AUCKLAND TO TARANAKI.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 278, 3 May 1915, Page 6

AUCKLAND TO TARANAKI.

EEEECI'S OP A RAILWAY. OPENING NEW COUNTRY. The special comiiih'Hioncr of tha New Zealand Herald who recently travelled through the 01mr;i writes as 'follows .in the Herald:— Quite recently I travelled by the Slain Trunk line from Auckland to Okaliukura, and from that at present insignificant place ! journeyed by a very crude sort of road to Whangamomona. Such a journey shows up with startling; distinctness the dilforence between country possessed of a railway and country wit!'.out one, and incidentally it shows many other interesting things. It is not so very long ago since I saw a good deal of the country between To Awamutu and Marten, before the Main Trunk was constructed. There was not a European town nor a formed road nor a farm for a length of two hundred miles, and there were few people then who thought that there ever would be such things in those parts, and yet, in the brief time that the Main Trunk has been completed, scores of prosperous towns and villages have sprung into existence, thousands of farms have been made, sorno scores of thousands cf people have established thnmsclvc? ■ there, and the stretch of country which bc'ore the advent of the railway was » desolate useless wilderness, is producing {.wit wealth. At present, between Auckland and Marton, a distance of 310 miles, there is only one other line joining the Main Trunk, the Rotorua-Thanies branch, and one may reasonably expect that in time branches will be built from Pukekohe to Waiuku, Pokeiio to l'aeroa, Frankton to Raglan, To Awamutu to Kawhia, Otorohanga to Kangitoto-Tuhua, To Kuiti to Mokau, Okalmkura to Stratford, Taringamutu to Taupo, and many others eastward and*"V/estward of the Main Trunk, between Kaurimu and Marton, and wherever a branch line is built, population and wealth-production will increase.

ARABLE COUNTRY, For nearly 130 mile 3 southward of Auckland the Main Trunk line runs, principally through arable, country, tint is, through.land which can be cultivated and intensively farmed. I estimate thai within easy reach of this line, there are over 2000 square miles which could be tuvnofl to agriculture. At present the bulk of the land, even within easy distance of the main towns, is put to no higher use than grazing, and far too much of it is not put to any use at all. It requires no effort of imagination on the part of those who know what can be done with land under modern systems of farming to realise what unlimited scope there is for increased wealth production in this part of New Zealand. With the exception of a small area at Pukekohe there is no intensive farming in the. whole of this great stretch of country. It is crude and primitive yet, but if a skilful agriculturist like Mr. Primrose were asked what could be done with such lands he would reply that wherever the plough could be freely used nearly every acre could be brought to yield ns much wealth as 20 acres of ordinary land is yielding now. BETWEEN TE AWAMUTU AND TE KUITI. For years people travelling by the Main' Trunk line firmly believed that when they passed southward of Te Awamutu they entered an utterly barren region. The dim-colored fern spread in rounded waves as far as the eye could reach on cither hand, and there was sign of neither grata nor crop. It was argued in these columns again and again that this shapely rolling downs country was composed of just the same soil as the prosperous farming districts about Te Awnmutu and Kihikihi, and that it only looked barren' because no one worked it, and no one worked it because the Maoris held possession of most of it, and what hinds the Crown had there were not open to settlement. A little change was made in legislation, and the Maoris began to fern has given place to farms; the eoun tryslde is becoming dotted with homesteads, and the solitary flag-stations of a few years ago arc spreading into townships. There c,;n be no doubt, but that in a few years to come all the fern country running westward to the Pirongia ar'd Ilautiirn ranges a-".;! lho still greater area rolling eastward toward the Waikato, will become an unbroken sequence of farms, raising dairy produce and fat lambs for the overseas markets. I was struck with the immense improvement that has been made, during the last year or two in this so-recently-desolate part of the Main Trunk line country. The Punui Kivcr no longer makes a boundary between Maori and pakeha territory; the old Autaki line lias gone for ever, and though the Maoris may bo idle landowners the land itself, under pakeha labor and skill, is being turned into as fine a farming country as man could desire to see.

WHAT A RAILWAY DOES. I always like to visit To Kuiti, because to me there is no finer example of pakeha energy and enterprise in the whole of New Zealand. It is built on Maori land, its citizens have to pay rent to Maori landlords, and in spite of this they have made it one of the most up-to-date provincial centres in the Dominion, and hilve pushed its trade whereover the pioneer settlor could force his way. Even tin Te Kuiti people three or four years ago thought that they would have to depend, for prosperity entirely upon the country to the westward of the Main Trunk, but r.ow settlement is going on so fast to the eastward of the railway and the results already won are proving that there is such an immense scope, for farming in the districts toward Taupo that the more farscoing men are about doubling their estimate ns to the future of the town and even they are not taking an unduly sanguine view of things. MAOIU LAN!') AND ROADS. The diflieulties of settling country owned by Maoris used to be one of the chief subjects in Te Kuiti; now I notice it has lost its importance. The European has reconciled' himself to being a

tunant of iho Maori and fully ceventcnths of the country which has boon must, recently settled and improved has been taken up under Maori lease—;:ot in large aria? for speculation purposes as some, of our politicians declare, but in moderate sized blocks of 500 to 1000 acres, and the Maoris, instead of being despoiled and defrauded as the same politicians are so fond of asserting, seem to have secured substantial rentals for every acre they have permitted the pakeha to use. Now one of the burning questions is the roads. The settlers who have taken up land from the Maoris must have roads. Who is going to make then\, c-.r. pay for them? The noble Maori refuses to pay his share toward reading his own country, and the.local bodies and the Government naturally object to making roads through iiiteyvening Maori territory, vdiipb, contributes 1:0 rates, The obvious thing to do 13 to make the ccst of roads chargeable on all the lar.<.V, benefit, whether Maori cv.ited or iu,t, and collect these charges v/hr-n the lard i-j sold or !•:?.■ ?d. Bi't the King Country people will break though tlio barriers of Maori selfifihncsr, aval Government indifference with regard to reading the eastern districts, just as they broke the barriers to good reads to the west. Vor years the settlers were handicapped by muddy tracks and high freights, then they taxed themselves with loans amounting to scores of thousands of pounds, metalled some hundreds of miles of highways, and gave to the State (for all roads really belong to the State) better means of communication than ever the State has given to settlers in any part of the Auckland Province.