FEILDING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5166, 12 October 1877, Page 3

FEILDING.

(PROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Feilding, October 8. The Feilding Choral Society gave their first concert at the Assembly-room on Friday night. The weather was favorable. Although there was no moonlight, an important consideration with people in country districts, where roads are only in course of construction, the room was quite filled with an appreciative audience, and the stage by the best musical talent of the district, as the inembers of the society filed in and took their seats precisely at 8 o’clock. The affair was a very great success. A considerable quantity of Crown land having been sold on deferred payment in the early part of the present year at Kiwitea, a few miles north-east from Feilding, it is interesting to notice the progress the new settlers are making in clearing their farms from the hush. The terms given to settlers ou the deferred payment system on the block were, that 20 per cent, of the purchase-money be paid down, and that 10 per cent, of the bush be felled the first year, and a further instalment of 20 per cent, of the purchase-money be paid up every year, after the terms of settlement have been complied with in having 10 per cent, of the land cleared, and a house built ou the section, during the first two years. I learn that it is estimated that about 5000 acres of bush has been felled already iu Kiwitea ; but this includes land that has been purchased out unconditionally by settlers. There is usually considerable difficulty during the first year in getting supplies forwarded to those engaged in the work of clearing the land, as it takes the butchers and storekeepers one day going with provisions on packhorses, and another day to return to the township. Every day iu the week packhorses may be seen leaving Feilding, by way of Mancheater-street and the Makino-road, which has been formed and metalled for the first seven miles from Feilding, and the creeks bridged. This work has been undertaken by the Corporation, and performed by the immigrants located on the Manchester Block. The rural laud on this line of road has been laid off in 40-acre'seotiona, which have been let on seven years leases to immigrants and others at a rental of 2s. 6d. per acre, with a purchasing clause to enable them to secure the freehold at £3 per acre. The land is fertile, with a frontage of four chairs for each section to a good macadamised road leading from Feilding to Haloombetown on the one hand, and to Kiwitea on the other by Mackay’s line. I was speaking to an old Canterbury settler the other day, who compared the chances afforded to settlers introduced to this district to what he had seen in the provincial district of Canterbury, where those employed on road-making had to pay seven shillings a week rent for their cottages, whereas for the same money the immigrant at Feilding acquired the freehold of a town house and section iu three years, and can also obtain higher wages, which enable him to acquire rural land on easy terms. Another old settler remarked how different he found things on his arrival in Wellington in 1842, when people were glad to get bush land at Makara without a road to it, for which they paid £3 per acre, and after clearing it proved to be of little value.

I find all along this Makino line of road that some progress is making in felling the bush, especially where the land is occupied by settlers of some colonial experience, and I notice a small portable engine of six-horse power, and the machinery necessary for working a small saw-mill, which is in course of erection about three miles from Fielding on the Makino-road. It is expected that the proprietor will soon be in a position to supply sawn timber to the settlers in the neighborhood. Messrs. Bartholomew and Manson's saw-mills, on the Kim-bolton-road, are in full work, and send a constant supply of sawn timber by a tramway to the railway station, and also to the Feilding township. Mr. Bull's saw-mill at the Oroua bridge is again in full operation. A little beyond Bull’s saw-mill there is another, which belongs to Messrs. Richter, Mansted, and Co., who °are engaged in getting out railway sleepers for their Government contract In addition to all these operations in sawn timber it is expected that Feilding and Halcombe will be able to supply Marton, Wanganui, and other northern settlements with firewood, as soon as the railway is opened through, and then the matai timber, that is now being burned off the land as an incumbrance, will be turned to profitable account. Mr. W. E. Chamberlain, who is erecting a first-class steam flour-mill near the railway station here, expects to have it in working order by the time the railway is opened to Bangitikei, from which locality he expects to draw a large quantity of his wheat, grown by the farmers in that fertile agricultural district. As this mill is situated at the outlet by Kimbolton-road for the produce of the Kiwitea Settlement, and will be central for the whole of the Manchester Block, Mr. Chamberlain s choice of a site for his mill js judicious, and will prove a boon to the district. Business is quiet here, but as everyone seems to bo employed, although wages are not so hi"h as they were at one time, there is steady progress made in settling the district. A rise has taken place in the price of butchers meat owing to the greater demand consequent on the increased population in the locality. Mr. Wheeler has been recently a purchaser of 1000 acres in the Manchester Block. This gentleman bought another 1000 acres of land about three years ago in the same block, which ho subsequently sold at much above the original cost. He is known to be a useful settler, and is heartily welcomed back_again by his neighborhood.

Dr. Henry Spratt, of Greytown, following the example of several other Wairarapa settlers, has lately invested in land in this neighborhood. lam told he has secured 900 acres in the Manchester Block. This gentleman practised his profession for some time in the Manawatu District, but he was here before there were so many settlers as there are now, and returned to the Wairarapa.