NORTHERN JOTTINGS.

Evening Star, Issue 3430, 18 February 1874, Page 3

NORTHERN JOTTINGS.

No. 2. TARANAKI. (From our oion Correspondent. ) Taranaki is a peculiar Province, inhabited by a peculiar people. It contains some 2,300,000 acres of land, and an European population of about 5,000 souls, having a revenue of 20s per head per inhabitant. It was founded in the year 1841, and seems to have made no more pro gress than if its first European settlers had arrived there twenty years later. The land obtained in the Province by purchase or confiscation amounts only to 300,000 acres, the millions still belonging to the various tribes inhabiting the Province. The dwellers in Taranaki appear to be principally the original immigrants and their descendants. No fresh blood has been infiltrated into the Province for the last twenty years. From Patea to the Waitara all the people appear to be related to each other. Moat of the original settlers came from the counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall; and the Province seems to have been preserved as an antipodean “in-and-in” west-country breeding ground. It is a Province where still life, clotted cream, wooden ploughshares, mead, and honey abound; where ties of relationship do not count for nought; where Tom will resent _an injury to Fanny, and Fanny will champion Tom against the charge of rusticity, condone the cut of his coat, and champion the correctness of the antiquated opinions he has inherited from his grandfather. The means of living are so easily obtained that men pause a day or two before they make up their minds to become employed in manual labor, even ior themselves. The climate, perhaps, may be enervating; but butter sells for sixpence the pound, eggs for sixpence the dozen, and other comestibles at a similar rate. Four-fifths of all the old settlers being landholders, further tends to induce independence of other men’s labor. You see no rags, poverty, or destitution in the Province; the police have no vagrants to apprehend. If Provincial policemen in New Zealand anywhere have a sinecure, it is here. The people all knowing each other in this clovernook, a stranger attracts immediate attention. His antecedents and business are carefully inquired after ; the male population strive to ascertain what balance he has at his bankers, what lands and beeves he possesses elsewhere ; the softer sex learn whether he is married or single, and if found to be without incumbrance consider if he may be regarded as an eligible parti.

Some time since a paragraph went the round of our Colonial Press to the effect that three hundred unmarried ladies in the Province were eligible for marriage, and waiting for husbands. The fact, by a short residence in Taranaki, will be impressed on the visitor’s mind. Clean limbed, healthy, robust damsels they are—and nearly all blondes. It is a singular physiological fact that a large majority of the children of European parentage bom in New Zealand are Of the blonde variety. Let any person take a note-book in his hand and mark the rising feminine generation, in Nelson and Taranaki especially, as they pass before him, and he will speedily find abundant confirmation of this fact. Tasmania has long been noted as a country where wealthy Australian merchants and magnates have gone to seek wives to cheer their solitude and see that their shirt buttons were, not allowed to wander. The ladies from this quarter of the globe were considered to have more stamina in them than those horn in Australia— the cold setting them up in winter—not having been trained down as fine by climatic influences. Taranaki and Nelson in competing to supply this important part of domesticity and civilization can compete certainly with Tasmania and the world.

