TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1908. TARANAKI'S ANNIVERSARY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13664, 31 March 1908, Page 4

TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1908. TARANAKI'S ANNIVERSARY.

There are still among us a few — very few — of the little .company of daring pioneers left the old Plymouth in the barque William Bryan on November 19|h, 1840, and came to an anchorage off Moturoa in the evening of March 30th, 1841, landing her passenger* on the following morning, thus making $jb!e foundation of the settlement of Taraaaki date from M,arch 31st, ' 184f , sixtyseven years ago :to-day. They were a hardy rabs those early pioneers,- and they ha ve* left their impress on the history of tlie settlement they founded. It was no light undertaking in those far off days to journey /fourteen thousaud miles to an' unknown country, inhabited only by a savage' and warlike' race, and the very fact of their undertaking the journey argued the possession by the, pioneers , of more than ordinary; grit antl determination. They w^b come from England to-day find tlielh'selvesih'sit or seven* weeks .torj^splan^d without inconvenience qt clanger., into wha^j might almost be another English town, famished ipith. all the conveniences and comforts they have left. TJie ..pioneers had to find aepftHtfttodati&n .in tents and whares. on ; the beac,h at Moturoa,: and they felt as if in leaving" the brave fittle bar&ue they were; leaving home a second time. But the f pH* which upheld them during tneir long journey carried them through tae initial trials and dangers of the young settlement, though these were sometimes trying enough, as when their provisions had almost become exhausted before the Amelia Thompson, the second vessel, arrived with fresh supplies,. Gradually, however, the settlers became reconciled io their, new home, or most of' them dicj, for a few took the opportunity of leaving. As time went on they became attached to the place ; they built comfortable homgs; and made up their minds to live and die in their adopted country. So strong,, indeed, did their attachment grow that nos even the hor* rors of the wars with the Maoris, spreading over a number of years,

could drive them away. They had temporarily to leave their j farms; many of their homesteads! were burned, by the Natives ; and a great many of the settlers sent or took their wives and families to Nelson to await the end of the war, when most of them returned. That they did so is a fact which speaks as eloquently lor the charms of Taranaki as that other significant fact that the Maoris were reluctant to give up the Garden of New Zealand to tlie pakeha. There is no need to dwell here upon the struggles and vicissitudes of the early settlers or upon the horrors of the long war. A pleasanter ans more profitable task is ours to-day, to remind our readers of N the change which has come over Taranaki in the intervening years and of the blessings they enjoy as a result of the trials and hardships the earlier settler^ endured. It as difficult to make a fair compari-

son between the progress made by, Taranaki and that made by the other provinces, for this,,dis^ trict, though one of the earliest settled and one of ttie most fterr tile, was terribly handicapped by its isolation and the Maori troubles. ,The hand of -the clock "was practically put back to the starting" point five and twenty years after it was first set going. Indeed it may be said that the material progress and development of Taranaki dates from the early seventies instead of the forties, for it was not until 1871 that the first coach came through to New Plymouth from Wanganui, by the coast route, ans it was not until two and a half years later that the railway from- Wow Plymouth was commenced. About that time, too, Hawera and Patea were established, and in January, 1875, the town of Inglewood was founded. It will thus be seen! that Taranaki has had no more than about thirty-five years' continuous growth, and even in the earlier years of this period its progress was retarded by isolation and the^ want of capital to develop the great natural* resources it has sin^e been proved to possess. Now-, .however, the province can hpld up its head and claim to be 1 second to none in New Zealand in the matter of fertility, prosperity, and the comfort and wellbeing of. its inhabitants. We will not weary our readers with a long array of statistics, though we might easily make comparisons to prove that we are entitled to claim for Taranaki first place in many respects among the provinces of tEe, Dominion. 'Acre for acre it is the most fertile, for it contains scarcely any lans which can be classed as bad. No other part of the Dominion maintains so comfortably so large, a rural population in proportion to area. In the matter of climate and natural beauties it is unsurpassed. With all these ' advantages and with so few drawbacks we look forward with confidence to the district taking in the near future a. higher position in respect to those matters by which tlie progress and wealth of comnimiit'.es are usually measured. In point o£\ area its 2,430,000 acres are small tpojenpared with- Auckland's 13,858,000 acres, Hawke's Bay's 6,063,000, and Wellington's 6,810,958 acres, but in ayer r age fertility 3&razfailci is more than equal to those provinces. Its present disadvantages are lack 6f roads into; the back country and the want of a deep-sea harbour; For the want of the former many hard-working . settlers are compelled to pay enormous prices for their requirements, while they are heavily handicapped in getting their produce to, market. For i want of a harbour the district is ! paying substantial tribute every year to the port of Wellington, which thrives at the expense of the Taranaki producer. When the Hon. Mr. Hall- Jones was her:} prior to the lust general election he told a deputation that these — a harbour and roads — werewhat was wanted in Taranaki, adding the advice that we should push on the harbour while he provided the roads, which he declared would be ready first. ' That remains to be seen, but of one thing we are certain, that given those two elements of success the settlers Have -all the enterprise and energy necessary to make

