THE GROWING NORTH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11763, 29 July 1916, Page 8

THE GROWING NORTH.

I'The tide of settlement which hr.s jwept steadily over the North Island Jltt the ia3t few years is something unprecedented, in tho story of Kew Zealand, and many South IslandjMjj} perhaps do not realise the extent to Tvhich tile breaking in process, in .this ,part pi tho Do-

minion nearly half a century ago, still goes on north of Cook Strait. The rush for land has, it is true, slackened temporarily, owing to the war, but when the thousands of young men now bearing arms in France return to take their share in peaceful pursuits there will be an enormous spurt in farm-winning, home-building activities throughout the country, and the Government cannot too soon complete it» arrangements for providing space in the good lands for those stout hearts and strong arms. Although the rough-and-ready old system of settlement has passed awfiy, and although the farmer's lifo is made much more comfortable and assured than it was in the early days, a certain quality of adventure still flavours the work of home-mak-ing in the back country of the North. The more enterprising spirits still mako for the furthest-out parts, as of old, and find a zest in breaking into the wild forest, where never foot of civilised man but, perhaps, the exploring surveyor trod before. There is still many a place where such men of the out-of-doo.Ms can End room to breathe and move and swing a pioneer axe. But the average new settler of looks for a home within reasonably easy distance of township and market and served by passable roads, and in this .respect the State's care for the country man in the North has always lagged behind requirements. The necessity for reading ahead of settlement has never yet been properly appreciated by the Government, and this winter, as in a long procession of winters past, there are protests from the remoter districts of the North against the unfairness of placing setters on Crown sections cut off from the world for months in the year.

It is the great stretch of territory still known as th© King Country, although the fitness of the term has long vanished, that has seen the greatest transformation during the last few years. To realise what the quick Europeanisation of this once-locked land really means one- must have travelled it in the pre-raihvay days. For a hundred miles the railway traveller now passes easily across settled country that lay in its wild, native state until less than twenty-five years ago. For a generation after Canterbury had been completely divided up among farmers and runholders these millions of good acres in the heart of the North were altogether barred against the white home-seeker, From the Waikato border down to the Wanganui River, Lake Taupo and the White Cliffs in North Taranaki, there were thirty years- ago no resident white men except the few who had " taken to the blanket" and married into Maori tribes. Te Kuiti, the coming big provincial town of South Auckland, and already promising to surpass Palmerston North in importance as a country centre, was a Hauhau settlement, without a single pakeha, and the on© solitary white man who had his home in Taumarunui less than twenty years ago has seen that coro of Maoridom develop into a largo and well-equipped modern town. The redoubts and blockhouses along the Waikato and Taranaki borders were garrisoned by detachments of Armed Constabulary until the early 'eighties, and it was, indeed, as late as 1883 that the last fortified post against the Maoris, a redoubt at Kawhia, was built by the A.C.'s, in the expectation of a renewal of the old battle between white man and Kingite Native.

The speed with which the white hand is beneficially replacing the brown is, therefore, more marked in the great Rohepotae than elsewhere. The traveller, indeed, does .not view the most remarkable changes from the Main Trunk' Railway. The most amazing example of energy and determination in the conquest of the wild places is perhaps that of the Ohura-Stratford district. Less than twenty-five years ago there was an unbroken mass of the heaviest forest, extending for nearly eighty miles from the Ohura Valley, near the present line of the Main Trunk, to the neighbourhood of Stratf6rd in Taranaki. This huge extent of formidable bush country is settled along almost the whole length of the road cut through its heart, and settlement is spreading east and west from the good land so won from wild nature's .hold, and fat stock, dairy produce and wool are winning for the plucky settlers a fitting reward for their great toil and their long isolation. And this process is going on all over the interior of the North, though perhaps not under such severe conditions as those which faced the Ohura pioneers. In the warm North Auckland country, too, the beautiful slopes that go down to tho Bay of Plenty, and on the Gis-borne-East Cape pastoral hills new settlers everywhere are adding to the productivity of the Dominion and increasing the tale of exports by millions in the year. Good land is even being won from the sea, in the great coastal swemp reclamation works on the Pinko, the Rangitaiki, and the Northern Wairoa, and in the unwatering of the Lower Waikato. These enterprises and the skilful development of the pumicecoated lands of the Upper Waikato and Taupo. where it has been discovered that a pumice admixture actually is an enriching element under proper treatment, are increasing the workable areas by millions of acres. The South Islander perhaps could uot devote his uext summer holiday to a more interesting purpose than to an inspection of these breaking-in activities in the North.