Where Seddon Stands.

It is always interesting, often fascinating, to turn back the pages of our settlement stories and picture the beginnings of white-man's work in the land. Here is quite a charming vignette of the old-time Flaxbourne lagoons, near the present busy little country town of Seddon, thirty-four miles in from Picton, on the railway run southward through Marlborough. It is from the pen of that admirable figure in New Zealand's settlement and political history, Sir Frederick Weld, who after leaving here became a British Colonial Governor in Malaysia. In 1849, Sir Frederick Weld (then Mr. Weld), was settled, with Mr. Clifford, as a sheep-farmer at Flaxbourne, in Marlborough (Seddon is on the old Flaxbourne estate). He wrote, in a letter to his sister in England, the following description of the lagoons on his run, and the wild-fowl with which they abounded:—

“The Flaxbourne lakes . . remind me in a way of the swannery at Abbotsbury, though on page 50 a much larger scale. You have no idea what a glorious sight it is in the early morning, when the mist is just clearing off the waters. Unseen, one creeps along the banks, and poking one's head up over a tuft of flax one beholds thousands (no exaggeration!) of ducks floating on the shadowy surface of the lake. There is a big paradise duck, something like the muscovy duck, with its amber breast and white head reflected in the waters; the common grey wild duck, the teal, and the bright-plumaged widgeon chasing one another in play, or in pursuit of insects; whilst on the banks the long-legged plover strats about, and perhaps a white crane shows itself on the rising ground—the latter being so shy that one never can get the chance of a shot! Possibly one may hear the distant boom of the bittern. Then the uproar which arises the moment a head is raised from the place of concealment; off flies the white crane, the ducks quack, the whole lake is in commotion—the enemy has appeared.”