Taranaki witiiout a doubt tlie most flourishing province in tlie Dominion.

Whiteley Memorial Church and Hall are to lie painted and renovated. To-day is the last day on svhicbf settlers' applications for jGrO^ernmeuu assistance in the renewal of burned pastures will be received. „ We understand that the State Fire Insurance Department iB about to open an agency in JSew Plymouth, under the management of an officer from the head office, Wellington. The Department has taken offices in the Theatre Buildings, lately vacated by Messrs Jones and Hill. . Recently, in a coiintry toyfib in this State (says the Sydney Morning Herald) a baker sued a long-winded customer for £20 — "goods sold and delivered." The debtor's solicitor defended the case by disputing some of the. items. "Now, sir," thundered the, legal practitioner, "don't you think you are greatly to blame for giving my client £20 worth of credit?" The baker resented being made a "butt" by the lawyer. Turning to another r Dage in the ledger, he scored by reajdmg the amount of the legal gentleman's own account. Verdict for the plaintiff. The Hope of Egmont Juveriile Temple, No. 25, I.O.GXi held its weekly meeting iirSt. Mary's Hall last night. The superintendent, Sis. (Mrs) JJruce, was in charge: The Temple was opened by* the Chief Templar, Br. F™. Roberts, ' at 6.30. After the usual business had been transacted, the Temple paid visit to the Egmont. Lodge, aiid contributed the following programme : —Recitations by Sisters I. Connett, A. Leosch, I. Russell, N. Ticner, and Bro. { L. Pepperell; reading by Sister L'.'j Allen. Afterwards refreshments ,- were j provided by the Egmont Lodge. ' • The j Temple closed at 9 p.m. r -"•*■ When in New Plymouth for a fc\v ! days recently Dr. A. S. Wohlmann, Gtovernment Balneologist, Rotorua, spoke very highly of the of the hot saltwater baths, aad said that he would endeavour to persuade the tourist department to advertise the baths ; Mr E. Dockrill (Mayor) has now received the following letter from Dr. Wohlmann : ' 'Permit ,me to\ thank you-j very much for the coiirtesy shown -"to my wife and self during our' stay in New Plymouth. lam glad to know of; a place to which I can sena patients : who require hot saltwater baths, ©specially a place with such natural attractions as New Plymouth." . What may be considered a record droving performance has been accomplished with a mob of 1/700 bullocks brought from Victoria Downs station, , in the Northern Territory,, to Na.rra- i bri, an approximate distance! of 3,000 ' miles (says the Sydney Morning Herald). ' The animals have, just arriyed at Narfabri, after being ' thirteen months on the road. They are owned by the New Zealand Loan and* Mercantile Agency Company. Mr Buchanan, of l&Harney station, Narrabri, a year ago brought from near -the same locality in two mobs 6,000 head. They were fattened and sold in the Sydney market. Up to March 19th ninety-three settlers in Taranaki had received supplies of grass seed for burned pastures uydef tho Government's loan without interest scheme. The cost' was £1300. In Wellington district up) to the. present 248 burnt-out setlers have been, furnished by the State with gross seed of a total value of £9955. The Wellington district appears to have suffered most from the fires judging by the applications for< assistance About twenty settlers in Hawke's Bay have been relieved. Up to March 19th there, had been forty cases (representing. £1500) dealt with in Auckland* 16 in Marlborough (£1500), and 31 in Nelson (£800). "By the bye," observed Murdoch McLean, C.E., to a London correspondent, "I have been making notes attd comparisons as regards the railway travelling, and I do not hesitate to say that New Zealand gives the cheapest in the world. You can travel firstclass in New Zealand as cheaply as third-class in England. I admit that, on the other hand, you can travel as comfortably third-class in Britain as first-class in New Zealand, and of course the speed and the personal comfort and convenience are incomparably greater in tho Mother Country. But >n point of cheapness, neither England nor any European country, is 'in it 1 with New Zealand. An ex-Hawera man who has settled in Vancouver writes to his people that the severity of the winter in comparison with those experienced in New Zealand has particularly struck him. Short days, continuous wet, and severe I frosts, and the terrible' effects these have in stopping outdoor work, and throwing thousands of people out of employment, are commented on aff making life so much less pleasant than it is in New Zealand. The "yellow" trouble, he says, is very acute, and is likely to^ grow worse, for the number of Japs is increasing, and they are inso many direptions displacing* white labour, owing to the small wages they are willing to work for. Even a white female servant is a rarity. A salmon fishery establishment on the FraserRiver that At one time kept a thousand or two white mon employed is now" manned almost exclusively by. Japanese. The feeling is thai England is afraid of breaking with Japan, and that therefore it is difficult to exclude the Asiatic immigration— that British Columbia is sacrificed to Imperial policy. Vancouver, ho says, is a go-ahead town of about 80,OuO people, but there is a considerable amount; of crime and lawlessness in proportion' to the population. An invention of a very! unique character successfully displayed its capabilities in King Street, Dunedin, o» Thursday last.~ The machine not only spreads tar on the road, tyut also covers the tar with a fine layer of, sand. The layers of tar and sand are beautifully regulated, the mere shifting of a han--die and the turning of a wheel serving to regulate the distribution- to any thickness. The machine, the Star says, is not unlike one of. tile «ity .. watercarts in appearance, ftwjt is drawn by two horses. In its fore, part is contained the tank for the tar, combined with a heating apVar&tufi, and aft is a basin for the sand. Ths tar runs out through perforated pipes under the car, and two brushes, i also worked under the car, and driv«n with a reciprocating motion, ply to such effect that a snjodth "surface- is itfeo result. A turn of a wheel and the sand bursts out of the baok of the machine and leaves a fine layer upon the tar. The sand, distribution is worked fly motor. The work is expeditiously done, and only two men are required fir the machine — a driver and a man for the wheels, the inventor, Mr W. .0 Southgate, of North-east Valley, claims that The machine will do the tvprk jof tarring and. sanding the streets five 1 times quicker than by hand labour.

