PAGES FROM THE PAST

Taranaki Daily News, 26 June 1928, Page 13

PAGES FROM THE PAST

TARANAKI’S EARLY HISTORY. THEN AND NOW. (S. Saunders in Wellington Post.) A little more than two months ago the Taranaki Province celebrated the anniversary of the arrival of its “Pilgram Fathers,” in. 1841, so modestly that the outside world had little opportunity to appreciate the importance and significance of the occasion. Taranaki was unique among the provinces in the manner and method of its settlement. The Wellington and Auckland ■settlements were established under the aegis of ships and constituted authority, and with the facilities offered bv excellent harbours. ' Taranaki, only some fifteen months later, was peopled by the Plymouth Company of New Zealand while still without as much as a passable roadstead, a single road, or any protection from the wandering and marauding Natives. Its occupation was the most heroic of all the heroic adventures that marked the settlement of this country. Its story never has been adequately told, and probably never will be; but a little stained and moth-eaten book, with numerous faded and mostly unreadable marginal notes, sent to me by a correspondent a little while ago, contains many pages and paragraphs which throw some light tipon the Taranaki of the early and middle ’forties. The book, published in London in 1849, is entitled “An Account of the Settlement of New Plymouth in New Zealand,” and the author is Air. Chales Hunsthouse, the jrioneer of a well-known family that has made its mark in various spheres of activity. The volume is dedicated bv -'ermission to “His Excellency Sir George Gray, Governor-inrChief,” and is prefaced by an alphabetical list of subscribers containing 229 names, 170 of residents in England and 59 of residents in New Zealand. Among the yet familiar names on the list are those of Sir George Gray, Governor from l°th December, 1945, to 7th March, 1903, Captain Robert Fitzroy, Governor from 26th December, 1843, to 17 November, 1845, Sir Francis Dillon Bell, sen., Mr. Justice Chapman, Mr. H. King, Mr. G. Lethbridge, Sir Donald McLean, Hon Henry Petre, end Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield. It ie fairly safe to say that Mr. Hursthouse’s production, the labour of five years, is the first book published dealing exclusively with actual settlement in the Dominion. THE CRITIC’S COMPLAINTS. Here only some fragments can be quoted from its pages. Mr. Hursthouse, Unlike some of the tiresome writers of prefaces in his own day, confines his “introductory remarks” to three brief pages. By the time he had completed his investigations the New Zealand Company had taken over the interests of the New Plymouth Company, and by this arrangeme , no doubt, his hand had been considerably freed. At any rate, he has a deprecatory word or two to say concerning the policy and administration of the larger company. “A grave error in the colonisation of New Zealand,” he writes, “has been the. hasty planting of so many scattered settlements—Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Manawatu, Otago —powerless to afford any mutual assistance, some of them almost unconscious of each other’s existence, and possibly, before the evils resulting from this system became clearly apparent in England, other new settlements will lie added to tl list. It has been well observed, that from the character of this country, Its colonisation will be best effected by scattered settlements on its coasts. The mistake has been in planting them -co soon. It is notorious in the colony that if the New Zealand Company hgd confined its operations to one or two places, its persevering efforts, strict integrity, and large expenditure, would have been productive of mors advantageous results.” This was written more than eighty yefirs ago, and the intervening years scarcely have justified Mr. Hursthouse’s conclusions. It was the facilities for water-carriage that decided the location of the big cities of the Dominion, and anv unnecessary delay in their erection would have iiost.no. ed the development of their back country. Another of Mr. Hursthouse’s complaints—and it is the last that shall be quoted—is the absence of a newsnaper. “From the first,” be eavs, “Wellington and Nelson have had their papers for the publication of their individual claims, but Taranaki has never enjoyed the advantage sbf a papier, so that settlement is comparatively little known in England and has not attracted that attention p.s a field for colonising enterprise which I am prepared to show it pre-eminently deserves.” This disability was removed many years ago, and to-day the province is at least as well "papered” as is any similar area in the Mother Countrv. SOME PREDICTIONS. In bis redictions regarding the future of New Zealand agriculture, Mr. Hursthouse is only partially successful. “As all young colonies must at first import food,” he writes, “and as the growth and progress of this one has been so lamentably cripped, New South Wales, herself a large importer, has hitherto supplied most of its flour. This, however, will not be the case much longer, and when the immense agricultural resources of New Zealand are fairly developed, and it becomes what it will be—the granary of the South Pacific —New South Wales herself will probably be an excellent market for some of its grain exports. If with the certainty of good home markets for some years t come, and the probability of others i New South Wales, it will be considered necessary to look still further, we find that New Zealand Is conveniently situated for supplying several places which may become excellent markets, such as the British 1 ossessions in China, the French in Bourbon and Tahiti, the Mauritius, the Cape Colony, and some of the numerous islands of the South Pacific, which English enterprise and ‘steam communication’ may soon enliven with the busy hum of comm -ce.” In i.is allqsion to the development of the dairy industry, the vision of this cheery optimist approaches nearer to realisation. “Dairy farming, as a distinct and separate business,” he says, “has not yet been tried; but there is every reason to suppose that it would answer .ell, especially if combined with the curing of hams and bacon. Good firkin butter ranges from 7d to lOd per pound in the colonial markets, cheese, bacon, and hams from 4d to fid. These would be remunerative prices. It has been shown that bush land is well adapted to dairy farms, which certainly possess an advantage over arable farms, in being less dependent upon good roads." Eighty years after these de-

cisions need some revision, but they still are not unworthy of a sagacious observer. Air. Hursthouse was looking ahead eight decades, and through the mists he saw the reflection of some of the dreams he had dreamed. The Europec ■ population of the Taranaki settlement in 1847—it >. ..s not until some years later that It blossomed into .. province under an Act of the Imperial Parliament—numbered 1137, made up of 560 adults and 7'l children. In the official returns children over fourteen years of age were styled adults, and the figures show that six -o-ears after the European occupation of this fruitful wilderness it was maintaining 650 children under eighteen years of age and 487 adults over that age. There can bo few communities of a similar size in the world at the present time showing such a preponderance of infant life. “REMARKABLY FINE CHILDREN.” All-. Hursthouse bears glowing testimony to the virility of .the young settlers. “This climate,” he writes, "is highly salubrious. The children born here are considered by their mothers to be remarkably fine, and, making all due allowance for maternal hyperbole, they certainly promise to be a large and robust race. By the census of 1847 the population was 1137; the births that year and In 1846, when the .ansuß was 19°9, amounted jointly to 104, the deaths to fourteen, two of which were accidental; yet, in 1817, fever and whoop-ing-cougn were introduced into the settlement from Auckland.” The figures show that the ratio of births was one in eighteen and the rates of death one in 157, while in England the ratio of births was one in 32 and the ratio of deaths one in 44. Air. Hursthouse, wth the inspiration of the enthusiast who dreams dreams and sees visions, descried in the future New Plymouth occupied by half a million people; but for the present he was content to estimate from existin'' data the population that would be required to cultivate and develop the settlement in his own day. He would have had 50 capitalists, or large farmers;. 200 small farmers; 2000 agricultural labourers; 800 of the common mechanical trades; 300 engaged in trade and commerce, and 50 professionals; a tot"I '■* 3400 male adults. _ The settlement, now a province, long since passed that stage. New Plymouth has a population approaching 20,000; its hinterland has developed beyond all recognition; its people have pioneered the greatest of the Dominion’s rural industries, and Mount Egmont remains one of the entrancing natural spectacles of the wide world. The shade of the province’s first historian should remain content.