Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1874.] TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1895. THE FORTY-MILE BUSH.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5001, 16 April 1895, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1874.] TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1895. THE FORTY-MILE BUSH.

It was nearly twenty years ago that a well-known Masterton journalist, many of our readers will remember liiin as Mr Carrick, began to " write up the Forty-Mile Bush," Every issue of his piper, teemed with eulogies of a land flowing with (milk and honey, till people who knew not tho spot deemed liirn to be | affected with a'Forty-Mile bush j head.' He had taken Mr McCardle for his guide and prophet, and with liirn had penetrated the wilds of the remote Pahiatua and Mangatainoka and brought back with him wondrous accounts of the fertility of the now Canaan and of its prospects. We mention this to show that the marvellous'growth of the bush settlements is not altogether a tale of yesterday, not a mushroom development, but the steady progression of many anxiousyears of toiland hibour. I'jvon twenty years ago there were frontier settlements in tho bush, of some magnitude at Mauriceville and Eketalnma, while the good land beyond had been spied out and penetrated. During the period subsequent to this, tho growth of settlement in the Forty-mile Bush has been constant. At one time it may have languished, at another made rapid strides, but the good work never ceased, Wo, in Masterton, who at one time lost almost a third of our population by migration to the Bush District, know much of its good and evil fortune. The first factor in its prosperity was tho excellence of its soil. A fertile acre at Pahiatua, is as productive as two of the best acres about Masterton (and we have excellent land round this town), and is more productive than say twenty acres of the alleged goodmi of Pomahaka. Once cleared, fenced, and grassed, the Bush land is productive of income for all time, even though the price of stock and produce fall to zero, but in tho clearing, foncing, and grassing, there have been and there will be heroic struggles. Men have had to starye, while their grass grew, but those -w)io held out obtained their reward. Their best friend wa§ the good sq}l, tlioir next best the capital : which was brought into their dis- ; trict and expended there, Whatever tho straw-stuffed Liberal lions of

to-day may Bay to the contrary the patron saints of the Forty-mile Busk hnvebeencapitalistsliketbe absentee Balfour, Martin Kennedy, and T. C. Williams. It was their money which helped tho lame dogs over styles and enabled hundreds of struggling settlers to keep their heads above water. Capital, too, invaluable capital, came to the district In tho form of dairy factories, and much of tho marked prosperity of the past three years Inis arisen from this beneficent aid to settlement. Politicans have neither madenormarred tlio district in tho past, and are unlikely to make or mav it in the future. Neither neglect nor spoonfeeding can altogether spoil such a district. Men like Rollcston, Richardson, and McKenzio have tried in their Ministerial capacities to help it, but it is hard to say which of tho trio has been the more successful. Tho claim of the last must certainly be disallowed, for has lie not sinned by making it a dumping ground for loafers and undesirable immigrants. It is not easy oven to declaro whether amongst M.H.R.'s Mr George Beetham or Mr A. W. Hogg has been its better friend, though both deserve to bo held in tho grateful remembrance of its settlers, Capital and labour have in tho main made the fertile soil of tho Forty-mile Bush one of the richest districts in the Colony, and if undisturbed they will in the future multiply its resources to a marvellous extent.