NOTES AND COMMENTS.

West Coast Times, 27 June 1912, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oue friends the “Grcyraouth Evening Star” have blundered across a para graph appearing in a Christchurch paper having reference to tho formation of a branch of the Reform League in Westland, and also an intimation that some prominent members

of the Reform Party may visit the Coast at an early date. The “Star” with its proverbial bent for saying the right thing at the wrong time, declared: “This is another case of “going from home to learn nows; “probably the wish is father to the “thought.” If our Grey contemporary had not been so busy hunting around for excuses to justify the existence of the Stop-gay Minist \y, it would have seen a paragraph substantially identical in terms with the one it mentioned, [published in this journal over a week ago. In the ease of the Grey Star it is another instance of staying at homo and go ng to sleep. It may stagger out contemporary to knriw that even on the West Coast there are large numbers of people who are staunch supporters of tho Reform Party. Wo are not referring .only to Westland. If “The Star” has doubts about tho correctness of our statements it need not trouble about this portion of the tho Coast hut has only to make some intelligent enquiries in its own town.

Tun death of Sir John Logan Campbell severs tho last link that connected tho prosperous city of Auckland tf the present day with the days before Auckland was. Alone, says tho Press, of all its present citizens, Sir John was present when Auckland was hern; lie know its site before a single hut or house was erected thereon, and virtually tho whole of his long life since early manhood was passed on the shores of tho Waitemata. In’ years now long gone Ivy ho played an important part in Hie politics of the province and in its commerce, and in the evening of Ivis life ho was called from his retirement, Ivy the unanimous wisli of his fellow-citizens, to become tho Chief Magistrate of his well-loved city, and in that capacity to receive tho present King on Ivis visit to Now Zealand. It was on that occasion that ho made to Auckland tho gift with which his memory will over bo associated—that of tho bountiful recreation ground of Cornwall Park, consisting of 230 acres of tho historic, estate, of Guo Tree Mill, on which ho had slept on the first night he spout in tho district sixty-one years earlier. In his deed of gift Sir John mentioned -that it was signed on tho sixty-first anniversary of the ' year on which ho left tho .Maori village of Waiomn, on tho llauraki Go])’, and “entered live primeval forest to carve with my axo the canoe Hi which afterwards 1 made my way to the island of Motnkorea, my first homo in tho Waitemata.”

[r is, therefore, peculiarly appropriate that the veteran pioneer, whoso lifn in Now Zealand embraced its whole history since it became a portin'', of the British Empire, should he Ini.l to vest on Maungakiekie, the eminence that, rising from a treeless plain and crowned with a solitary tret, was known to the earliest settlors as One Tree Hill. It is a spot to which the owner must have made his way in long ago days, from which ho must often have looked over the hoantilul panorama that the height commands, and where ho must often have noted with pride tlio growth of the city at whoso cradle he had stood. Its association with Sir John Logan Campbell would suffiifco to make Maungakiekie historic, but 'it had also gained a place in the history of New Zealand before over the white man’s foot had trodden it. It was the place of residence, nearly two hundred years ago, of a groat chief of the Waiohua, To Kiwi, and one of Ids strongest fighting pas, the remain? of which are still to lie scon. To Kiwi hold sway over a wide region, hut his tyrannical rule led to Ids overthrow, and about 1741, in revenge for the treacherous murder of some of their people at Kaipara, the Te Taon tribe swept down on the Manukau. (Tossed the Hoads in canoes and rafts of rushes, and, in a fierce battle at Pnrnroa, defeated the Waiohua and killed ITe Kiwi, completing their work of destruction at Mangero.