OUR WASTE LANDS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 137, 12 June 1871, Page 2

OUR WASTE LANDS.

No. 11. To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail Sir, — In ray former letter on this subject, I endeavoured to show, that, if the settlement of our waste lands is not progressing as it ought to do, the cause is not to be sought for altogether, if at all, in our defective land laws, but rather in the inherent disinclination on the part of our young men to settle of their own aqcord in the Bush. I also ipentioned that, if our young men are ever to go forth from us for the purpose of taking up wild land, it must be under the influence either of pressure or inducement. Now, pressure to be effectual in such a case, must come naturally, and be the result of circumstances, as it were ; and "we must only hope, in default of inducement, that, in the interest of the community, such pressure may soon come upon some wj£h force sufficient to compel them Renter our a mode of life, which, howeverJ^ard it may seem at the outset, will idfubitably, by perseverance and sobrie^yresult in their own as well as the general good. But surely no Statesman, no Governor, or governing body in a young country, whose very existence depends upon having scattered over it, a solid, and rooted, producing population, would wait for the pressure of poverty to arise in the towns ; and, by drivjng men through its ageucy iuto the bacl^ country, so to people our waste lands ! V To say nothing of the heartlessness of\such a policy, it would clearly be a breach of trust, and a wanton disregard by each of their several obligations. * Turning, then, from the system of pressure to that of inducement, it may not be amiss at the outset to enquire what is the " final cause," the raison d'etre of our Provincial Institutions ? For what were they created in fact ? The commonly received notion on this point is, that legislative powers and the control of the land revenue, were entrusted to the Superintendents and Councils^ of the various Provinces of New Zealand, on the understanding that they would, in return,, promote the settlement of the Waste Lands of their respective Provinces, to the utmost of their ability. I believe this is a correct account! of the matter ; and it is easy to' see why the projectors of our constitution adopted this system. Wherever there are many and great sources of local disturbance, or modification, no general scheme can run smoothly. New Zealand with its geographical extremes of latitude, its mountain ranges, its impenetrable bush, and its hostile Maori tribes, was no doubt a country, of all others, to be settled by local efforts ; and so it was determined to inoculate it, on its sea-board, in several

places at ouce, with the virus of colonisation. Hence arose, in the first instance, six Provinces, with their six Superintendents, six Parliaments,, six Treasuries, and. all the necessary machinery for administering six land funds, so as to secure the happiness and well-being of (for the sake of uniformity say) the six hundred settlers who had first landed on the shores of each ; and at the same time to bring into the country, year by year, and push out into the bush, fresh supplies of men and muscle, who should subdue the wilderness and make it smile again. This was the picture sketched out beforehand. Let us see what are the actual facts, as regards this Province at any rate. During the dow nearly thirty years of our existence as a settlement aud Province, we have received and expended about a quarter of a million of money from the land fund alone ; and yet I question very much whether we can truly say that a thousand men have been brought into the country at the cost of this fund, from first to last. In fact since the Provincial System was substituted for the rule of the New Zealand Company, I am not aware of auy continuous effort whatever having been made by those in authority towards colonisation, even in thel mildest form*. Unfortunately I have no| the revenue returns for the various years before me, so that I cannot say what the actual receipts have been from the beginning ; but it will be in the recollection of your readers that the Council at its last session voted, for all purposes, the sum of £96,000 in round numbers. I have before me however the Provincial Gazette of 24th April, 1870, to 31st March, 1871, by which it appears, that the Province which lias just voted the expenditure of £96,000 and which is languishing for want of population, could only spend during the year ending the 31st March last £255 (the most of which will have to be refunded) on the very object for which Provincial Institutions have being, namely, the introduction of as a step towards the settlement of our waste lands. « I must yet reserve some further remarks, for fear of trespassing on your space and good nature, until a future occasion. Tours, &c, Backwoodsman.

