The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1892.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 2716, 2 February 1892, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1892.

E-eperusinq the history of the Nelson settlement, on the occasion of the celebration of its jubilee, grumblers of later years may discover that their lot was an enviable one in comparison with the hardships endured by the first settlers. It is the fashion now-a-days for Liberal politicians of a certain type to denounce the early settlers as landgrabbers and gridironers who parcelled out amongst themselves the fairest and choicest spots in the colony at a nominal price. Writing from personal inspection both of the earliest and latest settlement, we assert that this is a thorough misconception. The opportunities now offered to settlers, even without freehold tenure, are magnificent in comparison with what fell to the lot of the first settlers. In the absence of any means of inland communication, settlement was at first confined to the vicinity of the chief ports. Climatic considerations gave the preference to northern localities. Those who braved the rigorous winter of Canterbury and Otago found a sufficiency of good land ; but at Auckland, Nelson, and Wellington, the pioneers had to hew their homes out of the wilderness. We know of no considerable section of our population, either native-born or imported, which has laboured so hard for such poor reward at first. The Wellington settlers found their only available arable land in the valley of the Hutt. The history of the early Auckland settlements is often a lifelong wrestling with Nature in efforts to make the desert rejoice and blossom like the rose, —efforts which, from the barrenness of the soil, too often resulted in bitter disappointment. At Nelson, though the climate is mild and genial, and there is some

good land, it is very limited in area, | and hemmed in by forbidding mountains towering in proximity to the city. The country may possess yet undiscovered mineral wealth, but its resources, from an agricultural point of view, were soon developed, and for many years the district has been almost stationary. Then it is often forgotten that the early settlers carried their lives in their hands. In those days a Maori chief had to be treated with due respect. Those who have arrived in the colony since 1871 can know hardly anything, save by report, of the dangers and difficulties which attended the colonisation of New Zealand. They have been called upon to pay a somewhat higher price for their land, but it was of better average quality, pierced not only with arterial roads but even supplied with some track, however rough, to each section; and, for the last fourteen years, one third of the price has been refunded to the local bodies for expenditure on roads, in addition to other facilities for procuring funds for the same purpose. In the early days, if a settler wanted a road, he might make it himself or do without it. It is a pity that we cannot have a real ** looking backward ” on the events and actors in the New Zealand of fifty years ago.