RECENT BUSH FIRES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2139, 14 March 1908, Page 1

RECENT BUSH FIRES.

SETTLERS IN GOOD HEART Ah- J. AlaeKenzie, Commissioner of Crown Lands, Auckland, recently paid a visit to the fire swept- districts. “Taking them altogether,” said Air AlaeKenzie, “the settlers are in wonderfully good heart. They recbgnise that if they can only tide over the next eighteen months tho carrying capacity of some farms will bo doubled. Taking the district all over, the fire will have increased the carrying capacity for the next season by fully 40 per cent. The present big trouble is that the settlers, who had to buy stock in a high market, have to sell for anything the animals will fetch, as there is no feed left. They would have pulled through the drought all right, but the fire came on ton of -it, and thus destroyed the rough feed which would have kept the stock going. Afany miles of fencing are burned, and that means a lot of ready money gone, and about a quarter of tho area swept was in grass. At the same time the fires will have done they have swept out rough places that never w'ould have burned in tho ordinary course of events, and mado the ground ready for sowing with the first rains. There was a grand point about it; there was no whining amongst the people. Some of them are terrible hard pushed, but they’re not growling about it, and they’re all helping ono another in the best possible spirit. Everywhere I went 1 was struck with admiration for the splendid spirit- with which the people are bearing their heavy losses.