The Auckland Volunteer Eifle Band refused to play when Colonel Harrington came on the ground for his annual inspection. Their grievance was that their practice-room had been taken from them for drill. The Cadet's band was disbanded the same afternoon for insubordination. Visit of Natives to Wairarapa. — The following letter has been handed to the Hawke's Bay Herald for publication : " I (Editor of Te Waka Maori) have just received a letter from one of the party who went from this district to the late tangi, at Wairarapa, over the death of Piripi Te Apatu. The writer says that on the 22nd of March 200 of them started from Porangahau. He says they were abundantly supplied with provisions by the people on the coast, many of whom joined them as they proceeded, so that by the time they reached Greytown, on Good Friday, their number amounted to 500. They passed the Suuday previous at Te Oreore, Mr. Collins place, who, he says,; welcomed them with great cordiality, allowing them to graze their horses on his land "while they remained. In describing the dances and hakas, at Greytown, he says : — ' The voices 6f the 500 was like the bursting of (keketanga) thunder ; their tongues lolled from their yawning mouths like the tongues of oxen ; their glaring eyeballs shone like the full moon, and clouds of dust arose, and the gravel flew as high as their knees from the force of their tread. The Resident Magistrate at Wairarapa, Wardel, or some such name, visited them with 'red-coated troopers.' He says, ."they were overcome with admiration and wonder at the splendor ot' their uniform, and the dazzling appearance which they presented." He speaks in the highest encomium of tho profuse hospitality of the Wairarapa natives.' The Europeans also come in for their share of praise. One pakeha was so ashamed of having nothing to give the strangers that he went off to Greytown and purchased a supply of provisions for them. He called him "Kirini," whatever that may be when iuterpreted. Amongst the eatables provided there was a great abundance of bread and butter, great quantities of pork, mutton, beef, eels, potatoes, &c. ; also, 760 gallons of grog ! besides 20 gallons generously contributed by the pakehas. So that if the supplies were not obtained by supernatural means, as our friend Henare Tomoana jocosely Buggests in his letter to the Editor of the Wairarapa Mercury, published in your paper of the 6th instant, they at least partook largely of ,a spirttugl nature." A curious remark was made in the Melbourne Police Court recently by an old man, brought up for drunkenness, who asked to be lei off because he was a stonebreaker, and the incessant bending of the head at this occupation had made him so j stupid that a glass of ale affected him very much. He said he was stonebreaking for an old woman of 84. Mr. Call remarked that he might give a lesson in rockfracturing to the inmates of the Melbourne Gaol, who were said to be a lazy lot, and sent him to join them for 24 hours. Longevity.— The death is recorded in an English paper, of an old man named John Jenkins, of Coddington, near Ledbury, Herefordshire, at the age of 107 years. Jenkins lived with his daughter, who is now about 85 years of age, in a small mud hut, near Coddington-cross, and was formerly a farm labourer, of vei'y industrious habits. For many years, however he has been supported by parochial relief. The deceased was in possession of all his faculties up to the time of his death, and was an habitual smoker. A New Oil. — The Mod Journal reports a new oil as being in use in South Russia. It is said to have wonderful healing properties, and also the merit of simplicity, being made of the yolk of hens' eggs, which are first boiled hard and the yolks removed, cooked, and placed over the fire. Here they are carefully stirred until the whole substance is ou the point of catching fire, when the oil separates and may be poured off. The yolk will yield nearly two teaspoonfuls of oil. It certainly is extraordinary that with all our enormous consumption of eggs we know little about them, and of the manifold uses — nutricious, medical, scientific-— to which they may be put. The following, from and English paper, shows that; the small waste coal from colleries need not be wasted : — v Millions of tons" of small coals are wasted annually in and out our colleries. For souie time Mr. Crampton has had a furnace in. action in Woolwich, and another at the Bowling Iron-works, in Yorkshire, in which powder coal is only used. This powder coal is blown into the furnace with exactly the quantity of air wbichjre required to effect the completed combustion of the coal. The effect is surprising— -a mass of flame of the highest temperature fills the furnace and do6B.it work, and no smoke whatever is seen to issue from the chimney. Thus, the utilisation of all small coal is promised great economy is expected, and the absence of smoke is fully secured."

