Recollections of Early New Zealand
By H. B. Morton
Recollections of Early New Zealand
1925
A FINELY TATTOOED CHIEF OF THE OLD SCHOOL
BEATTIE PHOTO
Recollections of Early New Zealand
by H. B. Morton
WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED
AUCKLAND, WELLINGTON, CHRISTCHURCH, DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND MELBOURNE AND LONDON
Preface
I have committed the following Recollections to writing by the desire of my family. Whether they are worth publication I must leave others to judge.
I have endeavoured to avoid anything that could cause pain to the survivors of anyone mentioned. Had I incorporated some of the gossip of the days of which I have written my recollections might have possessed an added piquancy.
Extracts published in the New Zealand Herald called forth some interesting correspondence, and one important fragment of history, which would probably not otherwise have been revealed. I refer to the wise and beneficent course followed by Sir George Grey in restoring to their tribal homes the escaped Maori prisoners taken at Rangiriri in 1864.
ERRATA Page 28, line 2, read "at" for "on." Page 60, 10th line from bottom of page, read "William Rolleston" for "John Rolleston." Same correction under photo. Page 67, 7th line, read "latter" for "later" Page 100, 15th line from bottom of page, read "Granville." for "Grenville" Page 102 line 14, read "Haultain" for "Hamilton" Page 168 4th line from bottom of page read "into" for "with" Page 175, line 12, from top of page, read "20 tons" for "30 tons."
Index
Chapter I. 9
Passage Out on the "Tyburnia"—Incidents on the Voyage—Outbreak of Smallpox—Arrival in Waitemata —Quarantined —Landing at Auckland.
Chapter II. ...16
A Discouraging Reception—Maori War Alarms—An Amusing Incident—First Impressions—The Waterfront —The Water Supply and Drainage—Custom House —Bank of New Zealand—Postage and Telegraphic Facilities—The Suburbs—The Medical Profession —Taxation—Maori as a Provison Merchant—Maori Manhood—Food Importation—Education—A Devastating Whirlwind.
Chapter III. ...29
Early Colonisation—Trade Unionism—Butter—Duty on Clothing —Toll Bars—Bridges—Provincial Government —Revenue —First Railway—Capt. Beckham—Timber and Kauri Gum—Social Activities—Governor Sir George Grey—The Press—Commission Investigates Land Purchases.
Chapter IV. ...43
First Issue of "N.Z. Herald,"—Bishops Selwyn and Patteson— Archdeacon Maunsell—The Williams Family—Te Aute College.
Chapter V. ...57
Sir George Arney, Chief Justice —Mr. F. E. Maning—Early Politicians—Julius Vogel—Loan of Ten Millions for RailwaysMaori War Victories—War Prisoners on Hulk —Disease and Sanitary Conditions—Escape of Prisoners from Hulk.
Chapter VI. ...75
Whitaker-Fox Ministry—Sir George Grey and Ministers—Mr. Thomas Russell—Mr. Fox—Vetoed Land Sale —Opinions on the War—The Maori a Generous Enemy.
Chapter VII. ....80
Grey and Cameron at Loggerheads—Cameron's Resignation— General Chute—Recall oj Sir George Grey—Grey on the Treatment of Colony by Home Authorities—Return of Grey—Weld's Ministry—Grey Enters Colonial Politics—Evacuation of Imperial Troops.
Chapter VIII. ...91
Confiscation of Maori Land—Maoris' Renunciation of Christianity—Murder of Volckner—Bowen succeeds Grey.
Chapter IX. ...97
Te Kuiti—Colonial Methods of Dealing with Rebels—Rewards for Capture of Prisoners criticised—Early Maoris compared with Ancient Highlanders—Exaggerated Statements of Maori Massacres.
Chapter X. ...108
Crime in Auckland—Roads and Bridges—Sea Trade with Northern Coast —Rivalry between Ports of Auckland and Wellington— Seat of Government removed to Wellington—Mooted Separation of Auckland—Effect of Removal of Government.
Chapter XI. ...115
Scarcity of Money—Unemployment—Gold at Thames—Frozen Meat—A Judge of Ale —Lake Pupuke—Old Waitemata Hotel— Arson—Acclimitisation of Birds.
Chapter XII. ...123
Land Claims—The Flax Industry—The Domain Board—Early Population—Taxation—Maoris obtain Ammunition from Colonists
Chapter XIII. ...131
Albert Park nearly lost to Auckland—Crime in Auckland—The Telephone—Fine Christmas Holidays in the Old Days a Delusion —Kauri.
Chapter XIV. ...137
Kawau —Departure of Episcopalian Bishop and Arrival of his Successor —Visit of Duke of Edinburgh.
Chapter XV. ...144
Origin of N.Z. Shipping Co. —Direct Cargo Steamer advocated— Aviation.
Chapter XVI. ...149
Rotorua and the Journey from Auckland—The Pink and White Terraces before the Eruption—Old Mission at Wairoa—Return to Auckland.
Chapter XVII. ...162
Milford Sound—The Trip from Nelson—Scenic Wonders.
Chapter XVIII. ...167
Retrospective: Looking Backward at a Lifetime's Changes.
Chapter XIX. ...171
Conclusion of My Recollections—Remarks on the Finances of New Zealand—A General Resume.
Recollections of Early New Zealand
9
CHAPTER I.
Passage Out on the "Tyburnia"—Incidents on the Voyage— Outbreak of Smallpox—Arrival in Waitemata —Quarantined—Landing at Auckland.
The Tyburnia, a ship of 965 tons register, left Gravesend for Auckland the 31st May, 1863. She was about the third ship that sailed with what were known as Nonconformist Settlers. The passenger list numbered 366 persons, —a very motley crowd of men, women and children of all ages. Such a vessel appearing in the Auckland Harbour to-day would attract no attention, when Yankee schooners of double or treble her tonnage are taken as a matter of course. It may be worth while to recall the conditions under which settlers were brought to New Zealand a couple of generations ago. The Tyburnia had, it was said, been built as a yacht. She was a long, narrow vessel, being then technically known as a tender ship. The passage out was reported as "boisterous." In these days, when the humblest immigrant has a passage in a 10,000-ton fast steamer — the passenger accommodation well lighted with electricity and fairly well ventilated —it is difficult to realise what it meant for a family of small means to cross the ocean over 60 years ago. The few who were fortunate enough to travel first-class occupied what was called the after deck or poop, a section of the ship which was raised above the after part of the main deck to a height of about 7ft., and furnished accommodation for the Captain and officers and a limited number of passengers. The food of these latter was certainly no better than that provided nowadays for
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
third-class passengers. A few sheep, a number of crates of fowls, two or three pigs, and a cow, were carried for their use. Needless to say that mutton and poultry did not improve as time went on. The pigs did better, perhaps, but the poor cow, fed on hay, soon ceased to yield much milk. As for the rest, the less fortunate passengers, who numbered about nine-tenths of the whole, they were carried in what was euphemistically known as " 'tween decks," which meant the hold of the ship immediately below the main deck. Of course there were no port holes, and what dim light there was by day came through temporary skylights fitted over the hatches and these were liable to be removed in stormy weather. At night illumination was obtained by heavy oil lanterns which, swung from the deck beams, creaked with an eerie sound in sympathy with every roll of the vessel. Such ventilation as there was came from canvas windsails. If there was no wind, the supply of fresh air was naturally a negligible quantity. Reading, or, indeed, any sort of occupation requiring light, was out of the question below deck. The sleeping accommodation consisted of small enclosures constructed of rough deal boards. In the case of a family of, say, a father and mother and three or four children under 10 years of age, the enclosure would measure 6 feet by 7 or 8 feet, most of the space being occupied by lower and upper bunks.
The suggestion of a bath would have caused a smile. The nearest approach to this luxury was to rise early, when the decks were being washed, and get a douche from the hose; a simple enough proceeding for young men, but impracticable for the aged, and for those —young or old— of the opposite sex.
Wooden ships were always more or less leaky, and it was part of the boatswain's duty to take soundings in the ship's "well" and, as often as necessary, to blow his shrill whistle and give the order to pump the ship. The amount of water discharged on these occasions was quite considerable.
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
The sails were all hoisted to the tune of some familiar "chanty" or song. I recall one: —
"Oh once I had a little dog His name was Judy Callaghan Haul away! Haul away, Joe!"
The last line would be the signal for three concerted hauls on the halyard or rope which hoisted the sail.
These were days long prior to cold storage; even the system of preserving meat in tins was carried on in what nowadays we should regard as a primitive manner. The food consisted of salt beef and pork—both very salt and very tough—very hard brown biscuits, dried vegetables, and a periodical allowance of suet and flour, supplemented by exceedingly moderate quantities of such luxuries as tea, coffee, pepper, salt, butter, and sugar. Lime-juice must not be overlooked. It was prescribed by Board of Trade regulations as a preventive of scurvy, and its use was compulsory. Passengers had to go to the galley for their daily food allowance, and if from any cause the cook had a black mark against one of them, that person's prospects were not of the brightest.
I have mentioned the boisterous weather. People who have travelled only by present-day ocean liners, which require a gale to make them roll seriously, have little idea of the vagaries of a "tender" ship in this respect. The discomfort of a crowded vessel, loaded with no regard to the comfort of passengers, can hardly be imagined by those who have not experienced it. Many a time the unfortunate bearer of a family or mess dinner was thrown against the side of the ship, and the food sent into the scuppers.
The Captain was a somewhat excitable little man, with a full sense of his responsibility, and it was a familiar and somewhat disquieting sound to hear him at any hour of the day or night, when overtaken by a sudden squall, scream down the hatches "now, young fellows, hurry up and lend a hand to shorten sail."
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
This was the time of the American Civil War. The Confederate ship Alabama was prowling the ocean in search of Northern merchantmen. She held up several vessels en rôute for New Zealand, and it was a matter of uncertainty, day by day, whether or not we should be met by her. Her story is so well known as to need no amplification. The marvel was that one ship should have been able to strike terror into the merchant navy of the United States. She was built a year before by Lairds, of Birkenhead, as a small warship. It was an open secret that she was intended by the Confederate States Government as a commerce destroyer, and the United States authorities called the attention of the British Government to the circumstances. After considerable red tape delay, it was decided in London to detain her at Liverpool the next day. That night, however, she slipped out of port and henceforward, under the command of Captain Semmes, a bold seaman of the old conventional type, she took the leading part in sweeping American commerce off the seas. She put into Melbourne on the 25th January, 1865, and was allowed to coal and leave again in spite of the protests of the United States Consul at that port. She was eventually sunk in the English Channel by the United States ship Kearsage. Incidentally, it may be added, that she brought England and the United States very near to war. The matter was eventually, after several years of diplomatic wrangling, referred to arbitration, and England was mulcted to the extent of $15,500,000 —about 3¼ million sterling—damages. It is interesting to note in passing that the United States authorities, after compensating liberally every possible claimant, had a large sum of money left on hand.
As it turned out, we met with no trouble from the famous ship, but escaping the Scylla of war we felt the full force of the Charybdis of pestilence. About the tenth day out, dark whispers ran round the ship that there was a case of small-pox on board. The unwelcome truth was soon
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
known. A sergeant armourer on his way to join his regiment in New Zealand was the first victim. A feeling of dismay naturally spread throughout the ship. Nearly 400 persons cooped up like sheep in a pen, offered a very excellent chance for a tragic outbreak. It is not necessary to dwell on the horror of the situation. The details were loathsome. There was no proper hospital, and passengers slightly affected were placed over terrible cases of the confluent type. It was found impossible to segregate mild cases. By some extraordinary good fortune, the disease died down about a month before reaching Auckland. There were 35 cases in all, of which nine were of the confluent type, and only one case ended fatally. In dismissing this painful episode one could only wish that a deputation from the anti-vaccinationists could undergo such an experience at equally close quarters to see for himself the difference, in virulence, of the disease as it attacks vaccinated and unvaccinated persons.
On the morning of the 4th September, the Tyburnia arrived off the north end of Rangitoto. It was a typical sunny, spring morning. A sudden squall came as a surprise whilst the ship was fairly close to the shore. On attempting to put her about she missed stays and for a few moments it looked as though the voyage might come to a fateful end. There was no time to be lost. Both anchors were dropped in record time, and as the ship's drift shorewards was checked a loud hurrah went up from the young men. The first mate, a dour old Scot, called out: "Aye, boys, there's plenty of time to coo-ee when ye're out of the wood." The anchors held, however, and as we looked at the rugged island, we were not impressed with the agricultural capabilities of the first land to be sighted. During the morning, Captain I. Burgess came along in the pilot cutter Falcon, and in answer to the usual questions, was informed of the outbreak. The ship was ordered to have no communication with the shore, to hoist the yellow flag, and to await orders
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
from Auckland. Captain Burgess was one of the best known local men at the time, and for many years afterwards. He was a fine sailor and a genial man. He lived at the North Head, and his cutter anchored under the shelter of the hill, was a well-known craft to all old Aucklanders.
The order came next day to lay at anchor at a less exposed spot indicated by the Pilot. Tents and provisions were sent from town, and the order given to land all the young men on the island; the rest of the passengers were to remain on board. Certainly the young men had the best of it. There were some wild spirits amongst them. These enlivened the evenings by singing erotic songs of an unprintable nature. Fatigue parties cut firewood. Nearly all were men accustomed only to city life, and the experience was an entirely novel one. I have often wondered what became of all those young fellows. One heard of hardly any of them in the coming years. A very few became wellknown citizens, and several still survive in more or less prominent positions in Auckland and elsewhere. The quarantine lasted a month. Fortunately there was no recrudesence of the disease.
On the 4th of October, the Tyburnia entered the harbour and anchored off the town. The only wharf in those days extended a few hundred feet beyond the site of the present Ferry Buildings. Cargo was mostly lightered ashore, so were the passengers. There were no ferry boats, or one might say local steamers of any kind. The North Shore was sparsely inhabited, and a small sailing boat was the only means of communication with the town. Early in 1864 a company with a capital of £3000 was formed, called the Waitemata Steam Ferry Company, for the purpose of building a small ferry steamer to run between the North Shore and Auckland.
Shortly afterwards a small vessel called Waitemata was built by Holmes Bros., three shipbuilders from North Shields—who had a yard at Devonport. She was 75 feet
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
long and 30 h.p., built to carry a maximum of fifty passengers —a queer-looking little craft whose appearance would excite merriment nowadays. The launching, however, was quite an event, and the advent of steam communication was naturally hailed as a proof of the growing importance of the North Shore.
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
CHAPTER II.
A Discouraging Reception—Maori War Alarms —An Amusing Incident — First Impressions — The Waterfront —The Water Supply and Drainage—Custom House —Bank of New Zealand—Postage and Telegraphic Facilities—The Suburbs—The Medical Profession —Taxation —Maori as a Provision Merchant—Maori Manhood—Food Importation—Education—A Devastating Whirlwind.
The reception which met the Tyburnia's passengers was not encouraging. Houses were excessively scarce, and residents were greatly scared at the first approach of the dreaded small-pox to New Zealand shores. Many found it impossible to obtain any kind of accommodation, and were glad to shelter in tents which they were allowed to set up in the Domain. My family gave up the weary quest, and was faced with the prospect of a night in the open air. A friendly draper in Shortland Street offered the use of his shop as a last resource. The offer was gratefully accepted, and, leaving our belongings on the wharf all unguarded, we bought a few provisions and made our first meal in the new land, amid cases of drapery and piles of clothing. These were the days of the Maori War. The number of British soldiers in the country was greatly below its ultimate complement. The Waikato Militia had not been enlisted. Rightly or wrongly, the authorities had an idea that a night attack was within the bounds of possibility, or even probability. As a precautionary measure several blockhouses were in evidence around the town, and a rifle pit had been constructed near St. Andrew's Church as a useful
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
corrective should a landing of hostile natives be attempted in front of the Maori hostelry—in what was then called Mechanics Bay.
We were told before retiring that in the event of a night attack the signal of alarm would be the ringing of bells. We new arrivals were quite unaccustomed to fire bells, and when at midnight we heard the loud and continuous clanging of bells we quite naturally assumed the Maoris were on the war-path, and rushed to the door of the shop to assure ourselves of the worst. We found Shortland Street almost deserted. It was evident the Maoris had not arrived. A stray wayfarer informed us that the firebells were ringing only for a fire in High Street. He was amused at the fears of the new arrivals, but the incident was anything but a pleasant accompaniment to our first night in New Zealand.
It is difficult to realise the difference between presentday conditions and those of these early days. I have already mentioned the very limited wharfage accommodation. The Harbour front came up to Customs Street —the street itself terminating to the west of Point Britomart, a picturesque headland running out into the harbour, the low cliffs dotted with fine pohutukawa trees. On this point, overlooking the harbour, was Fort Britomart, belonging to the British War Authorities, a very primitive fort even in those days, and used as a storehouse for military material.
A long flight of cranky wooden steps known as "Jacob's Ladder" was the only means of access from Customs Street to the top of Point Britomart. Near the foot of these steps lay an old abandoned hulk which had been converted into a blacksmith's shop. It was approached from the shore by a wooden gangway and bore a notice board informing those interested that Thomas Inglis, shipsmith, was prepared to execute all descriptions of ships ironwork in the best manner.
For many years the only building extending beyond the Customs Street harbour frontage was an iron shed built B
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
on piles, just beyond the site of the present Palmerston Buildings, on which was painted the notice in Maori "E whare hoko Kapia tenei." It was, in fact the Gum Store of the late Mr. Robert Walker, at that time, the principal buyer of kauri gum, and the notice contained the information that he was prepared to deal in that commodity.
The Gas Company, lately started, had a small plant in Graham Street, a little beyond the western end of Customs Street, where its works were carried on for many years afterwards.
The Waitemata Hotel was a primitive-looking wooden building owned by one Hugh Coolahan. There was no Thames Hotel. The eastern corner of the street was unoccupied save by an itinerant coffee-stall, owned by an enterprising negro —probably the only one of his race in the community.
There was great laxity in regard to straying animals, and complaints were frequent that horses, cows and pigs found their way into people's gardens in Princes Street and other places equally near the young city.
The Club House was a small building in Eden Crescent, and is, I think, still standing close to the well-known "Cargen" Hotel.
There was no municipal water supply, and in the summer time the scarcity of water was a serious matter. The Herald of 11th January, 1865, commented on the situation in somewhat picturesque language: "How long," it asked, "are we to remain poisoned by the fætid liquid we are (many of us) now compelled to resort to, no person can tell." Mr. Cracroft Wilson, of Christchurch, paid a visit to Auckland about this time, and on his return made a speech in which he said: "I was twenty days in Auckland, and yet, during the whole of that time, I never saw a cup of pure water, and in some parts of the city, where rain had not fallen for some time, fears were entertained that fresh water for all the purposes of life would be so scarce as to
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
necessitate its being sold in the street." As a matter of fact a Captain Casey did at this period advertise that he was prepared to deliver fresh water to the order of citizens. I cannot recall where he procured it. There were several pumps in Queen Street, which were free to the public.
It is, perhaps, worth recording the source from which ships of war and some of the merchant vessels procured a supply of water. There was a beautiful spring in the grounds of the late David Nathan's residence appropriately known as "Bella Vista," in Waterloo Quadrant. Pipes were laid from a small reservoir supplied by this spring down Short Street and along the Wynyard Pier which, in early days, formed a continuation of Short Street. It was an interesting sight to see the men-o'-war pinnaces with enormous canvas receptacles the full size of the boats, coming in to the pier, filling up, and off to their ships. This fine spring still flows, although its water is no longer used for drinking.
Practically unlimited supplies of pure water for individual households were obtainable from wells on all but scoria soil, and nearly every house of the better kind had this useful accessory, so that the position was hardly so bad as it was painted. Still, it was bad enough.
When the question of the best source of a supply was discussed a somewhat heated controversy arose. Some favoured Waitakerei, others the Western Springs. The spring at Seccombe's Brewery, and those in the Domain had their advocates, whilst a few sanguine persons thought that a sufficiency might be obtained from wells. Rain water was generally stored in wooden casks which incidentally served as breeding places for countless swarms of mosquitos. The more sanitary 400-gallon square iron tanks were not then in very general use.
Drainage was practically non-existent, and fever was naturally very prevalent. The small creek, which originally ran along the bottom of the gully—the present Queen Street
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
—had been enclosed as a drain, and found its exit at the head of the wharf on the point which is now the main entrance to Palmerston Buildings, but the City Commissioners had no power to compel owners to connect. They passed a resolution towards the end of the year 1864 affirming the necessity of obtaining the power. The enclosed drain must, however, have received a certain amount of sewage for the stench it emitted was always offensive, and in hot weather almost unbearable.
The Custom House was a crazy old wooden building on the site of the present Shortland Street Post Office. Nearly opposite the Bank of New South Wales had its offices, close to the Commercial Hotel.
The newly-established Bank of New Zealand occupied a small building near the present Brunswick Buildings. The Union Bank of Australia was the first to transact business in New Zealand, and had just erected the fine building it still occupies. The General Post Office was a shabby onestorey shack in Princes Street on the site of the present Museum. The local rate of postage was 2d. per half-ounce, and on English letters 6d. per half-ounce. The latter rate was increased towards the end of 1864 to 1/- if sent via Southampton or 1/4 via Marseilles.
Newspapers were free of postage, on the principle that anything which made the Colony better known to the outside world was a public service. When in the early part of 1865 they were subjected to a postage of one penny much indignation was expended in the public press. It was looked upon as a retrograde step, and an infringement of the vested rights of journalists. There was, I think, no telegraphic communication beyond Drury, except for purely military purposes. There was a large public house known as "The Greyhound" on the site of what is now John Court's drapery shop. At the back of this a livery stable was carried on for many years. At the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street West a congeries of shabby
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
wooden buildings served as the public gaol and the Supreme Courthouse. The site on the corner of Shortland Street, where the offices of the South British Insurance Company now stand, was occupied by a wooden building where a Mr. Mark Sommerville carried on a grocery business. This was always known as "Sommerville's Corner," and the distances on the mile-posts between Auckland and Drury were all computed from this point. The site of the present Victoria Arcade Building was occupied by a number of small and shabby business premises. A long jetty known as Wynyard Pier ran out from the end of Short Street. This was reserved principally for the use of boats from men-o'-war in harbour. It was also used by pleasure boats and those belonging to members of the Boating Clubs, and was a very favourite promenade for all and sundry.
The suburbs of the town were very limited, a few picked sites in Ponsonby were occupied by business men— but most of the district was covered with manuka. Newton was about the limit of close settlement on that side of the town. Parnell was the residing place of the official class, the old missionary families, and married military officers. Many an old cottage there has been the abode of men who afterwards made honoured names in the service. As Auckland was at this time the Seat of Government the official class was a numerous one. The principal Government buildings were in Waterloo Quadrant. The Parliament House was the building at the back of the Supreme Court, which in more recent years served to house the University College and has recently been demolished by the City Council in connection with the formation of Anzac Avenue.
There were no public conveyances in those days, with the exception of a bus service to Onehunga, owned by H. Hardington, having its headquarters at the Greyhound Hotel livery stables. The first venture of this description was made by Wm. Crowther, who afterwards entered Parliament and proved himself a sturdy and fearless critic. He
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
started a Parnell service with a two-wheeled vehicle which he called an Albert Car. If I remember rightly it was drawn by one horse and carried about half-a-dozen passengers. The only route to Parnell was via Shortland Street and Alten Road —a very severe one for horse traffic. Those who did not walk came to town on horseback. Practically all the doctors rode round to their patients. These were not the days of specialists, and medical men were General Practitioners in the broadest sense of the term. A story went the rounds that one day an overworked and well-known doctor of the old school had had a very busy morning. About midday hunger reminded him that he had had no breakfast—he was too busy to leave off work—but remembering he had a few biscuits in his coat pocket he took some out to satisfy his hunger. They had become very broken and were mixed with small bones. The devoted doctor picked out and ate the fragments of biscuit and returned the bones to his pocket. He was a skilful and enthusiastic surgeon. These were the bones of an amputated finger which possessed some point of clinical interest. The story was told me by a brother medico, who assured me he had witnessed the occurrence. I forbear to mention names.
The war virtually put a stop to settlement for two or three years. I remember towards the end of 1863 seeing settlers coming into town in drays from abandoned farms with such of their belongings as they had been able to carry away piled up around them.
It seems to me, looking back over all the years, that people drink much less alcohol nowadays. At the earlier period there were many more public houses in and around Auckland than there are to-day. The principal one was the Auckland Hotel, kept by a Mr. A. Vialou. It occupied the site of the present Ellison Chambers and extended through to High Street. It was customary then to conclude a business deal with a drink. The consumption of imported liquor, on the wharf, must have been considerable. It was quite usual
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
to see Customs employees and other persons who worked amongst the shipping, walking up the wharf, at the end of the day in a manner wihch left no doubt that they had imbibed all that they were able to carry. Much the same state of things prevailed in the cellars of wine and spirit merchants. I have, when travelling on the coast, seen men in high positions, whose sobriety would not be questioned, consume at every meal, breakfast included, a quantity of liquor that in these days would hardly fail to excite comment. The modern taste for whisky and soda had not become popular. Of course all drink was much cheaper then than now. There was no duty on locally brewed beer, and Customs duties on wines and spirits were light as compared with to-day.
In this connection it is interesting to recall that Customs duty, other than that on alcoholic liquors and tobacco, and a few other items, was levied on the cubic contents of the package. The rate was 4/-, afterwards raised to 5/-, per cubic foot. It will readily be understood that the discrepancies on an ad valorem basis were amazing. A crate of crockery, worth perhaps £10, would pay about £5, whereas a case of drapery measuring half as much, and worth perhaps £100, would pay £2 10s. The duty on spirits was raised at the end of 1864 to 15/- per gallon, tobacco to 2/6 per pound, tea and sugar were each taxed one penny per pound.
