The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1884. NATIVE LAND PURCHASES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1625, 5 March 1884, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1884. NATIVE LAND PURCHASES.

In the year 1871 the Government purchased from the Natives about a quarter of a million of acres in the Forty-Mile Bush, of which but a small proportion, after the lapse of a dozen years, is sold or settled. This land, generally speaking, is of a character fit for settlement -that is, it is good busk-soil, which would pay to clear. Instead of opening up and selling the most fertile portions of this vast estate, the Government wero contented with disposing only of some small slices of the roughest parts of it, so that the experiences of the pioneer luish settlers havo not been altogether of a satisfactory character. Had the good land been sold ten years ago a thousand families might havo been counted to the north of Masterton for every hundred tliot can now be numbered. Hud the good land been utilised instead of being tied up in a napkin, the Forty-Mile Bush would have at the present time been the most populous district in the whole of the Wairarapa. The demand for land of this character has always been active. A year ago a small patch, not of the best country, but of fair land known as the Kopuaranga Block, was put into the market and sold, and we learn from one of the purchasers that every section on it now has been improved and partly cleared. When once the land gets into the hands of the people it quickly becomes reproductive. Pahiatua was locked up from settlement by the Government for ten years. The marked progress made in this block during the couple of years that it has been in the hands of colonists indicates what a valuable district it might now ;

havo beon had it been put in the market at.an earlier period, In.the interests of the colony, as well as ot the Wairarapa, it is expedient that the Government should now go earnestly to work to people the lands they have so long kept back from settlement. By this time they ought to have ploced in the market the whole of the quarter million of acres to which we referred, Other blocks subsequently purchased have come into thoir hands, which, if a reserve were wanted to be enhanced in value by railway construction, would be ample. Three years ago they purchased 113,500 acres in the Tararua district, and later still the public estate has been enriched by purchases in the Mangatainokn Block. The vitality of the North Island of New Zealand, and more especially of this portion of it, depends mainly on the settlement of the lands of which we have been speaking. In the temporary excitement engendered by disputes between local bodies, wo are apt to forget (: our main chance," and that is the increase of population and trade which will follow the settlement of the good waste lands in Wairarapa North, It depends very much on public opinion in this district whether the delays in settling waste lands which have been so marked in the past are continued in the future.