town or other not very far away. Many years ago, when the first flying surveys were being made for the StLouia Santa Fe railroad, which now runs through Oklahoma, the surveyors came across small colonies of Americans settled in the eastern valleys of New Mexico, entirely cut off by distance from eastern settlements (so far as any possibility of exchange of goods was concerned at all events), and cut off by rough country, language, and racial dislike, from the Spanish settlements in the west of that great Territory. Yet these people were well to do, they produced all they needed, and if their needs were found to be somewhat less than nineteenth century civilization prescribes, they had the absolute requisites of a comfortable existence: roomy and weather-proof dwellings, plenty of clothing, plenty of food, and plenty of leisure, and it rested with themselves, not to a very great extent more than it does with “ city folk,” to provide themselves with amusements. These people simply “ went on the land,” and were content to live without any aid from commerce with the outer world, and were able to live well. New Zealanders are said to be too fond of town life and'town luxuries. It is much more likely—seeing how little enjoyment many of them get out of town life —that they are ignorant how easy it is to live comfortably in the country. It is a common saying that one half the world does not know how the other half lives. About one half the world’s population to-day—at a guess—live in very small self-supporting communities, and many of these have as high an average standard of material comfort as our boasted nineteenth century civilization provides.