Some Pioneers.

Many race elements have gone to the making of the New Zealander of to-day, though the population is, of course, so predominantly AngloCeltic in origin. Some of our best pioneers, sturdy, industrious and courageous, were Danes and Norwegians, who broke into the great bush that covered the country where the towns of Dannevirke, Norsewood, and adjacent settlements now stand, and made the land a richly productive farm region. There is a small German strain, from immigrants who were dissatisfied with the opportunities in their birthland.

Recently the descendants of the Bohemian settlers at Puhoi met to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of their landing in Auckland. Puhoi, a few miles north of the Waiwera, the hot-springs seaside resort, was all dense bush until a band of immigrants brought out by Captain Krippner from Southern Bohemia, by way of Hamburg and Liverpool, set bravely to work and hewed the tall timber away and made their homes there and brought up large families, a splendid stock of pioneer small-farmers.

Some of them served in the Maori War, and while they were in the fighting field the women kept the axe and saw going, loaded cutters with firewood for Auckland, and carried on the farms. It was heroic work for many a year; still it was better than the life of poverty in the old land of Europe.

But those hard-toiling Bohemians never forgot the traditions and the customs of their homeland. The old ways, the old costumes and dances are on occasion revived. They are great dancers, those vigorous folk of Puhoi. I remember that when there was a wedding in the settlement they kept up the dances for three days, and weren't tired then. Auckland people who were invited up that way on such occasions were amazed at the energy of the girls of the “Boo-eye” (coastwise sailor pronunciation), who danced with the vigour that they displayed in their farm and bush work. Also, there was usually a lordly barrel of beer on tap in or about the ballroom, but no Puhoian was ever seen the worse for liquor.