There was no Income or Land Tax, nor were there any Death Duties. A cheque or a receipt, or a deed of any kind, required no stamp. There was practically no public debt, and when a loan of £3,000,000 became necessary to finance the war the colonists had serious misgivings at the magnitude of the debt the country was incurring. A curious and interesting contrast to the present day, when our ruling autocrat tells us that he will need, before Parliament meets again, another five millions to carry on with for a few months.
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
It is difficult to realise that at the time of which I write the ubiquitous sparrow was unknown in New Zealand. There were no starlings, blackbirds, or thrushes, or, indeed, any kind of English birds. Frogs had not been introduced. The trout was, of course, a much later importation. A few rabbits were liberated in the neighbourhood of Foveaux Straits about this time. The honour, if such it be, of introducing them is, I believe, due to a Dr. Menzies, a Southland settler.
The weasel, stoat and mongoose were introduced later on to kill the rabbits.
What is still more interesting is the fact that blight of all kinds was practically unknown. For some years it was perfectly easy to grow cherries, peaches, apples and pears anywhere around the town with no special care, and free from blight of any kind. Every Maori settlement had an abundance of peaches. A peach stone dropped into the ground bore fruit bountifully in three years. The Irish potato blight, now universal, was unknown until less than twenty years ago.
The Maoris were the sole purveyors of peaches in those days. They brought them from their settlements around the Hauraki Gulf in canoes or half-decked sailing boats, packed them in flax kits, which held from thirty to seventy peaches, and hawked them around the town at a shilling a kit. They used to bring their canoes into Mechanics' Bay, which then formed part of the harbour, in front of the Maori Hostelry. They did a brisk trade in fruit, kumeras, pumpkins and pigs. It was not unusual to see as many as thirty canoes there tied to stakes driven into the muddy bottom. The Maoris also supplied nearly all the fish that came into town. Schnapper was almost the only kind procurable. It was carried around at "one herring" a shilling a bundle. A bundle contained anything from three to half-a-dozen or more according to supply and size. It was a matter of frequent comment that the Maoris were allowed free and unrestricted access to the town
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
during the war. There was, of course, no guarantee that they were not in communication with those in arms against us. All traffic with them in lead, gun powder, or firearms was strictly prohibited.
I remember an occasion when a professional conjurer visited Auckland. He bought a kit of peaches, and, breaking one in half before the Maoris, withdrew half-a-crown from its interior. It was their first experience of sleight-of-hand tricks, and they handed him a peach from another kit to experiment with. The same result followed. Then they tried several peaches themselves, and were puzzled that they met with no success. For some little time, however, they hesitated to part with their stock of peaches.
There were many fine specimens of Maori manhood who used to come into town a little later on, such men as Te Monanui, Rewi, and Paora, of Orakei. The principal of caste was part of their system, and it must be admitted that the splendid physique and fine bearing of their chiefs seemed to encourage a belief in an aristocracy of birth.
Such men wore beautiful mats and often carried an ancient stone mere as a mark of rank. They had no need, however, to parade their authority. Their natural dignity and the influence of their presence amongst their people were enough. Bishop Selwyn is said to have once remarked that for a specimen of nature's gentleman he wanted nothing better than a Maori chief of the olden school. Such men were always richly tatooed, not alone on the face, but on the breech and thigh. The painful operation, which was performed at the age of puberty, must have been a great test of endurance. Before the advent of Europeans they had fewer diseases than after. Their teeth were always perfect, and longevity appears to have been the rule.
It is curious to recall the dependence we had to place upon imported food in the sixties of last century. At an earlier period the Maoris in the Waikato country grew a considerable quantity of wheat, part of which they ground
26
Recollections of Early New Zealand
into flour for their own use in small stone mills driven by water power. The early settlers around the Epsom district also grew a limited quantity. A certain amount was even available for export to Melbourne at the outbreak of the rush for gold ten years earlier. There was a windmill at Epsom, the tower of which, overgrown with ivy, still remains. There was also a stone building used as a flour mill, on the site of the Herald Printing Works in Wyndham Street, which belonged to a Mr. Snodgrass. The great building in Queen Street, erected by Messrs. Thornton, Smith and Firth, depended almost entirely upon imported grain. It is pleasant to see that the fine windmill in Symonds Street, built by the father of the present owner, still remains as the most picturesque landmark of our city. It would, I think, be impossible to find another in Australasia.
At the period we are considering there was very little wheat grown in any other part of New Zealand. Our supplies of breadstuff's, mostly in the shape of flour, came from Valpariso or Adelaide, chiefly, I think, from the American port. Flour fluctuated a good deal in price, owing to the uncertain passages of sailing vessels. The normal price was about £15 to £20 per ton, but I remember on one occasion seeing the town placarded with the announcement that a cargo, just arrived from Valpariso, was being offered by Messrs. John Roberton and Co., at £30 per ton.
Eggs were imported from Sydney. They came in casks packed in salt. Butter came from Woolongong in New South Wales. A considerable quantity was even imported from Ireland. This came in wooden firkins secured with wooden hoops. Bacon, too, was largely imported from Ireland. Hay and oats for commissariat use were sent out from Scotland by the Home Government. Cheese also figured largely in our list of imports, as very little was produced in the country. Subsequently for a good many years the Akaroa Peninsula was our principal source of supply. Sheep came principally from Napier. The S.S. Beautiful
27
Recollections of Early New Zealand
Star, Corio, and Star of the South were employed in the carrying trade. Practically all the beef required for military use came from Port Gladstone in Queensland. The cattle were brought over in sailing vessels and were sometimes discharged into the harbour at Taurarua (Judge's Bay). As may be supposed with animals reared on large stations and confined for a good many days on board ship, they were pretty wild when they reached the shore. I have seen some exciting drives as they were mustered on the beach and driven along what is now Gladstone Road—then an unformed track —a sea of mud in wet weather.
Fresh milk was a somewhat scarce commodity. The United States at the time had a practical monopoly of the supply of preserved milk. The same remark applied to cornflour, which in those days was called by Americans, possibly with literal correctness, corn starch.
There was no system of State education. Each denomination had its own schools. I recall the Church of England Grammar School at Parnell. The Wesleyans also had a school in Parnell, carried on by a Mr. Singer. There was also a private school in town owned by a Mr. Gorrie.
The large building in Upper Queen Street, now owned by the Salvation Army, then known as Prince Albert College, belonged to the Wesleyans. This, and the Parnell Grammar School, were the principal schools for many years, and provided education for a generation of Auckland boys, a few of whom are still in our midst. It is worthy of passing note that I cannot recall the name of a boy from either school who afterwards made any conspicuous mark in public life.
Towards the end of 1863 a whirlwind passed over the harbour, without doing any damage to shipping. It caused considerable havoc, however, in its course up the main Parnell Road. Several shop verandahs were swept away. Sheets of galvanised iron and heavy pieces of timber were carried high into the air. The front of the brick house then,
28
Recollections of Early New Zealand
as now, known as "Hulme Court," was badly damaged, and a large sash and door factory on the top of Parnell, owned by David Hunter and Son, was razed to the ground. The Hunters were much respected. Their factory had only just been erected and the loss to them was very serious. In those days, when everybody seemed to know everybody else, I think there was a more general all-round feeling of friendliness. A subscription list to help the Hunters was started, and it is interesting to recall that it was headed by Bishop Selwyn, Bishop Patteson, and Sir Wm. Martin, with £25 apiece. Bishop Selwyn also lent £100 for three years free of interest. It may be noted that he was not a wealthy man, and his income as a bishop was a very modest one.
The whirlwind either changed its course at this point, or its force was spent, as no further damage took place. It may be a trick of memory, but looking back it seems to me that storms were more common, and of greater severity then than in more recent years.
29
Recollections of Early New Zealand
CHAPTER III.
Early Colonisation —Trade Unionism—Butter—Duty on Clothing—Toil Bars —Bridges—Provincial Government — Revenue—First Railway—Capt. Beckham —Timber and Kauri Gum —Social Activities—Governor Sir George Grey —The Press—Commission Investigates Land Purchases.
It is curious to note the varying systems under which the different parts of New Zealand were first colonized. Auckland, originally represented by the Bay of Islands, led the way. It received a very miscellaneous instalment of settlers from Sydney and from the American whalers which frequented Russell in the early days. Marsden (from Sydney), and the Williams Brothers (from the Homeland) were the missionary pioneers. The capital of the colony was fixed at Auckland in the early forties, but for some reason there was no immigration of a distinctive character as in the case of Wellington, Canterbury and Otago. The movement towards an exclusively Non-conformist settlement, orignated in 1862, was the nearest approach to anything of the kind. I do not think, however, that the religious question had very much to do with it.
The free grant of forty acres of land to every adult settler and twenty acres to each member of a family under the age of eighteen was the bait which induced many of the settlers to come to Auckland at this time. Much disillusion followed their arrival. Members of the Non-conformist party named their Kaipara
30
Recollections of Early New Zealand
settlement "Albertland" in memory of the Consort of Queen Victoria, who had died a year earlier. There were no roads. Practically all communication was by sea. Most of the land was covered with bush or heavy scrub. Few, very few, of the settlers had any experience of bush work or of any kind of farming. Many of them frankly saw the uselessness of attempting a new life under such conditions and gave up the idea. There was a good deal of suffering on the part of those who ventured with little money and still less experience on to their grants of land, and many were the stories of their privations. Some, it was said, were at times chiefly dependent upon oysters for food. It was even asserted that it was not an unknown occurrence for potatoes which had been planted for seed to be recovered from the ground and used to supply present urgent needs. All honour to the few brave men and women who won through. No one cared to lend money on northern land in those days, so they had to struggle on as best they could. Such a condition of things may not have been without its advantages. These pioneers had no interest to pay, nor did the fear of foreclosure disturb their peace of mind. Incidentally it may be noted that the current rate of interest on mortgages was from 10 per cent, to 12½ per cent. Tenders for New Zealand Government Treasury Bills bearing 8 per cent, interest were advertised for in February, 1865, but the appeal met with a poor response, and when Mr. Murdoch, of the Bank of New Zealand, went to Sydney to endeavour to dispose of them his mission was equally unsuccessful.
Trade Unionism had hardly reached Auckland at this time. There seemed to be little or no class bitterness. Wages were below present-day standards, and yet many articles of daily consumption were dearer than now. Violent fluctuations took place in the price of all imported things. If a ship made a long passage and a scarcity arose, up went prices. Only tallow candles were made locally. Most of those im-
31
Recollections of Early New Zealand
ported were made in Belgium, and sometimes they went up to about 2/- per pound. Kerosene sold at 40/- a case. A local grocer advertised it retail at 7/- per gallon as a bargain. I do not recall the butchers' price for meat, but as the contract price for military purposes was 10d. per pound, the price in shops must have been proportionately high. Sugar and tea were dearer than now.
The supply of locally-made butter was very limited. If my memory serves me rightly, the price was not less than 2/6 per pound. Irish and Australian butter were much in evidence at somewhat lower prices. Bacon, being imported from the Homeland, was dear. Eggs were a luxury for the well-to-do. Oatmeal was imported from Scotland. Such Eastern farinacious foods as sago, and tapioca, which now come direct, all arrived via London, and were regarded as luxuries.
As the duty on clothing and boots was very low, prices were fairly reasonable. Probably people did not spend more than half of what they now do on dress. Changes in fashion took much longer in reaching us when our dependance had to be placed on sailing ships that often took four months on the voyage. A newcomer when asked what impressed him most on arrival, replied: "the shabbiness of the men's hats, and the length of the horses' tails."
In the year 1863 the Auckland Provincial Government decided to erect toll-bars at the eastern and western approaches to the town. The right to collect tolls at three of these, one on the Manukau Road at Newmarket, one at the Remuera Junction, and the third at Arney Road, were put up at auction, and realised £190 per month. A Mr. John Wrigley was the successful bidder. The venture proved a profitable one, the tolls averaging about £100 a month over the rent. The profitable nature of the lease must have been well guarded, for the same bidder purchased the rights the two following years at £200 and £215 a month respectively, and made a trip to England on the profits
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
of his venture. Soon afterwards gates or chain bars were erected at Seccombe's Brewery, and at Boston Road; also at Otahuhu and Drury.
It was even then looked upon as a cumbrous and rather out-of-date method of raising funds for road maintenance, and it caused a good deal of irritation. They were all removed at the time of the abolition of the Provinces.
There were no bridges throughout the Colony at this times. The rivers were all crossed by ferries. Tenders were invited by the Provincial Government of Auckland yearly for the ferry service at Panmure and for that across the Manukau connecting Onehunga and Mangere.
Speaking of the Provincial Government reminds one that it was part of the Constitution of the Colony for each Province to have its Governor, who was styled Superintendent, and its single Parliament, called the Provincial Council. The Auckland Provincial Council Buildings were near the House of Representatives, behind the present Supreme Court. I remember a visit when the Council was sitting. The forms of Parliament were strictly observed. Mr. Wm. Powditch, who was succeeded by Mr. O'Rorke (afterwards Sir Maurice) occupied the Speaker's Chair with a dignity worthy of Mr. Speaker Peel. Members bowed to the Chair on entering or leaving the Council Chamber in the same way that Members of the House of Commons do to their Speaker. The functions of the Council included legislation relating to roads and bridges, noxious weeds, fencing and many other minor, but no less important, local matters which are now performed by Parliament, often in a hurried and perfunctory manner.
The Provincial Treasurer —a permanent official —was Mr. R. B. Lusk, an elderly Scotch gentleman, quite one of Auckland's local notabilities. He was the grandfather of the various contemporary holders of the name in Auckland and Napier. Of his sons, one, Robert, represented the firm of Collins and Son, wholesale stationers, who then carried
Note the Windmill in distance, still standing
AUCKLAND IN 1853
FROM AN OLD PRINT
THE MORNING BATH
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
on their business at the corner of Exchange Lane and Queen Street; another, Mr. H. H. Lusk, afterwards occupied the post of Superintendent; and a third was the late well-known Major Lusk.
The Provincial Treasurer long survived the abolition of his office, and lived to be about 92 years of age. He died at Devonport.
The revenue of New Zealand for the year 1864/5 was estimated at £703,000, of which Customs were to contribute £605,700, postal service £43,500, and judicature £53,800. As the population was 172,158 this works out an average taxation of £4 1s 8d per head. This, however, leaves out of consideration the inevitable contribution by the ten British regiments then stationed in the country. If that be taken into account the average tax paid by the colonists was considerably under £4. What a happy state of things compared with the average in 1921 of £19 9s per head!
There were three local banks in 1865, exclusive of the Bank of New Zealand. The success of the latter stimulated competition, but neither of the new aspirants ever did much good, and they were all eventually absorbed by the Bank of New Zealand, or died a natural death. Their business could not have been extensive. In November, 1865, their total liabilities were given in the Gazette as follows: —
£ s. d.
Bank of Otago .... 135,949 15 8
Commercial Bank of New Zealand 44,971 18 4
Bank of Auckland .... .... 45,975 13 2
The Colonial Bank of New Zealand, which started later, had a longer life. It figured very prominently many years afterwards in connection with the financial affairs of Sir Joseph Ward. It was eventually absorbed by the Bank of New Zealand.
The first railway in the North Island was started in September, 1864. It was called the Auckland and Drury Railway, and was a Provincial Government undertaking. c
34
Recollections of Early New Zealand
A special Board of Commissioners was set up to carry out the work, of which the late Thos. Cheeseman (father of the late Curator of the Auckland Museum) was chairman. The ostensible object of the railway was to render available for Auckland a coal mine at Drury, and also to connect Onehunga with Auckland. After a large sum of money had been spent on construction work, the scheme fizzled out for want of funds, and all that Auckland had to show for its money was the Parnell tunnel, a few miles of track, and the unwieldy stone piers in Beach Road, which were removed a few years ago as being dangerous to traffic. A good deal of interest centred in regard to the claim for compensation made by the late Jas. Dilworth for damage caused by the severance of his land at Remuera. A somewhat protracted enquiry was held by Captain Thomas Beckham, Resident Magistrate.
Mr. Dilworth assessed the injury to his property at a considerable amount; as usual in such cases, much more than the sum he was awarded, which I think was about £4000. Mr. Dilworth farmed his estate at the time, and had a good reputation for the liberal treatment he gave it. Speaking from memory I have heard it said that he used to apply over half a ton of bonedust to the acre. People then had little idea of the beneficient purpose to which the beautiful estate would ultimately be devoted.
The mention of Captain Beckham's name recalls a very well-known and interesting personality of the period. En passant there is a narrow lane, turning off Grafton Road, where he lived, named after him. He was the only Stipendiary Magistrate, and an old Army Captain, a perfect embodiment of the stage "beak." He was a very tall, well set up man of erect military bearing, and curiously pompous manner. I may add that he was about the most carefully groomed citizen of his day, and used pomade very freely for his hair and heavy moustache. Following the prevailing custom, however, he wore a dreadfully
35
Recollections of Early New Zealand
shabby hat, which in his case happened to be a "belltopper." It was always scrupulously well brushed, but this did not conceal the ravages of time. Year by year added a fresh stratum of the stain of pomade to his head gear, so that as time went on its age was in this way indicated; like that of a tree by its concentric rings. I remember his unvarying opening remark when about to emphasize anything more than usually obvious, was "There can be no doubt in the world." He was once castigating a woman for her bad influence on a young girl who was brought before him. In his severest and most pompous magisterial tone he said: "There can be no doubt in the world that your influence over this young girl has been very bad. In fact, if it were not for you she might not have been here to-day." The Clerk of the Court, an Irishman, with a keen sense of the comic, turned half-round and said in a stage whisper: "The girl's mother, your Worship."
If I have ventured to touch upon his humorous aspect, I will add that he was a hard-worked, conscientious, and capable magistrate. His decisions were based on common sense and an equitable interpretation of law, and were, I think, seldom, if ever, appealed against.
Auckland City was at this time governed by a Board of Town Commissioners. At a meeting on the 28th September, 1864, the net annual value of city property for rating purposes was stated as £164,719 10s. It was decided to levy a rate of sixpence in the £, which was estimated to produce a revenue of £4177 19s 9d. The total estimated expenditure was £4117 19s 9d. Municipal taxation, like national, was very moderate in those days. If we have greater advantages nowadays it is certain that we have to pay liberally for them.
It interests me to record that I can recall the names of only two dentists practising in Auckland at this time: Mr. Plumley, of Hobson Street, and Mr. Cook, of Princes Street. The latter did not remain long in Auckland; he was
36
Recollections of Early New Zealand
a first-class man, and evidently did not consider the prospects sufficiently encouraging. The question arises whether this was because people paid less attention to their teeth in those days than they do now, or was it because there was not the same need for it? It is unsafe to generalise on insufficient knowledge, but I cannot help thinking that dental decay has increased very much. Certainly we did not hear of young girls of sixteen having all their teeth extracted to make room for artificial ones, as dentists inform me is not infrequently the case to-day. Another fact bearing on the question is that Maoris always had beautiful teeth then, whilst in these days they appear to suffer from dental decay almost as much as Europeans.
Timber and kauri gum were the principal productions of Auckland at this time. The waste of timber must have been appalling. Nothing but kauri was considered to be worth saving, everything else was destroyed by fire. Even totara was very little used for building purposes. The value of kauri in Auckland was about 10/- to 12/- per hundred superficial feet. A great deal that is now used for building would then have been burnt for steam purposes, perhaps with advantage, so far as the durability of the houses is concerned.
Kauri gum was easily got—at least, one must assume it was, as the price quoted in the daily paper of 30th September, 1864, for "good and clean" was £14 to £16 per ton. Such gum is now worth about £180. Nothing but fairly good quality was brought into the market. Such poor stuff as is now largely exported for use in the manufacture of linoleum was cast aside as worthless or used for kindling fires.
Auckland, being the Seat of Government, and the military headquarters, was naturally the centre of a good deal of pleasant social activity. Members of both Houses were, for the most part, men of liberal education, and in many cases scions of old English families. There was a distinc-
37
Recollections of Early New Zealand
tion about society that disappeared at a later date. Many of our Members of Parliament had inherited traditons of governing from past generations. Such autocracy on the part of a Minister as we have patiently endured in more recent times was unknown. The only autocrat was our Governor, Sir George Grey, but as he had no power to make laws at the period of his second term of office, his autocratic tendencies were limited to a certain extent to those he might wield as Lord High Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty's Forces. The people generally did not feel the curb, and I think he was at this time not generally unpopular. I well recall his familiar presence in 1864. Tall of stature, he had a slight peculiarity of gait, the result, it was said, of the wound he received from the flinttipped spears of Western Australian Natives some years earlier. His face wore the expression of a man accustomed to command. Fresh complexioned, with good features, and penetrating blue eyes, dressed in a tweed lounge suit, one was accustomed to see him in the afternoon, perhaps accompanied by a friend strolling towards Parnell, where his few intimates resided. Passers-by raised their hats as they met him, a politeness he returned with a grave courtesy and no particle of condescension. As he was personally the best known man of the time in New Zealand, he was certainly the one around whom centred the keenest controversy. He evoked feelings of loyalty—one might almost say hero worship —on one side, and on the other a political rancour that sometimes degenerated into personal hostility and even hatred.
Those who knew him well found it difficult to estimate him impartially, and the man in the street, like the present writer, can hardly hope to succeed. There can be little doubt that he outlived his reputation. "Whom the gods love die young." Had Nelson and Wolfe lived to be old men it is possible that some of the brilliance that surrounds their names would have been tarnished in later life. Had the
38
Recollections of Early New Zealand
great Wellington died soon after Waterloo he would have escaped the unhappy political struggles of his old age. Had Grey's political career ended when he left the Cape the second time, he would have been spared the comparative failure of his last term of Governorship in New Zealand, and his name would have been worthily associated with the names of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lord Durham as one of England's greatest Empire builders.
What to my mind is a very remarkable piece of introspection is contained in a little book with the title "The Romance of a Pro-Consul." The writer, a Mr. Jas. Milne, appears, so far as one can judge by internal evidence, to have met Sir George only after he had finally settled in London at a very advanced age. They must have passed much time together. I judge that Mr. Milne was a young man. He begins his book by quoting Sir George Grey: "Perhaps there is something in old age that likes to have a young man clinging to it." They appear to have understood one another quite plainly that the outpouring of the octogenarian mind would be given to the world. "Why, I am getting to be quite a depository of your memories and ideas," said Mr. Milne. At which Sir George smiled and replied: "Who do you fancy would thank you for them?"
I suppose that most men of advanced age, when looking back on the past, and seeing the things done by them during a long life, would wish many of them to have been done differently, and would see many errors of judgment, and many causes of offence that might have been avoided. Nothing of the kind appears to have troubled this remarkable man. To himself, in his old age, if one may write it without irreverence, he had lived his long life to the glory of God and for the good of his fellow men. He appears to have been imbued with a deep sense of the value and truth of the Christian religion. He narrated that he always carried his New Testament wherever he went. In early life, when exploring in the wilds of Western Australia, after
39
Recollections of Early New Zealand
he had been wounded by hostile natives, his little party was in a desperate situation. Their only hope lay in reaching a town distant over 200 miles away. The heat was overpowering. They were pressed by thirst and hunger. Clouds of hot dust threatened at times to stifle them. Grey had to cast aside one by one his cherished belongings. At last his sextant was left in the hollow of a stunted bush; but he relates to Milne how he kept his New Testament after stripping off the covers to reduce its weight.
Gordon seems to have derived his inspiration from the Hebrew Prophets, Grey from the Sermon on the Mount.
As a young English officer on service in Ireland he became deeply impressed with the servile conditions of the Irish peasantry, their insufficient food, and miserable insanitary hovels, and to have resolved to devote his life to the formation and development of new communities under freer and happier conditions in new and unpeopled lands. His booklet on the Irish land question, little read or known to-day, was a bitter indictment of Irish landlords and the circumstances under which many of their ancestors were granted their estates.
He informed Mr. Milne that when the throne of Greece was vacant, his name was mentioned as one with likely parts for the kingship, adding that Freeman, the historian, wrote that "He would be just the man to deal with any unruly elements in the country," but, says Milne, "the absolute offer of the Crown of Greece would not have tempted Sir George for an hour." In this connection he is said to have made a remark that to my mind supplies a key to explain much in his career. Speaking of Australasia: "Here was a region where several kingdoms were in the raising, where the pattern could take something from yourself. What drew me to the far South as a fairy tale might, was that charm. Yes, it is all new. Hardly anything has been done. It is mine to do with as I will." This displays an egoism, a perfect belief in himself that approaches the
40
Recollections of Early New Zealand
sublime. He led a troubled life. His domestic sorrow is 110 proper subject for comment. I refer to his continual embroilment with those in authority. And yet time generally vindicated his most audacious actions. He was an idealist —an Empire builder; an autocrat by nature, and yet it must be added, a demagogue in later life. His early ideal was the foundation of free communities in the "far south," where the land should be the heritage of all. His Irish experiences had embittered him against land monopolists. It must be said in justice to his memory that he never availed himself of his many opportunities to acquire land or riches. He owned no land in New Zealand except the island of Kawau, and he died a comparatively poor man. He was an altruist, and had in early life formed very definite ideas how his altruism could best be carried into effect. No other way could be so good—hence he brooked no opposition. When during his first Governorship of New Zealand a constitution was approved by the British Parliament and sent to him for promulgation he did not think it a suitable constitution, and he had the hardihood to defy the English Minister of the time. He put the document aside when it reached him in New Zealand and said nothing about it. When he sent stores and men and money from the Cape to India and diverted troops intended for the China War to the relief of India he considered, and probably with reason, that he saved Lucknow, and possibly saved India too. When in 1865 General Cameron declined to attack the strong Wereroa Pa with the force at his disposal he marched against and took it himself.
He knew the risks he ran in going counter to the Home Authorities. Milne quotes him as saying when describing what he had done to help India and his possible dismissal from office in consequence "As for myself, in a personal way, I felt that I should not feel it a disgrace for doing what I regarded as my duty. I had not very much, but at worst I had enough to live upon."
