THE PIAKO COUNTY. Morrinsville, Lockerby. [By OUR Travelling Reporter.]

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1388, 26 May 1881, Page 2

THE PIAKO COUNTY. Morrinsville, Lockerby. [By OUR Travelling Reporter.]

Our great Northern capitalists can boast of as fine and even more extensive landed properties than those of their fellow colonists of the South. John Greig (of Long Beach), Cracroft Wilson (of Rangitata), Reid (of Elderslie), or the great Southern laird, Big Jock himself, or to speak without the impertinent colonial familiarity, the greit Maclean (of every; where), could not; show anything to beat Matamata, or Morrinsville, or the fat acres of the Northern Maclean. Indeed, I doubt whether their High and Mighty Graces the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Northumberland, and the Duke of Argyle could consider themselves larger potatoes as landlords alone than our merchant princes. They, no doubt, could wipe out our young country with their old palaces and collections of the arts and luxuries of the whole world, brought together bit by bit for centuries ; and their parks may have been more elaborately laid out and planted for picturesqueness of effect since the days when the good old barons, their original owners, appropriated them by the good old law of h"3t, or were presented by grateful sovereigns with considerable slices of some other sovereign's kingdom which they had assisted in appropriating on the purely patriotic principle of a share in the plunder. But they could show nothing to fine for pure natural scenery, quality of soil and the charms of •leliciouH climate. And raorpover, the land here above all other claims to superiority, is rising rupidly in value, while from all accounts, that of England rau-t just as rapidly fall or fro out of cultivation alto gether in the struggle for existence with the other great countries opening thtir broad bosoms to the populations of the world. Yankee Doodle Dandy would swear that he could wear New Zealand a-* in ornament to his watch chain or put it away in one corner of any of hi-* greit estate, but we all know Yankee Doodle' *• little weakness. His country is a very grand place, and very convenient a? a refoumtory for disaffected Paddies, but it it just possible to havj too much of a sjood thing ; the old story of the man vho received a fiiendly present of a white elephant that ruined him might be ap >lied to the United States as a kingdom. 3'ime day, rival interests must divide its sections into separate kingdoms at war with one another eventually, and then perhaps New Zealand may be a compact and beautiful little nation worth mote than all the warring great rivals, and ■nay be as powerful. In those days it is to be hoped that ifc will own some more pleasing name than New Zealand and that Morun^ville will have disappeared into Lockerby. Anybody who names a ra.igluficieiit estate from his personal name •ornehow caits a ridicule upon himself md his property. How ifc is so, it is not ttorth while to enquire, but undoubtedly Jouesville or Johnson's Castle do not ■found half so pleasing as something aug-jre--tive of bomo feature or *-otne association of the surrounding district, such an Woodville or Lakeville or Ken Court or some name recalling a well-known English or European scene. Sometimes in tt v \e lowest parts of Manchester, 01 Sheffield, it is common to come across a very small potato shop or a cobblers stall with a very big board over it labelled. ''Bills go in" or "Jacks Endeavour" and and any estate however large named aftei the proprietor always somehow suggests the same sorts of ideas. It was a lovely morning that I ohose for my journey and the Te Aroha Mercury, McGuire of the rubicund countenance, had a full load, md his heart was light in proportion and he tooled us along with such skill and dexterity that even the horses blessed him. while the passengprs laughed and grew fat over his joking of jokes. The road was rather more holey than righteous in places and rathei forcibly suggestive of what the pleasures of w inter travelling after three weeks or so of rain will be to such as have to enjoy it, but in other places some stuff had been piled on that made it tolerably level for the tim<» though as it was all soft earth it seemed likely to become rather slushy before next July. Still we bumped and rolled bravely along, and in due time anived at Morrinsville with its trim school and neat cottages, and the comfortable looking half-way house, the Nottingham Castle with its verandah and balcony. The landlord, M.r R. S. Brown picked us up and poured ale and choice spirits down our throats, and most obligingly intimated that whatsoever we wanted more would be cheerfully suppliel >y him for a consideration. Savoury and -unoking joints, with divers, etceteras were then set before us, and we were entreated to eat and be filled. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr S. Morrin here on his way back from a shooting excursion to Hamilton, and he introduced me to Mr Ticklepenny, the energetic and skilful manager of the propeitv under whose superintendence all the immense amount of work performed here annually is carried on It was arranged that I should stroll away during the afternoon and examine some of the attractions in one direction, and that in the morning I should call on the manager and look at aome of the more especial features of the homestead and stock-yards, and learn the particulars of what has been done and is still doing on this splendid estate. This was as much as any merely human correspondent could undertake without a six months residence on the place, and I smoked a pipe of peace with myself as jolly Mac "ya hooped !" and "gee hup thened !" and cracked his whip and went on with a fine load of pilgrims for Hamilton, After doing my stroll and spending a quiet evening in the Nottingham Castle, the comfortable bedrooms of which would make a tired traveller murmur a blessing on his luck as he stretched himself between his clean sheets, I rose about sunrise and went over to the house about two miles off, in which abides Mr Ticklepenny, the manager, and the following items will embody what I saw and heard of Lockerby, or Morrinsville, as it is generally called, the estate of Messrs viorrin and Studholme. The lord of Lockerby is the owner of 23,000 acres, the greater proportion of which is fine gently-sloping land or alluvial flat j the actual swamp forming only a small part. Such an estate, even in a state of nature, would be a most desirable property to make up and find oneself the inheritor of, but this has been enormously improved in only a few years, and in a very few more will become the equal or the superior of any fine old Gloucestershire or Devonshire manor, grassed and fenced and drained, and hedged about with wellmade lanes and roads intersecting it, and trim cottages with their small gardens and orchards, and homesteads dotting the scene, shady corners, wide 1 fields of golden grain stretching across the gentle slopes, and flocks and herds the second only to those of Old England, thriving in the deep cool meadows far and. wide. This is ' no gushing fancy, the thing is done; tho plan only wants the nursing of old time to ripen a little. Already 8000 acres haveibeen .broken up and sown down in grass, and the work goes on at the rate of two or three thousand acresa year. Seventy miles of ,wire fencing' have been, put up about estate? ! Wth' l7*ol? 18 miles of sub-walls, and many miles of deep drains,' someUof

