DANISH SETTLEMENTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 14

DANISH SETTLEMENTS

FOREST HOMES, by George Conrad Petersen; A. H. and A. W. Reed, 15/-. ‘THIS is the story of the Scandinavian settlements in the Forty Mile Bush, and in particular of the largest of the Danish settlements, that at Mauriceville in the Wairarapa. The story is well wotth the telling, not only as a monument to a group of non-British immigrants who, assimilated into our population, have contributed invaluable qualities to their descendants, but also as a reminder to the present generation of the grit and endurance required of some, at least, of our pioneers. The Danish immigrants for the Mauriceville settlement arrived in 1874. Those who paid their own passages got a section of 40 acres of standing bush free; assisted immigrants paid £1 an acre. All were debited with "costs of location" charges -about £35 per family-deducted from wages on public works, namely, opening and forming the road through the rain forest. Not one of them failed in his obligations either of payment or of land development. Contrast these conditions of land settlement with those on, say, the Rotorua area today! Let those who travel the road north from Masterton — through Mauriceville and Eketahuna tfemember the Danes. The book is fortunate in its author, son of a Danish immigrant of 1875, who married into an immigrant family, and born and brought up in the settlement while many of the .pioneers still lived. The book is well illustrated and carries a locality map and a plan of the original

township of Mauriceville.

L.J.

W.