41
Recollections of Early New Zealand
On the whole his last period as Governor of New Zealand did not meet with the approval of the Colonial Office. In 1867 the Duke of Buckingham curtly informed him at the end of a letter that the name of his successor would be communicated to him. Such treatment of a man who had rendered loyal service to his country is not pleasant to look back upon. At that time Grey's idea of a great federation of Britain and her world-wide possessions was hopelessly premature. Statesmen and politicians in the Old Country looked upon colonies like fruit upon a tree which would naturally drop off as it matured. So colonies would secede from the Mother Country, rather to her gain than otherwise, as their defence and government were a source of expense and risk to her.
Grey's sympathies were strongly attracted to the Maori race. His policy would have been to avoid war, and by conciliation to have waited until time and numbers had given the white man his opportunity. His plan was known as the "flour and sugar policy."
There were two morning newspapers published in Auckland from an early period of its history. The Daily Southern Cross, owned by Messrs. Brown, Campbell and Co., represented the point of view of the average colonist, and especially of the landed class. The New Zealander, owned by Mr. John Williamson, was the exponent of the less numerous pro-Maori party. Sir George Grey aroused the bitter enmity of large land-owners during his first term as Governor by appointing a Commission to investigate the equity of many of the so-called land purchases by the early settlers. Large tracts of land belonging to the Maoris under guarantee of the famous Treaty of Waitangi, had been acquired by them. A few muskets and some ammunition, a package of blankets and other equally trifling considerations, was usually all the Maoris got. Grey's Commission cut many of these grants ruthlessly down. The grantees pleaded that they had given the price the Maoris were will-
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
ing to accept, and there was an end of it. This solution of the question did not appeal to Sir George, and, as I heard him say in a speech many years afterwards, he "braved obloquy and scorn," and did what he thought right. Looking back dispassionately at this time, probably most people will agree with him. He certainly did meet with "obloquy and scorn" at the time. One of Auckland's earliest settlers, a friend of Grey's, told me many years ago that on one occasion when an unfair attack of particular rancour was made upon the latter in the press he remarked to Grey that he thought in justice to himself he should make the facts known, Grey's reply was: "My dear---, we don't turn round to kick every yelping cur that barks at our heels."
Recollections of Early New Zealand
43
CHAPTER IV.
First Issue of "N.Z. Herald"—Bishops Selwyn and Patteson —Archdeacon Maunsell —The Williams Family—Te Aute College.
On the 13th November, 1863, the first number of the New Zealand Herald was issued. It bears the imprint of W. C. Wilson and David Burn. Mr. Wilson was a burly Ulsterman of the type that has done so much in the cause of King and Empire. David Burn was a very well-known man of the time. A sturdy, well set up man, well advanced in middle age, with a healthy complexion bronzed by the sun. A figure, trim and well groomed, usually dressed in blue serge, he had the manner and appearance of a naval officer. He was the Editor for some years, and his frank and remarkably outspoken articles were a great feature of the paper. He had been a Shakespearian actor in his early life, and I well remember the pride with which he told me one evening over a friendly rubber of whist that he had acted a leading part with Macready. I think it was in "Othello."
The Herald's first leader referred to a debate in the House of Representatives in which such questions were discussed as the removal of the Seat of Government, and the proposed division of the North and South Islands into two separate colonies. There were likewise passing remarks on a proposed amendment of the Constitution Act. The Colonial Treasurer, Mr. Reader Wood, had presented
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
his Financial Statement a few days before. I have already alluded to a proposal to raise a loan of £3,000,000 to pay war expenses, which the Government were to ask the Home Government to guarantee. If they succeeded the interest would be 4 per cent., otherwise the Colony must pay 5 per cent.
There are many interesting allusions to the current events of the time. Mr. Sewell gave notice to move that the lands of rebel Maoris who did not lay down their arms within a certain specified time should be confiscated, and embodied in his resolution the necessity of roads throughout the disturbed districts, and European settlements capable of self-defence being formed therein.
It is natural that of the many names of colonists occurring in the first issue of the Herald, not one remains amongst us to-day. What is perhaps surprising is, that of the many mercantile firms and shopkeepers whose names appear in the advertising columns, one only has survived. David Nathan was a prominent figure at the time, and universally respected. His business, carried on by son and grandsons, still flourishes.
I have mentioned Sir George Grey as the outstanding figure in public life in New Zealand. Second only to him was Bishop Selwyn. Had he been bred a statesman, instead of a theologian, to what height might he not have attained! To-day he would be an anachronism. With the growth of democracy the general tendency to mediocrity, following the prevalence of education of a kind, seems inevitably to follow. Mediocrity's the thing. It rules the world to-day. Great men are out of date.
Selwyn had the tradition of great men behind him. He was named George Augustus after a cousin of his father's. His earlier namesake is chiefly remembered as a wit and a sinecurist in public life, lacking the nobility of character of our great Bishop. Selwyn was one of the very
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few great Colonial Bishops. Dr. Moorhouse, of Melbourne, was a great Bishop. Colenzo, of Natal, created a greater stir in the world than either by his criticism of the Pentateuch.
In early life Selwyn acted as curate to the Reverend Isaac Gossett, Vicar of Windsor. His portrait by Richmond, taken at this time, is fairly well known by its reproduction as a steel plate engraving. It represents him as a very handsome young man—I remember remarking this to one of his successors, who replied: "Yes, Richmond painted all his subjects as they will appear in the next world." As a curate of Windsor, he was a favourite of the youthful Queen. Had he remained in England there is little doubt he would have had a notable career. He was attached to this young country, however. There was at that time a fascination about the name of New Zealand that no other colony possessed. He learned the Maori language on the voyage and astonished everyone by preaching to the natives in their own tongue the first Sunday after he landed. His physical achievements were the admiration of the Maoris. He had gained a knowledge of seamanship on the voyage, he was a fine swimmer, a good boxer, a first-class all-round athlete in fact. Many were the stories current in early days of his accomplishments as a muscular Christian. His sympathies were naturally with the Maoris, and in fearlessly asserting what he considered the right attitude towards them, he made many enemies among the settlers.
In 1864 he had been Bishop of New Zealand for over twenty years. Hard work, constant exercise, and the worries incidental to his position, had aged him. His face was wrinkled, but he carried himself with all his early dignity. I have seen him on his return from a pastoral visit to the Waikato, riding a tired horse, carrying a heavy swag across the pommel of his saddle, dusty and travel stained, the very picture of a Christian pilgrim. Still more often have I seen him in old St. Mary's Church, a diminutive wooden build-
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ing at that time, trim and well groomed, looking the very picture of a Christian Bishop, and yet I do not recall ever having seen him in cope or mitre, nor can I remember seeing him preceded by the pastoral staff. He paid a visit to England in, I think, 1867, and was offered the Bishopric of Lichfield, which, it was said, he declined, as he intended to return to New Zealand. The Queen invited her old friend to Windsor, and one who knew him well told me that she paid him the unique compliment of extending both hands to him and saying: "Dr. Selwyn, we must have you for Lichfield." This settled the question, and he was lost to New Zealand.
Bishop Selwyn came to New Zealand as a missionary bishop and, like most men who have come into close contact with the Maoris, his sympathies went out strongly towards them. He tried earnestly, whilst hostilities were in progress, to mediate between the contending parties. It was his misfortune to incur the suspicion of both. The ill-feel-ing of some prominent colonists, and especially of those who had large land deals with the Maoris, was marked by unreasoning bitterness.
On the eve of his departure, at a public meeting held to bid him farewell, he spoke with evident emotion in alluding to this attitude on the part of a section of his fellow colonists, in words which are worth recording: "I am by no means in a state of mind to say anything to hurt the feelings of anyone, and if the gentleman to whom I am going to allude be present, I assure him, if there is anything in what he said to be forgiven, that it has been forgiven long since. Not very far from this place, a public meeting was held, nearly as large as this, at which a speaker described a monster of iniquity, an enemy of his fellow-creatures, in such animated terms, that he was called upon to name, and he named the Bishop of New Zealand. I believe my fault was that I desired unity, I desired that,
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I desired peace, that it might please God to give us peace. The speaker of that meeting enjoyed the benefits of peace when I saw him at Matamata, and was an advocate for that peace which he found fault with me for advocating."
The allusion was unmistakeable. The gentleman referred to was one of Auckland's most prominent citizens, a straightforward and enterpising business man, full of energy, with unfaltering faith in the future of the country. He had secured a very large block of land at Matamata on terms which many persons thought too favourable to himself.
In spite of the ill-feeling on the part of a few prominent men, the great Bishop's unselfishness and manliness appealed to the people generally—a man who earns the reputation of being a fine sport is sure of friendly recogniion by Englishmen. One of his last Episcopal acts was the consecration of St. Andrew's, Epsom, on 4th October, 1868. He presided at the General Synod held at Auckland in the same month, and left for Sydney in the old s.s. Hero on the 19th October. His departure was marked by general tokens of goodwill. A large number assembled to see him off. The horses were taken out, and his carriage was drawn down the wharf by eager volunteers.
The name of Selwyn naturally brings to mind that of Patteson. Could two men have been less alike? Selwyn, strong, imperious, autocratic; Patteson, whose appearance was not suggestive of great physical strength, was gentle, patient, persuasive. Both men with a common characeristic: a simple belief in the Christian religion, and a burning desire to spread the knowledge of it. I never heard a remark which even suggested that Patteson had an enemy. I have mentioned his patience and gentleness. One hot, steamy afternoon I saw him walking along the road fronting Mechanics Bay. When he reached the foot of Parnell Hill he overtook a young girl carrying a basket of laundry work
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It was a heavy load for a young girl on a hot day. With no suggestion of condescension, he took the handle on one side of the basket and quietly said, "I will help you up the hill."
At Oxford Patteson had come under the influence of Jowett. He was captain of a cricket eleven, a good speaker, and a better linguist. During a visit of Selwyn to Oxford he decided to join the latter and left England in 1855. He made his first voyage to the Islands the following year. The first missionary school was established by Selwyn at St. John's College. At the time of which I am speaking, it was stationed at Kohimarama, so that Patteson spent a part of each year in Auckland. The stone dining room, still standing, was built with funds presented by Miss Charlotte Yonge, being the entire profit, amounting to about £2000, on the sale of her well-known novel, The Daisy Chain. It was said that he refused to regard the natives as an inferior race, and that he treated his classes as though they were formed of "Eton boys." He had no thought of the value of money, except as it helped him to carry out his ideals. He took his meals with his native scholars, and partook of the same food. He gave all his funds, including his fellowship at Merton College, and even his father's legacy, to the mission. His biographer in The Dictionary of National Biography says that he worked incessantly from 5.30 a.m. to 10 p.m. He spoke twenty-three native languages, and in early life acquired a knowledge of German, Hebrew, and Arabic. He was killed by natives at one of the Santa Cruz group of islands on the 16th September, 1871. At that time "blackbirding" expeditions from Auckland and Sydney in search of native labour for the Queensland sugar plantations were a regular branch of the South Sea Islands trade. Later on, each boat had to carry a Government inspector. At that time every slave hunter was free to work as he willed, and their will was sometimes relentlessly cruel. Patteson suffered according to native custom for the cruelties of one of these expeditions. His body was
BISHOP A. G. SELWYN New Zealand and Lichfield
BISHOP PATTESON Melanesia
BISHOP JOHN SELWYN Melanesia
BISHOP CECIL WILSON Melanesia
THE CHAPEL, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
OLD ST. THOMAS' CHURCH, WEST TAMAKI (1895)
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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sent off in a canoe, a palm branch laid across his breast. The story is, perhaps, too well known to need re-telling. His face was said to have borne a heavenly calm. It may well be that a martyr's death was one he would not have shunned had the choice lay open to him. He lived nearer the Christian ideal than probably any man our times in New Zealand have known. Well may we use for an epitaph the words of the Hebrew Prophet: "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."
Amongst the clergy, Dr. Robert Maunsell, Archdeacon of Auckland, was pre-eminent. He was a scholar and a linguist, and probably knew more of the Maori language than any other Englishman has ever known. He, with one of the Williams, evolved its grammar, and so enabled it to become a written language. One who knew him intimately told me he once asked the Doctor how he had acquired his perfect knowledge of Maori idiom, and that Maunsell explained to him how it was his custom, when visiting Maori villages to take his place amongst the natives and place a row of pieces of tobacco in front of him, with a promise that anyone who showed him he had used a wrong idiom should have one of the pieces. By this means he became accustomed to speak it like one of themselves, and, what was even better, to think in it. His translation of the Old Testament is, I believe, still unrivalled.
At the time of which I write he was Vicar (I think we said Incumbent in those days) of St. Mary's, Parnell. He came of an old English family, which had long been settled in Ireland. His style of preaching was forceful and unconventional. His illustrations, often drawn from the simple incidents of daily life, were arresting and sometimes provoked a smile from his congregation. As when in preaching on men's wilful ignoring of religion, he said, "The great Commander Nelson had a blind eye, and when at the D
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Battle of Copenhagen his captain told him that the signal was flying to cease firing— Here he paused a moment and resumed with the question "What did he do?" "What did he do?" He put the telescope to his blind eye and said "I don't see it." "So it is with you; so it is with you." On another occasion I recall an appeal for funds to re-shingle the roof of the old church, which was in a very leaky condition. He said: "If you are not more liberal you will have to sit in Church with your umbrellas over your heads." The habit of going to church on Sunday mornings had not then given place to bathing, golf, tennis, etc., and quite a considerable number of young fellows regularly formed part of the morning congregation. The Kisslings, Nations, Kennys, Graces and other early Auckland families are names I recall amongst the number.
Dr. Maunsell was a broad-minded Churchman. I remember being present at a lecture he gave on the anonymously published Ecce Homo, afterwards pretty well known to have been written by Professor Seeley. He gave a fair statement of the intention of the book —to present the human side of the life of Christ, and thought it was, on the whole, a useful contribution to Christian literature. Considering the violence with which the book was assailed by many good people in England (one speaker, I think it was the Earl of Shaftesbury, a very eminent Evangelical, denounced it as "a book belched forth from the jaws of hell," or some very similar expression), the lecture gave evidence of a fair and judicial attitude towards a much criticised and well-abused book.
The Archdeacon told a pretty story to illustrate the unselfishness of Bishop Selwyn. On one occasion when they were making a pastoral visit in company, they got "bushed." The night was very cold, and when he woke in the early morning he was surprised to find his companion no longer by his side, and he himself covered by the Bishop's coat. On rising to search for him, he found the Bishop
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walking briskly up and down, coatless, slapping his arms from side to side for warmth. He had discarded his coat, probably early in the night, out of regard for his younger, but less hardy, friend.
I am permitted by the surviving members of the venerable Archdeacon's family to record a very touching and very characteristic incident, the last of his long and honourable life. He was lying in complete prostration of body and in great suffering, and expressed faintly a desire to "depart and be with Christ." A clerical friend who was present quoted the last verse of Psalm XXVII. (P.B.V.): "O tarry thou the Lord's leisure; be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart, and put thy trust in the Lord." The dying man, with a momentary flash of his old energy, replied with emphasis: "Bad translation, bad translation," and, quoting from memory the original Hebrew, translated the passage thus: "Wait upon the Lord. Be of good courage. Let thy heart be strong; yes, wait upon the Lord." Four hours afterwards his spirit passed peacefully away.
There were a few of the old Crown Colony officials still residing in Auckland, and when one says Auckland it follows, as a matter of course that Parnell is meant. Sir Wm. Martin, the ex-Chief Justice, lived on the right-hand side of Taurarua, the present Judge's Bay. He and Lady Martin were prominent church folk, great friends of the Selwyns. Sir William was generally credited with a considerable share in the framing of the constitution of the Anglican Church of New Zealand. The Hon. William Swainson lived on the slope fronting the Bay. He was an English barrister, and the first Attorney-General. He left England in 1841, and brought his house, which is still standing on its original site, out with him. Like Martin and Selwyn, he strongly opposed the Maori War, as being impolitic and unnecessary. In 1842 he caused a flutter in Governmental dovecotes by advising Governor Willoughby Shortland that in his opinion "the jurisdiction of the British Crown did not
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ipso facto extend to the Maoris." It is recorded that this opinion drew a severe rebuke from Earl Grey, who, I suppose, was Secretary for the Colonies at the time. When New Zealand ceased to be a Crown Colony, Mr. Swainson decided to remain in Auckland. He became a member of the Legislative Council, and his ripe knowledge and experience were at all times freely given to the church. He was known to everyone, and was universally respected. Personally he was an extremely spare man. The opening in the post and rail fence enclosing his property at the end of Gladstone Road was so narrow that it was not easy for anyone but himself to pass through it. He never walked out without an umbrella, which he carried over his shoulder like a rifle. He was a bachelor, and his select and exclusive little afternoon parties were the delight of the young ladies who were privileged to attend them. He was apt at versification, and were it permissible to reveal such matters, I think there are several ladies still amongst us who treasure little verses descriptive of the charms and attractions of their possessors, written by this very pleasant old gentleman. He sold his property a good many years later to Mr. Street, a well-known yachtsman from Otago, on condition that he was to retain possession of his old home as long as he lived.
No mention of Mr. Swainson would be complete without an allusion to Mohi, his Maori servant. Mohi was a fine old Maori, a huge man with charming manners —quite an institution of the time. Mr. Swainson used to go to town by rowing boat when the tide suited, and Mohi, dressed in spotless white with blue facings, was his trusty boatman.
I need hardly say that the Williams family have been among the most prominent men of their time since the foundation of the colony. Their progenitors were Henry and William Williams, the former of whom arrived at the Bay of Islands in 1823, and the latter in 1826. Henry began life as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. Physically and mentally they were both strong men. They were well known
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, 1895
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
ARCHDEACON SAMUEL WILLIAMS AND HIS GRANDDAUGHTER MISS MARY WARREN
F. W. WILLIAMS PHOTO
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
to Aucklanders at this period. William became the first Bishop of Waiapu. His brother Henry was Archdeacon of Waimate. They both had large families, and as these were equally virile the members of the clan rapidly increased. It is not too much to say that their numerous descendants throughout the North Island at the present time are all men of note.
Probably no other single family has exercised so great an influence on the life of the community, whether regarded from a religious, social, or economic standpoint.
It may be granted that some members of the family have acquired considerable landed estates, but it will be conceded by all who know that they have always acted as pioneers, and have never shirked the difficulties and hardships inseparable from the life of early settlers in remote and often inaccessible districts.
Archdeacon Samuel, a son of Henry Williams, settled at Te Aute in Hawke's Bay, where he earned the respect and regard both of settlers and Maoris. He spoke Maori fluently in the grand manner of the old chiefs. He founded the well-known Maori boys' college at Te Aute, and took a leading part in all matters relating to Hukarere Maori girls' school at Napier.
He was a man of extraordinary energy and enterprise. He took the responsibility of diverting the River Waipawa from a tortuous and swampy course, and so reclaimed several thousand acres of the most fertile land in New Zealand. This great work was carried out on his own plan, and was completely successful, in spite of the unfavourable forecasts of professional engineers.
He was an expert judge of live stock, and introduced some of the best Shorthorn cattle that have ever come into New Zealand. I remember on one occasion he lost, from pneumonia, a very fine Shorthorn bull, which he had recently imported at the cost of 800 guineas. I met him soon afterwards, and expressed my regret at his mishap.
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"Yes," he said, "it was unfortunate, but see how much better off I am than Job. He lost all his."
His cousin, Archdeacon Leonard Williams, was a resident of Parnell in the sixties and early seventies. Later in life he became third Bishop of Waiapu in succession to Bishop Stuart. He was a graduate of Oxford, a man of gentle and unassuming nature. An accomplished Maori scholar, he compiled and printed the first dictionary of the Maori language. He possessed a wide and practical knowledge of New Zealand botany. Worldly wealth had no attraction for him. He left as a heritage for his family the memory of a well spent life, full of kindliness and good works.
The story of Te Aute College for Maori boys furnishes an interesting side light on the early history of New Zealand.
In the year 1847 the Rev. S. Williams, who was a son of Hemy, was placed in charge of Maori schools in the Otaki district, where he succeeded so well that there were over 120 scholars in the central school at Otaki alone.
In the year 1852, Sir George Grey, then Governor, visited the district and made Mr. Williams' house his headquarters. He explained to him that he was convinced there would soon be a considerable influx of settlers into the Hawke's Bay district, and that it was desirable there should be facilities there for the education of Maori boys.
In view of the experience which Mr. Williams possessed Sir George expressed his wish that he should transfer his services to Hawke's Bay. Apart, however, from the Governor's wish to provide facilities for Maori education, there is little doubt that, aware as he was of the confidence which the natives had in the young clergyman, he believed his influence would prove useful in preventing friction between them and the early settlers. As Bishop Selwyn concurred with the Governor, Mr. Williams agreed to the proposal. He travelled by canoe, with his wife and infant
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daughter, up the Manawatu River to meet the Governor and Bishop at Waipukurau, where final plans were made for the establishment of a school at Te Aute.
As New Zealand was at this time a Crown Colony, the Governor had power to dedicate Crown lands for public purposes, a power liberally exercised by Sir G. Grey. His foresight regarding the future of this country has proved of inestimable benefit, by the provison of landed endowments for education, municipal, recreation, hospital, and other purposes. He set aside 4000 acres at Te Aute for the endowment of the proposed school, and used his influence successfully with Hapuku, the chief of the district, to make a gift of a similar area. Hapuku wished his gift to be a personal one to Mr. Williams, who very properly declined the offer. The combined grants remain vested in trust for the benefit of the school.
Mr. Williams' first abode at Te Aute was a pataka (Maori food house), 14ft. by 8ft., with walls 3ft. 6in. high. This he exchanged, as soon as possible, for a three-roomed raupo whare, in which he and his family lived for six years.
The school was opened in 1854 with twelve pupils brought from the Otaki school. The attendance for some years was not encouraging. Funds were scarce in the young colony, and the school was carried on in a raupo whare, which was hardly waterpoof, and generally unsuitable for its purpose.
The endowment land brought in little or no revenue. Half of the combined grants, about 4000 acres, was let at a yearly rental of a farthing per acre, but after holding on for four years the tenant gave up his lease on the ground that he could not make a living out of the land.
The Government made small grants which, supplemented by funds supplied by Bishop Selwyn and Mr. Williams' friends, enabled limited areas to be cleared year by year and cropped with wheat and potatoes, or laid down in English grass.
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In the year 1857 matters began to improve. Four pit sawyers were engaged to cut timber for necessary farm buildings. In 1860 Mr. J. H. Coleman was engaged as overseer of the estate, a position he held until 1868. Under his management the property was greatly developed and rendered revenue-producing. During this period Mr. Williams, finding he could not obtain funds from the Government, borrowed money from a private source, with which he erected the large wooden building that served for the school until 1918, when it was destroyed by fire.
A fine block of brick buildings is now in course of erection. The endowment land has been leased in small holdings, and brings in a revenue of about £7000 a year.
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CHAPTER V.
Sir George Arney, Chief Justice—Mr. F. E. Maning—Early Politicians —Julius Vogel—Loan of Ten Millions for Railways —Maori War Victories—War Prisoners on Hulk— Disease and Sanitary Conditions—Escape of Prisoners from Hulk.
Another of the interesting men of the early days was Sir George Arney the Chief Justice. He was an unmarried man of gentle, almost courtly manner. He lived in St. George's Bay Road, and afterwards in Remuera at the junction of Arney and Brighton Roads. He used to indulge in mild judicial humour, and purred his pleasant platitudes in a gentle, soporific voice that soothed and tranquilised his decorous court. As Mr. Plowden, the London Magistrate, said in his reminiscences, it is only those who have sat on the bench that know how much even a feeble joke relieves the boredom of the position and prevents possible collapse from pure ennui. During the hearing of an action for breach of promise brought by a disappointed young lady against Mr. Hunt, of Thames goldfield fame, a lady milliner of quite ordinary appearance and fairly mature years, gave evidence that at a party given by the wife of the leading butcher of the period to enable the defendant to make the more intimate acquaintance of the plaintiff, she, the witness, had been asked to have her photograph taken. "And a very pretty picture I'm sure you made," gently interjected Sir George.
A very notable case tried before him was a charge of seditious libel, brought by the Crown against one Charles Oliver Bond Davies. Davies was a diminutive man of mummified appearance with a thin squeaky voice, destitute of one atom of personal charm. He was much in evidence at the time, and was what was known as a Pakeha-Maori.
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He had great influence with the Maoris, and spoke their language fluently. It was a curious sight to see him in intimate converse with the splendid specimens of Maori manhood with whose appearance we were so familiar at that time. Davies was the author of a Maori pamphlet in which, as the Crown alleged, the Natives of the Arawa tribe, who had remained on our side throughout the war, were held up to contempt and ridicule. He was defended by Mr. R. W. Wynn, the ablest criminal lawyer in Auckland. The Native Minister was the Hon. F. D. Bell, a man with a very judicial cast of mind, a just, but not a good party man. It was waggishly said of him that he always looked at both sides of every question, and had it been practicable would have voted both ways, but even then, uncertain that either was right, he would preferably have exercised a middle vote. Mr. (afterwards Sir) F. D. Bell was the father of the present Knight. He subsequently became Speaker in the House of Representatives, and later Agent-General in London. He was a widely read man, of sauve manner and attractive appearance. Apart from politics he was an Otago run-holder. I happened to go into Court during Wynn's concluding speech in defence of Davies, and remember hearing him, in impassioned tone and with questionable taste, parody a well-known children's hymn:
"Tinkle, tinkle, fickle Bell, I wonder much you're not in Hell."
Trials for sedition in modern times have generally been unsuccessful. Davies was acquitted.
