THE TARANAKI PROVINCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 1 February 1915, Page 3

THE TARANAKI PROVINCE.

THEN :AND XOW. Writes the Lyttelton Times:—A }vew Plymouth journal lias been engaged in congratulating its readers on tile great advances, commercial and industrial,*, tlie Taranaki district lias made during ■ the past year, a progress all tlie more f creditable because of New Plymouth ! bring at a dead-end as far as interpro- ■ vilicial trafiic is concerned, since the > Main Trunk railway was completed, j Tlie province of tlie Mountain is ]>rob- ; ablv tlie most "go-ahead" district in j Xew Zealand; its residents "expend 0111 the soil and tlie dairy business the dog-1 ged eombativeness and determination to succeed that they devoted to the native trouble of forty years ago. !lf the patriots of the. Egniont country are in search of a fresh text upon which to base, their panegyrics of the pro- j vincc they could scarcely do better ] than contrast the present prosperous and bappy face of the land with that which it wore when General Chute made his great march round the back of the Mountain, a march which was completed just forty-nine years ago to-day. General Chute was really the first Imperial officer who carried tlie war into the heart of the Maori bush. I'p to ISGG the British commander;; had displayed a wholesome fear of supplejacks and bush lawyers, and near as possible kept to the open country; in the bush the white regulars, loaded up with heavy knapsacks and unsuitably clothed, were at ah obvious disadvantage. Rut General Chute, being of a more enterprising and rough-and-ready type, determined to give the Tarannkis a taste of their own metal, and so conceived and carried out the idea of penetrating the rugged forest country on the inland, or eastern side of Mount Egniont, from Ketermarao to New Plymouth, a distance of nearjv sixty miles. This, of course, would be a trilling matter to-day, but for those who do not know what Taranaki was like in the middle 'sixties it may be explained tlita what settlement there was lay on the coast, at a few isolated localities, and that the whole of the interior was one huge forest, much of which was scarcely known even to the Maoris themselves. There were no roads, no horse tracks even, at the back of the mountain, and where the railway line runs to-day was one vast wilderness of jungly bush, threaded by swift little rivers from Egniont, running in deep beds. 'Many packhorses were taken with the

force when it started from Koieniarae —whore the townsliip of Xornmnbv now stands —and bridges had to In' thrown across the crooks before the animals could bo !?ot. across. The general's column consisted of three companies of the Hth Hejjinieiit. a Native Contingent under tlio olTl AA r an<ranui chief ITori to A liana, and a party of Forest Rangers under von Tempsky, and Dr. Feathersfon, Superintendent of tlio Province ol Wellington, accompanied tlio force. > I'ach soldier carried three days' nrovisions ami loft his knapsack beliind. So roiiLdi was tlio ma roll (lint tlio iounvy ' took a. week to tlio clear 'wintry at. . Mftt.i'tn'vb and it was eijrlit days be- . foro New Plymouth was rraohed. v.'as onlv ~!!e skirmish. in . which tliree of tlio en-my were killed, lull tin- hardships of the journey were worse Ihnn mere !h,;hi:n;', just as the soldiers of the Allies siii'S'er more severely in the wet trenches than : n the ordinary day's work of battle. They ran SO short of rations' (hut they had to shoot some of their paekhon-'efi for food, and it rained nearly the lvliole time of the march, Tarniia'U settlors of to-day.