The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill, Saturday, Dec. 23. OUR CHRISTMAS GREETING.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 39, 23 December 1893, Page 12

The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill, Saturday, Dec. 23. OUR CHRISTMAS GREETING.

Our first Christmas ! So it is. We may therefore pause for a moment, take breath, and look about ns. The climbing has been stiff —not too stiff, and we have got up a good bit. Yes, the prospect is fair, very fair indeed, and the retrospect encouraging. As a public journal we have shared in the advancing weal of our town and neighbourhood.

Southland has done well. It is doing better every day. Strong are the brains, brave the hearts, and broad the shoulders of the yeomen that bring to our town rich fare for the Christmas feasting. The frozen meat industry has been greatly developed during the year. The famous works at Ocean Beach have been considerably enlarged; and new works, as thoroughly perfect as the scientific knowledge of the hour could make them, have been built at that magnificent source of industrial dynamical power, the falls of Mataura, a site which will be the centre of many important factories in a day near at hand, the promise of which is brightened by the splendid enterprise and success of the owners of the papermaking mills, whose energies are now S' ag directed to the extension and reIding of their factory and to the lacing of old-timo machinery by the newest and best that money can procure.

The cry once heard, and not so long ago, that the export of frozen sheep would soon exhaust the flocks of Southland has proved a vain one. .The flocks are larger and better, and the green pastures more extensive than ever. IS T or has the dairying interest been damaged by the popular-

ity of the meat trade. The dairies have been fully active, and the market for cheese and kindred products lively and seemingly unlimited. Settlement has gone on very steadily ; not fast enough, of course - for one’s patience, in truth, is as short as the latest year of one’s life which, when gone, seems brief as a day, or the glance of a dream. Naturally, we long to see our beautiful Southland covered with a busy, intelligent, God-fearing people, the fruits of whose toil will command the highest price in the best market, and the constancy of whose heaitsin the ways of righteousness will be the security of the nation’s permanence in wellbeing. Patience, the time is coming, for, wherever of late land has been, opened up, eager settlers have pressed forward to possess it. Already theaxes and spades and ploughs of our stalwart pioneers are at work on the fine lands along the Waiau sidehitherward ; and even beyond • that majestic, swift-flowing river, many farms have been taken up. The surveyors are busy with axe, chain, and' theodolite, opening up tracks through the great forests that lie on the slopes of those western mountains, and laying out fresh and fertile regions for immediate settlement. Elsewhere,, east and west, co-operative labour parties are forming roads, and the Seaward Bush railway is creeping along with slow, but steady progress *, soon the Mataura will be bridged, and the Portrose and Waikawa farmers brought into direct contact with a daily Invercargill market. The owners of claims on the new goldfields of Cromarty and Coal Island have held to their faith in the splendid promise of their auriferous areas, and, backed up by the Government, the rough regions in which nature has hidden away her stores of the precious metal will soon be opened to the hurrying feet and. greedy hands of gold-loving man. This Christmastide will see families united whose members have been scattered for years. The many who left us five years ago for Marvellous Melbourne and go-a-head Victoria, have almost all come back to us. Houses are springing up all over our town. In all the townships and burghs of the province the building trade is brisk, although not so profitable as well-tried skill and honest pains have a right to exjDeet, mainly because of the influx of artisan labour from beyond the water. Thus has our country prospered, and Christmas has come upon us. Well, it is becoming to rejoice together, but while doing this we must not forget those who have fallen on. the onward march, and rush of life. In every community, however well off, there are the poor, the broken and the crippled. Surely we will remember them as we rejoice in ourgood things, and wish each other the customary compliments of the season.