Another celebrated case which came before Sir George Arney some years later was the bankruptcy of Mr. George Thorne, a well known Auckland merchant at the time. A large shipment of wool made by him to a client in San Francisco resulted in a very heavy loss, for which he considered his bankers responsible. The loss ran into a good many thousands, and rendered Mr. Thorne insolvent. He paid every one of his creditors in full except the bank,
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which he left to take all that remained. On the petition of the bank he was declared bankrupt, and his discharge was strenuously opposed. The two leaders of the bar were engaged on the case. Mr. Whitaker appeared for Mr. Thorne and Mr. MacCormack (father of the present Native Land Judge) for the bank. An apparenly interminable wrangle over the case went on for over a year. The judge seemed unable to cope with its intricacies. In the end Sir George resigned his judgeship and a local barrister and ex-Minis-ter, Mr. T. B. Gillies, who succeeded him, brought the case to a speedy conclusion.
F. E. Maning, the author of Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha-Maori, was another man of note. His book, and Alfred Domett's Ranolf and Amohia, have been said to be the only two classics that New Zealand has so far produced. Like many other classics, I am afraid they are little known, and less read by the present generation. Maning was a man of huge stature. He relates in his book how he made his reputation on landing by a successful wrestling encounter with a great chief. His appearance was rather suggestive of a story book pirate. I remember on the occasion of a visit I paid him at Hokianga, seeing him throw a boomerang and, not having seen anything of the kind before, how surprised I was to see the weapon, after gyrating in the air at a considerable distance away, return within a few feet of the spot whence it had been thrown. We had on the occasion of a ride from Taheke to Waitangi, some interesting talk about his early days in New Zealand. I asked him how it had been possible for the Maoris to fell a tree several feet in diameter, say for a canoe, with stone adzes or axes, and whether he had ever seen it done. He said that he had, and described how the Maoris erected a platform about three feet high around the tree. Then perhaps about thirty or more of them, each provided with a stone axe, would mount the platform and slowly walking around the tree would strike to the rhythm of a song. Each blow would cut
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out a small chip, and so in course of time —it might be weeks—the tree would be felled. I did not think to ask him, nor do I understand—how they avoided disaster by a tree falling in the wrong direction. Poor Maning died at an advanced age whilst on a visit to England. In accordance with his last wish his body was brought back to New Zealand and buried in the Symonds Street cemetery. His wife was a Ngapuhi woman of high rank. His son, Hauraki Maning, was a very well-known athlete, and his daughter was an accomplished and highly-educated lady of distinguished appearance, remarkably tall, and very proud of her Ngapuhi ancestry.
There were at this time certain leading men in New Zealand without some of whom no politician would have attempted to form a ministry. I recall the names of Weld, Stafford, Fox, Fitzherbert, Bell, Fitzgerald, Hall, Rolleston, Wood and Whittaker as the most prominent. They were notable men in their day. Who remembers them now? And yet they were the founders of New Zealand. The tub thumping orator of our time, if their names were mentioned, would imagine they were class legislators, land monopolists, and impersonations of every capitalistic vice. It was Weld who curbed the autocracy of Governor Grey, and insisted on the management by the colony of its own affairs, and repudiated divided authority on the question of defence. John Rolleston, familiarly known as "Honest John Rolleston," who initiated liberal land laws, two of whose sons are now members of the New Zealand Parliament, practical settlers of the best type, destined, I hope, to make their mark in the affairs of the Dominion. Atkinson, who started the taxation of property, and who held strong views on the subject of class privilege. I asked a lad who attends one of our most popular secondary schools, the other day if he had ever heard the names of one or two of those whom I thought least likely to have reached oblivion. He had not. "We aren't taught New Zealand history," he
KAURI FOREST, WAITAKERIE RANGE
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
KIWI (APTERYX)
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
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said. Sic transit gloria mundi. These men answered to the old governing families in England. They were mostly cultured men of good family. Their speeches were often enlivened with quotations that nowadays would be "caviare to the general." Reader Wood was an Auckland man residing in Parnell. He had a commanding presence, was a well read man, a pleasant and fluent speaker, and never at a loss for an apt quotation. It was understood that he designed the old Parliamentary buildings, which until recently were used for University purposes. The staircase was, I believe, originally placed outside the building for some reason. It used to be jokingly said that it was forgotten in the original plan and placed outside as an afterthought. I remember conversing with him in later years during a time of great commercial depression, before science had come to our rescue by the preservation of food on long voyages. We agreed that the outlook seemed black, the cloud showed no silver lining, but he was no pessimist. "The sun will shine," he said, "the showers will fall, and the earth will still give forth her increase."
Mr. W. B. D. Mantell, a Southern man, was the humourist of the House. There were many good stories current, but I can recall only one. He was walking arm-in-arm with a friend along a corridor of the House in Wellington when they espied through an open door Mr. Julius Vogel, who was a Jew, voraciously enjoying a salad. Gently nudging his friend he said
"Behold the gentle J-ew (dew) Descend upon the tender herb."
The mention of vogel's name reminds me of the important part he played in the affairs of New Zealand a few years later. At this time he had not come into great prominence, although I think he was recognised as a man of outstanding ability. He entered Parliament in the year 1863. As his name indicates, he was of German origin,
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although born in London. He was not an attractive-looking man, short of stature, with a heavy body set upon short legs, a rather massive head, and a very short neck. His thick black hair grew down comparatively close to his eyebrows, and gave him the appearance of having very little forehead. It need hardly be added that he was an exceptionally good subject for caricature. Apropos of which, a young fellow in the civil service, who was clever at the art, being in the House one evening whilst Vogel was speaking, drew a very good, but by no means complimentary, sketch of him. This was at the time when Vogel was Premier. The young man passed his sketch round to some lady acquaintances, one of whom retained it. Next morning he was informed that the Premier wished to see him. The youth scented trouble. On entering the Minister's room he saw the skit lying on the table in front of Vogel, who said: "I think, young man, you know something about this?" The artist, of course, admitted the fact. Said the Premier: "You have a dangerous gift; be careful how you use it," and bade him return to his duties. Had he been a petty man he might, instead of giving the youth a few words of good advice, have made things unpleasant for him.
Vogel was the most interesting, and probably the ablest statesman this country has yet produced. Had his field of action been on a sufficiently large scale, I have often thought he might have been named in comparison with his famous Hebrew contemporary Disraeli. A mere recital of his activities is enough to show his versatile mind.
He founded and carried on successfully for some years the Otago Daily Times, one of the leading daily newspapers in the colony. He originated the State Life Insurance Office and the Public Trust Office. It was during his Ministry that the Torrens Land Transfer System was brought into operation, the San Francisco mail service started, and the cable laid across Cook's Straits. He had visions of the possibili-
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ties of the pumice plains which form the central plateau of the North Island, and suggested that science would provide a way of fertilising these great tracts of land, which at the time were regarded as hopeless for anything like close settlement. He was the moving power, that rightly or wrongly, abolished the cumbrous system of Provincial Government. He had broad and statesmanlike views as to the future of the Pacific Islands, and their ultimate relation to the British Empire, and especially to this country. He advocated the system of the franchise to women, at a time when the idea was hardly breathed in the old country, and finished his political career by appointing himself AgentGeneral in London. There he wrote a pamphlet suggesting England should pay off her national debt in a very novel way. His plan was to lend the colonies seven millions a year for 100 years at 4 per cent., which would be onehalf per cent, above the rate at which he estimated England would be able to borrow the money. He stated that the half per cent., invested, would produce, at the end of 100 years, the sum of £855,253,059.
I have yet to mention what, so far as New Zealand is concerned, was his most daring scheme, and the one which has exercised, from that time to the present, the greatest influence upon the development of this country.
On the 28th June, 1870, he laid his proposals before the House. Briefly, they were to borrow £10,000,000 spread over a period of ten years, for the construction of a railway from end to end of the colony. He proposed to pay contractors partly in bonds and partly by grants of land. He also proposed immigration on a large scale. Nowadays we have grown accustomed to think in millions, and an addition to our indebtedness in one year of nearly as much as Vogel proposed in ten, excites little comment. In 1870 more conservative —shall I add safer —views prevailed, and his scheme was looked upon by many as a very daring one which might land the colony in difficulty. The precautions
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he intended to prevent political influence from spoiling his scheme did not avail. Political railways in the South Island diverted the money from his intended main line, and, as we know, Auckland remained isolated from the rest of the colony for many years, and even now the northern portion of each island remains isolated. His immigration scheme was carried out with considerable vigour, and reached its high-water mark in 1874, when 32,118 immigrants arrived in the colony from England. There was no serious opposition to the scheme on the part of the working class, nor did any great difficulty arise in the finding of employment.
Mr. (afterwards Sir) Julius Vogel was, on the whole, a popular Prime Minister. He remained in office for seven years. The peroration to his memorable budget speech is worth quoting: "We shall be told that these proposals will entail on posterity an enormous burden. Granted. But they will give to posterity enormous means out of which to meet it. Every member has constituents whom he represents: He will be justified in assuring them that the measure we propose will benefit every person in the community, from the highest to the lowest—from the richest to the poorest. They will lead the colony to prosperity, and enable it to do justice to its splendid resources."
The year 1864 was memorable for its incidents in connection with the Maori War. We gained an important victory at Rangiriri on 21st November, 1863. The memorable incident at the Orakau Pa took place in 1864, when Rewi scornfully replied to our humane overture that he should surrender, that he would fight "for ever, for ever, for ever."
We fared badly at the Gate Pa at Tauranga in April, 1864. An interesting incident arising out of this unfortunate engagement, and one not wholly without its comic element, took place shortly afterwards. Some comments on the action, in an article in the New Zealander, were taken as suggesting that the men of one of H.M. ships—l do not
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recall which it was —had not shown the bravery which it is usual to associate with British sailors. A large party of bluejackets landed one morning at the Wynyard Pier — it can hardly have been without the knowledge of their officers —and proceeded to the office of the New Zealander near the top of Shortland Street. It was a crazy, wooden shack. The sailors passed a strong rope, which they had either brought from the ship or purchased in the town, around the building and, planting an anchor on the opposite side of the street, announced their determination to pull the whole concern over —type, press, papers and all. The staff lost no time in clearing out of the building. Something, however, happened to cause a delay in carrying out the sailors' project which gave them time to listen to counsels of moderation. They eventually retired with their tackle and anchor and left the flimsy old building intact.
Nearly two hundred prisoners fell into our hands at Rangiriri. The problem was, what to do with them? H.M.S. Curogoa was in harbour, and they were temporarily placed on board. Obviously that could not last. Her Majesty's ships were wanted for a very different purpose. These men were prisoners of war, and the common gaol was not the place for them, and in any case was not large enough to accommodate them. The Governor and the military authorities were desirous they should be treated with clemency. The Ministry, whilst not desirous they should be treated with undue severity, was anxious they should be detained beyond the possibility of escape.
There was a coal hulk in harbour named Marion. She was a small vessel about 100 feet long and 26 feet beam. The coal was left in her lower hold, the main hold was whitewashed, and the Maori prisoners were transferred to her from the Curogoa. The exact amount of air space per man was under fifty cubic feet. This sounds like a repetition of the Black Hole of Calcutta incident, but we must remember that sixty years ago current ideas of air space E
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and sanitation were widely different from what they are to-day. The hold of a ship carrying passengers in 1864, for instance, would not be considered quite fit for their conveyance in this year of grace 1925. Still, fifty cubic feet was below the limit, even for Maori prisoners of war, so the coal was removed and the lower hold made available. After this was done the Port Immigration Officer, Captain S. J. Williams, in an official report to Ministers, stated that, "were the Marion in every respect fitted as a sea-going craft with 219 passengers on board she would be allowed to proceed to sea without committing any breach within the meaning of the Act." Let us thank Providence that such a report would be impossible to-day.
The old Marion and her prisoners were naturally the object of great interest to us all. I well remember going off from Wynyard Pier and pulling round the hulk. There were some very fine men amongst them, and some quite the reverse. They formed a very interesting study, many fishing, the majority listlessly sitting or lying on deck. This was in fine weather. The conditions in wet or stormy weather must have been less pleasant, to say the least of it. These men were taken prisoners at Rangiriri on 21st November, 1863, and transferred from H.M.S. Curoqoa to the hulk Marion on the 24th December. No one seems to have been troubled with any misgivings about their place of detention during the summer months, but on 12th April, 1865, Sir George Grey writes to Ministers that "he has felt, and still feels, that when men have lost relations, lands, homes and liberty, that they ought not to be kept prisoners on board a hulk, in uncertainty regarding their future fate, for any longer period than the necessities of the case may absolutely require. He would also try the prisoners before the ordinary courts of the country."
The positon I happened to occupy at the time gave me an opportunity of perusing all correspondence between the Governor and his Ministers before it was presented to
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Parliament, and very entertaining to a youthful outsider it was. The relations between the parties had not been amicable for some time. A heated dialectical encounter now began, which raged fiercely until the Ministry resigned from pure weariness towards the end of the year. A perusal of the correspondence brings to mind the well-known advice of Lord Chesterfield to his son when the later was about to take the "Grand Tour" of Europe. I quote from memory: "Go forth into the world, my son, and learn with how little wisdom men are governed."
The Governor had two doughty antagonists in Mr. Wm. Fox, the Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Fred. Whitaker, the Attorney-General. Mr. Whitaker replies to the Governor a week later that the "Ministry would prefer to detain them until peace is established, and then offer the same terms as those who accept the terms of submission offered by the Government." He objects to try them by the ordinary courts, "on account of the delay and technicalities which attend such trials." He ends by suggesting trial under the "Suppression of Rebellion Act." On the 22nd April the Governor replies by emphasizing his points of the 12th April.
A few days later Mr. Fox writes to the Governor pointing out the great improvement in the prisoners' health and physique, and how much they enjoyed fishing and games. About the same time he reminds the Governor that the detention of the prisoners has checked murders of "unarmed men, women and children."
On the 4th May Sir George Grey suggests to Ministers a Judicial Board of naval and military surgeons to report whether the prisoners can, with safety, be kept on the hulk during the coming winter. About this time the Government leased a house and forty acres of land on the North Shore for sick Maori prisoners.
Sir George Grey, writing to the Duke of Newcastle on the 7th May, asks "that instructions be given to him in relation to the disposal of the rebel prisoners."
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Here was a new phase of the difficulty. Sir George had been writing to his Ministers as though the responsibility of dealing with these prisoners rested upon the Colonial Government. Now a knotty question arises. These Maoris were the prisoners of Her Majesty's Forces, taken in the course of Sir D. Cameron's military operations. Had the Colonial Government really any right to interfere? This despatch was not made known to Ministers for nearly a month after it was sent away, and on the 2nd June Mr. Whitaker writes to the Governor: "Ministers regret they were not given the opportunity to make their observations on the subject of responsible government." It was one of the Governor's peculiarities, as we shall see later, to send away Home despatches reflecting on the man on the spot, and omitting to forward copies to him in time for a reply to reach England by the same mail as the reflecting despatch.
On the 27th June, Mr. Cardwell, then British War Minister, wrote to Sir George Grey authorising him to act with regard to the prisoners, and stating that he "does not consider concurrence of (his) Ministers indispensable," seeing that the Maoris were taken by Her Majesty's Forces, and further adds: "I shall therefore be fully prepared to support you in case you should have thought it necessary, with or without the consent of your Ministers, so to deal with these prisoners as in your opinion the public interest may have required."
On the 11th July a new personality appears on the scene: the Reverend B. Y. Ashwell. He was a very emotional man, of diminutive stature, who had been in charge of a Mission Station on the banks of the Lower Waikato. He was a simple-minded man, of a kindly disposition, who had the welfare of the Maoris very much at heart.
He usually wore a pith helmet which appeared to be a size or two too large for his head. As he had a short neck, the brim of his headdress seemed to rest upon his back and
J. C. MACCORMACK
THE HON. JOHN ROLLESTON
PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR LAKE ROTO EHU
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
A STUDY IN EXPRESSION
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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partly obscured his face. He met Mr. Fox one day and suggested that it would be a good way out of a difficulty to send the prisoners to Kawau. Mr. Fox laughed and said: "I know whose heifer you are ploughing with." Mr. Ashwell's idea was to isolate them from their rebellious friends, and to set aside a portion of the island for them to cultivate. It is not unreasonable to assume, as Mr. Fox assumed, that he was acting with the Governor's authority, and he was requested to put his views in writing for Ministers' information. This he did.
The idea did not apparently appeal to Ministers. Sir George, in spite of Mr. Cardwell's suggestion, that "the concurrence of his Ministers was not indispensible," was not disposed to make a public scandal and take the responsibility of flouting his Ministers by insisting on the removal of the Maoris from the hulk. He tried other tactics. He knew that the war was unpopular amongst the officers of Her Majesty's Forces, and asked Dr. W. A. MacKinnon of the 57th Regiment to visit and report on the sanitary aspect of the case. Dr. MacKinnon occupied a very high and responsible position in the Sanitary Department of the Army. His report was uncompromising. It dwelt, inter alia, on the "foulness and filthiness of the atmosphere," and stated that "the lower deck was in perfect darkness," that "none o9f the prisoners had anything to lie upon but the deck of the ship," and that "many of the prisoners were much depressed and careworn." This seemed fairly conclusive evidence that things were not as they should be, but Ministers were equal to the emergency. The Southern Cross newspaper had long been bitterly opposed to Sir George Grey. Ministers sent the latter a long account of a visit paid to the hulk by a representative of the paper with a request that it should be forwarded to England for the information of Her Majesty's Government. It was written in flowery language, and was obviously intended to convey the impression that the prisoners were having a
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very fine time indeed, and that, if anything was wrong, it was, all things Considered, that they were being too well treated.
If this was not enough, the Reverend J. Morgan wrote to Mr. Whitaker that, having visited the hulk, "I could not hut compare the state of the prisoners on board, and that of the Maoris generally in their native villages; the comfort, order, cleanliness, and health of the prisoners, together with the abundance of provisions and the regularity of meals, contrasted most favourably with their condition when at home."
The conflict of opinion is so bewildering that one is reminded of a well-known story of Daniel O'Connell who, when passing through a narrow alley in Dublin, was annoyed by the vituperation of two women who were abusing one another from opposite windows. He called out: "My good women, cease your wrangling; you'll never agree, for you're not even arguing on the same premises." To complete the story of divergent evidence, I must anticipate dates. It could not be denied that there were cases of dysentery, etc., on board the hulk, and with a view to prove that the health of the prisoners was no worse than that of Auckland generally, Dr. T. M. Philson, the Medical Superintendent of the Auckland Hospital, was asked by Mr. Fox to report on the sanitary condition of Auckland between November 1863 and July 1864. His report is couched in somewhat unusual terms. "I am unable," he writes to Mr. Fox, "to account for the increasing prevalence of febrile diseases on medical grounds, although something is due to increasing population, to the hardships and exposure of the present war. I think we shall search in vain for second causes, such as defective drainage, overcrowding, want of fresh vegetables, etc., etc. The true cause you will find set forth in the 90th Psalm, Bth verse. 'For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath (due to us for sin) are we troubled.' And as to the remedy, re-
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pentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ, issuing in general reformation, will prove a never-failing specific."
I have already mentioned the terribly insanitary conditions of Auckland at this period. Without drainage or a water supply, a sort of low fever was very prevalent. One recalls, by the force of contrast, Lord Palmerston's reply to a deputation of Glasgow citizens, when the city was threatened with an outbreak of cholera. Their request was for a day to be set apart for humiliation and prayer. "Go back, gentlemen, and attend to your drains," was the substance of his reply.
The situation between Governor and Ministers had become so strained that they disagreed on almost every subject. However, some compromise must have been effected, for one morning early in September we missed the old hulk from her accustomed moorings. She had been towed by H.M. Colonial gunboat Sandfly to Kawau, with her human freight on board. The tender susceptibilities of the Governor for the welfare of the Maori prisoners on the one hand, and the anxiety of his Ministers for their safe keeping on the other, were apparently both satisfied. They could till the soil, or indulge in long walks, or fish from the wharf, or, what was still better suited to the Maori temperament, they could bask in the sunshine and enjoy their tobacco to their hearts' content. Boats were even provided for their use. The idea of their using them to cross to the mainland naturally never entered the official mind. At least, that is the most charitable suppositon. It was even said that they had given a verbal pledge to Mr. White, a Native interpreter, not to leave the island without the sanction of the Government.
Their guard on the old hulk had consisted of fifty men of the Colonial Forces, under the command of a German, a Captain Krippner. In those days, to be a Teuton was almost a better passport to promotion than to be a Briton. The guard on the island consisted of our emotional little
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friend, Mr. Ashwell, a Dr. Sam, Mr. White, and one warder, according to one account, and a "few" according to another.
Surely Burns' familiar aphorism, "The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee," was never better illustrated than by the result.
The town was startled on the morning of September 12th by the news that all the prisoners but two were missing. I do not remember seeing any quite definite account of the method of their departure. Probably it took place whilst the Europeans were asleep. Several small vessels had been noticed in the vicinity of the island, and it was supposed that they assisted the Maoris to reach the mainland. The entire journey in the rowing boats left at their disposal would have been a rather tedious and laborious one. However they got there, the outstanding fact was that they were there. They had little or no food. It was said that for several days they subsisted on the root of the nikau palm. They appear to have had a considerable sum of money amongst them. The only serious and definite charge made against their honesty during the time they were in the North was that they shot a few bullocks which were running in the bush. The real danger was that their presence and influence might spread the war to the northern tribes.
A deputation of Matakana settlers came to town to set forth that the Maoris had occupied a good strategic position at Mt. Hamilton, that they were building a strong pa, and praying that appropriate steps might be taken. Sir George hastened by H.M.S. Miranda to the spot where the Maoris had landed without telling his Ministers he was going, which, of course, caused further friction between them. He sent pacific messages to the Maoris. They laughed at them. According to the Southern Cross newspaper, they said "Kakino te kawana" ("the Governor is no good"). Worse still, regardless of gubernatorial dignity, they poked fun at him, and said "The Governor is an old woman."
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Sir George suggested to Ministers that the Maoris be offered safe conduct to Waikato or elsewhere. Mr. Searancke, a Government agent, sent to endeavour to persuade them to return to Kawau, reported that their leader had informed him they were all determined not to return for, as Wirenui Kumete said: "How many birds, having escaped from the trap, return to it?"
Controversy in Auckland raged round the question whether Governor or Ministers were responsible for the escape. It was said editorially at the time: "There were not wanting some who were ready to aver that Governor Sir George Grey was at the bottom of the whole affair. Others more reasonably lay the blame on the Ministry." There was a general feeling of insecurity. If operations against these men began there was no telling what might happen. The whole of the Northern Peninsula might be ablaze. Weeks passed in fruitless negotiations. Eventually all these erstwhile prisoners were allowed, probably assisted, to filter through to their old homes in the Waikato, and the farce came to an end.
It was said that boats were left in suitable places on the Manukau to enable them to cross the harbour. We were regaled from time to time with stories of what these men were doing, how, for instance, they had cut down the flagstaff at the Signal Station at Manukau Heads. As a matter of fact, I think they showed themselves to be a harmless and law-abiding body of men, apart from their participation in what they regarded as a struggle against the injustice of the white man in depriving them of their land.
The foregoing remarks on the escape of the Maori prisoners were published, as one of a series of extracts from the present work, in the N.Z. Herald of 16th July, 1923, and called forth a number of interesting letters from persons old enough to remember the incident. The only one which threw any fresh light of importance on the subject was one by Mr. D. B. Wallace, which is of exceptional in-
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terest, and fully confirms my surmise that Sir G. Grey was a party to the return, to their homes, of the escaped prisoners.
Mr. Wallace states that he was at the time a clerk in the employment of a Mr. D. Kirkwood, of Onchunga, who owned several small schooners running between that port and various small places on the West Coast. One of these vessels, the Excelsior, left Onehunga for Kawhia, with the owner as a passenger and en route stopped at Whatipu, on the North Manukau Head, to embark a number of Maoris, the exact number he was unable to state, for Kawhia, where she arrived next day, anchoring just inside the south head at a Maori village called Te Maeke. He states that "there was great rejoicing at the return of their friends and relatives, and Hau Hauism being rampant, dancing round the pole continued till a very late hour of the night. The tohunga, or priest, would ask in English, "Who likee speakee the wind?" and some unfortunate would jump up and run round the pole till he sank exhausted or in a fit, when the tohunga would interpret his ravings.
Some of the leading Maoris advised Kirkwood to get away and never to come back, as they would not guarantee his safety, so early next morning the Excelsior, left.
In about a week or ten days after Kirkwood's return I went to Government House and received from Sir George Grey's secretary a cheque for the trip of the Excelsior."
The tenure of office of the Whitaker-Fox Ministry was almost over. Both Governor and Ministers had grown weary of their ceaseless wranglings. Matters were brought to a climax by the action of the Governor in sending Ministers a copy of a letter from General Cameron to himself, in which Cameron expressed his opinion that the war was being protracted by the colonists "from base and unworthy motives, and with a culpable disregard of the lives of British officers and men."
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CHAPTER VI.
Whitaker-Fox Ministry—Sir George Grey and Ministers—Mr. Thomas Russell —Mr. Fox—Vetoed Land Sale —Opinions on the War —The Maori a Generous Enemy.
The Governor, however, was not disposed to let Ministers resign on their own terms. He wished first to communicate with responsible southern men, who might be able and willing to form a new Ministry. As there was no telegraph, and steamers did not leave very frequently, this meant delay. Ministers grew impatient. Mr. Whitaker wrote to the Governor on the 20th October, 1864: "Ministers can conceive no ground of resignation more constitutional and proper than that which induced them to resign, viz., the expressed opinion of the Queen's representative (Cameron) that they were prolonging the war, and closing the avenues of peace."
Sir George wished to convoke Parliament. By this time the verdict of the Commissioners appointed to fix a site for the new capital "somewhere in Cook's Straits," had decided on Wellington. Ministers therefore considered Wellington should be the place of meeting. The Governor replied that if this were so he could not be present, as the state of affairs in Auckland required his presence there. After more correspondence Ministers gave way, and Auckland, for the last time, was the meeting place of the General Assembly.
