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An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand

Nova-Scotian Settlement at Waipu

Nova-Scotian Settlement at Waipu.

At Waipu, about twelve miles from the south head of Whangarei, a party of emigrants from. Cape Breton, North America, have formed a settlement, and in the short space of twelve or fifteen months have converted the primitive wastes and forests into comfortable homes and farmsteads. Without any other aid than that of the axe and the hoe they have cleared and brought under cultivation muck more than sufficient land to raise crops for their own subsistence, and from their hardihood and previous skill in contending with the heavy forests and capricious climate of North America there is every reason to expect that, in a country like New Zealand, which they regard as a comparative paradise, page 57by a continuance of their present industry and perseverance, they will contribute greatly to the material advancement of the province. Thousands of their countrymen would follow these first pioneers from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and other parts of British North America, if inducements were held out to them to do so. These inducements need not be of any extravagant character: all that they ask is that we should give hem land in localities suited to their requirements, allowing them the usual privilege to which other immigrants are entitled by way of remission in land for their passage-money, and a credit for five or seven years for such additional quantity as it may be advisable to assign to them, under a pre-emptive right of purchase.

By these means the Government would insure a steady flow of immigration to the province of well-trained, hardy, and experienced bush-men and sailors; whose loyalty and devotion to British authority, joined with their clannish spirit and unanimity of action, would he found most important elements in the formation and early settlement of a new country situated like New Zealand. Such colonists, moreover, derive a peculiar value from the manner in which they transplant themselves to these shores, bringing along with them their religious and educational establishments already in operation: no chance-collection of men, but an active and organized community possessing many of the characteristics of the early pioneers of colonization in North America. Nor ought this opportunity to be overlooked by either the General or Provincial Governments, lest the stream should be diverted to other colonies, the Cape of Good Hope, for instance, which are fully sensible of its value, which a liberal administration of the waste lands, valueless and unproductive without capital and labour, might secure for New Zealand—a population which would so materially contribute towards the wealth, the stability, and the progress, not only of any one province in particular, but also of the colony at large.

A glance at the map of the northern peninsula of New Zealand will show your Excellency the peculiar advantages which it offers for English colonization. In addition to the main harbours of the eastern coast—Auckland, Whangarei, the Bay of Islands, and Whangaroa (likely to be so important in case of the establishment of the Panama line of steamers)—there are numerous well-sheltered coves and smaller anchorages; while the Kaipara and Hokianga on the western side, if more dangerous from the bars across their mouths and the stormy character of the coast upon which they open, yet lead up into navigable streams which must tend to form a hardy and skilful race of seamen, invaluable to our insular position in the Southern Hemisphere.