AS OTHERS SEE US.

Western Star, Issue 1294, 6 March 1897, Page 3

AS OTHERS SEE US.

The Hon. A. Heron Wilson, a mem ber of the Queensland Legislative Council, is "at present making a tour through New Zealand, and recently arrived in Lawrence in company with Mr E. Cleave of Invercargill, reports the Tuapeka Times. The two gentlemen drove through to Lawrence from Invercargill, and were consequently able to see much of the conditions of the people and the country en route. Mr Wilson has been an annual visitor to' the colony since 1890, and he is accustomed to look forward to his trip through the tourist resorts of I. New Zealand as a pleasure that com- £ pensates for much of the laborious ' conditions inseparable from the life >;. of an active public man. Tn coming if- through the country, Mr Wilson took ?' more than passing notice of the industrial conditions prevailing at Waikawa and generally in the Catlins and Owaka districts At Waikawa, he says, the circumstances of the settlers are exceedingly hard. Those who took up land there, as the settlers had done, must be men of extraordinary courage, and hopeful beyond measure. It is all bush land, and travelling from there to Owaka, a distance of 12 miles, he never saw an acre of open land. When cleared, it will be good pastoral country, and were he in a position of authority in the colony, he should be inclined to utilise the services of the prisoners from the metropolitan prisons in clearing the bush off that country and preparing it for settlement. The people were engaged sowing grass seed of a very inferior kind, that produced nothing but fog. They had the land in a perfectly clean condition and simply through ignorauce they were providing themselves with unending troub'e in the future. But, as regards such settlement as he saw there, he could not possibly see how it could succeed. One of the first conditions of successful land settlement was capital, and without itthe most experienced and industrious agriculturist was comparatively helpless. His idea as regards bush country was that the Government should in the first place, put a value on the land and then give the settlers a " clearing lease " without any rental whatever. Then, at the end of, say 10 years, or whatever period might be decided on, all the land they had cleared would go absolutely and forever to them. And you may, generally speaking, rely upon it that a struggling settler who acquires a piece of land and a home at the price of so much hardship will stick to it at any sacrifice, and.will not allowit to slip through his fingers afterwards. Tuapeka Times.