TARANAKI.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1922, Page 11

TARANAKI.

SOME HISTORICAL EVENTS. A TRIBUTE TO THE PIONEERS. (Taihape Times.)' With understandable and pardonable pride the citizens of New Plymouth, have had. printed and published a little booklet of quite modest proportions, which they are distributing throughout the greater portion of the Dominion. The little publication is well printed, on good paper, and profusely illustrated with excellent pictures of the most notable places in the whole Taranaki Province. It deals concisely with the settlement, history, natural beauties, and advantages, development and trade of the whole province, and. of New Plymouth, in particular. Those who have made themselves acquainted with the history of New Zealand will know that New Plymouth was among the very first districts to be settled; that a settlement company was formed in Devon and Cornwall (England) to exploit this particular portion of the new colony, and although that company eventually had to unite with the main New Zealand Company it was not owing to either the lack of energy and determination of the settlers themselves, or to the failure of the land to produce up to their expectations, but rather to difficulties over which they could have but a negligible control. They had to contend with a virile race of natives of whose manners and customs they knew virtually nothing; nevertheless, those old Taranaki pioneers never wavered, but persisted amidst all those dangers and drawbacks which early settlers experienced with disparaging frequency. SPLENDID PIONEERS.

New Plymouth and Taranaki as a whole has been favored by Nature, but it was equally well-favored with a splendid lot of pioneers, and the spirit of determination to make the province all it was possible to make it has never departed from the descendants and legatees of that splendid band of men who did so much to render this Britain of the South, this God’s Own Country, one of the best lands, if not the best, in the great Empire to live in. We have the good fortune to possess a whole year’s issue of one of the highest class English newspapers published in Iwkj, and therein re many reports in connection with the settlement of New Zealand. Its pages from. January to December are freely speckled with most interesting communications from vari-

ous individual settlers, and. none are more interesting than those sent from men of the New Plymouth settlements. Most old colonists know that in earlier times, before the native bush was destroyed, many economic plants and trees grew in wild luxuriousness which will not grow at the present timet. Not only in Taranaki, but also in the Wairarapa and other piaces, cartloads of peaches could be gathered without any interference from those upon whose selection they grew. Those old residents of this colony will understand that the first pioneers of Taranaki were not drawing the longbow when they penned descriptions of their new homes to their parents, brothers, and friends they had left in England. John Wallace was the possessor of rather more than ordinary prescience, as, in a letter to England, published in an English newspaper, dated September 2, 1843, he stated without qualification that “Taranaki, where New Plymouth is situated, there is an opening for at least a nrillion people,” and he added: “The country is open, so that you may have a clear view, upon almost any of the rising grounds, for at least thirty miles, and in some cases you can see land fifty miles off.

PRODUCTION CAPABILITIES. Messrs. S. and W. Curtis wrote to their people as follows: “This (Taranaki) is the finest wheat and barley country that ever was seen, and that you would say if you were to see it.” Another writer said: “I don’t believe any country in the world will beat this for breeding sheep. Some of my goats have kidded three times in less than fifteen months. Our hush land is too rich and strong for wheat; I put some in my garden, and had to cut it twice before I could get it -to stand up. I have oats, seven feet high, and a large sort of English pea growing so high that I cannot reach some of the upper pods.” This writer thinks he may be misunderstood by even his own friends, so he says: “You will think I am romancing, but I give you my honor that I am not. .Some Flat Pole cabbages growing on a piece of bush land on our farm measure five feet- across, and have only been planted out eight weeks. At this present moment my garden is groaning under a profusion of most excellent vegetables.”

Anothed settler—William Henwood—states: “Cattle do remarkably well here; our milch cows surpass anything I have experienced in England. I brought out two quarts of wheat, from the first sowing of which. I reaped and thrashed ten gallons.’* - These quotations from the first white settiers on Taranaki land are in no way exceptional; we could go on quoting columns of them, many of them stating results of cultivation which might over-tax the credulity of present day people who have no correct idea or knowledge of what Taranaki land was originally capable of producing, or of what it is actually capable of producing at the present time. We are particularly interested in the vision of Mr. John Wallace, who so correctly appraised -the value of Taranaki land while it was yet in its virgin condition. A GREAT FUTURE. Present-day New Plymouth commer- : ical men, and Taranaki men on. the | land, should take John Wallace as their 'patron saiut and guide; he stated over eighty years ago that Taranaki was.. I capable of supporting a million people. | Might not present-day men of energy, | intelligence and determination, with the book of Taranaki fully opened to them, showing the iron, coal, and oil, of which John Wallace knew nothing; showing an almost miraculous development of dairying possibilities, of which John Wallace could have no conception, together with Alpine wonders to attract tourists from all parts of the world, which John Wallace could not appraise, now say that Taranaki is capable of giving opportunity to two millions of men'! Lack of space prevents further reference to the early past of Taranaki, but we gather from the booklet, which the chairman of the Expansion and Tourist League has been good enough to supply us with, that the present-day settlers of Taranaki I are no whit less mindful of what the i arovince is capable of than its first

settlers were; that they are no less determined to make New Plymouth and Taranaki as a whole play the part Nature intended that province should play in the production, trade, commerce and manufacturers of New Zealand. booklet, which prompted the 9'' ia sure to impress etiv q impressed us, and its

publication should arouse a desire in other localities to go and do likewise.