A NEW CHUM’S EXPERIENCE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2113, 1 December 1880, Page 3

A NEW CHUM’S EXPERIENCE.

TO THE EDITOE OP THE PBEBS. Sxh,—Perhaps you will spare me a corner in one of your publications for tho following letter. I think I must be the person mentioned in yours of the 20bh as having passed through the township of Waiau with a wheelbarrow j at least I have not heard of anyone else having been seen in that part of the country following the same eccentric mode of travel. But I am not a foreigner, as your correspondent has called me, unless, indeed, you have become so conservative as to call all your “new chums” from the old country “foreigners.” Having been born and bred in “ Auld Reekie ” (Edinburgh), I may claim to bo a genuine Scotchman, and although having come to this New Britain with the full intention (which any sensible emigrant ought to have ) of making it my own adopted country for the future, yet none of us can help preserving a warm feeling toward the old country we have left. Now I am not travelling to do business, but to gather information, and as the mode of travelling I have adopted has always excited some surprise, and cansed many inquiries in those parts I have visited, let me here explain tho reasons of it. First of all is its cheapness. Was there ever a Scotchman yet who was not mindful of the “ bawbees ? ” Well, I have no lodging to pay for, because I carry my tent with me, strapped to one of the spokes of my barrow, I cannot stand upright in this tent, but it serves to keep the dew and rain off at night. I transform my vehicle into a kind of bod by taking the wheel off and spreading out its waterproof cover on the ground, then , wrapping my rug round me I defy all changes of weather. The weather, however, allow me to say, is in this land so unexpectedly genial that really not much defying of its changes is called for. It is a highly favored land in that respect. I have travelled in America in the came manner during the summer, and then the heat is almost unendurable, but in winter of course had to find house room, for then the frost is sufficient to freeze one to death. But in this favored land such intense summer heats are not known, and in winter I do not expect to hear of frosts of five months’ duration that freeze the lakes five feet thick of ice. America and the Australian colonies (amongst which latter the New Zealand islands, I think, are usually classed), being the two great fields for the emigration that flows from the Old Country, if I am asked my opinion of their relative merits, judging from what little I have |seen, I should say that the preference is decidedly to be given to these latter, both on oooount of the better climate, the more homelike aspect of the general features, and for many other reasons. It is not so much a land for a speculator to come to to make a pile of money to go off with as it is a land for a quiet and home-loving set of people to live and be happy in in an unambitious way. That is the opinion I have formed from what I have seen, and from a good deal that I have heard in speaking to those whom ohanoe has thrown in my way, added of course, to a good deal that had been read before coming to the country at all. All along my route, from Port Chalmers (not Invercargill) to Waiau, I have been struck by the healthful look of the people, the rosiness of the children generally—just as at home. Now, in America, that is the first thing that a now comer from the old country misses on his or her arrival. There is little or no color in the cheek either of adult or juvenile. A pale, wan, somewhat withered look, characterises all, even the ladies, and as for the men, the “ leather chopped Yankee” has become almost a proverbial term for them. This fact alone speaks a great deal as to the difference of the two climates. But as, with a very large number of people, wealth is a higher consideration than health, more will always flock to America and other lands where money is to be made than to a land like this, where, although money may be made in it too, yet offers more attractions as a place where a home may be built up, and perhaps a broken constitution may be renovated than where a broken fortune may be repaired and a large pile of wealth made at the expense, perhaps, both of health and of comfort. All along my journey the one complaint has been that too few even of the class of moderate capitalists come out here to reside and improve the land, and too many of the needy “ Lack all ” class, as Carlyle calls them, come or are brought out, to hang about the country, having no one to employ them, no one to give them bread. Without the capitalist the labourer, however able and willing (if he is in no degree a capitalist himself) is a superfluity and almost a burden. Under other arrangements these men might be valuable and worthy members of the community—but as it is, how many of them does a wayfarer like me see wandering about seeking the big wages of former days, and which wo read about in the hand-books, and finding them not, and living, in a manner, from hand to mouth, neither happy in themselves nor profitable to the community ? Let us hope yet to see a better state of things. Yours, &0., David Hat. Riooarton, November 26th.