A LAND OF PROMISE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 100, 18 October 1911, Page 3

A LAND OF PROMISE.

'.ALONG 'ME STRATFORDON'GAIIIIE I um I A SAW.MILLING CENTRE. (From our special commissioner.) No. 2. During the afternoon we have business at the telephone, and meet the obliging young postmistress, Miss Maggie Speck. We stroll through the railway yards at Pohokura, and notice how well the railway construction is being done and how well the public is being call-red for. lioomy yards, splendid cat-tle-yards, a goods station, and handy passenger station are all ready. A little farther along is the Public Works office. The clerical and engineering staff, of 1 whom we met Mr. J. May, at present acting assistant-engineer, .and Mr. Bush, timekeeper and clerk, are well housed in the buildings soon to be occupied by the stall' of the Railway Department. They have, amongst other things, a capable chef, as we can testify. Farther on, we find the ballasting party at J work under Mr. Robert Hill, overseer. The rails have to be raised to the level of the white-painted pegs along the side, every one of which, as well as every sleeper, is numbered. The ballast has to be brought all the way from tilt Skinner road pit, for no one has managed to find another good gravel pit anywhere in the neighborhood. The line is nearing completion here —there's , only the ballasting to do, with the exception of the filling up of the sides here and there with the papa brought down from the tunnel in the "muck train."

This is a busy corner. Here is Mr. Jack Robson's sawmill. The railway works alone keep him busy, but there are settlers' orders for building timber ever arriving, and there's no accumulation of timber yet. The plant is a very complete one, and we see various phases of the industry, from the "jacking" of a huge log into position under the great revolving twin saws to the planing machine from which dressed timber is being loaded as it is finished into a waiting ' waggon. White pine and rimu are here in abundance, and Mr. Robson has ten years' cutting in sight without shifting the mill. Ilis enterprise has conferred a big boon on the district. We spend | the night at Mr. R. McC'luggage's homestead, intending to proceed next morning to Whangamomona. The day breaks gloriously fine. The whole landscape seems to radiate warmth and sunshine, and the lambs frisk about on the j hillsides. We arc assured of a splendid 1 ride through some of the finest bush { scenery. But the scene in changed with- \ in the hour, and it rains. IN THE BUSH. What's that shrill whistle in the bush, and what does it mean? Presently we go and see., Half-a-mile of bush tramline along a pretty valley brings us to a lovely glade. Here, framed in a setting of waving pungas and a wealth of forest foliage, stands the steam-hauler, in charge of Mr. Jack Speck. It's a fine picture. All around is Nature, as represented by the virgin bush and a tiny stream below. As a centrepiece is man and man's invention, a puffing, snorting, shrieking log-hauler, whose business it is to haul to the skids j the logs which the bushmen have felled some distance further up the valley, tearing down and rooting out the lovely ferns and mosses and the glorious starlike clematis which here blooms in all its beauty. Here is a rata vine, just combining with a inatai or black pine tree. Soon the vine will grow and crush out the life of the parent tree, and the parasite will become rata. What wonders Nature provides! We are sit- ■ ting beneath a grove of pungas, one of | which has almost given its last gasp j in the embrace of a vine, which in habit ] resembles the rata. A light cord running down the opposite side of the val- ' ley is seen to move. It's a signal from the men away up in the bush. A shriek from the engine follows, and the wire rope tightens. The log-hauling has commenced. Alternately pulling and slacking, screeching and hissing, the hauler does its work, but we haven't time to await the arrival of the log. We have seen something of the work, but only a little. ALL ABOARD FOR WHANG A'.

Lunch, and then all aboard for Wlianga'. Jupiter Pluvius is giving us of his best in abundance. Already the roads are heavy as the result of heavy rains a day or two before, but there's no real mud. as the Wlianga' man knows it.' until we have crossed the Saddle. The road is beautifully graded, a triumph of survey through standing bush and through country that has the reputation of being "stacked up on end." This is a scenery reserve. A large tract of bush-clad hills is the sanctuary of the tui. We don't see the bush at its best. A sunny day is necessary to bring out the almost illimitable tints of green in the native foliage, but the most glorious time of all is the early morning when the birds lift up their myriads of voices to welcome the sun. We feel glad, however, that this is a reserve, although we are not privileged to-day to enjoy its beauties. May it escape the ravages of fire as it has bei>n preserved from the axe of the vandal, and be a jpy to our people for ever. Here we see the native clematis in huge clusters.

