THE PIAKO COUNTY. (By Our Travelling Reporter.)

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1378, 3 May 1881, Page 2

THE PIAKO COUNTY. (By Our Travelling Reporter.)

Looking from Te Aroha across the bright blue line of the Waihou river and beyond " the landscape winking in the heat" in the broad level plains that extend from range to range in the great basin of many miles in diameter that makes up the flat, rather boggy, but splendidly rich, peaty district known as thf Piako County, one sees a toy woe den Tillage with bright clean painted houses aud bright red shingle roofs — in the German Btyle, composed principally of a big pub and a pleasant roomy sohool-houge, with one store, a couple of private residences and a smithy in the real "New Zealand Colonial style of design. The village is the rising township of Waihou, and the big pub is Mis^en's Hotel, a woll-known comfortable roadside house of acoomodation for travellers that has been erected for the last two years, and ia advancing with the township nearer and nearer towards the perfection of shakedownery for man aud beast. On the one hand the beautiful wood covered, deep gullied soft green Thames range of from 2000 to 3000 feet high, bounds the scene, and on the other Bide the low level flax and titree swamps and plains stretch away for bcores of miles in unbroken wealth of agricultural and pastoral land. Auckland looks on this district as Canterbury does upon its plains, as a choice bit of property destined to be one of the future iuvestments of the country richer than goldfields and more fertilising than black diamonds ; but thia country is far richer than the Canterbury Plains ia the quality of the soil and is in fact the perfection of all New Zealand's most perfect endowments of soil climate and beauty of scenery. The township allotments of Waihou originally fetched £66 each, and are at the present time worth from 10s to £1 per foot for frontage to the mam road. Missen's Hotel is a fine substantially built house that cost about £1000, and includes every convenience, and ia surrounded with good gardens and grass paddocks, one of which is of 30 acres m extent. The dining room of 18 feet by 14, the bar parlour, 14 feet square, and the private of 14 by 1 3 are good reception rooms, while on the upper floor the nice clean comfortable arrangements of linen closets, big airy bed-rooms, and fittings of all kinds, put one in mind of the good old-fashioned sweet-scented homelike country inns of English renown that are not so well known in these degenerate times, as to our happier foiefathers. I could quite understand the professional pleasure Mr Missen felt fn calling my attention to the scrupulous laundry, the cool cellar, such as I have not seen since I left Auckland, and in which 30 casks would find room, the sweet fresh cabbages, and caulifloweis, anil gigantic carrots and turnips that appealed to man's stomach rather than his nose or his eye in the gardens, and the other good things that constitute one's ease in one's inn. It was a charming bright sparkling morning as we rippled softly across the beautiful river, the big broadwinged hawks flapped up and down or skimmed majestically over the paddocks and the larks carolled higher and higher till out of sight and hearing, and the trimly dressed, gentlemanlylooking pheasants sprung out with noisy demonstrations of self applause, or the more modest-looking, but more acceptable friend quail bowled across the road now and then as we made our way through the flat towards the banks of the Waitoa river, by which I had been told to look for the pleasant estate of one of the bogtrotting fraternity, who are fast filling up and reclaiming the thousands of aci es of magnificent land that ao to form the Piako county. With the broad deep ditch on each side of the road, and the wide flats of raupo, flax, tall ti-tree. and the graceful palm trees — or cabbage trees as they piefer to call them here — the scene may not present anything very thrilling for majesty or loveliness, and there may be a sort of Belgian or Lincolnshire fen monotony about it, in fact ; but there ia a tale told by the depth of the lich black vegetable surface soil, the stratum of peat or limestone, and the heavy clay subsoil that, like homely worth is better than good looks and a rich fortune to the fortunate ininheritors of the next generation's acres. A few years ago only, these were trackless waters, only passable to a few sad bood-thirsty savages, whose sole happinees was supplied by mutual exteimination, and whose utmost limit of human sympathy was the absorption of a fellowbeing's life with his body into another beings' belly. Passing aloug, I admired with all the warmth of my gushing heart a buggy full of gentle Anglo-Saxon colonists, consisting of heavy father, withered mother, fleshy daughter and fleshy son, all presumably in quest of a day's pleasure, but to judge from the expression of their countenences, going with acute cholera morbus at their stomachs to instatant death and everlasting mi-cry. It is a most curious distinctive feature of the genuine old English yokel wherever he may be met with, that the expression of the intense, sour, grudging of even a kind look for a fellow mortal, is always stamped on his intellectual face, to the exclusion of every other expression ; and how this race has always been specially selected as the type of joviality, I never could comprehend, except as one more proof, if it were necessary, of the way in which mankind, as if with a bitter sneer, always praises his fellow for the good quality of all othera that he least possesses. The happy English yokel made himself the laughing stock of all Europe for his sweetly pleasing powers of sympathising with other men so long ago as the Plantagenets, and he seems quite as able still to support the character of the jolly Englishman to the uttermost bounds of the earth, if one may judge by the countenances of some families in search of pleasure to be met with on New Zealand roads occasionally. Something of the expression between a Medusa's head and that of a codfish while being boiled alive is the sweet attractive turn one catches about the corners of the dear girls' mouths, and the lines round Ma dear's Roman nose while Pa dear looks as if the last four quarts of his morning beer had gone the wrong way and turned sour, and the dear boys would perhaps haye felt happier if they . had* been placed in the position Isaac would have been in if old Abraham had not lifted up bis eyes and beheld a ram caught in the thicket to take the place of his sweet son as an offering to a wise and >