I During ike past ten years the. J»~ crease vof J ferade«t>Tinmru harbouf^WS been 138 per cent., the highest of anyport in the Dominion, Wellington com- , ing next with 132 per cent. At Norfolk Island the Melanesian boys take periodical "holidays" and spend them in hoeing kumeras, doing ntore hoeing then than on ordinary 'working days/ In New. Zealand the working man celebrates "Labour Day" by abstaining from work. Thefee's the difference. > '■:'-, At a meeting of the Council of Evangelical Churches last evening it was resolved to wait ott ministers and protest against ' the needless amount of drill done in volunteer camps pn Sundays, and to urge that- no canteens should be allowed at the forthcoming Easter manoeuyeresi . ; Work at all the West Coast Coalmines continues plentiful, the demand for coal being greater than, tho Supply, telegraphs the Greymouth correspondent of a Christchurch paper. The consequence is that while the bar continues good, high pf ensure of York is the result in order .to fulfil ordWs and get the boats away. 'I The steamer Arawa, which left Wellington for London on Friday evening, took the following dairy produce: — Butter : Auckland lit* boxes, New Plymouth 5037 boxes, Wellington 671 boxes. Cheese: Auckland 159 cases, New Plymouth 1547 cases, Patea 951 cases, Wellington 858 "Cases, Lyttelton 29,3 cases, Dunedin 2612 cases. 'Totals: Butter 3827 boxes; cheese 6420 cases. The women's journal, Tho HaaoVj is rather severe. "For colossal, hidebound vanity," it says, "give mo menl It would be almost impossible to find one who is not certain that he is an Adonis. Men are sublimely % certain that, they are beyond criticism, and I believe that they could be cured" of anything, even drink, through an assault on their vanity. ,', "Head-hunting is still rife in certain islands," stated MrGoates, when lecturing on mission life in the Melanesian Group, at Christchurch, last week. "In some places, owing to the raids of the head-hunters . from- the bush, the coastal inhabitants are compelled to fortify themselves with palisades, and in many cases they nave actually been compelled to seek their hojhes on small, islands adjacent to the 'coast. There are dozens of these islands carrying a population of two or three hundred people, who live in a state of indescribable filth. '^The females herd with the pigs, and have their food thrown to them." * / " « A decision of importance, in that i% swas practically an interpretation which affects all employers of labour, was Siven in Wellington a few days, ago by ie Arbitration Court. A bricklayer was charged with having employed a. labourer to do bricklaying work. Tjiis, the union submitted, was a breach of the .award, which stipulated that only bricklayers and apprentices shbolcl be employed. It was shown ithat the man had been paid the wages stipulated by the award:. Tho Court held' that, the position taken up by the union ; wa3 untenable. Any man working under any award- could employ any person he liked so long as the wages as provided in the award under whicn he was working were paid. A blacksmith could be employed as a butcher, a milkman as a baker, whether the men ,w»re competent or incompetent, provided, the sti- • pulated wages: were paid. , . . The Wellington composer, Mr Alfred Hill, is doing some interesting work. He has received from Mr" Jbhaiines Andersen, author of the Exhibition ode, the libretto of a Maori