Untitled

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 172, 25 February 1873, Page 5

, & ever there existed an ignorant superstitious lot of people, it is the old settlers ( w Otago, they never saw anything before wey left home, and have never seen | anything since, and if ever their minds were ever enlightened, it muse have been 'on the passage out;" Such' is the sendee, just as it appears in the Dunstan 'ww of last Friday morning, that form's portion of an article upon Mr Carru'«EßS' report on the floo ling of the Taieri «n. From a few remarks made by the J«fato 'Afatf on the same subject, and J* by the Tmpeka Times on the Rev, 'J' Will's and Mr Gillies' after-dinner wsrances at the Mosgiel factory anniver*7. our Dunstan contemporary has hashed P hi If a column of the most unmitigated m m that ever saw the light even in its »n columns. The grammar is such as ' Q 'M have caused Wtluam Cobbett to aghast. The-following extract will "»■ us an example of its transcendent jwy, and at file same time as an expla--2? ° f / M natm ' 6 of Mr Caukuthkks' -port—(wre closely follow spelling and wWttttioa>:-~«<:f he 'old Entities' mm

.". feel themselves rather taken aback by the ." report of Mr Carkuthers, Government "Engineer in Chief, who attributes the " periodical flooding of the Tueri river to , " the silting up of its bar at its sea mouth, "?' instead of to the accumulation of debris " from- the mining districts on its upper "waters. About Mr Carruthers' con- " elusions, there can be no two opinions, " the debris from the gold workings in the " Upper Manuherikia and Taeri valleys " has never reached so far as the plains of " Lower Taieri j one glanae at the state of " the river bed is sufficient answer to that, "and when we come to consider the miles, " any deposit from the goldfielus would " have to travel before it reached the low "flat lands of the 'old identity,' no danger " need be apprehended, as all the gravel " and silt would have been deposited long "since." Doubtless, if Mr Carruthers says so, the Taieri settlers w?re mistaken in attributing the floods to the filling-up of the river by gold-fields tailings ■ but it is going too far to say that their mistake was at all the outcome of " ignorance and superstition." If we remember rightly, Mr J. T. Thomson—no mean authorityupheld the view that the floods resulted in .some measure from the Mount Ida tailings. But, even if not, surely it was a very natural belief on the part of unscientific men, who had no experience of such disastrous risings of the river before the beginning of gold-seeking "on its upper waters." And granted that they had some warrant for this supposition, surely, also, it will be admitted that they bore long and patiently what they must have considered the infliction of an undeserved evil. Place the Mount Ida miners in the same position, or let them be harassed by certain circumstances which would cause them as much inconvenience, expense, and sore-hearted-ness, and if they would evince no less long-suffering, at least they would evince no more.

But it was not to defend the Taieri farmers that we purposed when we begun this writing. We confess that the- first-quoted sentence—that at the head of this articlewas the exciting agent to the lifting of our pen; and well it might be. Tn the first place, this "old identity" and "new iniquity" quarrel is only fit for old women, and for those who, like the editor of the Dunstan Times, strive to keep it alive, and to rob it of the peaceful grave it would otherwise find,—a grave it would have! found long ago but for them and such as them. And in us there has grown up a feeling of reverence for those old settlers of Otago, who bravely fought the battle inseparable from settlement in a new coun-try-who patiently, if slowly, advanced civi isation into the interior, struggling manfully against innumerable difficulties and drawbacks, and not infrequently sustaining the loss of daring pioneers who perished in attempting to explore what was then an untrodden will 1 . We know as well as any what the discovery of gold did ■for the Province, and for the Colony : our presence here is a fortunate result of it: but that knowledge gives us occasion none the less to honour those old settlers who so sturdily overcame all things without the golden talisman that lured the miner for whom they paved the way. And the editor of the Dunstm Tunes, forsooth, whose miserable ignorance bristles from every line of his writings, is to force it on us that these men Were " ignorant and superstitions": Dr Burns, Captain C.irgill, Messrs Gillies, M'G-lashan, Valpy, Kettle, —to mention nothing of the many who yet happily, live to give the lie to so "insulting' so impertinent, so utterly unfounded an imputation—the outcome of an ignorance as brazen as it is self-conceited! In conclusion, and while we are on the subject, let us ask : Are the education and the intelligence all on the side of the "new iniquity?" Leaving on one side the Dunstan Times sample, just compare the politicians, for instance, of the two sf.oeks ; and the result will speak not unfavourably even for the " ignorant and superstitious" Taieri farmer element.

After all, perhaps, it is doubtful whether we have not attached, too much importance to this rhodomontade of the editor of the Dunstan Times. The filthy water in our town race, when it falls into the Clutha river, is lost: the puny stream is powerless to sully the purity of the mighty volume. And just as little effect will the foul aspersions of the TimesA\n\'e, upon the opinions of any—be they of the old or new among our fellow-provincials—who know or who have come in contact with the Old Settlers of Otago.