AS OTHERS SEE US.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 171, 28 October 1910, Page 7

AS OTHERS SEE US.

FORTY -EIGHT IHHTvS IX TIIE BUTTER l'Ri tYIXC'E. TARANAKI'S WEALTH. (By "Deepwnter" in the Times) Life is a sequent". 1 . What you do today. yovenis what yon will do tomorrow. On a certain Monday in September. I found myself aboard the s.s. l'utiki, 1 blowing up the coast before a sou'-west wind and sea. For details of this little craft read Genesis: She carries 3110 tons 1 of eoal, loads in a couple of hours, and works out in eight. She yets there after 1 the fashion of a Straker waggon; car- * ries her breadth of thirty cubits from over the propeller to about six feet 1 from her cut-water and steers like a timber jinker. In other words, there is nothing of the Shamrock about her, but she is a handy economical, profitable coastal tramp. Exactly the sequence of things prior to Monday that found me a passenger aboard this Auckland-built Mauretania, I haven't yet worked out. Like does attract like, and there are not many of na; I nuan, that she was manned by a few good fellows. You discover this on shipboard, when one set of breakers is put astern and the 1 next is 200 miles away. From the pleasant little skipper to the smiling youth who waited at table, the intent of all I hands was to be pleasant, happy, agreeable. You always get what you give, and I defy competition in helping a natural law. So I told them my best and when 1 slipped a few chestnuts, they laughed as if they'd really never heard them before, and when our merriment died away, we lifted the land somewhere about Opunake, 24 hours out, where the "Ventnor" and her cargo of coal and I Chinamen tapped heels with Mount Egmont. As the sun dispersed the haze. I got my first glimpse of the butter province. Terrace after terrace of rolling green swarded mounted up to the clsud fane on the mountain. A rich land, a fat land it looked, dotted with sheep and cattle. The primal instinct immediately speculated as to the numbers and strength that held it, for surely .these folk have something to hold. Xo doubt every man here has a weapon, and universal training should find ( 'ready acceptance. I don't know of any coastal view in the colony that gives such a panorama of God's Own Country, and if the vagrant Jap training ships ever skirt this eoast, the little brown man will have tales to tell on his return, that may some day, with age and repetition, incite that prolific race, like our fathers of old, to get out and abroad, and the Immigration Restriction Act won't be considered. What is won bv the sword must be held by the sword, and don't forget it. Soon we were berthing at the breakwater, and an hour afterwards I was on the oil-field. There a torrent of natural I gas raised steam on a boiler that drove a boring plant a couple of hundred yards away. A bore hole spouted petroleum which was led into excavated tanks, to await the advent of refining machinery. Experimental refining gave all the grades of lubricants, and a perfect water-white illuminant. The blue tinge of the Standard oil article was absent, and by the practical exhibition in shop windows 1 should say that the case-oil ships, Xew York to Xew Zealand, will soon be a thing of the past. I would that I had had more time and made a note of what the courteous manager told me of the field. My reflection as I clambered on to another prehistoric conveyance to reach Xew Plymouth was, "More servants wait on man than he'll take notice of." lie's one of them, and they've struck it. One interesting incident. The manager showed me a fossil shell from the bore some two thousand feet down, tne duplicate of which I had seen unearthed on the Stockton incline cuttings fifteen hundred feet above sea-level. I have heard scientists say that Xew Zealand is one of the oldest portions of the earth's crust above sea level. If so, there must have been days in the dim and muddy past when the betting was even that we joined the majority. And now that I think of it, one of the cuttings on the Stockton disclosed pockets bf petroleum jelly and the whole section smelt like a kerosene bond, and Dr. Gaze told me twenty years ago that he reckoned that we lived on an oilfield, so we had better look out, for while delving for coal we may one day find ourselves blown to prosperity on an oil-jet. And so we rumbled on to clean, whole-1 some Xew Plymouth. It reminded me of my Sunday-school days, when we laboriously read that "a city set upon a hill cannot be hidden," or words to that effect. Its historic interest aijd its beauty spots have so often been written up and illustrated that no more need be said. Its streets are broad and spacious, its buildings solid and substantial, there is a quaint conservative atmosphere about the place that I should expect to find in the towns of Devon, if it ever comes mv lot to reach there. You would never suspect that they had '"struck oil"; the papers say so, and you can hear it down in Wellington, but in Xew Plymouth they'll say "Yes," if you ask twice. Business men were most concerned about a certain anarchist in ordinary named ITatriek, from Wangamii, who liad turned heir liank and captured Waitara. > This direct descendant of Ruaparaha, seemingly travelled overland during the night, seized the trade of Waitara! and when the Devon men woke up, they found the A.H. banner waving from the castle keep. I'm told he welcomed the late-comers and offered them an apple: he's a dietetic philosopher and savs there's nothing like a pippin to the palate and alter the frame of mind. I was very pleased to find Dan Berry, the archbishop of good sorts, still on'deek. The reprisals of fate, always due to the pioneer of enterprise, had done their worst physically and otherwise, but lie still cherished in the right-hand drawer of his desk a piece of strange mineral, the . latent product, of the last reduction of the sands of Taranaki shores. T'ell with the snug comfort and complacency of • tho man who takes his purple, ease after n. 1 if" of trade. The margin between a sure competency and the bulk that makes a usurer is only loaned; moreover, it is multi-edged. There is no grander sight than ripe years, and sticks no longer -a.e for stun ,-a:is still challenging trie Pferets and treasuries of nnturoT To be defeated in such a contest is a gloviou? Vievory: somewhere in my cosmic self, I see the glorious pageant of the homecoming, and hear the •'Well done! Thou .good and faithful.'' But I digress. The irmi-'uid is -till a problem, and there in no problem on this planet that has not got a solution. The real man is undoubtedly "Xature's insurgent son," and fhe insurgent son that forces Xature oil 'l this question is due for the triple laurel. | Here seems a good place to interpolate ' Kipling's sage remark— Oh, Faith that knows ten thousanJ (cheats, Yet drops no jot of faith. ■ i Xext day T took train as far as Straff ford, -thought a paper, the "Taranaki j DailjSTews." Then 1 had regrets. Sure 1 bere was a man worth meeting. "Wrecks I that -fix v the Empire," was the title of

