PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1880. BIDDING FOR LAND.

Patea Mail, 25 September 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1880. BIDDING FOR LAND.

The sections to be sold on the Waimale Plains were laid out by Sir George Grey’s Government, in small allotments intended to meet the necessities of small capitalists. The theory looks captivating, but will not work out practically. The settler’s difficulties come all at the beginning. If he buys a small allotment —one of these 60 acre sections—he will not be able to make a decent living out of it for the next five years, for reasons which any average farmer could point out. He cannot grow grain near the sea with success. A clearing in the bush would suit cereals excellently, whereas the humid air of the coast and the saline spray that blows at times three or four miles inland will spoil the color of grain, and lower its selling value. He cannot grow garden produce with profit until the railway is completed southward to the large towns. He must therefore run stock, and he will be a better farmer than most of those on the Coast if he can carve a fair living out of a GO acre grazing farm. Intending settlers should look before they leap. We deem it a public duty to offer a wholesome warning to persons who may be intending to bid for these sections on the Plains without figuring out the commercial results. Let them reckon like speculators who intend to have a safe bargain or nothing. It can be no benefit to anybody to have embarrassment, disappointment, misery, and despair overtaking many of those who come here to bid blindly in a hot competition for land, carried away by the eagerness of others’ bidding, and determined to secure a section at any price before it is all gone. There is plenty of land. The acres to be offered at this first auction are a trifle compared with the hundreds of thousands of good acres available for settlement in this district.