FOUNDERS OF NATIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 544, 14 October 1902, Page 4

FOUNDERS OF NATIONS.

(Special to Times.)

Auckland, yesterday. In view ol the great interest that is. being taken 'in the subject oi the first landing in the colony of Captain Cook I send you the following article given by the Auckland Herald, in connection With the gathering of old colonists in this city. lam sure that the article will he much appreciated in your district.

Tho reunion of Old Colonists, which was held in Auckland, should survive under another form, in memory of our pioneers, long uflet the last of them has passed from among us. For New Zealand has Been made what it is, the home of an English-speaking nation, by thoso strong and determined men and women who sailed South in tho pioneering ships of the early ’4o’s and planted civilisation in what was then a strange and savage land. It is easy enough nowadays for visitors to reach Now Zealand, to spy out its advantages and disadvantages, to stay if it suits them or to withdraw if it does not. ihoro is nothing but a pleasure trip in tho modern journey from Britain to its antipodes, and no hardships to he feared upon arrival unless one ventures into the roadless North and pioneers in tho still unopened bush. But it was a different matter when steam was still unknown and when sailing vessels were slow and not too sure, when not a made road existed on either of the Islands, when new arrivals saw from the waters virgin soil and threatening foes. Wo may form some idea of the impulse to swarm which soized upon our Homo-born people in the middle decades of the last century by comparing the numbers which then came to face unknown porils and known hardships with the much scantier number who come to join us now that secure footing has been aequiicdhere and the highest European conditions established goneraily among us. And we may judge of the depth of that impu’se, of the way in which it entered into every class in tho community, by remembering the character and tho stamina of those who founded New Zealand. For among the founders of outnation wo are proud to include not only thoso who built up Auckland, but their k.nsmen and women, who helped to seize upon these islands at a dozen vantagopoints, and who, in time of danger, such as now wo cannot conceive of, stood stoutly together and tnado New Zealand British indeed.

Tho debt of gratitude which a people owes to those who do great deeds on its behalf is not to be lessened by tho assertion that it was their “ luck ” to get the ohauee. New Zealand was always here. Lung after the groat navigators found it and mapped it, long after it had become tho rendezvous of whalers and the resort of reckless adventurers it still lay inviolate from European occupation in tho Pacific waste. And judging by tho strange present listlessness of the forty millions of our countrymen at Home, who for long have not been moved by the gnawing landhunger that drives tho settler-swarms oversea, it would lie savage and desolate to day had it not been grasped and held by the men of tho '4o’s. They did not seek too gold which had inspired almost every great “ rush ” which bus since occurred. They sought for land whereon to build British homes, wherein to reproduce the laws, tho customs, the religion, the race, of the land they left. And we do not fear to say that no white-haired man or woman who gathered at the Auckland reunion but felt that the reality which has come about excelled tho wildest dream of their ambitious and eager use. We cannot put ourselves nowadays into tho place of those old pioneers w'ho dropped down the Clyde in tho Duchess of Argyle and tho Jane Gifford and other ships, who sailed from tho English ports on kindred mission, and carno with stout hearts to whatever fortune might be under strange stars and stranger skies. They were so few and tho world was so great and wide. They were leaving the old Home behind them and the new was so unknown and so far. Men and women, to whom home was dear and living secure, came with their children to fulfil their destiny. The longing that tore their hearts comes down ito us today in the love for the Old Land that they implanted in the New, in the loyalty to kith and kin that is ingrained in our colonial character. It is mistaking facts altogether to speak of our pioneers as having “ chanced to be the founders of a nation. They were the tounders beoause the impulse that moved them stirred in true British hoarts and drew together for the conquest of another Britain men and women who were as tho salt of the earth.

The histories of nation-foundings commonly show us three phases. There is the discoverer of new lands, the navigator, the traveller, the explorer, the investigator, the man who cannot rest while a sea re! mains unsailed or an Alp untrodden. Thete is the adventurer, the so-called wastrel, the man who turns his hack upon civilisation and forms the fringe of wreckage that herald the rising tide of kuu uuere is me seiner, the lising tide itself, the man who sees with the inspiration of genius green fields where others see only trackless forests and great cities where others see only a sandy beach. Unless a man and woman have that inspiration in them they cannot pioneer; unless they have imagination and faith and patience they can- I not possibly succeed ; and it wus from those whe possessed these virtues that our Old Colonists were chosen by circumstance. The perception that pioneers are invariably the chosen of the land they came from has led to tho honorable placo assigned in the song and legend and history of many peoples to those from whom they sprang. Xever has a nation been ashamed of its founders ; whenever they could be traced it has honored them altogether. It was so with Greek and with Roman. It is so with our American cousins who have no prouder name than that of their Pilgrim Fathers, And it will be so, when our national traditions have firmly set themselves, in New Zealand. Wealth aDd ofiico may pass him by, children to per petuate his name may be denied him, but the man who dared to cross the world to pioneer a wilderness and who saw it grow beneath his hands, as clay moulds to beauty in the hands of the potter, will never be forgotten while Nbw Zealand is proud of her past.