“Farewell to Lochaber.”

New Zealand has numerous communities of Highland Scots and their descendants, and though the Largs councillors in Old Scotland have banned the bagpipes the Caledonians in these Islands are never likely to follow this curious example. Pipe bands are popular, and never a prominent Scot is laid in his grave but the inspiring and heart-stirring strains of the page 25 famous laments are heard. “Lochaber No More” and “The Flowers of the Forest” are played here as they are played in the far-away glens of the north.

There are still a few survivors of the grand old Highland stock who took part in the migration of the Nova Scotian settlers to North New Zealand seventy years ago. One who passed away to “the land o’ the leal” the other day was Mr. John R. Maclean, of Waipu, North Auckland. He came out here as a small boy from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, with his parents, who hewed a home out of the bush at Waipu, with scores of their compatriots.

In The Capital City Of The Dominion.
A daily scene at the Lambton station, Wellington.

These Scots are the descendants of the crofters who were forced to emigrate from the West of Scotland after those wholesale crimes against a people—the cruel evictions of over a century ago. The memory of those “clearances” rankles yet in the Scottish Colonial mind; the heart still is Highland, even to the fourth or fifth generation removed.

Splendid settlers those ex-Nova Scotians, and splendid sailors too. There is a story still told with pride in Waipu and by the Scots of Auckland that on one day in the old sailing ship era there were at anchor in the Waitemata Harbour, either just arrived or about to sail, nine vessels, all commanded by McKenzies, and all McKenzies of Waipu.