the Explorers’ Monument on Sea View Hill overlooking the Tasman sea with the mountain landscape crowded behind, a not unfitting setting for such a memorial.
There remains Cass Square—now “the lungs of the town,” and our popular playing field. This was named after Thomas Cass who was Commissioner of Crown Lands in Canterbury prior to Cyrus Davie named before. Travellers by the overland route also pass a well-known locality likewise named after Mr Cass. Cass Square, too, is to become the object of special attention by the Beautifying Association, and the members and public alike while this necessary civic work is being done, should also feel that honor is being done to the pioneer officials of the past who had so much thought for the future generations by providing so generously for the people who were to come after them.
With these thoughts, this paper may be brought to a close. The desire has been to stimulate an interest in our town, so that the citizens will pride themselves on its well-being. A long list of notabilites are associated with the naming of our streets, men who did their country great service. They were all men of splendid spirit. Longfellow has put it in his memorable lines from “A Psalm of Life”:
“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
Let the lives of the pioneers inspire us so that as a corporation we might see the town further progress and be made more and more worthy of the honor done it by associating with its fortunes for all time the names of men distinguished in their professions and in their public life. Let our motto be: “Forward, Hokitika,” and work and strive to achieve that municipal importance which will come from honest effort and unquenched endeavour.