Sir George, in a parting memo., complained bitterly of the treatment he had received from his Ministers. "His health and spirits," he wrote, "are impaired by the un-
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generous treatment which he conceives he has received from Ministers." Ministers, in reply, failed to see what the Governor had to complain of, and asked for more specific charges. The Governor, however, declined to carry the controversy any further.
There is no doubt he had a strong combination against him. He was a master of incisive phrase, and had no mercy on his opponents, but in pitting himself against Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Fox he faced a very able and aggressive combination. It was a keen dialectical fight, and it would be hard to say where the advantage lay.
There was at this time a strong public feeling in many quarters against the Governor, and a leading article in the Canterbury Press appeared on 15th November, 1864, urging Parliament to petition the Home Government for his recall.
Before parting with this Ministry it may be of interest to record the remarkable fact that it contained the two members of the leading firm of Auckland lawyers. It was this circumstance that gave point to the jibe of a writer in the Saturday Review of the period, who wrote of New Zealand being "governed by a couple of attorneys." In those days English Ministers were chosen from the governing class, and he would have been a bold man who should have foretold that fifty years later Great Britain would itself be autocratically governed by one attorney and "a little Welsh one" at that.
Mr. Whitaker, the senior partner of the Auckland firm, was Attorney General. He was an astute lawyer, whose "opinions" those Delphic oracles so skilfully framed by lawyers as never to leave their authors in the wrong, were then, and for many years afterwards, freely sought by litigants. He was rather short of stature, a man of few words in the ordinary business of life. He wore a monocle, the use of which, other things being equal, gives the wearer an advantage over the ordinary man.
ATIAMURI, RIVER WAIKATO
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
SIR GEORGE GREY, K.C.B.
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When the eye behind it is focussed upon you it seems to pierce you through and through, and to make you feel that you are at its mercy. In recent times who can gauge the value of the monocle of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and his illustrious son and successor, Austin?
Mr. Thomas Russell, the junior partner, but more dominating personality, was Defence Minister. Whatever part he may have taken in the preparation of the stinging correspondence which threatened to inundate the Governor, his name seldom appeared. He was a tall, active man, with a somewhat pale and statuesque cast of face, perhaps a little ascetic in appearance. Not that he was really an ascetic. He was a man of many parts. I was told by a contemporary that he was one of the most widely informed men he had ever met. My informant, a man of old family and good education, was a Queensland sheep farmer who had settled in the Waikato. He told me that Mr. Russell seemed to know as much about sheep as he did himself. He was at this time a very prominent Wesleyan, and I think I am correct in saying that he laid the foundation stone of the Pitt Street Church. His real domain, however, was finance, and he had much to do in the promotion of several of the most prominent and successful financial and insurance institutions in the colony. I do not think he aspired to be a great lawyer. It is possible that it might have been said of him as it was of one of England's Lord Chancellors: "If he had known a little law, he would have known a little of everything." But of this I am not competent to judge.
Mr. Fox, whose signature appears at the end of some of the spiciest Ministerial memoranda, was, in private life, universally respected. He was a prominent advocate of Temperance and a quiet Christian gentleman. Sir George seems to have fully realised all this, for in a despatch to Mr. Cardwell on the 29th September, 1864, he wrote: "I believe Mr. Fox to be a very kind-hearted and benevolent man from whom I am sorry to differ."
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It might be thought that correspondence with Ministers would have absorbed all the Governor's energy and time. It was not so, however. In addition to a very active and sometimes heated correspondence with the Home authorities, he was constantly writing letters and memos to General Cameron. His position in this respect was a trying one. He was sent to New Zealand to bring to a successful and speedy end a very unsatisfactory petty war begun by his predecessor, Governor T. Gore Brown. When responsible Government was granted to the colony, the ultimate decision with regard to Native affairs was left with the Governor. A block of land at the mouth of the Waitara River, was sold by a Maori named Teira. The sale was vetoed by William King, a chief of the district. Unhappily Governor Brown, with the concurrence of his Ministers, directed that the land should be surveyed. Strong protests against so provocative a proceeding were made by Sir Wm. Martin and Mr. Hadfield (afterwards Bishop of Wellington), and other influential men. Unfortunately they were unavailing. Had Governor Brown been a tactful man, and thrown his influence on the side of a waiting policy, there might, and probably would have been no war. As it was, King's influence was strong enough not only to start hostilities in the Taranaki Province, but eventually to carry war into the Waikato country, and it was Grey's misfortune, instead of bringing war to an end, to see it extended over the greater part of the island south of Auckland. The Maoris said of the two men "Brown was like a hawk, he swooped down upon us; Grey was like a rat, he undermined us."
It was natural that under these circumstances the Home Government grew impatient, and were anxious to end the war. Sir George laboured under great disadvantages. He himself liked and respected the Maoris. His friends, men of influence and distinction, such as Sir Wm. Martin, Mr. Swainson, and many others disliked, I had almost written loathed, the war. It was unpopular with a con-
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siderable section of Auckland Colonists and with practically all those of the South Island. In England the impression in high quarters was that it was one of the usual results of land hunger on the part of the Colonists. The Times in a leader on the disastrous Gate Pa engagement, wrote "The soldiers we land in New Zealand are in one respect seriously 'demoralized' as a military critic would express it. They have their own opinion on the war, and they have lost all faith in its justice and wisdom. They don't like shooting down savages upon their own land."
Instances of acts of chivalry on the part of the Maoris gained general currency and gave point to the dislike of the War generally attributed to British Officers. In the life of Bishop Selwyn two well known instances are narrated in the words of General Alexander as follows: —
"One day several large canoes were seen coming down the Waikato River from Mere Mere with a white flag flying. On being detained at Colonel Austin's post they were found to contain a large quantity of potatoes and several milch goats as a present to General Cameron and his soldiers. The chiefs at Mere Mere had heard that the troops were short of provisions and they had obeyed the Scripture injunction, 'If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst give him drink.'
"In 1865, when our troops had stormed the formidable Gate Pa and been repulsed, several wounded officers were left inside. One of them was tenderly cared for by the very Maori who defended the pa, Henere Taratoa by name. He had been educated by the Bishop at St. John's College, near Auckland, and now when his dying enemy feebly moaned for water, and there was none inside the pa, this noble warrior crept down at the imminent risk of his life, within the line of English sentries, filled a vessel with water, and bore it back to refresh the parched lips of the expiring Englishman."
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CHAPTER VII.
Grey and Cameron at Loggerheads—Cameron's ResignationGeneral Chute —Recall of Sir George Grey—Grey on the Treatment of Colony by Home Authorities—Return of Grey—Weld's Ministry—Grey Enters Colonial Politics— Evacuation of Imperial Troops.
It is worthy of remark that, under these circumstances, no word of disparagement of the Colonists in relation to the war, ever appears in any of Sir George's memoranda or despatches.
He differed fundamentally from General Cameron as to the proper method of fighting the Maoris. The latter had a good fighting record, and came of a gallant Highland stock, but his genius and temperament disposed him to caution, and strategy which would have been suitable for a war between civilised combatants. Although he had at the time about ten British regiments under his command, in addition to about eight thousand Colonial troops raised in Australia and known as Waikato Militia, he considered he was not strong enough to carry hosilities into the Wanganui district, and on 30th January, 1865, he wrote to Grey recommending His Excellency "to apply to the War Office for a reinforcement of at least two thousand men." Sir George, however, had no intention of making any such application. He considered that operations should be carried on more on guerilla lines; that the Maoris should be
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followed up and brought to fight before they had time to complete their well-planned and formidable pas. For months a perfectly friendly correspondence went on between Governor and General. Early in 1865, however, Sir George writes to his new Ministers that, "having considered recent letters he had received from General Cameron, he believes that if a colony can only have operations carried on by being subject to such imputations it will be more likely to extricate itself speedily from its difficulties by relying on its own resources, energy and courage, than by depending on aid accompanied by remarks of this kind."
At this point we must anticipate dates to follow up the quarrel between Cameron and Grey, and his Ministers. On the 8th April, 1865, Mr. Weld wrote to the Governor in reference to the severe strictures on the Colonists passed by the General, which the Governor had communicated to Mr. Weld, as he had already done to his former Ministers. "In reference to certain statements made by Lieut.-General Sir Duncan A. Cameron, which have been communicated by the Governor to his responsible advisers, Ministers express their regret. . . . They believe that, having regard to the character of the colony (which it is their duty to uphold) and to their own which, as public men, is the property of the colony, it is impossible longer to accept assistance so unwillingly rendered. Nor, indeed, can it be hoped that the zeal and energy (which alone can secure success or lead to any useful operations in the field) will be displayed by any officer, however distinguished, in support of a case which is branded by him with such severe reprobation." In May the Governor decided to give the people of New Zealand the benefit of General Cameron's opinions as to their object in carrying on the war. He sent to the local press a copy of Cameron's strictures, accompanied by a copy of his own memo, to Ministers on the subject. This acted like a train of gunpowder. The General apparently
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saw no impropriety in casting his aspersions on the honour of New Zealand colonists, in a private note to the Governor, but to let them know they were his opinions was quite another matter. That they should be given to the public press was outrageous; a breach of all good manners in fact. He wrote on the 3rd May an indignant note to Sir George addressing him as "Sir," in place of the former "My dear Sir George," and concluded by saying: "I intend to forward copies of these memoranda for the information of Her Majesty's Government that they may know what your Excellency, in concert with the Colonial Ministers, was doing behind my back, whilst I was engaged in operations in the field."
In June the General receives a copy of a despatch which the Governor had sent the same day to the Home authorities, enclosing a memorandum from Ministers commenting on the General's opinion of the Colonists in relation to the war. The copies did not reach-nor were they apparently intended to reach —the General until next morning, and meanwhile the mail steamer carrying the Governor's despatch had left for Sydney. The S.S. Alexandra, belonging to the Home Government, lay in the harbour. The General was equal to the emergency. He prepared his reply and, placing it on board the Alexandra, sent her off with orders to lose no time in reaching Melbourne, and there to tranship his despatch to the P. and O. mail boat, which he hoped to intercept at that port. He wrote to the Secretary of State for War: "Re Memorandum by Colonial Ministers to His Excellency, written in consequence of the Governor having communicated to them the contents of my private letters to him I have despatched the S.S. Alexandra with this letter in the hope that she will be in time to overtake the mail for England." Whether she did or did not overtake the mail, history does not record, nor was it a matter of the first importance either way. The whole transaction was only one more episode in an unfortunate squabble
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between two prominent men. Three weeks later Sir George wrote to the General for a statement of the cost of the Alexandra Expedition, which the General politely told him, in effect, was none of his business, adding that it was "an expense which became inevitable . . . when I discovered for the first time in a local newspaper of the 15th May the memorandum addressed by Ministers to Your Excellency on the 8th April in which an attack was made on me in my official position."
In July 1865 Cameron wrote to the Home Government that the purchase of the Waitotara block of land was an "iniquitous job." When Mr. Weld was informed of this he wrote to the Governor complaining that the General refused to afford information on what grounds he based his charge.
During the same month Cameron wrote to the Governor informing him that his resignation of the command of Her Majesty's Forces in New Zealand had been accepted and that he retained his position only until the arrival of his successor, General Chute. He lost no time in arranging his departure, as he sailed by the S.S. Prince Alfred on the Ist August.
The remarkable thing about his departure was that a section of Auckland business men got sufficient funds together to present him with an expensive sword. He may have been a great soldier. His earlier career proved him to be a capable one, but holding the opinions he did about the war and the Colonists, it was hardly possible that he could show his genius in the prosecution of a war which he hated. The weather on the day of presentation was not kind. Heavy rain fell. The Herald at this time always inclined to picturesque writing, sometimes at the risk of inaccuracy of expression, stated next morning that "extraordinary outworks called crinolines acted occasionally as a tour de force." However, the staging was excellent. A crowd of curious people assembled in the enclosure then occupied by
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the Albert Barracks. An illuminated address dilating on the genius of the General. His reply flattering the people of Auckland. Great hurrahs. The horses taken out and his carriage drawn down the wharf by a section of the crowd. Exit the General on board the steamer.
The dour old Scot must have had his sense of humour tickled by the whole proceeding. There were not wanting many persons who cynically characterised the entire affair as intended more to mortify the Governor than to glorify the General. The latter could not resist a parting shot at his adversary. The Governor in his speech at the opening of Parliament a few days before had said in reference to the taking of the Wereroa Pa "that General Waddy and officers and men under his command were precluded by their orders from taking any active part in the operations against the enemy's stronghold." On the morning of his departure a letter from the General appeared in the Herald containing this extract from one he had just written to Sir George: "It is my duty to inform your Excellency that I positively deny having given any orders to Brigadier-General Waddy, Colonel Trevor, or any other officer which precluded them from taking any part in the operations against the enemy's stronghold."
General Chute succeeded Cameron. En passant, I may add, he married an Auckland lady of great personal charm, a Miss Browning. The arrival of a new General, so far from pacifying Grey, was soon marked by a fresh controversy. Chute wanted the remaining British troops concentrated, with headquarters in Auckland. Grey wanted them scattered in small units, and especially mentioned the country east of Taupo.
The Home Government, wearied beyond endurance at the interminable quarrels of their officers in far-away New Zealand, did not take any pains to hide their feelings on the subject. Lord Carnarvon wrote to Grey on the 1st February, 1867: "I sincerely regret the controversies which have
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unfortunately so long subsisted between yourself and the officers successively commanding H.M. troops in New Zealand," to which Grey replied: "No man who had the interests of the Empire at heart could have refrained from feeling deeply grieved at the misfortune, the useless waste of life, of money, of resources which I was obliged to witness, or from doing his utmost, at all risks to himself, to have a wiser and saner mode of proceeding established." A little earlier he had written pathetically: "I feel keenly the disgrace to which your Lordship has seen fit to subject me . . . but it will be my pride to serve Her Majesty as carefully in disgrace as in prosperity."
I have already mentioned the harsh manner in which Grey's recall was conveyed to him. There can be no reasonable doubt that he had honestly tried to serve the Empire at large, and New Zealand in particular. His supercession marked the end of his career as a great Pro-Consul. He was still to figure prominently in New Zealand for a number of years, and it is not too much to say that his measures, and his powerful advocacy of them, have influenced advanced democratic legislation throughout the Empire.
He returned to England early in 1868 with the intention of entering English politics, and stood as Liberal candidate for Newark. The party managers, however, did not approve of his candidature, and he retired.
About the middle of 1869 he discussed with several prominent colonists in London the treatment of the colony by the Home authorities. The result was a strong remonstrance to the Colonial Secretary, signed by himself and Sir Charles Clifford, the ex-Speaker, Messrs. H. Sewell, H. A. Atkinson, and John Logan Campbell, protesting specifically against one of the Earl's despatches, and generally against their tone, reflecting, as they alleged, on the attitude of the colonists towards the Maoris. It proceeded: "We regard the action thus taken by the Imperial Government as in the highest degree ungenerous. It is the first time in British history that Great
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Britain has insultingly refused assistance to her countrymen in danger which she herself has been instrumental in creating," and concluded: "We declare our conviction that the policy which is being pursued towards New Zealand is calculated to drive the colony out of the Empire."
It is easy to trace the guiding hand in this scathing document, and not difficult to imagine the satisfaction it afforded him to have the opportunity of expressing his opinion of the authorities in terms which were denied him whilst acting in the position of Governor. The die was cast, however, and in spite of all these vigorous entreaties the last remaining regiment sailed for Melbourne in February, 1870, and New Zealand was left to its own resources for its defence, ••
Grey returned to New Zealand in 1871, and in the following year, when a general election was nearly due, the usual difficulty arose with regard to candidates. I ventured, in one of a series of occasional articles on current topics which I was contributing to the local press to write: "It is a pity that so much practical knowledge of the wants of the country combined with a good deal of political influence both at Home and here, should not be made available at a time like the present. I wonder whether Sir George Grey would consent to represent an Auckland constituency? The experiment of asking is worth trying." The idea had possibly occurred to others besides myself. Within a week a deputation, consisting of the proprietors of the Herald and Star, and another, proceeded to Kawau with a request that Sir George Grey would allow himself to be nominated for the double office of Superintendent of the Province, and Member for Auckland City. He was elected to both. I may add that his political programme embraced one man one vote in place of the system then in vogue under which a man exercised votes in proportion to the value of the land he owned; triennial parliaments, taxation of land values, leasing instead of selling Crown lands, the compulsory
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purchase of private land for settlement, and the election of Governor by colonists. Most of these measures, although they seemed revolutionary at the time, have since passed into law.
This portion of Grey's life has been fully and often chronicled. My recollection of him chiefly centres round his oratory, which was of a high order. His speeches were delivered with every mark of earnestness and high purpose. He had a wonderful power over the emotions of an audience. He spoke fluently, but not rapidly, and knowing well what points in his speech would excite applause, paused from time to time to allow the feelings of his audience to have their full play. And yet, when the glamour was over, one wondered how much was real, and how much simulated to tickle the ears of the unthinking. I recall a speech I heard at Hamilton, when he denounced the Government in scathing terms for selling a block of sixty thousand acres of the Piako Swamp at 2/6 an acre, to an Auckland syndicate. He declared that when he reflected on the enormity of the wrong, he felt that those responsible for the sale should be impeached. They had granted to a few great lords of the soil land which would support in comfort 400 happy families. Of course, he knew—none better —that this land could be of no use to his hypothetical families, happy or otherwise, until it was drained; and that successful drainage was only possible by a scheme for dealing with the swamp as a whole. The original intention was to drain it in this way, and afterwards dispose of it in suitable areas to farmers. But the undertaking was too great for private enterprise. It ruined some of the promoters, besides adding to the embarrassment of their bankers. To this day travellers to Rotorua will see in the vicinity of Ruakura a huge tract of this famous swamp still unoccupied and only partially reclaimed.
There was a feeling that Grey's emotion was not quite real—that he was not perfectly sincere. Many anecdotes
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apropos of this opinion could be quoted. I will give onlyone. Whilst Premier he visited the Thames goldfields. As usual on each occasion, deputations poured in upon him. He listened to their complaints and suggestions with sympathetic courtesy, and bade his secretary take notes of their representations. On the way back to Auckland by steamer the secretary mentioned that he had about fifty pages of these notes. What should he do with them? "Give them to the stoker, T ," was said to be Grey's reply. This story is possibly apocryphal, but serves to illustrate my point.
He lived in St. Stephen's Avenue for several years, but as I have already mentioned spent the last years of his life in London. On his death he was accorded a public funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral, a tardy recognition of his many services to the Empire.
It may be of interest to add a short extract from the estimate of Grey's career by W. P. Reeves, one of the ablest of New Zealand's literary men, who was himself one of Grey's followers: "His ability to sway crowds was remarkable, and was gained without a recourse to vulgar methods. His most striking personal characteristics were, perhaps, cool courage, and absolute self-confidence, marked by a manner, courteous to the verge of deference. He was wilful, quarrelsome, jealous and over fond of finesse, failings which had their full share in hindering him from receiving a full measure of reward for the solid services he rendered to the Empire, and its Southern Colonies."
I have anticipated events by some years. To revert to the sixties of last century.
Mr. F. A. Weld, who arrived in New Zealand in the year 1844, had been selected by the Governor to form a Ministry in succession to the Whitaker-Fox Government. He was a member of an old English Roman Catholic family, and represented a South Island constituency. If the lives of New Zealand's Prime Ministers should ever
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be written the name of Weld would supply an interesting chapter. His career furnishes a curious inversion of that of the only Governor under whom he served.
Sir George, after a distinguished career as twice Governor of the Cape and of New Zealand, during critical times in their history, afterwards descended from his exalted pedestal to enter the muddy stream of Colonial politics. Mr. Weld, as Sir Frederick A. Weld, was destined, after somewhat less than a year's experience of office in New Zealand, to govern in succession West Australia, Tasmania, and the Straits Settlements, and afterwards to be entrusted with an important diplomatic mission to Malacca, next to arrange a treaty with the Sultan of Johore, and finally to perform diplomatic service in the island of Borneo.
In spite of all this distinguished service, he is said to have been "wanting in tact and discretion." Before complying with Sir George's summons he formulated the terms on which alone he was prepared to take office, and the Governor agreed to them. The most important was his insistance on the withdrawal of the Imperial troops. The Governor was to be guided entirely by the recommendations of his constitutional advisers. The Colony was to pay a reasonable sum for the troops actually employed until such time as they could be removed. In explanation of this condition, it may be explained that the Imperial Government had decided that in future the annual charge per man would be £40, instead of £10 as heretofore. Mr. Weld's further conditions included strong military posts in the disturbed districts, and the formation of a road connecting Taranaki with Wanganui, the maintenance of a small standing army, the confiscation of certain lands for occupation by military settlers, the removal of the Seat of Government, and finally a stipulation that if Governor and Ministers differed on any material point, Ministers were to resign and the General Assembly to be summoned.
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Mr. Weld had none of the arts of the demagogue, nor did he ever simulate them. A certain austerity of manner, an aloofness due perhaps to the consciousness that he belonged to a governing class, put mob popularity out of the question.
I was in the House during his speech on 29th November, 1864, in support of the famous resolutions he had moved calling on the British Government to remove the Imperial troops. He spoke in a clear, unimpassioned voice, as though he were stating a simple self-evident proposition. It was a bold stroke at such a time, and one that naturally found no favour with the people of Auckland. Settlement was at a standstill. A number of country folk in outlying places had been killed by the Maoris. Many more had left their farms and come to Auckland for safety. There was a general feeling of insecurity.
A very acrimonious newspaper controversy was carried on throughout New Zealand on both sides. Public meetings were held in Auckland to protest against the proposal. It encountered opposition in Parliament, but Mr. Weld had no difficulty in carrying his resolutions, which were duly forwarded by the Governor to England. The evacuation was decided upon, and the Imperial troops left the Colony as ships became available for their transport. A sharp reaction, however, set in a little later, consequent on the complications arising from the escape of Te Kooti and his fellow prisoners from Chatham Islands, and, as I shall have occasion to show later on, the final evacuation was delayed for several years.
I have not mentioned that military conscription was in force at this time. Every able-bodied male over eighteen years of age, was liable to serve in the local militia. A Parliamentary return gives a list of those exempted for medical reasons, and a further list of those exempted by the Defence Minister on payment of £10 apiece.
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CHAPTER VIII.
Confiscation of Maori Land—Maoris' Renunciation of Christianity—Murder of Volckner —Bowen succeeds Grey.
As regards the confiscation of Maori land, a modified scheme was sanctioned by the Imperial Government, who accepted the principle with a wry face. About 1,400,000 acres were taken, instead of about 4,000,000 as originally proposed. The scheme was strongly opposed by the friends of the Maori people, and especially by Sir Wm. Martin and Mr. Gorst. The former wrote a closely reasoned protest which occupied twelve foolscap pages when issued as a Parliamentary paper. Mr. Gorst protested against .Ministers' assertion that the land intended to be taken would not really impoverish the Maoris, because they made no use of it. He contended that even if it contained no large- villages, it did include many scattered dwellings and patches of native cultivation.
The scheme was originally intended to provide funds to pay the cost of the war. Needless to say, it did nothing of the kind. It is even doubtful if it was worth the bitterness it caused the. dispossessed Maori owners. A large portion of the confiscated land was cut up into 50-acre sections, and given to the men of the disbanded Waikato militia. They were, however, with few exceptions, not the class of men to reclaim the wilderness. Their grants were placed on the market, and, there being little demand for them, were sold
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for a few pounds apiece, sufficient to pay the passages of the grantees back to Australia. Some of the most valuable farms in the Waikato district were acquired in part, or wholly by the purchase of these military grants.
Hostilities in the Waikato country, so far as any organised warfare was concerned, terminated early in 1865. A proclamation was issued by Ministers in the name of the Governor offering to accept the submission of all hostile Maoris who were not known to have actually been guilty of killing any unarmed settler. The document was fiercely assailed by the Herald and Southern Cross, both at this time opposed to Sir George Grey and all his works. It was probably the only question on which they ever agreed. The New Zealander, the pro-Maori paper which supported the Governor, was fast losing in circulation and influence. I confess that, looking back, the proclamation seems to have been a wise and humane proceeding. It brought about the submission of Wiremu Tamahana, an honest patriot. One of the ablest Maoris who fought against us, he had, throughout the war, supplied the guiding brains for his people's cause. He was generally referred to as the "King Maker," and his submission was therefore of the first importance.
We have seen that General Cameron demanded two thousand additional troops before undertaking a campaign in the Wanganui—Taranaki district, and how the Governor decided to personally conduct operations with the force at his command. The Maoris in what came to be known as the King Country, however, preserved an attitude of strict isolation for a good many years afterwards, and what was called the "Aukati line," in the neighbourhood of Kihi Kihi, was the boundary beyond which none, but a very few privileged white men, were allowed to pass.
The Maoris south of Auckland had at this time practically renounced Christianity, and a gross form of superstition known as "Pai Marire," or "Hau Hau," had taken its place. Its grosser developments were confined to a small
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section of natives living on the East Coast. It appeared to be founded on the tribal system of the ancient Israelites. At any rate, this small community of East Coast Maoris adopted, and even added to, the cruelties which are recorded as part of the ordinary conditions of warfare in those olden days.
The town was startled and horrified one morning early in March, 1865, when the Eclipse, a coasting schooner, of which a Captain Levy was master, arrived in harbour from Opotiki bringing news that a missionary named Volckner had been killed there by a party of Maoris, headed by Kereopa, who was a kind of high priest of this fanatical sect, under circumstances of peculiar cruelty. It was reported that Volckner had been ordered to prepare to be hanged, but that he did not believe the Maoris were in earnest. He had been their good friend, and was one of the most popular and trusted of white men. He soon saw his mistake, however, and, knowing that his doom was assured, knelt in prayer at the foot of a willow tree. Whilst on his knees a running noose was thrown over his head, the end of the rope was passed over an overhanging branch of the tree, and he was hanged amidst the jeers of a set of howling fanatics. The horrors that were reported to have followed are almost unnameable. His vital organs were said to have been partially eaten by the excited crowd, and his entrails thrown to their dogs. It was also said that his head was carried about as a token of savage triumph.