his leader and the preachment on mental, physical and moral dcrulicts v.as one worthy of wide circulation. The proper study of mankind is man. and the man up in the look-out of any journal, who addre>si's himself livst to the human element luis a right conception of his sacred oiliee. Compared with the majority of journals 1 had fugitive glimpses of the, T.D.X. stood nearly alone. The piffle claptrap, not to mention wilful perversion. ladled out to the people of these glorious isles, all with the patent reward leering from the revenue columns or the probable anticipation in the spoils to the victors, make one ponder as to whether the salenif the intellect or the carcase is the most to he regretted. A Magdalene Home for the rescue of fallen editors, who wei'e undone by a faithless Government promise of something in the future would he about as interesting a collection as the present Upper House. I hope the D.X. hadn't relapsed into virtue for the single issue I saw. A fat man short of breath dropped into a seat near me at the first station and beoian a fierce diatribe on the Government. "The Premier was another Bill Sykes, Millar should be shouting the odds. McKenzie was a But I pulled him up saying that he was a friend of mine. He eyed me suspiciously for a while, but I explained that subject to certain defects of temperament, he was able, practical and honest, and 110 doubt suffered, somewhat from the setting ho was in. This unlimbered him again, and lie challenged all and sundry to combat the statement, that the Cabinet lived entirely by unstinted bribery and cpDilation.' No one took up the challenge and then he laid down his cure-all. "Put 'em all in red jackets," he said; "every man who directly or indirectly, partly or wholly, receives Government money for his income.' and then you'll see. "Put 'em all in uniform, wives, daughters and sons of each such man, and you'll know the lmrden we carry." I think he took me for a squatter. I mentally figured a gigantic deal in red cloth and when I

