HIGHLAND CHIEF.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1928, Page 7

HIGHLAND CHIEF.

AN ENVOY OF CONFIDENCE LORD LOVAT’S CAREER. STORY OF A FAMOUS HOUSE. Lord Lovat, accompanied by Mr. F. Skevington, M.8.E., Mr. Ardell, of the Internal Affairs Department, and Mr, IL D. Thompson, of the Immigration Department, will arrive by the mail train at New Plymouth to-night. The party will be met at the station by the Mayor, Mr. 11. V. S. Griffiths, and will be conducted to the Criterion Hotel. The following amended programme has oeen drawn up for the visit:— Friday, October 12.—Party arrives by mail train at 7.48 p.m., and will be met by His Worship the Mayor (Mr. H. V. S. Griffiths), and members of the immigration committee) ; party drives to Criterion Hotel, After dinner members of the immigration committee will discuss informally with Lord Lovat matters connected with immigration. Saturday, October 13.—Lord Lovat and party leave the hotel at 9.30 a.m. and drive through Brixton and Lepperton districts, thence to Oakura, arriving at Taranaki Permanent Forests plantation at 11 a.m.; leave 11.30 a.m., arriving at noon at hotel, where Messrs S. Vickers and T. C. List will present the committee’s views on immigration matters to Lord Lovat. At 2 p.m., the party leaves the hotel for the garden party at Mr, T. C. List’s residence, Maranui. Mr. J. McLeod, vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, will formally welcome Lord Lovat on behalf of the chamber, and Mr. C. Carter, chairman of the immigration committee, will also speak. The official party will, after the function, be accompanied on foot through Brooklands and Pukekura Park, inspecting the fernery en route. A civic reception arranged by the Mayor will be held at the Victoria (League rooms on Sat- , . urday evening. Sunday, October 14.—The party leaves the hotel at 10 a.m. for Mount Egmont. Lunch will be taken at the mountain house at 12.30, and ths party will then proceed direct to Wanganui. The English schoolboys attending the garden party at Maranui are to assemble at the corner of Devon and Brougham Streets at 1.45 p.m., and will be conveyed to the party by a bus the borough council has placed at their disposal. (By John North in Auckland Star.) There is not a Highland heart in the Dominion of New Zealand that will not ba stirred with pride , and the “perfervidum ingenium Scotorum” to learn that Lord Lovat has arrived here, an envoy of Empire, entrusted by the Imperial Parliament with a mission that is equally important to England and New Zealand. Call it Highland clannishness if you like; I prefer to think of it aa pride of race, but there is not true Highland Celt alive who has not a pride in the House of Lovat, and in the able and distinguished head who has come to us on a high Imperial mission. As a Highlander born and bred on the borders of Lord Lovat’s vast Highland estates, I can claim to express fairly the thoughts and opinions of my fellow Highlanders in regard to the House of Lovat and its present head. Our guest, then, is the greatest and most popular of all great Highland chiefs alive today —alas I they are a fast diminishing band. To-day the wealthy stranger from England or America reigns in the mansions and on the estates where once the Highland chiefs lorded it in a kindly, patriarchal style. Highlanders have seen their chiefs and chieftains pass away thus with deep but unavailing regret, but they cling all the more faithfully and lovingly to the chiefs who still remain, of whom Lord Lovat, chief of the elan Fraser, is the greatest. A KINDLY LANDLORD. He is a great landowner in the Highlands, holding more territory than any other in the great country of Inverness. How many shooting lodges—really mansions—he owns I cannot say here, but in my own particular district he owns five. The family seat is Beaufort Castle, near Beauly, twelve miles from Inverness. On his estates live a verylarge number of tenant farmers and crofters, and of my own personal knowledge I can affirm that they live happy and contented. There is no suggestion

m*’"" l iiiffiiiinniiifnnii iirtiiiii niuiif! ■* i '•»'> n>i • '• (ill • of rack-renting or oppression on fhe Lovat estates. As far as is practicable in these modern days, the old kindly patriarchal system prevails. Any tenant with any grievance is certain of a patient and courteous hearing from the chief himself or his representatives, who, of course, take their cue from their employer. There would never have been any Highland agrarian trouble had all lords and lairds' managed their estates as Lord Lovat does, and treated their tenants with the kindly consideration which has become a tradition of the family.