FREE AND EAST NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 224, 16 May 1872, Page 7

FREE AND EAST NOTES.

BY P. TENAX.

The ignorance displayed by colonists who ought to know better regarding the resources ana 1 capabilities of the land of their adoption is astonishing and painful. With few exceptions, men settling in New Zealand draw a small circle around them, beyond the limits of which they cannot or will not see. Beyond their own petty districts nothing exists — everything is desolation. Enter into conversation with them on 'the prospects of the colony, and compare it; to some other country, puch as Victoria- or America. The.comparisqn itpmediately provokes a vplley of

disparagement of the colony. It is vilified and traduced in every way. It is loudly -asserted that the colony hag no resources of any kind whatever ; and a man making a comparison between it and other countries is accused of ignorance and imbecility. If calumniators of the colony would only lock around them and learn something about it, they would change their tone. They would find that the richest gold mine- in the world— the Caledonian — is at the Thames ; that the goldfields of New Zealand return a -better average per man than the goldfields of any other country ; that in its indigenous flax is a source of almost inexhaustible wealth ; and in its forests is valuable timber in great demand in the adjacent colonies ; that the land in the Oamaru Titnaru, and other districts yields magnificent crops of unsurpassable wheat ; that on this wide earth there is no better or easier got at coal than tha ton the west coast of the Middle Island, and at the Bay of Islands, in the North Island. They would learn that lodes of copper and other valuable minerals have been found in the colony ; that auriferous quartz reefs have been discovered in every part of it ; that it contains millions of acres of land which any country would find it difficult to equal; that its seas team with fish of the finest descriptions, ■which would find ready markets. I have not mentioned the quantity and quality of wool raised, 1 nor many resources which the existence of is apparent. I have, however, mentioned enough to show that the depreciation of the colony so freely indulged in is utterly uncalled for, and that instead of living in one of the poorest, we live in one of. the richest countries in the world. j If Americans, instead of developing their resources, had spent their time in lamenting, as New Zealanders do, that everything they wanted did not come to their hands ready made, the greater portion of the Great Republic would still be a wilderness, and the Pacific Railway undreamt of. • '| Mr. Brogden's speech at Queenstown on the railway question must have been "worth listening to. He stated that the northern people informed him that it was useless for him to come south, as no railways ii the colony would pay except in the North Island. He has probably discovered that the Southern people entertain precisely the same opinion regarding their own island. Mr. Brogden must have derived a large amount of amusement from the jealousy existing between island and island, province and province, district and district. Every locality wants a railway, and also wants it commenced before any steps are taken to construct a line anywhere else. The general welfare of the colony is not considered in the least — local selfishness and narrowmindedness hold undisputed sway. When one district has a prospect of a railway being commenced iv it, all oilier districts interfere to thwart its construction. Rather than see the formation of a railway commenced in any district < ther than their own. the inhabitauts of the colony would pr- fjr to see the railway and immigration loan squandered in a Maori war. A careful study of the aphorism about a house divided against itself which appears in the New Testament, wouid prove highly beneficial to New Zealanders.

Apropos of the railway question, a good story is being circulated. When. Air. Brogden arrived at Tnvercargill, the railway committee of that city of Magi ;i'i cent Disappointment waited upon him for the purpose of favourably impressing him with the Winton and Kingston line. They described, in glowing language, the great farming district it would pass through ; the large area of agricultural land it would open for settlement ; the rich goldtield it would lead to ; and drew a flattering picture of the prosperous township at its terminus. Mr. Brogden states that on arriving on the shores of Lake Wakatip he was electrified at finding the flourishing town of Kingston consist of two houses and three smaller edifices, erected for convenience and not for ornament.

The free fight provoked by Mr. James Smith's lectures on spiritualism has had at least one good effect — that of making the columns of Otago's leading journal readable. Which of the disputants is getting the best of it, is hard to decide. The congregations of the Revs. Messrs. Roseby and Copland, of conrse, implicitly believe that their respective pastors are the victors, while the spiritualists rejoice in the triumph of their apostle The approaching departure of the casus belli is a subject for congratulation to undertakers and drapers, as were Mr. Smith to permanently reside in Dunedin, there is no knowing where the strife would ea<\. It is to be presumed that the spirits which speak through mediums to present residents of the earth take a lively interest in all such controversies. Those. in the back would naturally press those in front to see how the affair was getting on, and would thus cause such a crowding of the spirits round about Dunedin as would effectually prevent the exit to the first sphere of ill? spirits of persons dying. Consequently nobody in Dunedin could die until the termination of the dispute, which unnatural state of things would ruin undertakers and seriously interfere with the profits of drapers, for they would find no salefor mourning, even at 75 per cent, below cost price.