Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 59 CHAPTER III. The Taranaki Settlement.?The Waitara.?The Native Title.? The Waitara considered essential to the Completeness of the Settlement.?Why valued by its Native Owners.?Their Suspicion of the Settlers.?Their early determination not to sell the Land. The Province in which the outbreak occurred is the smallest of the nine Provinces into which the Colony has been divided: but no one can speak of the soil or scenery of New Zealand, till he has seen both the natural beauties and the ripening harvests of Taranaki, which by concurrent testimony is described as the garden of New Zealand. From the beginning of March, 1860, to the end of March in the following year, this beautiful district was visited by the scourge of war. Its once fruitful fields and pleasant homesteads were abandoned and laid waste; the ploughshare was exchanged for the sword; and the settlers, separated from their wives and families, and shut up in an entrenched camp, within sight of thewasted labours of nearly twenty years, were for many months doing military duty under the iron despotism of martial law. With a seaboard of about 100 miles, of which Cape Egmont is the centre, the Province extends inland from twenty to forty miles; and it comprises an area of about two millions of acres. With the exception of a narrow and irregular strip of open fern-land near the sea, the country is heavily timbered. At the commencement of the outbreak, the English population of the province amounted to 2,700 souls; and the Native population was estimated to amount to about an equal number. But not having a harbour, being difficult of access, hemmed in between an open roadstead and a dense forest, and being almost impracticable for military operations, the Taranaki district, where the question of Native title has...
Synopsis
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