cantata, ."Tura and the Fairies." The cantata is founded on a very pretty Maori legend of a man who met the fairy, folk that never die or grow old. He ran m love with* the dusky Titania, and life was full aad complete till tragedy» * n the form of death, entered their paradise. Both Mr Hill and Mr Andersen hope to bring the beauty and pathos of old Maori legendary lore more fully before the public, and to make these tales and songs I've again-.the inteßectual life of the "native-born" New Zealanders. Mr Hill also Has a lyrical "Maori Love Pong," written for music by Mr Seaforth Mackenzie* a young Wellington pout. ' That appalljng disaster, the wreck - of the Wairarapa, off the Great Barrier about fourteen years ago. with its terrible loss of life, was called to menkory last week (says the Otego/ Dtoriy Times) by what will virtually w -tho last meeting of the Wairarapa Relief Fund Trustees. The meeting was'attended by his Worship the Mayor (Mr J. Loudon) and Messrs W. Wills and T. S. Graham. Mr Graham, who has acted as secretary, -submitted a state- , mont to the meeting showing that there . was still a small' sum of £9 4s lid m hand, with no further calls for relief. The trust deed of 1895 provided that any surplus should be handed to the Public Trustee, but the trustees of the fund resolved to ask his authority to pay the amount over to the Shipwreck ; Relief Society. The Public Trustee was written to accordingly. Recently a watersponii burst in the vicinity of the source of the Bucklerbtrttt River, Olenorchyr Central Qtago, btmem&the largest flood that. baa been known in this channel (says the Lake Wakatipu Mail). All the neighbouring gullies received a share of the waterspout, and for a time great torrents poured down them, washing everything in front of them.. In one of the gullies two miners were encamped^ and . they just escaped being washed into a deep gorge. All their provisions and most of their clothes were sweptaway. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," and in IShis case the extraordinary rush of water brought down a tremendous quantity of wooct. Most of the local people took toe. opportunity of laying in a quantity of ruenHat will lasi them for a few years. A "yellow peril" cry is raised by_Mr H F. Toogood,'whb was a candidate for Christchurch East at last general eleotion, and who is now in Rangpoß, in a letter to the editor of the Lyttelton Times. He says "I nope New Zealand is not slackening off in the matter of Asiatic restriction, The Chinese are our most dangerous foe. They are capable and so persistent that they can overcome almost any difficulties, or perorm any duty honestly and well. One finds them carrying out responsible duties in Singapore, in the Malay States, and in Rangoon, which in our country entitle a man to a highly-respected position. Bank clerks, shipping managers, building contractors, shop assistants, in fact all positions except the top one. THey are exceedingly polite and polished, without being obsequious, and talk most excellent English. Tho market-gardener, the small shopkeeper, or the coohe can be met by our restrictions, but we must be warned of tho British-born Chinese, the Singaporean. He is 'most dangerous, because ho is so very capable. Of course I have the highest respect for him in this country. He is the salvation of Burma and the Straits Settlements, especially th» Straits where he does all the work."