THE ROADLESS NORTH.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1804, 17 July 1913, Page 4

THE ROADLESS NORTH.

LANDS BOAUD CRITICISED. From Kaikohe, away up north of Auckland, Mr. Robert Stevenson writes as follows:— • 1. Owing to the- Crown Lands Board allowing certain settlers to evade the residence clause, there are no schools and no likelihood of there being any. 2. Yes; as far as land can be worked where there are no roads. 3. No; when there are only pack trades after 10 years of settlement no settler can be said to ljo served by either. i. The answer to No. 1 applies to this: In this district the genuine settler living on his land is merely there to forward the interests of the speculator, whose nonfulfilment of conditions is winked at by tho Crown Lands Beard. 5. The shows are no benefit here. . 6.'Only from the "Farm Journal/' which is a most useful publication. 7. We would be quite prepared to look after anything of that soTt ourselves, if we were only protected from the authorised dummy. 8. It is all Crown, land' in this part. Any settler could make a comfortable living, if tho Land Act was administered fairlv. 9 and 10. Labour supply and conditions satisfactory. U. In tho above I refer only to bush settlement in this district. Given honest administration of the conditions under which Crown land is taken up, he is a poor specimen of mankind who could not provide for everything else ihimself. As for the deadly monotony .we hear of, I must confess I have never experienced it. i If anyone is suffering from that complaint, as an antidote let him turn up the third chapter of Job, and apply the words of that much-afflicted man to the various Ministers for Lands and their appointees witlhdn the last ten years—Mr. Massey for the timo being excepted.