Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1907. AN OLD LETTER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVI, Issue 8683, 16 February 1907, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1907. AN OLD LETTER.

A curious interest is often attached to aii old letter from a friend or relative. It has been, perhaps, for some reason or another, carefully preserved and partly forgotten. Through long years ifc has lain unregarded among other cherished relics, too sacred for every day use, till the time arrives when memory recalls it, and gently turning over the faded pages, written by a hand that is dead, finds a record of life, forty long years, or more, ago. There is often almost a heartbreak in touching an old letter, for though half a century may have rolled between the day that it is re-opened and the day upon which it was written, the mind recalls in an instant "the days that are no more," and the old familiar faces are still clearly and indelibly marked on it. Such a letter will often make fifty years ago seem as if it were but yesterday. The battle of life, as it was fought in bygone years, by loved ones now gone to their rest, becomes a vivid picture.

A letter, dated February Oth, 1803, telling us a little about how men lived and worked in tho earlier days of this province has been placed at our disposal. The writer, at the time when it was written, was a married man, 32 years of age, who had been five and twenty years in the colony. He had a farm at the Taita, wellstocked with cattle and horses. He was, however, about to move into this district, for he says : '' We have benight a good deal of land (now known as Willow Bank, Opaki) at ten shillings per acre from the Government, about seventy miles from here. There is a good cart road all the way to it. We have about 1000 sheep, 50 horses and 200 head of cattle running on tho land. The most of it is open and grassy. So you will see we are very well to do, as we have a little of everything, and all our own.'' Somehow, the old plan of freehold holdings seemed to work out well. This land is still in the hands of the family of the writer of the letter, and may coutintie so till the fourth and fifth generation.

The writer proceeds to say: "I have been obliged to shift for myself, for I must say that I have been brought tip in a place where schools were scarcely ever thought of, so lam self-taught. I suppose I must try to give yo\i a brief outline of what we had to go through since we left Home. We lauded from the ship Oriental (1840), a regular old tub, and took up our station on a place called the River Hutt. My father worked occasionaly for aMr Hopper, until he met his death by boing thrown from his boat and drowned, when my father and us brats took to anything that would make us a living, find oftentimes it was a very hard one; perhaps a few potatoes, a piece of beef, or a little fish. Well we managed to rub through all this and a precious sight more, sitting on the bed, or any place, where we could get out of the reach of the floods. We were all greenhorns, for as the rain fell, the rivers rose, the women cried, the children screamed, the men knew not what to do, as they were in the bush, in a house (we called it that), but it was only a few poles with a little flax or grass thrown over them." These experiences seem to be somewhat rough, but they tend to make strong, self-reliant men.

The writer goes on to say: '' After this my father took to boating from the Hutt to to .vn, by which means he got on very well, as there were no roads, and all timber, etc., had to be taken by water. Afterwards we shifted five miles up the. river and took some land (Taita) in connection with a public-house, and tried farming, but that fish would not bite, as an English farmer is nowhere in the colonies. The old man got a horse and cart and did very well at that for a time, and then shifted to where I sit spoiling good material." Then the writer refers to his own educational training, and the letter says: "Most of my schooling was of an evening, after the toils of the day, when you may be sure I was in firstrate trim, studying under a. brokendown swell, who would make his way to 'tho lushing camp, , and be hail fellow well met with all the old hands that arc generally found at such shanties ; old convicts, runaway sailors, all the worst characters to be found in a young colony, such as it was at that time."

The author of the letter, like most early colonists, had a turn at gold hunting. He narrates how, in his seventeenth year, the year 1850, lie took a trip to Australia. Sailing in those days was a little rough, for he speaks of the 'cattle bark , in which he made the trip as being destitute of rations, with the exception of some maggoty biscuit and some salt junk. There was a furious, drunken captain ever swearing at the men. He himself was sick as a dog, and the devils of sailors tried to gull him to drink salt-water. The voyage to Newcastle occupied twenty-four days. His mining experiences resemble those of many other New Zealanders, making a little money at the diggings, and spending some of it in the towns. However, the writer, after knocking about Australia for a couple of years, returned to the Taita with £500 in his pocket made at the diggings. In those days hundreds of New Zealanders tried their hick at the Australian goldfields, and many of them returned with full pockets.

The writer of the letter, which we have quoted, was the late Mr William Read Welch, of the Opaki, a wellknown and a highly esteemed Wairarapa settler. There are hundreds of old settlers still living in New Zealand, who during the earlier history of the colony, passed through similar experiences; rough and ready selfreliant men, who carved a way to independence for themselves. They were men who took hardships as a matter of course, as being part and parcel of every-day life. The letter before is a- well-written letter, and yet the writer himself describes how he had to seek his education in a "lush camp," amongst broken-down swells and the scum of the earth. In New Zealand, to-day, in some of our back-blocks, remote from rail and road, pioneer settlers are encountering similar difficulties with the same persistency and courage. The pioneer settler to-day is of much the same stamp of a man as the pioneer settler of forty and fifty years ago. These pioneer settlers, too, take unto themselves wives, rear large families, clearing and tilling the waste places of the earth, and in time obtain the reward which waits upon high courage, great industry and healthy contempt for all dangers and difficulties.

This chance letter, penned by one of them, • might have been written by hundreds. There were many men in New Zealand in the days of old, and there are also such men here to-day, who have done much to make this colony rich and prosperous. Sxich men did the rough hewing by which we all benefit.