CRUELTY TO IMMIGRANTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3649, 2 November 1874, Page 3

CRUELTY TO IMMIGRANTS.

(From the Mount Ida Ckionicle) It will be remembered that several ships arrived in Otago one after the other, at very short intervals, during the last winter months, with such rapidity that great dilficulty was repor ed in the attempt to find iiouse-iooai for the passengers - the baira-. ks and every nook being filled. In the midst of this confu.-ion, wlmn toe Government were doubtless shrinking from the least expense which would be at all adequate to house the families in temporary building* until the summer, contractors were urgim/ 'hat bauds shou’d lie sent to the vicinity of their individual contracts. 'lhe agents jumped at the Chance, apparently, tolling the applicants for cheap labor, “ If you can p -rsuade a L,t to go—especially of the f.irail.es—we will send them up, and supply tents and seven days’ rations.” In this way, sixteen families, early iu stormy September, were s,nt up in wag-ons snpio*ed to be to tne. head race—the iai d of promise, of tropieal climate without rain. When arriving at Eden Creek the weather was at its worst (what that wor-t was will be easily reraembereu), and the waggons, after going up to the race, retunieo to the camp on the main road—the bulk of the men declaiing that it would simply kill the women and children to attempt to camp where they had gone, up in the wet and snow. 1 he waggoners, however, had done their part of the contract, and a shit had to be made somehow. Through the kindness of cho few icttlers scattered about the Ida burn, some for a time were able to get an old hut, others a stable others a ruin of a hut over which they stretched the slight, fliumy tent pr ivided for them, in this way a day or two were got over ; but what were the men to do ? They con'd not work while Hicrc was no covering for their little ones ; tube idle was to starve. .‘Sonic tried the head race, and found that even the fair promises of 8s per di m—so freely i fib>ed in the cb-pos if they would go—was not to bo fullilJed, bu piecework (that likely enough depending on goods being taken at the authorised store) at rates which simply meant -tarnation or hopeless debt. A few gut employment at the reef, and others drifted away, getting employment as they could. The few families that settled at the reef we can say (something of, and they may be taken as repiesentiug a fair average of the sufferings endured, as being about the first to get work. One family of tour young children were taken in by Mr Howard, of tlm reef, who gave up to them his own warm hut. O wing however, to the frightful exposure which had been undergone the mother was seized with a severe cold, which, settling on the lungs and inducing weakness, fostered by the want of proper nutriment, has reduced her to a very low condition indeed, tshe has continued in this state tor over a month, until removed on Tuesday last .otlm District Hospital. Another family—the husband being employed at the reef— cowered in a deserted sod wing, originally put up as a break-wmd to a tent, the sides of which were broken down. Over these crumbling remains one of these wretched tents (so graciously supplied without auy fly) was stretched, the ends being pegged in between sods and stones as best they might. “On windy days, such as last Saturday, in snow squalls 1 had to get my father up from the pit to come and fix the roof, which had blown off, or nearly so,” said the mother of th s family of four children—one, five months old, at the breast. Hearing a woman was tyd'S in this hovel, we had gone to it, but there being no door, but an aperture three or four feet wide, a bit of loose calico blowing in, and seeing, as we passed, a pallet of straw on the floor, we hesitated to call, and had indeed passed, when the inmate looking pallid and nervous as a ghost— put he head out At once turning, we saw that she was in a very low state, scarcely able to stand—her limbs all trembling, and complaining of great pains in the chest, wit-i a terrible cough. “ I have not been able to eat a bit of anything this good while, and the child lying-across me seems to crush me like and then, when we said that the child should be taken from from her, “Oh, but I have nothing for it. It would starve Ihave no milk to give it.” When we saw the ha f starved baby taking its frail life a sec ml time, as it were, from the mother, who, too weak in mind and body to refuse it, looked in her misery more a denizen of another world than a human beinv, we could not help thinking If these people had represented trout or salmon they would have teen cared for, if they had been prize shorthorns, or horses, sheds warm and dry would have been provided for them ; but, being as they are, the wet winter earth, the ruined sod, and the single ply of calico, with the rain misting through it, is their sufficient share to live or die in as they

»an. The next family were a little better—though no better secured from the weather ; the mother, with perhaps a stronger constitution, and better spirit, had battled through the earne attack —— the angrytoned coiudi b iug sti 1 retained. Two mothers of eight little ones (out of four) had to i e brought into the Hospital not a day too soon, fairly starved cold, reduced to such a low state that the greatest care and nursing wiil be necesH.-.ry io enable them once to look after their young ones dependant upon them. It is nonsense to talk about the e:!rly settlers as compared with this. Hardship was expected and warded against. The men at any rate went first, and prepar-d a dry hearth for their wives an ' cbi dren, if rny. Were deceit is employed to by any means get the families far away in the interior, jf any die it is only a ptr cenfcage on the shipment, and might hav< been worse.

How the children have suffered we need not say. The fact that these families came out, at our cost, of tbe'r own free will, will hardly excuse our neglect in the eyes of the great I Am, with whom they and we have to do.