THE TOLL OF THE FOREST

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 258, 1 May 1912, Page 8

THE TOLL OF THE FOREST

HEROES AND HEROINES. Mr. James Mackenzie, the newly-ap-' pointed Surveyor-General, gEtve expression in Wellington on Monday night to a strong plea for the back blocks settlers. The occasion was, a presentation to Mr. Mackenzie, and in expressing his thanks he permitted himself a very interesting digression. Apologising for alluding to what might be called a question of policy, he said that the great cry of the back blocks settlers, among whom lie had moved so long, was for roads. "I should be glad," continued Mr. Mackenzie, "to see rail-way-making have a rest for a year -or two, and let the money be devoted to building roads, and giving men who have not so much as a pig track some sort of access to their land. We run through to Auckland in the express, but there are men whose farms are away back beyond 20 miles of mud tracks, and no roads at all, and they cannot get access to the railway. Let them have at least some sort of access—these pioneers, the heroes and heroines of the back blocks. If we only knew the toll of the forest, and what these people have to contend with! Sick children carried over the mountaintops on their fathers' and mothers' backs before they can get aid of any kind, women going into the settlements to perform the highest duty of womanhood, and then, rather than go back to the isolation of the forest, committing i suicide—those are the sort of things that you run against, not once or twice, but dozens of times, in your travels. I don't kwow of anything more necessary than to help in getting roads into the back blocks."