Mr. T. S. Grace, an Anglican clergyman, according to Levy's statement, appears to have been reserved for similar treatment. Captain Levy stated that at the risk of his own life he had pulled up a creek in a boat during the night and secretly rescued Mr. Grace. The version of the affair given by Mr. Grace differed materially from that of Levy. Public feeling ran strongly in favour of the captain. Mr. Grace was accused of base ingratitude. A controversy of peculiar bitterness arose. A largely attended public
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meeting was held, at which Levy and his mate gave their version of the rescue, and Mr. Grace's conduct was very unfavourably reviewed. I am not aware how the blame of the respective parties was ultimately apportioned. It was a miserable squabble, which should never have "Occurred considering the tragic nature of the event out of which it arose.
It must for ever be borne in mind that the Maoris as a people were in no sense responsible for this savage outbreak. It was the action of a few excited fanatics, and many of the East Coast natives at once offered their services to avenge the murder.
Sir George Bowen succeeded Sir George"- Grey. It was remarked at the time that the latter did not follow the usual practice of departing from the colony before the arrival of his successor. He sought repose arid rest on his beautiful island home. '' " ■
Sir George Bowen arrived at Wellington in February, 1866, and paid his first visit to Auckland on the 25th of the following month. His speech on this occasion regretted the prevailing commercial depression, and hoped it would soon pass away. He was received With every mark of welcome. It was recorded that "an elegant carriage drawn by eight beautiful greys, and driven by Mr. F. Quick," conveyed him from the wharf to Government House. He spoke with emotion, so marked, indeed, that the newspaper account described the concluding passage'of his reply to the usual loyal addresses as being delivered with "faltering voice, and quivering lips, and moistened eyes." I did not witness the affecting scene, so am unable to say how much of the account was real, and how much Was due to the reporter's vivid imagination.
Bowen was an Irishman, and did not lack Celtic emotion or imagination. It would be difficult to picture a greater contrast than that which he presented to his predecessor. We know that Grey was intensely in earnest over every-
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thing he undertook, or at least gave every appearance of earnestness. He seemed to lack a sense of humour. The lighter side of a Colonial Governor's duties made no appeal to him. One can hardly imagine him opening a bazaar or making a humorous speech at a social meeting. He would certainly not have accepted Lord Salisbury's somewhat cynical dictum that "a man who has popular manners and gives good dinners can discharge the functions of a constitutional viceroy."
Bowen was an Oxford University man. He had twice been president of the Union, was a fellow of Brazenose College, and had written books on classical questions which had met the approval of Gladstone and other scholars. He had held important posts —educational and political—in Greece, and was wedded to a beautiful lady of that country. He excelled in the kind of speeches which please a popular audience. It was occasionally suggested that some of those made in New Zealand bore a very close resemblance to others of Queensland origin. One jocose journalist explained the resemblance in a very simple way. It was, he said, the Governor's custom to preserve his speeches in a tin box, and when he had exhausted his repertoire he released those at the bottom of the box and, trusting to the short memory of the public, ventured on a repetition of its contents. His oratory was of a flowery and picturesque order, free from even a shade of indiscretion.
He was appointed in 1859 the first Governor of Queensland, and gave so much satisfaction to the Home Government that his term was extended until 1866. In the latter year a financial crisis occurred in England owing to the failure of the Agra and Masterman's Bank. The monetary stringency extended to Queensland, and the Colonial Government proposed to meet it by the issue of inconvertible paper money, a proposal Bowen refused to sanction. His action was keenly debated, and caused him considerable unpopularity.
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His wide knowledge of the classics, combined with a natural bent for historical parallels, enabled him to trace some interesting social and political analogies. The huge estates of Queensland's shepherd kings reminded him of Homer's allusions to the spacious pastures of the ancient Greek landowners. The fertile Darling Downs suggested the rich plains of Larissae, as described by Horace. He saw in the threatened assertion of the rights of the many against the privileges of the fortunate few a parallel to the ancient strife between patricians and plebians.
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CHAPTER IX.
Te Kooti —Colonial Methods of dealing with Rebels —Rewards for Capture of Prisoners criticised—Early Maoris compared with Ancient Highlanders—Exaggerated Statements of Maori Massacres.
Within a few months of Bowen's arrival in New Zealand, the comedy of the escape from Kawau was repeated; but in a more heroic form on the part of the Maoris. It proved much more disastrous to ourselves, in regard both to the sacrifice of life involved, and to the implication of cruelty on the part of the New Zealand forces it caused. The comedy proved to be the prelude to a series of tragedies.
Te Kooti, with nearly 300 prisoners of war, had been deported in 1866 to the Chatham Islands where, brooding over his exile, he had devoted his time to a study of the Hebrew prophets. The text which specially appealed to him was Jeremiah XXI., 17: "And there is hope in thine end, said the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border." As in the case of the Maori prisoners on Kawau Island, the guard placed over them was negligible. The schooner Rifleman was in port in the middle of 1868, and Te Kooti decided to take the risk of using her as a means of reaching New Zealand with his band of fellow warriors. At a signal from Te Kooti the guard of four constables and one civilian was seized and bound. It is said, unofficially, that one who offered resistance, was promptly tomahawked.
The captain was impressed to navigate his vessel. About £500 was taken from the Government chest, with all the arms and ammuniton, and presumably food, they G
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could find, and the party started on their adventurous journey. The weather proved unfavourable and Te Kooti decided that there was a Jonah on board, in the person of his uncle, who, it seems, was not wholly sympathetic towards the actions and claims of his nephew. The unfortunate and sceptical uncle was thrown overboard, after which the weather improved, and the party landed in the neighbourhood of Poverty Bay very soon afterwards. For two years Te Kooti was a menace to the peace and prosperity of the North Island. He proved to be an able strategist, and amidst the wild fastnesses of the Urewera country and elsewhere gave ample scope for the military skill of such men as Whitmore, Capt. G. Mair, Preece, Major Ropata and Porter. Driven into positions from which escape seemed impossible, he was never captured, and although his active career practically came to an end in a brilliant engagement with Mair in 1870, his name was one to conjure with for some years afterwards. In 1883 an Amnesty Act was passed which granted him pardon for all his rebellious acts. The whole series of events after his landing was the cause of much discussion. It was suggested that if the action of Grey in regard to the escaped prisoners from Kawau had been repeated that Te Kooti and his followers would have been quietly absorbed among their own people, and that all the loss of life and expenditure of means might have been avoided. This must be relegated to the "might have beens." What is certain is that with our experience of Kawau, a proper guard should have been maintained at the Chathams, and a gradual dispersal of the prisoners from time to time might have been effected with advantage to the Maoris and benefit to the Colony. Those who wish for a history of this most interesting episode are recommended to read Mr. Jas. Cowan's History of the New Zealand Wars, now being issued by the Government printer.
Sir G. Bowen's New Zealand Governorship was interesting inasmuch as he was the first of a long line of strictly
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constitutional governors. Unlike Grey, he recognised that the real power now lay in the hands of his Ministers, and that whilst it was within his own power to exercise considerable influence in the counsels of the country, it must be rather by friendly suggestion than by any assumption of authority. His positon, notwithstanding, was not without difficulties. A correspondent of one of the daily papers, writing within a year of his arrival, complained that "practically Sir Geo. Bowen is a dummy and Stafford (the premier) a Dictator. We need affairs administered by a firm hand, guided by a clear head. Unfortunately we have neither at the helm at present." He soon became involved in a correspondence with the Home Government which, if less acrimonious than that of his predecessor, was marked by a distinct sympathy with the colonial point of view on the Governor's part, and some very plain speaking on the other side.
It must be admitted that the action of the Colony on the question of the withdrawal of the British troops was somewhat inconsistent and not wholly dignified. The escape and ultimate landing at Poverty Bay of Te Kooti and his followers, and their lawless actions there and elsewhere caused general consternation and alarm, and following the austere resolution of Mr. Weld, requesting the removal of the British troops, the authorities were almost abject in now asking for their retention.
The 18th Royal Irish still remained in the Colony, and Governor Bowen wrote to the Duke of Buckingham on the 7th December, 1868, pleading earnestly that this regiment might be allowed to remain. He stated, inter alia, that "many competent judges believe that the entire withdrawal of the Queen's troops may probably lead to a general rising of the disaffected natives throughout this island, and possibly to tragedies as dreadful as those of Cawnpore." Bowen was a prolific despatch writer, and this particular one occupies no fewer than six printed foolscap pages. It
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may be added that the Governor, in an earlier despatch, had emphasized the claim of the colony by stating that taxation in New Zealand had reached £6 5s per head, "more than double the taxation of the United Kingdom."
Mr. Stafford had already carried a resolution in the House of Representatives (October, 1868), "that the 18th Royal Irish be retained by the Governor until the subject has been referred to the Home Government."
This feeling of insecurity must have been shared by the military authorities, as General Chute took upon himself the responsibility of detaining the regiment. His action was greatly appreciated by the settlers of the North Island. It was hailed by Auckland journals as a welcome reversal of the Weld Policy. The Government had agreed to the increased payment of £40 per head, instead of the £10 previously paid. The actual cost of such troops was stated by the War Office to be £100 per head. As a last resource the Government took the extreme step of sending to England the Hon. Dillon Bell and the Hon. J. E. Fitzgerald as a deputation on behalf of the Colony to negotiate with the Home authorities for the retention of at least 1000 troops.
Earl Grenville, who had succeeded the Duke of Buckingham, was obdurate. The Colony had requested in no uncertain terms to be allowed to settle with the Maoris in its own way, and now he pertinently wrote: "This country is asked for assistance to sustain a policy which it does not direct, and which it is unable to foresee." The Earl usually brought bland courtesy to bear in his official intercourse, which, however, failed him in dealing with New Zealand, a reflection probably of the indifference towards colonies which prevailed at the time, and was particularly marked on the part of the Liberal Party.
Contemporaneously with this contention, a discussion was being carried on with some warmth regarding colonial methods of dealing with the rebel Maoris. Grey, shortly before his recall, complained that an Anglican clergyman
MAORIS PRACTISING HAKA AT WHANGANUI FOR THE RECEPTION OF THE PRESENT KING
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
MAORI VILLAGE, MOREA
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
SIR G. F. BOWEN
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named Weare had written a letter to an English newspaper stating, on the authority of his brother, Col. Weare, who was on active service in New Zealand, that "the Colonial Government did not want the expense of prisoners," that because of this desire on their part the General in command ordered that no prisoners should be taken, that such brutal cruelties were in consequence committed that young officers were ready to cry; and that the finest and most gallant officers were disgusted at being turned into colonial butchers." He stated further that he had evidence to show that the orders given had ended in deliberate murders.
The matter was referred to the General in command, and Weare asked for proof of his statements. He was taken by surprise, and had no proof to offer. It was evident he had never intended his letters to be made public.
Another, and a fruitful, source of controversy arose from the action of the New Zealand Government in offering rewards for the capture of Maori combatants. One, Titokowaru, was regarded as a particularly dangerous man, and a ringleader in the trouble which was going on in the southern part of the North Island. Earl Granville wrote to Sir Geo. Bowen 26th February 1869: "You have offered a reward of £1000 for the person of Titokowaru —I infer dead or alive —and £5 for the person of every Maori rebel brought in alive. I do not pronounce any opinion at present on the propriety of these steps. But I must observe that they are so much at variance with the usual laws of war and appear at first sight so much calculated to exasperate and extend hostilities that they ought to have been reported to me officially."
It is easy, after the lapse of so many years, to agree with the criticism of this urbane statesman. But it is fair to remember that it seemed at the time as though law and order, and even the very existence of our outlying settlements, were at stake. Sir George Arney, the Chief Justice, wrote to the Governor on his return to Auckland from Wel-
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lington, and described how the steamer in which he was travelling encountered a schooner "on the waters of Hawke's Bay," with her "freight of helpless women and children," to escape probable death at the hands of Te Kooti and his followers. We were fighting a warlike and clever enemy who had the advantage of great mobility, and a perfect knowledge of the most inaccessible parts of the North Island. They could choose their own fighting ground. Their commissariat needs were simple, and gave them little anxiety, needing none of the impediments necessary to civilised troops. Was it not said by one of the greatest of generals that "an army marches on its stomach?" Apropos of which I recall a telegram sent by Mr. Thomas Russell to Colonel Hamilton on 27th April, 1869, relative to commissariat difficulties caused by the nonarrival of a coasting steamer carrying supplies for an expedition to the Lake Waikaremoana district —"Confound Lyttelton and all such tubs. I think I can quietly buy up a number (of bullocks) at reasonable prices and have cords put in their noses to lead them. They want no feed like horses and saddles can be extemporised—they can be eaten after delivering loads."
It is true that our forces outnumbered many times the hostile Maoris. But so did the British at a later period outnumber the Boers, whose commissariat was almost as simple as that of the Maoris. It took over 300,000 British soldiers to overcome a Boer force estimated at 40,000, and in the end we concluded a peace which could hardly be considered as a victory over a beaten foe.
Very soon after his arrival in New Zealand Sir Geo. Bowen gave the Home Government his early impressions of the Maori race: "It should not be forgotten," he wrote, "that if the Maoris of the present time resemble the ancient (Scottish) Highlanders in some of their savage customs, and dark passions and superstitions, they resemble them equally, not only in their patriarchal and tribal systems of
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Government, but also in personal courage, strength and endurance; in love of war and military exercises, and of martial dances and songs; in liveliness of fancy; in natural shrewdness of character; and, it may be fairly added, in courtesy, hospitality and good humour, so long as no offence is given to their national pride, or to their individual self-esteem."
He soon afterwards made a tour of the South Island, and wrote a vivid and picturesque description of the scenery on a journey across the mountains from Hokitika to Christchurch. Incidentally I may add that his graphic narrative determined me to take the same trip a year or so later. I chanced en route to mention this to the coach driver, who happened to be the same man who had driven the Governor. His comment amused me: "Well," he said, "I don't see how the Governor could write like that, for it rained all the time, and he saw nothing, and we had to hurry through as fast as we could to avoid being stuck up by flooded rivers."
Describing in another despatch a tour through the Waikato district in June, 1868, he compares the Maori "aukati" line with the Irish "pale," and finds a close historical parallel between "the social conditions of the Maori Highlands and that of the Scotch Highlands down to the middle of the eighteenth century." He proceeds to remark: "Like the Jacobite clan that adhered to the Stuart King before 1745, so the tribes that support the Maori King stand aloof in sullen and hostile isolation." "It would be easy," he adds, "though tedious, to multiply proofs and illustrations of the close resemblance on many points of the Maori of the present day to the Scotch Highlander of a former age."
After Te Kooti's landing at Poverty Bay this pleasant, discursive, literary style of despatch had to give place to a more incisive and practical series of reports on the condition and prospects of the colony.
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An interesting incident, and one that caused a great deal of local excitement and ill-feeling, occurred at the end of the year 1868. A letter appeared in the daily Southern Cross newspaper signed "Exterminate." It came at a time when feeling ran high on the part of those whose sympathies were with the Maoris, and not less of those who were so embittered by the cruelties perpetrated by a small section of the race that they were not averse to a policy of extermination. The letter in question contained the following passage: "I was for some time with a party of our Colonial forces, who surprised a Maori kainga one morning. The people had not committed any murders, or annoyed any settlers, nor had they committed any dishonest or inhospitable act. But they were suspected of being Hauhaus, whatever that may mean, and, of course, by all the laws of Christianity and civilisation, they ought to be exterminated. Unfortunately we were too late, and it being pretty near daylight we were seen. The women and children ran out of the kainga to get to the bush. It was great fun to see how the little Hauhau 'cusses' ran by the side of their Hauhau mothers and how civilisation and Christianity poured volley after volley into them.
A few days after several hundreds of us went up to see if any had come back, but they had not, and the bodies were lying unburied half eaten by the pigs. Do you imagine Christianity and civilisation ever thought of burying them? We all had a hearty laugh, which was intensified when some squeamish fellow reminded us we might have to eat these very cannibal pigs. Christianity and civilisation were much amused, and one apostle told me how he had killed with an axe some twenty wounded men after a fight on the Opotiki plain."
It will readily be imagined that the effect of such statements, made by one who apparently was an eye-witness of the horrors he describes, was electrical. An angry newspaper correspondence took place. Certain well-known com-
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mercial men agreed to boycott the offending journal, and to withdraw all their advertisements. The agitation was led by a Scotchman, a Mr. J. S. Macfarlane, an Auckland merchant and commissariat contractor, familiarly known as "Jai.S." He had been a sea captain, and was quite a popular man in spite of an explosive temper which found vent in expletives of great force and variety, creditable even to a mariner of the mid-Victorian period. Indignant demands were made for the name of the writer. Day by day the controversy became more heated. It was not long, however, before the newspaper divulged the name of its correspondent, retracting his statements and apologising for "a shameful slander on the reputation of the colonists."
After the lapse of so many years it is interesting to recall the incident, and to state the sequel. Mr. William Berry, who was on the literary staff of the Southern , Cross, had acted as a war correspondent. He it was who wrote the letter. He was a man —gentle by nature, well read, and of unimpeachable character, who had mixed much with the Maoris, had acquired their language, and, like so many other men in similar circumstances, had allowed his sympathies to carry him too far. It appeared that there was substantial ground for the charges he made, but he omitted to state that the Colonial forces he mentioned were not Englishmen, but Maoris who were fighting on our side. The offending newspaper had to yield to the popular demand. "Exterminate" was asked to resign. He migrated to the Thames goldfield, where he was employed for several years on the staff of the Advertiser. The affair blew over in time and was forgotten. Mr. Berry returned to Auckland and was for many years well known and universally respected as the editor of the Herald.
It is somewhat singular in view of the indignation aroused by "Exterminate's" letter that the following paragraph reprinted in the Auckland Herald of 9th February, 1865, passed without public comment: "Fire and Sword.
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—A forest ranger, writing to the W hanganui Chronicle on the late affair at Putahi, says: 'Fighting over, we set fire to all the huts, and in one of them burnt three or four of the rebels, as they would not come out; seven or eight were found dead and left there. One of the Native Contingent saw a rebel nearly, but not quite, dead, and the rebel having a fine greenstone in his ears, the other pulled his ear out, greenstone and all. We found books and papers belonging to Hewett, and the harness belonging to poor Arbon, Simson's carter, who was lately murdered between Alexander and Nukumaru. His cap was found on an old woman who was taken prisoner. After being taken, the following day, she requested to go back to her friends the Hauhaus, and her request was granted. We then came back to camp, tired and hot, to get breakfast. Next day a party of ours and some civil natives went to root up all potatoes, got plenty, and saw nine rebels lying dead in the field about one mile from the pah. Took one prisoner, father to Tommy Walker, of the Native contingent. He was found spying with a tomahawk in his hand, and taken to camp and shot by his own son that night! His son was discharged for it."
The Hewett mentioned was Captain Jas. Duff Hewett, of the Toi Farm, near Whanganui. His father was Col. Wm. Hewett, who at the time of his death in 1891 in his 96th year, was the last of the English officers who fought at Waterloo. Capt. Hewett's widow is still (1925) living and resides in Auckland. She speaks gratefully of the kindness of Lord and Lady Jellicoe, by whom she was often made a welcome guest. Some years ago she published a brightly written narrative of her life under the title of Looking Back. In this she gives the details of the way in which her husband met his death. She herself, after one or two narrow escapes, had been removed with her children to the town. A party of about fifty Hauhau Maoris, who had hidden in the bush, attacked the house at midnight. They killed Capt. Hewett, removing his head and heart —
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the former of which they carried off on the top of a pole. In spite of all she has suffered, she speaks thus of the natives: "The Maoris, although fierce warriors, are, when peaceable, possessed of many lovable qualities, and, but for the interference of unprincipled Europeans, the missionaries would have made a splendid race of them. Those Maoris who were influenced by the early missionaries were the most courteous, regal looking men, and now even in these days, many fine characters are found among them who work hard for the uplifting of their race."
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CHAPTER X.
Crime in Auckland — Roads and Bridges — Sea trade with Northern Coast—Rivalry between Ports of Auckland and Wellington—Seat of Government removed to Wellington —Mooted Separation of Auckland —Effect of Removal of Government.
Crimes attended with violence were very prevalent in Auckland at this time. Few days passed without one being recorded. A young woman was assaulted in the street one evening. Her cries brought several young men to her rescue, and they found her assailant in hiding amongst the scrub not far off. The young woman, shrinking from publicity, declined to prosecute. The comment of the Herald was: "We very much regret that the young men who rescued her . . . did not give the scoundrel a severe thrashing. Had they beaten him within an inch of his life they would have earned the thanks of the community." A little later the wife of Colonel Pitt was driving along Stanley Street when several men, who had been in hiding in the Domain, ran out into the road. One of them seized the reins, the others standing by apparently intending to rob the lady as soon as the horse was brought to a standstill. Mrs. Pitt, however, had the presence of mind to hit the man who held the reins a violent blow with the butt end of her whip, and before the others had time to molest her, to drive away at top speed. The Herald next day advocated the general use of firearms and added: "Had the wretch who stopped the horse's head been shot instead of beaten off, the result in all probability would have been that his six companions would have thought twice before entering upon another highway robbery."
QUEENSTOWN, LAKE WHAKATIPU
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
CHRISTCHURCH, CATHEDRAL SQUARE
OTIRA GORGE
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In the Herald of 13th September, 1865, a Symonds Street resident writes enquiring whether he may legally shoot a person stealing fuschias from his garden. The editor in a footnote tells him that "shot has a very salutary effect in such cases, but is not strictly according to law," and quaintly adds that the bite of a large dog is also very effectual, and not illegal.
All of which to-day reads ominously like an appeal to the jurisdiction of Mr. Justice Lynch. "The times change, and we change with them."
To come to more peaceful surroundings, I recall that owing to the absence of roads and bridges, communication with the North was almost entirely by sea, and Auckland's "Mosquito Fleet," as it was called, was well known throughout New Zealand. It included many fine sailing craft, and the harbour on Regatta Day presented a beautiful scene. Shipbuilding was for many years one of Auckland's most important industries. Pohutukawa was always used for ships' frames, and many a pretty cliff and headland along the harbour and coast was denuded of its splendid old trees for this purpose.
An effort was made towards the end of 1864 to start steam communication with the North with a small boat called Wonga Wonga, but the result was not encouraging. The Herald recorded her return to Auckland with two bags of fish and one passenger, and commented somewhat sarcastically on "the futility of any attempt to compete against ordinary sailing craft." The attempt to pit steam against sail was abandoned for the time.
I think a small vessel called Tauranga was the first steamer to trade regularly on the northern coast. It ran between Auckland and the Bay of Islands, and was eventually sunk with all on board by a small trading vessel called Endeavour laden with coal. The circumstances under which the loss took place were peculiarly painful. For some days after the Tauranga was missing nothing was
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heard of her. Eventually the crew of the Endeavour admitted coming into collision with another vessel, which she struck amidship. They stated that the vessel Tauranga must have been cut clean in two, as those on board the Endeavour saw on either side persons lying in their bunks, but that the affair was so sudden, and the night so dark, that they were unable to render any assistance. The Endeavour, which was built of Australian hardwood, sustained little or no damage.
Most of the British troops were brought to Auckland in sailing ships, but a great sensation was caused at the end of 1863 by the arrival of S.S. Himalaya, with 819 officers and men, 57 women, and 87 children. She was built for the P. and 0. Company at a cost of about £120,000, and was one of the great company's crack ships until the Admiralty bought her as a transport. Like all steamers at this period, she was fully rigged for sailing. The shipping reporters exhausted their vocabulary of praise in describing the new arrival —the largest merchant vessel which, at that time, had ever entered the harbour. She was described as a "giant ship." "Indeed, a marvel of matchless power and beauty," and reference was made to the "stupendous and multifarious appliances of this splendid ship."
It enables one to realise the change that has come over things since that time, when we see so many superlatives bestowed upon a ship whose length was 375 feet, and net tonnage 3500 tons, whilst the Colonial Sugar Company's cargo steamer Rona is 400 feet long, and 3784 tons net tonnage, with a carrying capacity of 9,000 tons, and remember that she is one of the smallest of the great steamers that trade to Auckland at the present time.
An effort to open a coal mine at Kawakawa was made towards the end of 1864. A ton of coal arrived in Auckland in November, which was described in a morning paper as the possible "germ of a commerce that shall cover the Southern Seas." A mine was eventually opened and worked for a good many years. The coal was proved to be good for
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steaming purposes. A railway was constructed to take the coal from the mine to a wharf at Opua, where vessels engaged in the coasting and Sydney trade took their supplies. The seam, unfortunately, ran out eventually, and the mine was abandoned many years ago.
There was, from a very early period, a keen rivalry, which often developed into hostility, between the ports of Auckland and Wellington. When the choice of the latter as the future capital of the Colony was announced, the Auckland press was very caustic in its allusions to Wellington. It was "a fishing village somewhere in Cook Straits." The Herald, in a leader on the 14th July, 1865, wrote: "We have enlarged upon earthquakes, and have prophesied at no distant date the entire destruction of Port Nicholson in consequence of the steady and rapid shoaling of the water." It was, of course, a very serious blow to Auckland in every way when she lost the seat of Government. The remedy proposed by some of the leaders of Auckland to restore her fortunes was a very remarkable one. A cry for separation was raised. The exact form separation was to take was a matter of considerable difference of opinion. The invincible hostility between the two chief ports placed a separation of the two islands out of the question. Wellington would have none of it. It was, therefore, gravely proposed that the Province of Auckland should seek separation from the rest of New Zealand, and assume the status of a colony on its own account. The Auckland newspapers advocated the quixotic project. So astute and able a politician as Mr. F. Whitaker wrote to the Southern Cross "as a confirmed separationist, my object is to advance the cause." A public meeting at the end of 1864, at which 2000 persons were present, voted in favour of separation.