Now we are across the saddle, and the road gets worse. The whole of this portion of the road shows the effects of the heavy cartage of material for the railway works, and in places it is becoming very bad. Fortunately the winter has been a particularly dry one. Between the mud which the waggon traffic has made and the precipitous banks which everywhere fall away to the right of the road is a little narrow strip of firm ground. It's about, a foot wide, and is the -olid edge of the road. Slippery? It's like glass. Yet our sure-footed beast* along this make their way. preferring it to the mud and slush and by i heir preference placing their riders in imminent peril. Presently the horse ahead of me lets one foot slip over the bank, but makes a good recovery. Henceforward my steed is kept away from the brink. It's heavier for him, perhaps, but more pleasant and less risky for me. This portion of the road once was metalled with burnt pupa, and resembled a road in a brickyard. But that metal has gone right out of sight, except here and there where the churning of the wheel- has brought back to the surface a few broken pieces of the brick. It's wor-c for waggon traffic than i- the linmetalled road, for it hasn't broken up evenlv, and beneath the mud are banks and hollows. It .-fill rains heavily as we duly arrive at Whangamomona, for the years the outpost of settlement in Taranaki. It's a little place, but has long been the centre of a big and growing district. From here roads branch out in all directions, and from here have the settlers year after year drawn their household need-. It has loomed much in the public eye because of its proximity to the great coalfield in the neighborhood of the Tangarakau gorge; because it has been long looked on as a sort of gateway between the Auckland and Taranaki provinces, and through which the increasing stock traffic between Ohura and the rest of Taranaki has passed; because of the attention so pointedly

I drawn times without number to th«) f hardships endured by its settlers; and\ ' because of the determined efforts of dctermined men to have it connected with . tli?. railway system of the North Island, j A general store, a smithy, a school, and I a public hall comprise a settlement/ .in this country of ours. Whangamomona can boast of a store the ramifications of whose business extends for thirty miles or. more, and whose "turnover" would surprise many big business men of Taranaki. There's a hall, too, and the village possesses livery stables, saddlers, drapers, tailors, a billiard saloon, county offices, a bank, lodging-houses, an up-

to-date temperance hotel, and a hotel bar. Not so long ago there was a well »I pointed hotel here, too, but one night a fire broke out, and in twenty minutes from the time of its discovery by young Li ii-bay Bullot the building was a blazing ruin. "Fred" Calgher was the licensee of it, and he now conducts the sale of liquor in a galvanised iron building resembling a shed. Apparently he's doing a good business. The site of the burned hotel has not yet been properly cleared, and no steps can be taken to re-build until it becomes possible again to cart the material over the saddle. We put np at the temperance hotel,

I and find that Mrs. F. W. Court, formerly of New Plymouth, is the proprietress. Ir.'s a capital place to stay at. The building is new and the furniture is new. Everything is spotlessly clean, dcr spite the reputation of Whangamomona as a mud hole, and the cuisine is excellent. The terrors of travel in the backblocks fade to a dim memory in the midst of luxurious surroundings like these. The bank is a branch of the Bank of Australasia, and Mr. R. (4. Fawkner is in charge, with Mr. "Duke" Hunter as his "staff." The billiard saloon is run by -Mr. L. Klec, and with its two fine tables has the reputation of being one of the .best conducted country billiard rooms in the province. "THE STORE." But "the" institution of the place is its store. There's a histofy attached to it., The McCluggagcs started it, and it grew ahead of the settlement. The goods had to be sent in by packhorse in the early days, and the man in charge of the heavily laden beasts had a hundredweight or so on his own back as the string of horses toiled their way up the steep track that has since been replaced by a road. Its a "general" store,, and it aims at supplying everything the settler needs, from a silk dress length to I a coil of fencing wire, and from a roast

of well-grown beef or mutton (all fattened locally) to flaky pastry that makes : the mouth water. The store covers a lot of ground, too, and includes the post office and telephone bureau under 1 its roof. Goods must be stored in bulk during the fine weather season, for in bad winters it has been almost impossible to get in any fresh supplies. It needed a long-headed person of hopeful temperament to keep that business going in those days. To-dav Messrs, Court and Cottier have the business, and are moulding their eitv-bred ideas to

meet the backblocks requirements, just as much of the old-time free-and-easy style between storekeeper and customer is being supplanted by a system more in keeping with the' methods of the