A man with four wives was brought before Hans Swarihart, a Mohawk Justice, for commitment oil a charge of bigamy. "Four wives ! " exclaimed the astonished Hans "four wives! Dat was a most hinocious crime. Discharge him at vonst." "Why ?" ' protested the prosecutor ; "why discharge him when the proof is positive? Will the Court explain?" " Yes, I eckshplains. Ifhelifsmit four wives he got punishment enough. T lif mit von, and I got too. much punishment already." The Scottish American Journal observes : — "A glass of whisky is manufactured from a dozen grains of corn, the value of which is too small to be estimated. A glass of this mixture sells for a dime, and if not of a good brand is considered well worth the money. It is drunk in a miuute or two. It fires the brain, sharpens the appetite, derarges and weakens the physical system. On the same sideboard on which the deleterious beverage is served lies a newspaper. It is covered with half-a-million of types; it brings intelligence from the four quarters of the globe. The newspaper costs less than a , glass of grog, the juice of a few grains of corn, but it is no less true that there is a large number of people who think corn juice cheap and newspapers dear. The following account of the cruel mode of punishment practised by the Chinese Government is related in a letter from Foo-chow : — "A poor man is being starved to death in a cage — his neck through a hole in the ""top and his toes just touching the ground.'' In this inhuman position, with his hands and arms tightly tied behind his back, he is exposed to the gaze of tens of thousands of his in a public thoroughfare, within a hundred yards of were I am writing — his tender-hearted brethren laughing and jeering as they pass the miserable wretcb, as if the spectable were the most amusiDg in the universe. The poor man's crime is theft, and he is the third who has suffered within the last few months in the same refined fashion. The length of time they live is from four to six days." Gas Wells. — Gas wells of a very remarkable nature have been discovered in Ohio, and described by Dr. Newbury of the geological survey of that state. Near Millwood two wells give out oil ; two or three miles below these, in the valley of the Kokosing, borings have been made, and at the depth of 600 feet the augurs struck into vertical crevices,, and sank several feet . without resistance. From these borings such a volume of carburetted hydrogen issued as was unparalleled in any of the oil explorations. The wells'' give out salt water intermittingly, throwing it to a height of more than a hundred feet. The gas of one of those wells, lighted at ths end of a pipe two inches in the clear set in the well-head, produced a jet of flame twenty feet long, and as large as a hogshead. .-' The gas, which appears to be pure, is sufficient to light a large city. Fortune Telling.— At Marlborough street, recently, an old woman on crutches, named Margaret Charlton, was charged with obtaining money from Louisa Bailey, dressmaker, under pretence of telling her fortune by means of cards and a globe of crystal. A detective who was employed in the case said that the prisoner told him that her only means of living was by telling fortunes, and she had been a fortuneteller for six years. The officer found in the house a number of letters containing postage stamps, directed to the prisoner, asking questions and inquiring into future events; The letters found in her possession were from different parts of the country, al! from ' women, some asking about their future husbands,, others, when they were to be married, and the number of children they were to have. Mr. Knox said he should send her to prison for the full time — three months. Marriage* in the Army. — A new code of regulations has been issued from the War Office. Th^ " married roll " is, in future, to include all staff sergeants, military foremen, six sergeants out of every ten, and seven per cent, of rank and file, provided they have completed seven years' service in the army, and earned one goodconduct badge..,, No soldier is to be placed on the married rojll unless he obtains the consent of his commanding officer before marriage. The wives and families of soldiers married with lefave are. granted certain allowances, , in the shape of lodging money, pr6vision|ifufi!, and .light j and if any woman o^"lre^ll misconducts herself, the Commanding officer I 'of the corps may remove her name and the names of her children; aii4 'Send them to her home. When on foreign .stations^ and in certain other cases, half a soldier's, ' ration of food will be supplied to each of; the' women, or 3d. a day, and a 'quarter ration, or l^d. to each child. When aJordier is necessarily separated from his family, these allowances will be doublgd. *.«:. .-.■;..<; AN ECCLESE^IOJ^ITKAILLEUSE-^A Minor Canon. 1 •\"Xv ;; ■ '■ ' : ••' '■' : • ■