them from 10 to 12 feet, have been run through the swampy parts, £10iN) having been spent on this one work during last season alone, and with such good effect that one vast deep pool of stagnant water known as the large lake, and another known as the small lake, which have been looked upon as the main reservoirs of the Piako Swamp, have been lessened some 10 feet in depth, and the whole draining of this tract of useless, dangerous district will' have beeu materially assisted. The land generally on the slopes is by no means a poor, barren, sour pipecljfy, 'as some who are not, owners in the^district have kindly stated it to be,'' w,ith the usual good nature of the world, and in some spots I marked large extents of rich loam on a clay subsoil that would grow root crops and grain to perfection. The general quality of the second best land may be called a light soil that would grow the best and sweetest of grass,, and the worst of all to be found here and there would provide excellent feed for sheep by mere surface sowing.! About 100 acres were sown with oats for hay, and 23 or 24 "with carrots and mangolds last, season, besides many acres of turnips with the grass ; all the roots looked nice and healthy, and showed what the land will do with a little sweetening, though the colour, the depth and the subsoil of the fields are quite enough to speak for themselves,. In all directions ploughing 1 and sowing and harrowing operations were progressing busily over hundreds of broad acres, and besides the grass and turnips. 200 acres will be laid down in oats and 40 acres in carrots and mangolds for next season. Some of the broad paddocks of from 300 to 700 acres in extent that I visited afforded good sweet feed to flocks and herds that certainly showed no falling off in condition in spite of the long dry season so complained of by farmers, though here and there there were bits of the upper lands that looked in want of three or four weeks rain. In other parts of this varied land there were smaH flats between gullies, or bottoms, as 'the old Anglo Saxon calls them, abounding in rich moist feed, and, always shady and cool. In these alone thpro .would always be good f»>ed for the whole herd. In one of the larger paddocks I came across about a hundred beautiful young shortlionis of various degrees of breed but all seemingly in first rate condition and in such an overwhelming state of hijjfh spirits that nothing would satisfy some of them but an impromptu waltz on their fore legs with their heels in the air performed exclusively f<«r my admiration. Some of the heifers were very fine specimens of the shoithorn aud showed a considerable infusion of the breed for which the Morrin's herds have long been famous. I should fancy there was some of the Cambridge l Oth blood there ; the young calves, and more especially some of the little baby bulls were particularly good. There was a neat cottage here and a large eight stalled stable and aIJ round the young rapidly growing plantations of pinus insignis and cypresses, some of them already reaching from fifteen to five and twenty feet in height, and beginning to clo^e in the landscape with some little effect, and the whole surrounded by the beautiful wooded ranges in the distance across the wide fl-its made up a picture of rich' pastoral beauty in the afternoon sunlight that would have pleased Claude Lorraine aud placed £5000 in the pocket of its owner if he could have transferred it to canvas as that artist did aotne of his lovely little corners of France and Italy ; so like in every way what New Zealand will be in a few years when Auckland will have become more especially the land of the vine, the olive and the tig. Across one or two more wide paddocks, I came upon some large stockyards and two fine corrugated ironsheda used for cattle, and as a barn and implement house. These were 80 feet by 30 each. In the one wa3 a horse-power driving wheel for thrashing, chaff-cutting and all the other odd jobs of a homestead, conveniently covered by the roof and made independant of the weather ; and in another was a good collection of implements 'of all kinds, including ploughs, harrows, rollers, a haymaking machine, drills, sowing machines, waggons, drays, and others, of j the beautiful implements now used, more particularly for the thrashing, reaping, and binding of grain, I am sorry to say I did not see any. Auckland is not so forward in the growth of grain yet as the South ; but it is her own option, and because her market will not pay her better for grain than for stock. She has the land, however, and the climate, and can grow wheat or barley, or oats, as plentifully and as cheaply as any country on this side of the woild.

(To be Continued )