OTAGO'S ANNIVERSARY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 80, 24 March 1908, Page 2

OTAGO'S ANNIVERSARY

HEHTTINOLV' CELEBRATED. j Per Press Association. Duncdin, Last Night. A holiday was observed locally to-day in honor of the celebration of the tiOth anniversary of settlement in Otago. The principal event in connection with the celebrations was the opening of the Early Settlers' Hall, erected in memory of pioneors, and which will serve as a meeting place and storehouse for records and mementoes of the curly days. The opening ceremony was attended by a large and representative gathering, and speeches were delivered by leading" citi--r.ssns, who referred to the energy and

stout-heartedntws of the early settlers. On the motion of Dr. Hoekon, it was decided: "That this meeting, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of the first settlers to the settlement of Otago express their grateful recognition of Edward Cibbon Wakefield in the colonisation of New Zealand, and their desire that .steps should be taken to raise a suitable memorial to his memory." Telegrams of congratulation were received from the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice; also from a number of Aucklanders who were boys in Dunedin in the tifties. A conversazione was held in the afternoon, the picnic arranged for being abandoned owing to the weather. A concert was held in the evening.

ft is interesting to note that on 23rd of -March (XI years ago, the ship John Wicklill'c lirst dropped her anchors ill Otago harbor, and the pioneer band of pilgrim fathers first let their gaze wander over the outlines of the home of their adoption. In April, IS4B, the second pioneer ship, the Philip Laing, arrived with another batch of settlers, and tlio history of Otago province began. That history, says the Otago Witness, is summed up in one word, "progress." And that this is so, adds the Witness, is due in no small measure to the ability and self-sacrilicing energies of the men and women who applied themselves with a whole-hearted devotion to the work o? 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 bad constituted So uncongenial a feature of the life in the Homeland which they had left behind them. The services rendered by that noble band of pioneers can never bo outlived. As years follow on, the lustre that surrounds them to-day will shine with a greater brilliance, and on New Zealand's scroll of fame, holding an honorable place, will ever be inscribed the names of the fathers of settlement not only of Otago, but of the other portions of the Dominion."