(From the Southern Cross.)

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 313, 19 October 1860, Page 3

(From the Southern Cross.)

The Province.—The Province of Auckland has been for some time and Btill remains in a critical position—like every other Province in the Northern Island. War and rumors of war are not conducive to peaceful progress. At the same time the ordeal through which we are passing is instructive to us, in so far as it shows what the inhabitants of the Province are made of, and what the opinions of those best able to judge upoo the question are as to the capabilities of the country to bold its own. Even with all the mistakes which have been made in the manner of introducing population into the country— mistakes only too palpable to those residing in town where failures " must do congregate "— still there has been a crop of future settlers sown broadcast over the country who are gradually making that country their own. It is not in the nature of Englishmen to give up, and many even of those who where surprised at their first arrival in the country to find how highly colored, compared with the original, had been the picture of the Province exhibited to them before they left the mother country, are beginning to discover that the right-man can brighten up even the sombrest tints in a colonial .prospect. The men who without any inducement to come out would ha/c done so, are doing well—witness the flourishing rising settlements in the North, where colonisation carried out by men with its true spirit has had the effect not only of laying the foundation of future European greatness, but of even impressing the native race with respect. These men regardless of councils, promises and pledges, are going steadily but energetically about their work and will ultimately succ ed ; those who were not fit for the work arts doing what, might have been expected—nothing. The Province is worthy of being won and worn; but it take 3 men for the purpose, and this very fact is one which at the present momeat is most suggestive of hope. Even with war looming in the distance there is no feeling of surrender or retreat amongst our settlers, and the fact is known to the natives and they appreciate it at its proper worth. They see what the Province is. Settled from every class, from every conceivable quarter, and in every conceivable manner, and spread over a most extensive tract of country, we are not a mere settlement to be driven into entrenching itself within a mile or two of earthworks, or to give up our homesteads to be plundered. The bone and sinew of the Province are in its outsettlements, and there is but one desire amongst all, namely—to make them as far as is possible under the circumstances defensible. There is a class growing up round Auckland analogous to those, than whom better men never broke the glebe or drew the bow —we mean tbe yeomen in England —and day by day their numbers are beiug added to. They are not the class of men who are leaving by every opportunity for Sydney. They are not the victims of puffing— they are seldom seen iv town, but are well known in the bush, —and the only pity is that there is not more land to send such men on, and some better systim for finding their fellows in England.