PROGRESS OF MANAWATU.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1235, 18 February 1878, Page 3

PROGRESS OF MANAWATU.

A correspondent of the “ New Zealand Times” gives the following cheerful account of the progress of settlement in Manawatu County;— Each year as it passes sees great changes in the whole colony, but more especially perhaps is the improvement marked in those districts where the work of reclamation of bush land is being carried on. The warfare the bushman is obliged to carry on with the primeval forest is indeed a severe one, and probably the inland parts of the County of Manawatu give more wonderful proofs of progress than any district of New Zealand. Settlers have been pouring in during the last few years, and each week sees the completion of some new piece of busli reclamation on the principal road lines. In the country districts acres and acres of felled bush are each season being burnt off, and the number of cattle is yearly iucreapicg. I Jug year there are many farms

which produce from fifty to sixty calves, and already the exportation of cattle is becoming a recognised source of revenue to the district. As to the townships—The largest town of the county (Palmerston) is just emerging I from that period of stagnation which is sure to follow the cessation of public works and the consequent withdrawal of public money from the immediate vicinity of any new township. Palmerston lias now to draw its support from the surrounding country. There is, notwithstanding the withdrawal of external assistance, visible improvement daily occurring. Shops and private houses are springing up in the town of a much better class and more stable character than those' which in many cases they replace. Palmerston having the start in the county ought to keep it, although it has already a formidable rival in Feilding, supported by an active and energetic body, working solely for the benefit of their own settlers. In Palmerston, however, there is already a feeling of quiet and unostentatious prosperity, which speaks more for its ultimate prosperity than the more rapid and evanescent growth which it at first evinced.

Feilding is now developing very rapidly ; the corporation are spending money freely, and doing a great deal to open up the country around. Surveys and road and railwaymaking are going on steadily on the corporation block, and already the settlers in Feilding consider their “ upper ” part of the country quite as important as the “lower," and are seeking to draw the East Coast traffic away from Palmerston by the construction of a separate road from the Gorge. The township of Halcombe, lying in the centre of the bush country and on the line of railway from Wanganui to Foxton, only requires time for its development, and from the work done by the corporation in Feilding at present, the ultimate success of the second township in the Manchester special settlement cannot be doubted.