merciful Creator. I know if I had happened to have been an angel when I met them, and their lives had depended upon my interference with tneir Pa's murderous procliv ities they would have stood a poor chance, for I should have pitied the rani more fclun them. After a very nice glass of beer at Waihou that forcibly suggested a certain little book tiiat St. John was called upon to use as a lolly of rather dangerous dimensions, inasmuch as it was particularly bitter in the mouth and sweet in the belly, I turned across the flat abounding with good sweet; juicy feed, the red clover of which alone scented the air with a balmy tragrauce that would have changed the most misauthropical old bull or even my colonial jolly fanner family into a Christian oil distilling company. Messrs Parr and Mellons Farm. A gentle stroll tor a mile or two, brought me to the property of Messrs Reuben Parr and Mellon, which is a capital specimen of the best qualities of the land to be found in these flats, and of what settlers about hei-e have done in the last few years, and are doing towards the task that yet remains to be accomplished. These gentlemen have 1276 acres running along the bank of the Waitoa river, a twisting 1 , twining, pleasantly flowing stream of from forty to sixty feet in width up which a steamer finds its way from the Thames about sixty miles. Not more than two years ago this estate was bought at the Government upset price of £2 per acre, and when drained, at an expense of about £1 per acre, and fenced, as it is now, it is quite worth from £5 to £7 an acre at once, and should two years of increasing prosperity add to the propulation of the district, it is not by any means an exaggeration to say that it might be expected to realise from £10 to £20 per acre. This would mean a fortune for its purchasers of two years ago that would be better than gold digging under the most favorable circumstances, and when we see the prices that land fetches in ail the more settled districts, th* 1 prices named are considerably within the outside limit obtainable. The laud possesses all the usual qualities of the best level or swamp Laid, such as rich deep vegetable surface deposit, with an inexhaustible clay subsoil, that grows fine tfrain, root crops of an almost incredible weight and soundness or permament pastuie, such as even in ilnglish model farm could not beat. It is wonderfully easy to woik, and if only managed with the slightest system or consideration requires no outlay woith mentioning on manuies as Nature if only allowed will replace by each crop all she takes out of the land in the crop before. There is a very nice, comfortable and pretty eight-roomed dwelling-house, in which any man could enjoy all the solid comforts of mere life, and if a lover of Nature revel in the sweets and charms of beautiful homelike scenery, till if he is not a happy man he must be a most ungrateful one. At the back there are some substantial stables and sheds, made from the timber growing all aloDg the bank of the river, all as clean and well kept as on old maids dressing table, and one or two fine sweet smelling 1 oat and straw stacks. Adjoining Mr Pair's property is one of 19,000 acres belonging to Messrs Maclean and Co., whose approval of any district may be pretty safely considered as the w plus alt i a of testimony to its merit. These great land-owners are just commencing a big drain that will be about five miles in length on the other side of the river, on which they have already some twenty-five or thirty men employed. Around Mr Parr's homestead the whitethorn hedges, growing like magic ; the plantations everywhere of healthy young blue and red gums, and pines, yews, and cypresses, increasing their sue at a rate that can be equalled in no country in the world, and all the yearly and daily progressing marks of home and the extraordinary stamp of the Anglo-Saxon hand on the face of the world, tell what the place will be in a year or two more. Tall, sweet-blossomed May hedges will then surround the deep sheltered paddocks and gardens, round the flower-bedded lawns and the fragrant verandah, and a tall graceful avenue of a mile