gripped again I asked in m.v blandest ] manner, thinking of home, "Would yei 1 include harbor boards and the 8.X.Z.?" He exploded with indignation and snap-1 ped out: "What the deuce has that got j to do with it ?" and when he bounced ■, out to join more congenial company in the non-smoker, the remainder of the passengers laughed heartily. But I never learned the joke. 1 After a long strenuous climb we dropped into Stratford, a thriving, prosperous town with five Banks, and plenty of healthy, optimistic people. So full of progress that they were interesting themselves in the coal of the Buller Gorge. They were blacksanding near Ilokitika, investing in the Wilberforce reefs, and so on. They had a fine club, a hotel that would put any two in Westport to the bad, a main street that indicated another Chicago, and didn't I see the pig pens all along the line! Where was 1? Of course, in the heart of the most prosperous dairy centre in the colony. I believe as a people they are to be trusted, but their statements may have been for the year just passed or they might have referred to the future, i" noticed good fishing streams in the vicinity, so 1 hardly like to repeat all I heard, especially as I did not write it down. Good dairy cows yield £lO a head for the season. Whether it was two cows to one acre or one cow to two acres I don't know; but without the aid of algebra, there was no unknown quantity. All the district, with the exception of the patch above the snowline on Egmont, was worth £4O an acre. And pigsGod bless 'em —were worth fourpenee.the pound. And not many years ago, said one, "Mv banker growled, at advancing me £6O Last year I went to Europe, I've got a four-cylinder car that cost £BOO, and when I get another burn on my big block at Whanga something, I'll clear £2OOO a year." Honk! Honk! and he was off at twenty-five miles an hour to buy something else. I was doped, dazed, and glad to get to bed.

Xext day I talked with a man who spoke in a lower key ,and he assured me their cattle in numbers would have startled the old patriarchs. Job and Eliphaz and Bildad didn't know the game. Nine hundred steam boilers furnished power to whip the cream of 150,000 bovines to the tune of over a million pounds worth of butter and cheese per annum. Yes, Roger, pounds sterling, I meannot tons of coal. And then he explained the mysteries of the Babcock milk-tester, tlie values of butter-fat, the sinuosities of the over-run, and other trifles that allowed some other men to live between the cowspanker and the insulated steamer's hold. It's a great business and they don't care a rap whether Westport coal is anthracite or lignite; alt they know is that it is mighty dear, but as soon as they've burnt all the logs, they will be big customers. 1 But Taranaki wasn't always like this. There were long years of bushfelling, and burning, of solitary camps in the wilderness, of roads and tracks that meant mud to (he girths, if not to the crupper. Struggling soldiers with their land grants, unaccustomed immigrants from Devon moorlands. Sad-eyed women toiling unflinching. from daylight to dark, doing their work, bearing the children, that for many a year never elapped eye on another human, unless maybe some faithful old padre keeping in touch with his flock.

Those were the day when the muzzleloader hung ovei the big open tireplave, when the patk-saddle and the skillet contested the. corner, when the bag of flour hung from the roof tree. And' the rats dropped into the milk pans, when all in turn worked the old plunger in the barrel and dad went down to town twice a year to see how the account stood at the store.

Fourpenee for tlic butter was all the storekeeper could allow, and dad was lucky if he could eke out the whole return to meet the year's tucker, and luckier still if he could anticipate the future sufficiently to bring Jamcsy a coat and mother a new skirt. God knows the boys never had boots then and didn't miss them. We may talk of hardships on this coast in the early days, but there was always a chance of dad strikm<r it rich; that's what made it bearable'. I never was in Taranaki before: but I can picture the outlook before the advent of the creamery, the factory, and the insulated steamer. It must have been a heart-breaker. I suppose a good p C] .. cent age saw it out. But what a lesson this industry is of co-operation—co-oper-ation of farmers to establish creameries, co-operation of creameries to establish factories, and in one instance co-opera-tion of factories to establish a steamship service, and then they co-operated backward to bring the world's products as cheaply as possible to the farm door. So good-bye and trood luck to Taranaki. Its just forty-eight hours since I landed at the breakwater, and wc are tearin«' headlong, it appears to ni°", down, down" always down, past the Pa tea river and on to Wanganui. I asked a young farmer sitting near me if he could use a rifle. TTe said "Yes." and dilated on the rifle range in bis district, but be was a dismal pessimist, cocksure that Germany had evil designs on Britain. I tried to direct him to the importance of being able to hold his own country. But lie wandered into a vqr.y circumstantial story of a German colonel who ran a

barber's shop at Aldershot and learnt the secrets of the British War Oilice from Tommy Atkins. This pni me to sleep and the clicking metal* .-pun thus—"l lo! ho!" said the man with the liriu'ht milkcan, As he slapped his chest with glee. "If the Lord has said that some arc bred The salt of the earth to be, Then sure as death an' I draw thi» breath, 'The salt of the earth,' that's me! •" \ramoho!" called the guard, and I made for mv hag. But he told me to take it easy. Wangamri was still ten minutes away.