The question of the separation of the two islands was the subject of a motion in the House of Representatives. Colonel Haultain, Minister of Defence, and Member for Franklin, voted against it. His action was resented in Auck-
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land, and a public meeting of his constituents was held at Otahuhu in December, 1866, at which a motion was carried demanding his resignation, a demand with which the hon. and gallant gentleman very properly declined to comply. We have it on excellent authority that "a policeman's lot is not a happy one," but what would a politician's be if his resignation were demanded on every occasion his vote failed to satisfy a section of his constitutents?
Mr. F. Whitaker in the same year sent a public petition to the Crown, praying that the "northern portion of the province of Auckland might be erected into a separate and independent colony." Lord Carnarvon laconically replied that "his petition has been laid before the Queen, but that the circumstances of the case are not such as to justify me in advising a compliance with its prayer."
The agitation was widespread, for on the 2nd December, 1867, no fewer than 7325 residents of Otago petitioned the Queen to provide separation of the two islands.
It need hardly be added that the agitation eventually fizzled out, but it was several years before Auckland quite abandoned the idea.
It is hard to imagine now, as it was to my mind at the time, what conceivable benefit could have resulted to Auckland had the project for separation from the rest of the Colony been achieved. The South had large provincial land revenues. Auckland had none. Our imports exceeded our exports fivefold. The very idea seems farcical when looked at through the retrospect of half a century. It must be added that there was an entire lack of oneness and sympathy between Auckland and the rest of the colony. Perhaps our extreme isolation had something to do with it. Most of the communication was by way of the Manukau. The sea passage in the small vessels of the time was usually very unpleasant, and few Southerners thought of coming to Auckland unless induced by business or politics. The northern province was assumed to have few resources outside
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
LAKE ROTO ITI AND RIVER KAITUNA
MAORI VILLAGE, OHINEMUTU
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
GENERAL VIEW OF WELLINGTON
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
VIEW OF RIVER WHANGANUI
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
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of timber and gum, and these were diminishing and irreplaceable assets. To them our lands were almost hopelessly poor, our climate moist and enervating, hardly fit for white men to thrive in. So observant a traveller as Sir Charles Dilke, in Greater Britain, after affirming that white men languished where the banana flourished, quoted the northern part of New Zealand to prove his theory.
Happily, a more intimate acquaintance on both sides has changed this. Auckland is now the Mecca of all good Southerners. They still sometimes abuse our climate, and prove the insincerity of their abuse by coming to it. One is tempted to paraphrase Dr. Johnson's taunt to Scotchmen and to say "the proudest moment of a Southerner's life is when he finds himself with his face to the North on his way to Auckland." They praise their colder and more bracing climate, but they like a warmer one. As men and women grow older, they seek the sunshine, hence the fact of so many settlers leaving the South and coming to Auckland to spend the evening of life. But what of the numerous southern business houses who have joined us? If you take a census of all the more important firms in Auckland you will find a large percentage, probably a majority, are offshoots from the South. Otago, Canterbury, and Wellington have sent their quota. Besides all which, a considerable volume of world-wide trade is transacted through the medium of English mercantile firms having agencies in Wellington. We have been practically annexed by the South. The pendulum has swung so far that it may be our Southern friends are a little too persistent, and perhaps inclined to over-estimate the capacity of Auckland as a field for their enterprise.
The economic and social effects of the removal of seat of Government, to which I have alluded, were greatly intensified by the practically simultaneous withdrawal of the British troops. War expenditure is always lavish, and is usually accompanied by a form of transcient prosperity. H
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Both conditions applied to Auckland during the Waikato War. The setback was dramatically sudden and severe. The Herald had a leading article on the 29th April, 1865, referring to the altered state of affairs, in which the cautious policy of the Union Bank in particular was thus referred to "Its proprietary have put on the screw and actually refused the paper of some of the safest men in Auckland, men whose credit is as sound as that of the bank itself." A few days later malevolent Southern influence was credited with being at the root of the trouble. "An attempt," it was said, "has been made during the past fortnight by Southern influence to create a panic in the Auckland money market." And a little later it was further stated that "the commercial aspect of the affairs of the province at the present time is a subject that cannot fail to awaken more or less anxiety in the minds of all classes of the community." The coming years were to prove the literal accuracy of this statement. The commercial and economic state of affairs did not fail to cause wide-spread misfortune and suffering to many, and anxiety to all. Bank overdrafts were called in wherever there was a chance of getting them liquidated. The bills of old and seemingly well-established firms were accepted with hesitation. Heads of mercantile houses anxiously discussed with one another whose cheque might be the next to be returned.
At this time a creditor had the power to arrest a debtor on a writ and lodge him in jail. I well remember one afternoon seeing a cab at the warehouse of a large mercantile firm, well known at the time. An officer of the Court stepped inside, produced a writ, and carried off both partners to what was then the newly established jail known as the Mt. Eden Stockade. Both men occupied prominent positions, commercially and socially. They were arrested at the suit of an Adelaide flourmiller, who came from Australia in connection with his claim upon the firm.
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CHAPTER XI.
Scarcity of Money—Unemployment—Gold at Thames—Frozen Meat—A Judge of Ale—Lake Pupuke—Old Waitemata Hotel—Arson—Acclimitisation of Birds.
I recall, as illustrative of the scarcity of money, an instance where the large and valuable stock of an insolvent mercantile firm was sold by auction at a great sacrifice. The terms were nominally cash, but to make them sufficiently attractive a discount of 5 per cent, off auction prices was offered for cash payment, whilst the tender of a promissory note involved a charge of 2½ per cent, over auction price, really a difference of 7½ per cent, in favour of the cash buyer-—equivalent to 30 per cent, per annum —and yet even this inducement did not prove sufficient in every case to ensure payment of cash.
Unemployment was general. Wages were low. The Superintendent offered work to the unemployed to break road metal at Penrose for 4/- per yard. Considering that it is hard work for even an experienced man to break a yard per day, the offer was not inviting. The question arose of the retention of time-expired soldiers. The Colonial Government calculated on obtaining their services as members of a local force to consist of 1500 military constables, which it was proposed to organise for a payment of 1/6 per day. The Herald, however, asked, not unnaturally, how such a force could do the military work which had hitherto taken so many British and Colonial troops to accomplish, and suggested that the Auckland Provincial Government should outbid the Colonial Government by offering exservice men a fifty-acre farm and employment on public works until they became self-supporting settlers. Unfortunately no indication was given as to the source from which the money was to be obtained for carrying out so excellent a scheme.
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The remainder of the sixties may be summed up as a period of stagnation for New Zealand generally, and Auckland in particular. The discovery of payable gold at the Thames towards the end of the decade helped to lift Auckland out of its difficulties, and to inspire renewed confidence in its future. But gold alone will not ensure the lasting prosperity of a country. It was science that proved the salvation of New Zealand. In the late sixties the consumption of beef and mutton bore but a small relation to its production. The value of a sheep might be estimated by the amount of wool on its back. Its carcase was of little value, except for the tallow it might produce. In proof of which it may be mentioned that fat, shorn sheep were sold in Hawke's Bay as low as 1/6 each, the legs being the only portion of the carcase used for food, but the sale of even these was so limited that it became a practice to salt and smoke them. In this condition they found their way to Auckland, where they were offered as mutton hams; but they met with no great demand.
So things went on for a good many years until the conveyance of fresh food across the ocean was demonstrated to be practicable. There were still difficulties to be overcome. The cost of freezing and freight were so great that a producer often found himself in debt when a shipment was realised. Many of the earlier shipments perished or deteriorated on the voyage. The natural prejudice against eating meat that had been killed months before was hard to overcome.
It is interesting to note that the possibility of using intense cold for the preservation of perishable food was known from an early period. It had occurred to Lord Bacon 250 years before. One cold day, when the ground was covered with snow, he resolved to put his theory to the proof. He alighted from his coach, went into a cottage, bought a fowl and stuffed it with snow with his own hands. Whilst thus engaged he felt a sudden chill which developed
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into a fever from which he died. In the last letter he ever wrote we are told he did not omit to mention that the experiment with the snow had answered "excellently well." But it took long years to evolve a scientific process by which intense cold could be artificially produced at a cost low enough to do commercially what Bacon had demonstrated to be possible experimentally.
Amongst my recollections of old Aucklanders I recall with amusement an occasion when I acted as an arbitrator in a dispute between two rival brewery firms. A point if importance to be settled was the quality and strength of the beer brewed by the respective parties.
A M.P., well known and respected for his kindly and straightforward character, and known to have the traditional Englishman's appreciation of good ale, was called as a witness. "You are an expert judge of ale?" was my first question. "I know a good glass of beer when I taste it," he replied. "May I ask what test you apply?" "Well, I can enjoy half a dozen glasses of 's ale of an evening and don't want a shoe horn to put my hat on next morning." My old friend's name is not of importance, nor would it be fair to give it, as his son occupies an honoured and prominent position in New Zealand's political life. I thought at the time that the retort was as unanswerable as it was to the point.
Among minor matters of interest connected with the Auckland Province I note that the late Sir G. M. O'Rorke was admitted to practice as a lawyer in May, 1868. The personal touch was much in evidence in the early days. One of the daily papers congratulated the "gentleman learned in the law," upon "the accession to their number of one so calculated to confer as much honour on the profession as he will derive from it." It concluded "We doubt not his acknowledged talents will receive for him a successful career in the forum." He announced, by advertisement, later in the year, that he had "commenced the practice of
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his profession." Mr. O'Rorke was a member, and afterwards Speaker, of the Provincial Council, and in later years Speaker of the House of Representatives. In the latter capacity he showed a knowledge of parliamentary procedure combined with firmness and tact in controlling the proceedings of the House, which secured for him a reputation as one of the most successful of Australasian Speakers.
Reference was made in the same issue of the paper to the admission of the late Mr. Thomas Buddie as "the young gentleman who, it will be remembered, passed an examination some time ago, which was alike creditable to himself and the experienced and talented members of the profession to whom he was articled, Messrs. Whitaker and Russell."
In July of the same year (1868) the Herald records that "the two ruffians Bryant and Kersting received their first instalment of flogging yesterday morning. Dr. Philson and Governor Eyre were both present, and the sentence was carried out by a stranger with whose name we are not acquainted. We trust that their example (sic) will have the same deterrent effect on such characters as the same measures had in England some years ago."
It was for many years believed that Lake Pupuke (Takapuna) was unfathomable. Popular tradition ascribed the island of Rangitoto as its source, whence it was said a stream flowed below the bed of the outer harbour into the lake. A reference to the amenities of the district at the end of 1865 described "the beauty of this place, with its unfathomable lake," etc., etc. So strong was this belief that the lake was seriously discussed as a source of water supply for Auckland. The late Mr. Jas. Stewart, C.E., always maintained that it was simply a catchment area and totally unsuited for the purpose. It has now long been known that it is of very limited depth—about 140 feet — and that even with the relatively small consumption of the
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North Shore boroughs the supply is seriously reduced in a dry summer. The district around the lake was until quite recent years owned and cultivated by small farmers. Land could have been bought for what nowadays would be thought a nominal sum. I think the late W. J. Hurst, who was a produce dealer in Queen Street, was the first Auckland citizen to make his home on the border of Pupuke. He was as much in advance of the times as we should say a business man would be to-day who went to live in the neighbourhood of Waiwera. So much have motor-cars done to modify our ideas of time and distance. It must, however, be remembered that at this time the only access to the Lake District was by way of Devonport. The present road was non-existent. The sea at high-water reached both sides of what is known as Narrow Neck, which was, in fact, the only road between the two districts. I have seen the spray on a stormy day carried right across this road. The present Devonport racecourse was part of a tidal mangrove swamp. The construction of the embankment carrying the present direct road to the Lake rendered easy the reclamation of this swamp, and greatly facilitated access to the Lake, as well as other northern districts.
Toward the end of 1866 the old Waitemata Hotel, an unpretentious wooden building, was destroyed by fire. It was at the time carried on by one John Copland, an exceedingly popular Boniface ("a sleek, good-tempered, jolly landlord") . He possessed a very powerful bass voice, and was a prominent member of old St. Paul's choir. The present hotel was one of the finest buildings in the town when it was erected in 1867. It is at present owned by the trustees of the estate of the late Jas. Dilworth, who have announced their intention to remove the existing building and to erect one more worthy of the entrance to an important town. The Herald, in an account of the destruction of the old wooden building, stated that it belonged at that time to Hugh Coolahan, whom I remember as quite one of Auck-
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land's characters. He was a diminutive and voluble Irishman, who had been in business in the town as a baker. He fell upon evil times when the seat of Government was transferred to Wellington, and the British troops were withdrawn from the Colony, and was unfortunate enough eventually to lose this very valuable property.
It is not without interest to trace the varied ownerships through which this particular property has passed. The musty records of the Land Registry office might well furnish material for many a romantic story. The site in question, consisting of a little over a quarter of an acre, was sold by the Colonial Government on 11th November 1848 to W. S. Graham, whose name is now only associated with the dingy stone building in Fort Street known as Graham's Bond, for £286 2s. Small as this sum seems, the land appears to have depreciated in value; for three years afterwards it was bought by Hugh Coolahan for £200. The wooden hotel already mentioned was built upon the site and in 1862 the sum of £6000 was borrowed. This amount was subsequently increased to £8500, and the mortgage transferred to the New Zealand Insurance Co.
In 1870 Coolahan, being unable to pay principal and interest, the Company foreclosed and sold the property to James Dilworth for a little under £10,000. It may be presumed that the buildings were worth at least half the price, which would leave the unimproved site value at £5000. The Government valuation places its value to-day at £56,950. '
The opposite comer, the site of the Thames Hotel and adjacent buildings, is one of the few properties —possibly the only one —which has not changed ownership since it was sold by the New Zealand Government soon after Auckland became the capital of the Colony.
It was purchased at a Government land sale in 1848 by James Dilworth for £231, and remains part of the magnificent endowment left by him for the "Dilworth-Ulster
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Institute," a school for the education and maintenance of orphan or necessituous boys.
The scope and value of this great endowment are not so generally recognised as they deserve to be. This may be due in part to the somewhat cumbrous name devised for the school by the testator. It is a name that does not appeal to the imagination, and one that fails to give any definite idea of the nature of the Trust. The Oxford dictionary defines an Institute as "a society for the promotion of scientific or other object."
There can be no doubt that with skilful administration the school will become a New Zealand counterpart of the famous Christ's Hospital or Blue Coat School of England.
Just after the destruction of the Waitemata Hotel a Mr. C. A. Harris began the erection of a three-storey brick building a few doors higher up Queen Street. The City Commissioners thought it a suitable time to test the question of the reported encroachment of buildings on the western side of the street. They served Mr. Harris with a notice that his building encroached 9ft. 5n. and ordered the immediate removal of the "obstruction." As the question has been frequently re-opened in recent years, it is interesting to note the comment of the Herald, , of 6th October, 1866: "We know as a fact that many years ago Mr. Ligar, Surveyor General, fixed the line of street exactly as the buildings now stand."
If this is correct one can only lament that Mr. Ligar was not possessed of more invagination. The street is generally understood to be about 11 feet narrower at this point than it is at the Union Bank corner. The loss to the public of this additional width is abundantly shown nowadays at the close of each day. It is needless to add that Mr. Harris went on with his operations in spite of the curt notice to remove the building designated as an "obstruction" by the city authorities.
Arson was very frequent in the latter part of 1866. A man named John Elcock was found guilty on two counts of
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setting fire to a house in Chancery Street and sentenced to death on one count and to penal servitude for life for the other. A sentence which seemed to possess a certain grim humour, but I do not remember which was carried into effect.
I recall the havoc caused by caterpillars in early years. They appeared suddenly in certain districts in myriads and were almost as destructive as locusts. The introduction of English insectivorous birds was strongly advocated by the local press; and, a consignment reached Auckland in November 1867, which was sold by auction soon after arival. Sparrows sold as high as 10/- each. Thrushes, blackbirds and starlings were also imported and liberated in the neighbourhood of Auckland. The acclimatisation of swallows and rooks was attempted. As for the latter a small colony established itself on Dr. Campbell's One Tree Hill Estate, but for some reason it increased very little and eventually disappeared.
Every attempt to introduce the swallow has failed, probably owing to the fact that under natural conditions it pursues its insect food on the wing. The failure will be a matter of regret to those who have watched the graceful, gliding flight of this beautiful little bird. It is protected in England with almost superstitious care. It nests in old chimneys, or under the projecting eaves of houses. It is a migratory bird, but it has been proved that it returns to its old nest after its winter sojourn in North Africa. I remember seeing at the end of summer time in an old English Suffolk house a swallow's nest built over a mantel piece between the frame of a family portrait and the wall. It completely cemented the two together; but the lady of the house would permit no interference with the nest, and said it was her intention to leave an open window in the following spring by which the bird could return to its old nest.
Fruit-growers will not need to be reminded that all English small birds found their new surroundings congenial and increased surprisingly fast.
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CHAPTER XII.
Land Claims—The Flax Industry—The Domain Board—Early Population—Taxation—Maoris obtain Ammunition from Colonists .
I have alluded to the huge land claims of some of the early settlers, and the refusal of Sir George Grey to recognise their validity. He considered they were excessive in area, and that the prices paid to the Maoris bore no reasonable proportion to the value of the land. The case of Mr. Busby, who, under the title of British resident had represented the English Government when New Zealand was annexed to the Crown, was one that had long caused much discussion in the colony, and an aggrieved feeling on the part of Mr. Busby. It was eventually referred to arbitration and in the year 1868 Mr. Busby was awarded 10,000 acres of land at the Bay of Islands and a form of Government debenture known as landscrip to the amount of £30,000 or £40,000, to be available for the payment of land to be chosen by him in the province of Auckland. There were certain lands in Parnell belonging to the Provincial Government which he at once applied for. He was curtly informed that all provincial lands had been withdrawn from sale or selection. Litigation followed, but I think that Mr. Busby came off second best. I know that his family always considered their father had been harshly treated.
One of the earliest issues of the Government Gazette stated that Mr. Busby laid claim to 50,005 acres of land, and that the consideration paid to the Maori owners, in goods and money, was stated by him to be £822 12s 6d, which works out at about threepence halfpenny an acre. It may be assumed that most of this was represented by goods on which there would be a margin of profit.
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Mr. Busby was a well known figure in Auckland at this time. He was a man of distinguished presence. His abundant hair and beard were of that pure whiteness which gives an air of distinction to its possessor. His two sous were also well known until quite recent years. Both were highly respected. One, William, had a sheep station in Hawke's Bay, the other, John, managed one in the Marlborough district.
Writing of land claims reminds me of an interesting man of early Auckland days, Mr. T. F. S. Tinne. He arrived in the Tyburnia in 1863, and was an engineer by profession. He joined the late Geo. Fraser and the firm founded the business of engineers and iron shipbuilders in Mechanics' Bay and Stanley Street, long known as Fraser and Tinne.
Tinne, however, was first and foremost an idealist. His father was a West Indian merchant in Liverpool, and Deputy Lieutenant for the County. Of Dutch extraction, he built an Anglican Church at the Hague at the cost of, I think, about £20,000. He had a sister, a Miss Tinne, who was an eccentric and persistent traveller in Central and East Africa. She was murdered in Abyssinia. It was said that this circumstance had a share in bringing about one of Britain's petty wars, known as the Abyssinian campaign.
Tinne, of whom I write, induced some of his English friends to provide funds for the purchase from the Maoris of a block of 40,000 acres of land at Kaipara known as Kaihu No. 4. His idea was to form an industrial village in the Kaihu Valley and to cut up the remainder of the land for the purpose of a special settlement from which intoxicating drink should be excluded.
There was a terrible amount of drinking at the time at the embryo township of Dargaville. Unfortunate bushmen were filled with liquor and then pitched outside either to die or regain consciousness. I have seen a number of men at one time lying about in the helpless stage of drunken-
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ness. It was not an unknown incident for men to start away in their dingheys and never to be seen alive afterwards.
Tinne introduced a new phase of the flax industry into his Kaihu village. He started the manufacture of matting to take the place of that made from the fibre of cocoa-nuts, and also the making of strong wrapping paper.
The industry was a losing venture, and eventually collapsed. Tinne afterwards returned to England, leaving the agency of the business in my hands. When the Kaihu railway was proposed I went up to form a basis of agreement as to the amount of compensation, if any, to be paid for the land taken, and came to the conclusion that the benefit of railway communication would sufficiently compensate the owners of the land. The question was afterwards referred to an Auckland firm of land agents, who reported that £800 would be a fair payment. It was eventually settled by the arbitration of Mr. Justice Gillies and Mr. Wm. Aitken, who decided against the payment of any compensation.
The block was afterwards sold by auction. An Edinburgh visitor, a Mr. Nimmo, bought it for 5/- an acre, and at once let it on a gum-digging lease at £1000 a year to Messrs. Mitchelson.
I have never seen the land since. The last I heard of it was from an Auckland company promoter who invited me to form one of a syndicate to purchase "a block of fine land" for about £60,000. I found it was a portion of the 40,000-acre block known as Kaihu No. 4.
About the year 1868 Mr. William Brown made, happily, an unsuccessful effort to prove his claim to over 100 acres of Maungakeikei (One Tree Hill). This, I think, was the southern side of the hill, which now comprises the One Tree Hill Domain. It was afterwards set apart as an education reserve, and later narrowly escaped annexation by the borough of Onehunga for cemetery purposes. It was eventually proclaimed a public domain, the New Zealand
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Government making a grant of country land, of supposed equivalent value, for educational purposes.
It was my privilege to act for many years as chairman of the Domain Board, and in that capacity to direct the tree-planting of this beautiful public estate. Tree planting has always had a fascination for me, and although much remains to be done, I venture to hope that the result of my efforts is generally approved by those of the public who give any thought to the subject.
In this connection I place on record my appreciation of the valuable advice I received from my friends the late Thos. Cheeseman, F.L.S., Professor A. P. W. Thomas, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., and Rev. J. H. Simmonds.
In the year 1868 the One Tree Hill district was considered well out of town. The earliest movement of its residents towards independent local government took place on the 6th August, when a meeting of local farmers was held at Buckland's Sale Yards on the Great South Road to appoint trustees and levy a rate.
Statistics possess little interest for the majority of people, but it is worth noting that the population of New Zealand, which at the end of 1864 was 172,158 had reached only 218,637 three years later, of whom 132,009 were males and 86,628 females. This relatively small increase was mainly due to natural causes, and but little to immigration. The number of births during 1867 was 8918, equal to slightly over 40 per 1000.
This was the high-water mark of New Zealand's natural increase of population. It was, I believe, the highest rate at the time in the world, in countries where records were kept. It at least ranked with the highest. The fall from year to year since has been practically continuous. The year 1921 showed only 23.34 per 1000, a slight increase over the lowest recorded rate of 21.42 in 1919. It is not my concern to deal with the ethical aspect of the much-debated question of birth control. I will only add that whilst it is
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fairly open to discussion in old countries, where the population may be thought to have reached or exceeded the limit of the means of subsistence it is a remarkable feature in the life of a young country where food is produced in lavish abundance, far beyond the requirements of the present inhabitants or of any number they are likely to attain in the near future, where, moreover, the average standard of comfort is fairly high, and where the highest positions are open to, and often occupied by, citizens of the lowliest origin. It will be remembered of three of the Prime Ministers of New Zealand that Mr. R. J. Seddon began life as a boiler rivetter, Sir J. Ward as a telegraph messenger, and Mr. W. F. Massey as a lad on a farm. All honour to them for their ability, pluck, and perseverance.
The question of taxation was much in evidence during the late sixties of last century. The interest on the Maori War loan, and the inevitable increase of Government expenditure in the development of a new country, coupled with the comparatively slow increase of population by immigration, had produced an inevitable increase of taxation. A public meeting was held in Auckland on the Ist February, 1868, to bring into existence a "Reform League." The principal speaker was Mr. J. C. Firth, then and for many years afterwards one of Auckland's most progressive and prominent townsmen. He quoted the taxation at £5 per head of the population, and moved a resolution: "That this meeting is of opinion that the present rate of taxation and government expenditure in New Zealand is excessive and manifestly injurious to the prosperity of the Colony." One of the subsequent speakers was a Mr. W. Swanson. He was generally known as "Willie" Swanson, and was, I think, a shipbuilder by trade. The name Swanson Street was altered from that of West Queen Street as a compliment to him. He was a very unconventional person in appearance, speech and manner, and anyone passing up Queen Street at almost any time of the day was sure to meet him. It was somewhat
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of a surprise years afterwards when he was appointed to the Legislative Council. His speech on the occasion to which I am referring, delivered with a very strong Scottish accent, was somewhat personal and very characteristic. He advocated an income tax, and suggested a shilling in the £. By way of explanation he proceeded: "Suppose a man had an income of £1000 a year; at five per cent, that would be £50. Fancy Jemmy O'Neill being called upon to put his hand in his pocket for such a sum." I may add by way of explanation that an income of £1000 a year was very exceptional at this time. Jemmy O'Neill was the Hon. James of that ilk, who was supposed to be one of the few fortunate ones. The incident may not be without interest to-day when taxation has reached far above the figure then named, and also as illustrating the very personal element which pervaded public affairs at the time.