town. It will take some time to get the Wlianga' people accustomed to the change, perhaps, but the new proprietors are keen after business. "Dick" Cottier is at the moment endeavoring to prove to a group of young farmers that the. wool-press standing in the centre of the enlarged and modernised shop is the only wool-press worth bothering' their craniums about. "Dick" knows the Taranaki fanner, and his experience as auctioneer to Mr. Newton King is invaluable to him here. A country storekeeper must be a man of many parts. Mr. Court reckons he will have to take a hand in the slaughtering to-morrow, as the butchering staff is on the sicklist. Just now he is working out a ''quote" for the delivery of six tons of galvanised iron per packhorse for a destination 17 miles away, much of the route lying along a track alleged to be four feet wide. It's a sight not soon to be forgotten to see the packhorse brigade stringing out from the store, to carry goods perhaps thirty miles before discharging. Pity there was no photographer about the other day when the packhorses tramped through the settlement loaded with chairs, chests of drawers, and other furniture, and one old fellow practically hidden by his load of galvanised iron—only his head projecting. A wag raised a laugh by announcing the arrival of the

"iron horse" in Wlianga'l The packhorse teams include steeds of all descriptions, and some have been on the road for generations. One of Messrs. Court and Cottier's packhorses is old "Waiiti," who came near winning the Stratford Cup one year, but is now defying all the racing commissions and touts as she plods along the by-roads doing more real good to the country in a week than she would have done in a whole lifetime in a racing stable. Old friends "outside" will be glad to hear that the new firm of general storekeepers is doing well, and is looking forward to a big year. THE FUTURE OF WHANGA'.

What of Wlianga? "It is going back to dairying." says Mr. W. A. MeCutchan, one of the ablest men in the ranks of the local bodies of Taranaki to-day, and the liero of the big struggle which attended the adjustment of accounts between the Stratford and Whangamomona County Councils. Mr. MeCutchan expects to shear 115,000 sheep in the coming season. Most of the holdings are of one, two or three hundred acres, and are not large enough to enable the occupier to rely wholly on sheep. The day is near when dairy produce will be easily vailerl to thp port of New Plymouth. The country is in good grass, and is gradually acquiring a tendency to hold itself together. The papa country is treacherous for eight or nine years after the bush has been felled. The dairy factory owned by Messrs. McCluggao-e Bros.—owned by the settlers until tk« burning of the building brought the banking people down on them, and forced this big pioneering firm to come to the rescue—is making cheese this year, and the output is, we are told, sold for o%d per lb., f.0.b.. Wellington. The cheese made here must have a good reputation to command such a figure. Will Whangamomona grow? Nobody seems certain about it. First, there's no room for anything but a village, for I he little settlement is land-locked, walled iu bv steep ranges o'f hills and bounded by a river. It must be busy, though, as long as the railway works are in progress, and will always be the distributing centre for a great district. But when the railway touches the coalfields, and the district becomes engaged in the coal-mining industry, there must be a big settlement further inland. The settlers themselves are keenly alive to the importance of the development of these coal measures. They know the quality of the coal, for they have seen it burn. Men camped out there tell of its splendid heating-power, and are not worried over the wood problem. It burns to an ash, and leaves no cinder. Coal has to be brought in from Stratford now—forty miles—and there's a coalfield almost at Whanga's door. Everywhere we hear of the scarcity of firewood. Fuel of this kind forms one of the biggest items of expenditure with dairy companies, and the day is coming when coal must take the 'piaee of firewood. The Tangarakau coal is easily

' mined. It can be got from workings on the open quarry principle, and should i be landed in Stratford for ten or fifteen ! shillings a ton. What this means to j Taranaki will be shown as the years | press on. A STTOOTfXG STORY. What else has Whangamomona? It has great sport for the man with the gun, for the forest reserves are sanctuaries for the bush pigeon and the pheasant. A few years ago a Wlianga' settler chanced on a newcomer who had a number of native pigeons in his possession. He became ollicious, and seared the newcomer. Such a glaring case of

1 shooting game during a close season, he 1 declared, should not go unpunished, j : "Are you the ranger?" queried the man] l with the birds. "Of course, I am," said ; the other, "but," in an undertone, "I • can be squared!" Twenty-four of the • pigeons and a quarter of beef next Sun- ' day were the price of his silence, and he ; took the first part of the bribe at once. Next Sunday the offender toiled across miles of bush country with a quarter of beef strapped oil his shoulders. This delivered, lie was exempt from prosecution. and breathed freely.' Months afterwards, he discovered that his tormentor was not the ranger at all. and that it wasn't a close season, either. ' He is one of the men that can t see the humor in that joke. VUMVH (To ,be continued.)