Our Northern neighbors are fond of pic-nics, parties, reunions, and occasions for festivity. Any opportunity that may arise is taken advantage of, and processions, junketings, tea fights, concerts, and kiudred amusements are always well attended. The njale portion of the population takes every opportunity to indulge in cricket—thp town pne week playing against the country -rranpther week the married men against the sjnglp- then the members of the Armed Constabulary against the civilians. Time seems of comparative unimportance when placed against gnjoyxpent, and business is rpade to give way to merry making. Town and pountry people appear equally arpadian; whsle the hurry, the anxiety of pur gouthprn life seeds' a tiding they neither understand npr appreciate. Thpy drink the>yine of life still, instead pf sparkling. You feel transported tp another climate, another age, and fancy yourself put back three or four decades in the current century. In no part of the Colony is the dolce far idleness of life ” more assiduously cultivated, Not to disturb things that are quiet seems to be the rule of Taranaki life. Herbs and contentment are thought preferable to the fat ox and anxiety, and to sleep in the shade preferable to toil in the sun. Colored people are not the only class who consider it better to walk than to run, better to stand than to walk, and better to lie .than to sit. Those of Taranaki are homely, hospitable, kind, and given to fraternise with strangers. Their past military education may in some measure account for their taking life thus easily. Military service seems, as a general rule, to disqualify men from becoming energetic and successful colonists. The training military and naval men undergo would appear to unfit them for the business avocations of life. Half-pay military and naval officers who have settled in the Colonies, as a rule, have been unsuccessful in their enterprises. Colonial military training appears to demoralise onr youth and induce habits of idleness. Like Auckland, the people of Taranaki have had large sums of Imperial and Colonial money disbursed among them for defence purposes-moneys easily obtained ftnd pleasant to handlej wlncb. may pro* bibly ' account for ' their present lethargy Isolation"'jnayhaye also something to do with the nihtter;.' ■ The inhabitants are a day behind all tfi'e rest of New Zealand, eyen in their telegraphy. Yesterday’s hews comes in to-day ijriq they are pohtent tq heceiye it in two weekly instalments, as given thena by the ‘ Jerald’ and ‘News,- Let a man, accustomed to lie ay fait sdtn what transpires in the Colony generally jrpsidfl! two inpnths in Taranaki,' depending oil the local journals for big Tnfprqiatipn, and'then fpo elsewhere—he will find his ignorance tp be amentable, and will be regarded by his friends as though he had bfien drunk or sleeping for two months. Before the line of coaches ran, letters may have been directed to Taranaki and delivered months after date, the steamers being often unable to call during the winter months. This severance from the rest of the Colony, and Ignorance as to what is going on in other portions, help to explain the belief of the people in the wisdom of the saying—“As it was in the beginning, so it shall &c.” Many of the settlors have several times been driven from their homes, and been obliged to serve in the field for the preservation of their lives and property. They have long lived under the edge of the Maori tomahawk. The whites have been weak, the Maoris strong, and had blood has been engendered and fostered between the two races. The European population having suffered severely, appear to seek reprisal by driving hard bargains with their colored neighbors, and the feelings of distrust that have arisen are thus perpetuated. What the Province wants- is fresh blood and increased energy and Until a streaifa ' of ■immigrants pours in, it will |Wai» j» thataejni-comatose condition that has

so long endured. The railway and steel sand works give it no apparent fillip, and until it becomes re-vitalised, itjwill remain as lethargic as ever. The Province is called the garden of New Zealand. The name is apropos. It is too fertile to induce energy. We never expect to become millionaires, the people exclaim, but contentment is great gain. In politics, the Province is split up into two factious—the Carrington and Atkinson parties. It is over-represented for its population in the Parliament, sending three members to the House of Representatives. The reason given for this 'large Parliamentary staff is rather unique. It sends one member on account of its past misfortunes ; another to represent its present position; and a third, to stand sponsor for its unborn prosperity. The present Superintendent, Mr Carrington, may almost be considered the founder of the Province, and as such receives a large amount of support and confidence from his yld congeners, while his known singleness of aim, honesty of action and good nature, consikerably tend to increase his popularity. On the other side is what the inhabitants themselves call, the Richmond and Atkinson clique, at one time all powerful in the Province, and who, having once tasted, still hunger for the flesh pots of Egypt. There is no love, but much bitterness, existing between these two parties. Political partisan” ship seems to affect every relationship of life, and the two parties seem separated as much in their social and commercial relationship as though living in different Provinces, An illustration will suffice to show what I mean. Mr H. A. Atkinson and three others laid a criminal information against C. D. Whitcombe, Provincial Secretary, for libel, acknou lodged by Mr Whitcombe to have been written by him and circulated at the late Superintendent’s election. The defendant was bound over in his own recognizances, and ordered to provide two sureties to appear at the next sitting of the Supreme Court. Now, the Atkinson party, thinking it probably difficult to obtain twelve good men and true in Taranaki, applied for a change of venue—the arguing of which comes before Judge Richmond in a few days. But the Whitcombe party say Judge Richmond is a relative of Atkinson, and object to have the change of venue argued before him. The Province is as a parish—its politicians are as vestry men—and neither progress, wealth, nor energy will be manifest until its numbers are increased, and the heart-burnings of its political cliques at an end.