ACROSS THE MAU ESCARPMENT 57 



of its resources. To-day, it cannot be reached. No rail- 

 road comes near it. If all the railroad facilities of the country 

 were to be bent on handling export from it alone, they 

 would be absurdly inadequate. 



But what of the morrow ? What, when other and nearer 

 lumber regions are exhausted and Canada and the Baltic 

 can no longer supply pine wood, red, yellow or white ? 

 What of the forest land then ? Great trees, many of them 

 measuring from six to eleven feet in diameter at the base, 

 rise, tall and straight, knotless as reeds, forty, sixty, a 

 hundred feet into the air, before, free of the strangling 

 embrace of their fellows, they burst forth with their rich, 

 heavy crowns of branch and leaf. I am no forester - 

 how many grow to the acre I cannot say. But I can say 

 that, though I have ridden much in our own great woodlands, 

 I seldom have seen a country that would yield a heavier 

 return. The sugar pine groves in California are finer, 

 and high on the Columbia River forty years ago there 

 was an unequalled forest. But these Mau woods are 

 well worth looking after. What has Government done ? 

 Granted at least one hundred and ninety two thousand 

 acres of the very best of it, to two or three favourite 

 concessionaries. 



Of course, there were certain conditions entered into, 

 and also, of course, as almost always happens in this coun- 

 try, those conditions proved to be beyond the power of 

 either party to keep. That stage of the proceedings has, 

 I believe, been reached. 



It is hard to imagine any system more hurtful to a land 

 which has been, as this has, much advertised as a white 

 mans' country, and which is admittedly hard to populate 

 with desirable immigrants, than this system of granting 

 great concessions to individuals or companies with a "pull." 

 Concessions are begged for, more with the hope of pass- 

 ing on the thing to someone else at a good profit, than of 



