A FARMER'S DISCOURAGEMENTS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1098, 19 August 1871, Page 2

A FARMER'S DISCOURAGEMENTS.

Under the above heading, a Mangawai settler thus writes to the Daily Southern Cross :—-

On Sunday, August 6, on my return home, having been absent during the day, I found five or six horses, belonging to. the Maoris, in my garden, the fencing broken down and destroyed, and the. horses feeding on my crops of oats, barley, &c, besides having done considerabla other damage by breaking down and destroying a number of fruit trees, vines* &c, poaching the ground, and injuring the young grass. Some few weeks ago, they took the liberty of making a road 1 through the garden, and bringing their horses backwards and forwards through it for the purpose of gum digging. If 1 fastened the slip rails up, they took them down again, and left me to put them up after them. On speaking to them theydefied me to do my worst; they cared not for the law ; they should do as they liked. On making application to know if there was any remedy for this state of things, I was told, " Oh, they are Mao. ries; we cannot do anything with them j ; if it was a white man we could deal with the case, but the Maori is a very difficult subject to have to do with. You can apply for a summons if you like under the. Trespass Act, but you have considerable trouble and expense, and perhaps then, will not do any good. Ooax them—talk to them—try and persuade them not to, do it again." And this is all the redress, that is to be got, so that settlers are to be set at defiance, their fences broken; down, their cro[ s destroyed ; and the honest industrious settler, who has been trying to improve his farm and the colony by steady persevering industry, rising early and working late, and eating the. bread of carefulness, is to see the fruits, of his hard-earned labor destroyed by a parcel of dirty lazy Maori gu*n diggers, too idle to improve their own land, or to. let other people improve theirs. They pay no rates. If a settler's land adjoins theirs they are exempt from paying for division fencing, but if a settler's cattle stray on to their land they are at once destroyed or impounded, as witness a lata case at Port Albert. The white man is not allowed to dig gum on the Maori land, but the Maoris are spread all over the country digging on the settlers' land —land that they have sold and received payment for—reserving their own for fu? ture working. I think if such a state of things is to be allowed to be carried on, without some alteration, the sooner that the settlers quit this highly favored country the better. The American Qovernment, I am told, are offering land along the line of the Central Pacific and I think that, if such is the case, there will be a great many in this part of the colony who will avail themselves of it j for, instead of encouraging settlers that a v e in the country and settled on their land, there is everything done here to discourage them : bad roads, low prices of cattle and produce, no market, and therefore no inducement to grow more than just sufficient for their own wants; and even to raise them they have to, wage an incessant War against slugs, crickets, grasshoppers and locusts, and pheasants. And now the Maoris are to. be allowed (after having robbed the settler of the gum oft his land) to turn their horses into his cultivations. We shall next have them breaking into our houses. I think that the law ought to be that the Maori could be brought to justice with the same facility as the white man, and there will be no satisfaction until such ii the case.