In further illustration of this latter point I may record an incident which took place a year or so earlier. It was a much and hotly debated question where the Maoris obtained arms and ammunition. They certainly did get them, and as certainly did so through the agency of white men. It is a lamentable fact that large profits always tempt certain men to act thus traitorously. That it was so during the great European War is conclusively shown by Admiral Consett in his Triumph of Unarmed Forces, where it is made evident that huge supplies of war material, e.g., cotton, copper, fat, etc., were sent to Scandinavia by Englishmen manifestly for use in Germany. So in New Zealand; war material reached the Maoris and enabled them to prolong the fight. The exact means by which these things were sent was somewhat of a mystery. It was said that barrels of salt pork shipped in Auckland for the East Coast reached their destination as barrels of war material, and rumour was busy at the time in an endeavour to identify the offenders.
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
BUSHFELLERS AT WORK
Collected by Professor A. P. W. Thomas, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., in 1895 for scientific investigation. The eggs would, under
GROUP OF TUATARAS (SPHENODON PUNCTATUM)
natural conditions, be found in burrows.
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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The subject was raised in Parliament towards the close of 1866, and in reply to a question, Major Richardson, a member of the Government, stated that "from information received it appeared that Messrs. Coombes and Daldy had supplied the contraband articles." This was a very serious statement, which gave the force of Government assurance to the truth of what had so far been vague, unsupported rumour. It was naturally assumed throughout the colony that the Government was in possession of definite evidence of the truth of so serious an accusation, and that no one in the position of a Minister of the Crown would take advantage of the immunity from the law of libel enjoyed by members of Parliament to make the statement without such evidence. The effect in Auckland may be imagined. In so small a community as we were at the time, when everybody knew, or thought he knew, everybody else's business, it was as though a bomb had been exploded in our midst. Everybody was on the qui vive to see what would happen. The sequel was discreditable to the Government: Capt. Daldy (his title was derived from his former mastership of a coasting boat), the head of the firm which carried on a somewhat extensive mercantile business in Queen Street, just below its junction with Fort Street, was a man of mark in our small community. He occupied a very prominent position in religious as well as mercantile life. He met the Government's charge promptly and decisively with an absolute and unconditional denial. The denial was quietly accepted by Major Richardson and the accusation withdrawn. The comment of the Daily Southern Cross on 12th January, 1867, was vigorous and to the point, but written in terms that would hardly be used to-day in criticising the action of a public man. "We don't think Major Richardson could do any action if it required an exhibiton of straightforwardness. He has wriggled through life; and we doubt not that the end of his career will be a shuffle." The Cross at this time was edited by R. J. Creighi
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ton. He hailed from Ulster, and displayed the dour characteristics of his race. He afterwards gave up journalism and took to politics, acting for some time as Provincial Secretary, and subsequently as member of the House of Representatives for an Auckland constituency. He eventually left New Zealand and lived in San Francisco, where he acted as commercial agent for the New Zealand Government.
It may be of interest to record, as a sign that times have changed since the period of which I write, that on the 4th January, 1867, six boys employed at George Holdship's timber yard and factory at Newton were brought before Magistrate Beckham, charged by their employer with absenting themselves from work on Boxing Day. The worthy magistrate, after giving them one of his characteristic lectures on the serious nature of their offence, discharged them on their promise not to repeat it.
I have alluded to the paucity of Auckland's exports in the early days. In view of the thousands of bales of wool which are offered by each of the various auctioneers at the present time, it is of interest to recall Mr. A. Buckland's announcement of January, 1867, that he would offer a catalogue of 174 bales of wool at his second sale of the season, especially as most of the wool sold locally passed through his hands.
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CHAPTER XIII.
Albert Park nearly lost to Auckland —Crime in Auckland— The Telephone—Fine Christmas Holidays in the Old Days a Delusion—Kauri.
The fragment still remaining in Princes Street of the old wall that in those days surrounded the Albert Barracks reminds one how nearly the beautiful Albert Park fell into the hands of speculators. An advertisement appeared in the Auckland newspapers on 4th January, 1870, calling, on the part of the Home Government, for tenders for the purchase of part of the Albert Barracks. Happily Sir Donald Maclean, the Native Minister, intervened, and the land was withdrawn from sale. It was, I believe, soon afterwards conveyed to the New Zealand Government on condition that it was retained as an open space for the use of the public. A local body was set up, called, as well as I remember, the City Improvement Commissioners. This body, on the plea that money was necessary to improve the property, soon set to work to lay off streets and building sections. The latter, fronting the new streets, were let on 99-year building leases at nominal rents. The public quietly acquiesced in the spoliation of their estate, and no doubt the lessees congratulated themselves on their good fortune. I do not remember any other "improvements" carried out by these commissioners; my impression being that it was reserved for a city council of a much more recent period to create the beautiful little park as we see it to-day. It is one of the scandals of the early days that so much of it was alienated from the public.
Mr. (afterwards Sir) Wm. Fitzherbert, of Wellington, was Colonial Treasurer in 1867, a period when the South Island was progressing by leaps and bounds. Gold was
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being produced in large quantities and the open nature of the country enabled settlement to proceed at a much more rapid rate than in the North Island, where all the best of the land was covered with dense forest. This island appeared, to casual observers, to be hopelessly outclassed. It was commonly referred to by southern journalists in that sense. Bearing these facts in mind, a remark of Mr. Fitzherbert in his budget speech of 22nd August, 1867, is prophetic and worth recording. He said: "Up to the era of the discovery of gold in the South, the North not only kept pace with the South, but, in the greater part of that period, contributed much the largest share of the revenues of the country. It would be well to bear in mind that prudent people act as though 'what has been may be again'."
I have alluded to the prevalence of the crime of arson during the latter sixties. The acute commercial depression which prevailed at the time was not favourable to the development of a high commercial morality. I recall the disparaging tone in which Auckland was spoken of in the South in regard to this aspect of affairs —all were alike distrusted. Nor was this feeling of distrust in the business men of Auckland confined to their Southern fellow colonists. The Herald, usually jealous of the good name of its supporters, opened a remarkably outspoken leading article on 9th November, 1867, in these words: "Commercial immorality has reached such a pitch in this community that its very shamelessness will work its own cure." Apropos of this I call to mind a sermon preached at this time by the Rev. David Jones at old St. Matthew's wooden church. He took his text from 2 Kings, v.: 20: "Behold, my master hath spared this Naaman the Syrian in not receiving at his hands that which he brought; as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him." Mr. Jones was an eloquent and outspoken Welshman, and his congregation contained some of Auckland's prominent business men. He enlarged upon Gehazi's untruthfulness, covetousness
F. G. RADCLIFFE PHOTO
MAIN STREET, DUNEDIN
MILFORD SOUND
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
THE HARBOUR AT KAWAU
KAWAU, SHOWING OLD COPPER SMELTING WORKS IN MID DISTANCE
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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and dishonesty, and after a few moments' pause, exclaimed: "There are many Gehazi's in Queen Street."
I could recall some very flagrant and possibly interesting cases which came under my own observation at the time, but cui bono? I remember one which is, perhaps, sufficiently interesting to be worth mentioning. An Auckland firm insured a cargo of breadstuffs from a South American port by a barque named Sir George Grey. The vessel never reached port, and the insured applied for the insurance. The Company, an Australian office, refused to pay on the ground that the firm had good reason to believe their ship was lost when they took out a policy. The firm did not contest the matter. It was compromised by the payment of a sum much below the amount insured.
I suppose virtue and vice depend largely upon the temptation which men meet. In later and more prosperous times it might be said, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as men can bear"; or is man a predatory animal, and the stronger naturally prey upon the weaker? In olden times the Highlander came down from his barren hills to raid the cattle of the peaceful Lowlander, or the high-born but unscrupulous baron issued forth from his castle to levy toll from the helpless burgher of the plains. Is there anything in the crudely expressed philosophy of the Tichbourne claimant: "There are people with plenty money and no brains, and people with plenty brains and no money, and the people with plenty money and no brains are made for the people with plenty brains and no money." Does not the bogus company promoter or the land shark of to-day, the latter of whom obtains an option over a piece of barren land and sets to work to plan a paper township which he sells piecemeal to credulous victims at almost as much money per foot as he contracts to pay per acre, truly represent the cut-throat cattle stealer or the plundering baron of olden times, or are his ethics any better than those of the "shamelessly immoral" business man of 1867?
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Towards the end of the seventies there was much talk of the possibility of transmitting the human voice over long distances. It was said to be possible in a modified degree by means of a simple piece of string. Every small boy rigged up an amateur and very primitive apparatus for the purpose. The usual plan was to remove the ends of a couple of jam tins and to replace one end of each with strong paper pasted on to the side of the improvised cylinder. One end of a long piece of cord was passed through a small hole in the stretched paper of each tin and secured inside by a knot. Each tin was held by a boy, one of whom used the open end of his tin as a transmitter, the other using his as a receiver. As a matter of fact, the report was the reflection of the use in the United States of the telephone. We soon learnt that an English scientist, Mr. Bell, in corroboration with Mr. Edison, of New York, had invented this wonderful instrument. The invention had gained a pretty firm hold in the States before it came into use in this part of the world. I happened, in the late seventies, to be travelling to Sydney, and among my fellow voyagers was a representative of the Edison, Bell, Co., who had been sent to introduce the invention to Australia and New Zealand. He suggested that he should send me one of the company's telephones which I was somehow to get placed on trial in Auckland, and that I should endeavour to get a concession from the New Zealand Government for the general installation of the telephone system. The sample instrument reached Auckland soon after my return. It was a matter of some difficulty to find a means of testing it for public use. It happened, however, that the Auckland Gas Company had a short telegraph line from their Queen Street office to their works in Graham Street. I consulted Mr. Alfred Sheath, the local Superintendent of Electric Telegraphs, and we had very little difficulty in getting the Company's permission to use their line after four o'clock
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in the afternoons for the purpose of demonstrating the new invention. Mr. Sheath, who was a very courteous gentleman, got the necessary connections made, and the daily demonstration caused general interest among the business community.
My application to secure the right for the Edison, Bell Co. to install the system was declined by the New Zealand Government —very properly so, I think, although it was worked in England for many years, and is still, I believe, worked in the United States by private enterprise.
We all know how often, nowadays, the Christmas holidays are spoilt by rainy weather. Elderly colonists often remark that it was not so in the early days, when we could depend upon really fine holiday weather. I am afraid, however, that this is a fiction we must ascribe to fickle memory. In proof I may recall the fact that bushfellers used to depend upon heavy rain causing "Christmas freshes" to bring their timber down to the mills. In explanation of this, it will be remembered that in those days only timber growing within reach of a creek could be utilised. Bush tramways and wire rope haulers were unknown. The custom was to use only such trees as could be rolled down the hillside, by means of powerful "jacks," into the creek, and then only the best part of the trunk would be utilised. Dams were erected high up the creek to store the water, with provision for the sudden liberating of the intercepted stream. By these means an artificial flood was caused which often sufficed to float the logs down to the mill. The latter was of necessity always near the sea, as the only way of bringing the timber to market was by means of coasting craft. Most of the cutting was done at these country mills, and the timber distributed direct throughout New Zealand. It should be added that kauri was the only timber in general use at this period, and indeed until quite recent times. No one would have even suggested the use for building of rimu, matai, kahikatea, or tawa —even totara, as I
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
have remarked elsewhere, was barred if kauri was available. All other timbers, except perhaps totara, were ruthlessly burnt. The price of heart kauri varied, according to the demand, from 10/- to 14/- per hundred feet super. Such timber to-day, kauri or totara, is worth 65/-, or perhaps rather more. But nowadays bushes have to be equipped with expensive tramways and the timber has to be hauled for long distances by locomotive engines from bush to mill. In the case of isolated trees, the logs are hauled up by wire ropes worked by steam-driven windlasses; and, as we all know, anything in the shape of timber is brought on to the market quite regardless of its lasting or non-lasting quality. Even so recently as fifteen years ago, when the late Sir J. L. Campbell was developing his estate at One Tree Hill, there was a long avenue of great pinus insignis trees leading from the Great South Road to the old homestead. It cost £4 each to cut and burn these trees. Great fires were kept burning for weeks. To-day sawmill owners would be glad not only to remove such trees, but to pay a substantial price for the timber.
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Recollections of Early New Zealand
CHAPTER XIV.
Kawau —Departure of Episcopalian Bishop and Arrival of his Successor—Visit of Duke of Edinburgh.
From the time when Sir George Grey purchased Kawau in 1862 there existed in the minds of the people a certain feeling of curiosity and romance about the island.
It was known to contain a copper mine which might be of great potential value, and the fact that a man with so distinguished a career had chosen an island so detached from the busy haunts of men, as a retreat from the cares of office, invested it with unusual interest. He built a comfortable residence in one of its beautiful bays, where he dispensed a simple yet dignified hospitality. His collection of paintings and rare books was the delight of connoisseurs. Every visitor of note to the colony was a recipient of his hospitality. He was keenly interested in acclimatisation and his efforts to introduce new fauna were watched with interest. It was the only property in the colony whose owner possessed the land lying between high and low-water mark.
It the year 1867 the Herald gave publicity to a report that the island was to be created a separate province of New Zealand, and that Sir George Grey intended to bequeath it as a national endowment. These reports, however, proved to be incorrect.
The history of its ownership is not devoid of interest. The earliest reference to it in the archives of the colony
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dates from 15th July, 1848, when a title was issued signed by R. Fitzroy, Governor, and Andrew Sinclair, Colonial Secretary and registrar of lands. The deed sets forth that the grantee, one Beattie, had satisfied the authorities that he had a valid claim to the island, but it made no mention of high or low-water boundaries. It described the property as "the island of Kawa in the Firth of Thames or Gulf of Hauraki and lying abreast of Tawaranui." The area was given as about 2560 acres.
In the year 1853 the owner's right to the land below high-water mark appears to have been successfully impressed upon Sir George Grey, for he executed a declaration on behalf of the Crown setting out that whereas doubts had arisen as to the extent of the grant, in order to remove such doubts he declared that the grant extended to low-water mark, subject to the right of persons landing on, or passing or repassing over, the foreshore.
The island was mortgaged by the grantee to one Graham, and was sold on 9th April, 1858, to a Mr. Buckland, of Sydney, for £2500. On the 25th November, 1862, Buckland sold the island to Sir George Grey, with 27 acres on the mainland opposite, for £3700, reserving to himself 10 per cent, of the value of all minerals recovered, and the right to enter and take minerals. The area of the island had evidently been more correctly ascertained at this time, for the title deed states it to be about 4800 acres, instead of 2560 in the original grant.
The history of the island after its disposal by Sir George Grey is not of any public interest. It has passed through the hands of several land speculators at progressive prices. Quite recently the land between high and low-water mark was bought in by the Crown, at a sale on default on a mortgage by the Public Trustee. The price paid was £1200. The object of the Government was no doubt to obtain control of the oyster beds which exist around the island.
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On the departure of Bishop Selwyn in 1868 the title Bishop of New Zealand lapsed. The selection of his successor was left to the Bishop himself. His choice fell upon Dr. W. G. Cowie, who was a comparatively young man, being under 40. Born in London of Scottish Highland parents, he had served with distinction under General Roberts as an army chaplain, and was present at the capture of Lucknow. He was consecrated at Westminster Abbey and arrived in Auckland in 1869, holding office until a short time before his death in 1902 —a period of over 33 years.
I was present at old St. Paul's Church when he preached his first sermon in New Zealand, and was much impressed by his fine presence. The custom of shaving, now almost universal amongst the Anglican clergy, had not then become fashionable. The new Bishop had a very full black beard and moustache. He was above medium height and carried himself with a fine military bearing, which was accentuated by the medal and clasp he wore.
His preaching lacked eloquence, but was marked rather by a vein of strong common sense, and was free from any hard and fast dogmatic theology.
I think it may safely be assumed that had he been a politician he would have been on the Liberal, possibly on the Radical, side. A passage in one of his locally published diaries, written whilst on a visit to England, commented with warmth on the indifference of some of the English landed gentry to the condition of their parish churches. He wrote from an English rectory where he was staying at the time, and either wrote under a misapprehension or intended his remarks to have only a general application. It happened that a copy of the Church Gazette containing his comments reached Lord W-, the patron of the living. I was visiting the district some time afterwards and was told by the rector that he had had a bad time, as his patron erroneously jumped to the conclusion that he had
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inspired the Bishop's remarks. "As a matter of fact," said the rector, "my patron contributed liberally towards the restoration of the church."
Bishop Cowie was a man of wide sympathies, and held himself free from any cast iron rule of episcopal usage. He caused a mild sensation when it was announced in the Auckland newspapers that Mrs. Annie Besant, the high priestess of Theosophy, and a prominent member of the Indian Nationalist movement, was a guest at Bishopscourt during her stay in Auckland many years ago.
If the Bishop could be said to have had an autocratic leaning it was in his scrupulous regard—l had almost written reverence —for punctuality. It was my privilege to act under his presidency on more than one executive body for a number of years, but I never saw the proceedings begin one minute late.
Throughout his long episcopate it may fairly be said that he followed the line of least resistance. It was thought by many that the church would have been a greater power in the land had he been less compliant and shown greater resolution and less gentleness. He worked hard and visited every part of his greatly scattered diocese at a time when travelling was much more arduous than it is to-day. I have met him riding with his wife through some of the most distant parts of the Auckland province, with which few men were better acquainted.
He visited England for several Lambeth Conferences, and usually sent a diary of his travels and doings to the local Church Gazette. He published several books, one on the occasion of an English visit, entitled Our Last Year in New Zealand, containing a curiously graphic description of his daily life, as well as many appreciative references to Auckland churchmen. As literature it could hardly be called a success. He lived in old Bishops-court, and endured uncomplainingly to the end the discomfort of an out-of-date and uncomfortable residence.
H.R.H PRINCE ALFRED, DUKE OF EDINBURGH
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
VILLAGE SCENE, TE AWAHOU
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
OHINEMUTU, LAKE ROTORUA
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It may well be said that if he inspired no ardent enthusiasms he died without an enemy. He founded the Auckland Sailors' Home and was its President to the end of his life. His wife survived him only a few weeks. She did much good work in the diocese in a gentle, unobtrusive way. St. Mary's Home at Otahuhu is one of the good works due to her initiative. Their three sons all entered the church, and are too well known to need any appreciation from me.
It was announced early in 1868 that the Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria, would visit New Zealand and Australia in command of H.M.S. Galatea. Sir George Grey had received him at the Cape as a midshipman, when he described him as "a nice, frank, handsome boy; an extremely taking little boy," and in one of his last despatches dated from Kawau, 14th January, 1868, he pathetically expressed his "disappointment at not having accorded to me the honour and gratification of receiving him in New Zealand."
In due course the Duke arrived in Sydney, where he received a loyal welcome. On the 25th March a report, which was at first discredited, that he had been shot, reached Auckland. It turned out to be too true. He had accepted an invitation to visit, on the 12th March, a holiday resort called Clontarf in Middle Harbour. A large number of persons assembled to give him a welcome. On his way to witness some aboriginal sports a fanatical Irishman named O'Farrell discharged the contents of a revolver at him at close quarters. As he lay wounded on the ground he exclaimed "Good God, my back is broken." Sir Wm. Manning, hearing the shot, sprang at O'Farrell, who at once aimed the pistol at him. Sir William stooped to avoid the shot, and, losing his balance, fell. As he rose O'Farrell again took aim at him, but he was seized by a Mr. Vial who pinned his arms to his side. O'Farrell, however, managed once more to discharge the pistol, this time wounding
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in the ankle a Sydney gentleman, Mr. Geo. Thorne, who had hastened to the assistance of the wounded Prince. Mr. Thorne afterwards received a carte de visite photograph of the Prince as a memento of the occasion.
It proved, happily, that the Prince's injury, though serious was not dangerous —the bullet struck a rib which diverted it from any vital part of his body, and he soon recovered sufficiently to rejoin his ship. No time was lost in dealing with O'Farrell. He was tried, found guilty and, on the 21st April, hanged.
The Prince decided at once to return to England, but soon afterwards started on a second voyage to the Antipodes. He arrived in Auckland on the 10th May, 1869, and was welcomed with enthusiasm. It could hardly be said that he proved a popular prince. He certainly lacked the charm of manner which in recent times we have become accustomed to with royalty.
One of his equerries was Lord Chas. Beresford, who will be remembered as the fearless and outspoken critic of naval affairs he afterwards became. He was very fond of horses, and created a mild sensation by attempting to drive a coach and four down the Queen Street Wharf, which at that time started at the site now occupied by the Waverley Hotel. Another equerry, the Hon. Elliot Yorke, was an accomplished actor. He took the principal part in a performance of "Hamlet" at the old Prince of Wales Theatre, which then occupied the site of the present Brunswick Buildings. His acting as the Prince of Denmark was magnificent. I have seen the play several times since, when the part of Hamlet has been taken by distinguished actors, but never have I seen anything to equal the fine performance of the Hon. Elliot Yorke. This gentleman afterwards married a Rothschild and, I think, died at a comparatively early age.
The Prince was popularly believed to have the leaning of his Hanoverian ancestors to the Shrine of Eros. He was
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an enthusiastic musician, and I believe played skilfully on the violin. He took a keen interest in the Auckland Choral Society and conducted one or more of its performances.
I remember very well being at a dance that the members gave in his honour on the last night of his visit. It was a brilliant affair, and the Prince throughout the evening paid perhaps rather marked attention to a young halfcaste lady of great charm of appearance and manner, one of a family which occupied a prominent position in society at the time. I may add that she has long since been called from this life. When the last dance was over, a certain Dr. P-, a gentleman well known for his insatiable love of speechmaking, mounted the dais and, after paying the usual tribute to the great and princely qualities of the guest of the evening, concluded by expressing his regret at his approaching departure next morning, and his hope that "the Prince might at no distant day return to our midst and find, among the daughters of New Zealand, a bride who should not be unworthy of him." I think my memory enables me to quote practically verbatim. Need I add that the Prince failed to comply with the worthy Doctor's most excellent suggestion. Instead, he married the only daughter of Alexander II., Czar of Russia, renounced his British citizenship, and succeeded his father's brother as Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, a right which his own elder brother, afterwards King Edward VII., had renounced some years earlier. The Germans hardly shared the excessive love for Englishmen which in the Victorian period so many English people, following the example of their Queen, had for everything and everybody German. The accession, therefore, of an English Prince to the petty German ducal throne did not escape unfriendly comment on the part of some of his new subjects.
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CHAPTER XV.
Origin of N.Z. Shipping Co.—Direct Cargo Steamer advocated —Aviation.
We sometimes hear of the charm of the old sailing ships, and from a spectacular point of view they were certainly more beautiful than the modern steamship. It is said they produced a hardier and better type of seamen. This may be true, but it must be admitted that the modern seaman does not usually show a lack of resourcefulness or bravery if overtaken by disaster. From the merchant's point of view there can be no comparison. Nowadays he knows to within a few days or even hours when his merchandise will reach him. There is a large saving of interest on his outlay in the difference of time during which his goods are in transit, and most important of all the modern ship usually delivers its cargo in the same good order in which it was placed on board. The old style wooden ship was too often leaky, and a considerable proportion of the cargo was usually more or less saturated with salt water. Redress was difficult to obtain. The marine surveyor's report almost invariably certified that the damaged cargo was "well stowed and dunnaged," and the quaint "Act of God" clause in the Bills of Lading removed the onus from the ship. The carrying trade of New Zealand was originally in the hands of Messrs. Willis, Gann and Co., of London. Later, in the early sixties, two young Scotch clerks in their employment, Mr. Shaw and Mr. Savill, started in the same line of business. They soon worked up a large connection, and eventually obtained the practical monopoly originally held by their employers.
GEYSER IN ACTION, WHAKAREWAREWA, ROTORUA
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
RIVER AWA1HOU
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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In the absence of competition it was hardly to be expected that we should get the newest and best of ships, such as the famous Australian or China clippers, when vessels that were past their prime, or less expensively built, were to be chartered for much less money. At any rate we got ships which, though looking very pretty sailing up the harbour, were most unsatisfactory as cargo carriers.
I remember coming up from the wharf one morning in the early seventies after watching cargo saturated with sea water being landed from a ship called the Countess of Kintore. Meeting Mr. Henry Isaacs, of the firm of E. and H. Isaacs, at that time a large importing firm, and telling him what I had just seen, I asked "Are we so bound to the existing monopoly that no redress is possible —could the Auckland importers not combine to charter and load small iron ships in London instead of depending on the leaky wooden tubs to which we are accustomed." He entered readily into my suggestion, and convened a meeting of merchants to consider the project. It resulted in the formation of a small combination calling itself, as well as I remember, "The Auckland Freight Co." A small iron barque was chartered in London to start the scheme. The firm in possession, naturally enough, was not going to let the business pass out of its hands so easily. Inducements to desert the local enterprise were too strong, and this particular scheme proved a failure. The special disadvantage of Auckland was that it had practically no exports. About 4000 bales of wool, 5000 tons of gum, a little tallow, and a few transhipments were all we had to offer. The idea, however, was taken up in Christchurch, where dissatisfaction was as general as it was in Auckland, and the New Zealand Shipping Co. was formed. It was at the start a comparatively small company, and its capital was principally subscribed in the colony. It met at the outset with opposition from the old monopoly, but the leaky wooden ships were soon things of the past, and for many years afterwards the imK
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port and export trade of the country was carried on in iron sailing ships built for the purpose. There was no longer any room for the old wooden vessels which had so long hampered and monopolised our trade.
A few —a very few —men gifted with imagination ventured to advocate direct cargo steamers, and curiously enough their most insistent champion was a hard-headed Scotchman named Macandrew, who had been Superintendent of the Otago Province. Nearly all practical men thought, however, that the necessity of carrying sufficient coal for so long a voyage would require all the available space on an ocean steamer, and for that reason alone the idea was impracticable. Men did not realise that a type of vessel would be evolved large enough to carry huge cargoes in addition to the coal necessary for the longest voyage.
The experiment had, indeed, been tried some years earlier, before the invention of the compound engine. The Great Eastern, designed by Brunei, was launched in 1858, with great difficulty and some loss of life. