AN OLD COLONISTS EXPERI ENCES.

Some exciting reminiscences connected with the early days of European settlement on the • West Coast of the Wellington provincial district were related by Mr William Jenkins, a well-know settler at Otaki, one of the witnesses examined last week before the Commissioners who are enquiring into the desir-^ ableness of reopening the cases in reference to several blocks of ; land in the Waikanae district. Mr Jenkins is an old whaler, and came to the colony in the first instance in the year 1836, as one of the crew of the barque Caroline. Cloudy Bay was the first part of the coast at which he touched, and after chasing the marine mammal there for some time the vessel crossed' Cook Strait to the Island of Kapiti. (The Ngatiawa tribe was at this period in armed occupation of the land at Waikanae, and the Ngatitaos, under their celebrated fighting chief, Te Raiiparaha, were in the neighborhood of Porirua and at Kapiti. Mr Jenkins was an eye witness of a lerrible conflict between the two tribes, which took place on the island in 1846. On this occasion, he was so near to the combatants that he expresses surprise that, though neutral, he escaped being shot, for the natives were well supplied with firearms. In 1839 he viewed another bloody battle from a little island close to Kapiti, having heard the -first shot fired, and consequently rowed across in Ms boat out of curiosity. "That," observed the examining counsel, "is more than I should have cared to do." i " Well, sir," replied the old man, I with- a merry twinkle in his eye, " I'm made of very different stuff from you." This fight occurred three days before the arrival of tho ship Tory with the New Zealand Company's instalment of the pioneers of Wellington. Honi Tuhata, one of the Ngatiawa chiefs,, received an ugly flesh wound in the thigh. At Colonel Wakefield's request Mr Jenkins rowed Drs Dieffenbach, Dorset, and Robertson across from the mainland, to Kapiti to attend to the wounded warriors. Tuhata was found taking ashes out of the fireplace and putting them on his wound, treating it after, the fashion of his people. As to his own living, the witness said that he was in the . habit of stopping on the mainland until the mosquitoes became too numerous, and then betaking, himself to Kapiti. He remembered seeing the chief Rangihaeata eating the flesh of the man who killed Rauparaha. Whaling operations were first carried on at Kapiti in -1836, about the. time when the present Waikan^ oirief Wi I?arata's was born, and in the second season Wi Parata's father, who was working on board the whaler Louisa, was drowned. The witness spoke of an old chief who had only a little bit of rook for himself and his family to live upon, and did not own as much land as would grow six karaka trees. Altogether Mr Jenkins' evidence gave the Commissioners an interesting glimpse of the Vicissitudes encountered by the early settlers on the New Zealand coast. — Evening Post.