and a half in length through the home paddocks will be the master's approach to his home, and wherever the steep sloping side of a gully affords an acre or two that cannot be devoted to a more quickly paying crop it will be planted with young timber to succeed the copses now displaying the native growths of New Zealand. Thiough the property a railway has been surveyed to run from Hamilton to the Thames, and it is only a question of time and convenience when the scheme that is daily recognised as more and more ! pre^singly indispensable is earned out, and when it is there would be? at onrc from £10 to £15 added to the value per acre of the estate. About 500 acres altogether have been laid down m grass, 35 > of which have been broken up, and about 30 acres have been cropped with grain or »Dots during the last season. I was taken greatly to my own satisfaction, and that of my friend, the owner, to see some turnips, carrotts, mangolds, and sugarbeet, that were still in the ground, and as I am a very firm believer in these low lands of New Zealand for root crops, I handled my mangolds of from 25 to SOlbs a puce, and returning from 45 to 60 tons per acre, and some splendid sugar beet that deserved exhibition, and would sweeten the New Zealand financial minister's view of human destiny marvellously, and raved over rod and white carrotts swedes, &c, &c, till I was tired of admiring, and I only wish the district would take a fool's advice, and start some sort of show of agricultural produce. I have seen most of the shows of New Zealand, and no matter how humble the beginning, I maintain that Auckland and this districe would hold eventually the highest places in the rank of prize winnets, in their own specialities, if they would take the same amount of trouble to win mens prizes that le^s deserving competitors take, A nice second crop of green oa'en feed and some potatoes were also pointed out to me, and a nice herd of cattle of about 150 head of mixed Hereford and hhorthorn breeds also took ray fancy. The good old white faced Herefords are nowhere in greater favor than they appear to be in Auckland, and certainly for meat-carrying qualities, early maturity and stamina, or weight-supporting at the lowest price of feed, they are not to be beaten, though I may admire the Devor more for beauty of outline, and the shorthorn more for other qualities. Mr, Parr's herd are a trood deal indebted to the blood of u. Shorthorn bull known a* Gubbins's that took first prize in Auckland and to the Hereford breed of the Piako Swamp Company, who are importers of choice specimens of this breed, and there is a dash of the Ayrshire breed that alwayH has a wonderfully telling effect upon the produce of the dairy. The sheep are a mixed breed of Lincolns and MerinoH, and will exhibit the good points of the fleeces of both breeds when the shearing shall some day have prrown into a matter of the greatest importance, though I always fancy that the meat herds and grain crops and dairies of Auckland will be of more profit than the j wool. I fell violently m love with Messrs. Parr and Mellou's pigs, the Venus of the sty being a lady who for length And breadth of back and depth of 3ides could n Qfc be rivalled or approached. The implements on this property make a fair show and » farmer if he studies his Dwo interest in. tltesa tiroes will always

invest every pound to be Bpared in ni'ichineiy of every kind and find himself woll lepnid Cambridge rollers double-furrow ploughs, harrows and ii first prize w.iggon in the Auckland yhow, nvule to order by Mews. Cousins and Atkin particularly attracted my admiration. After a pleasant morning spent in finding: out the beauties of this delightful and rich estate on the banks of thi* eh.irminer little river just made to throw a fly over to the leaping silver tiout, of a still golden summers evening, my entertainer mounted me on a shapely little pony of his, that flung her pretty leirs about with all the grace and all the conceit, small blame to her, of an admired ballet dancer, and we cantered off about five miles along the bank of the Waitoa, to where Mr Strange's property of 1950 acres lies.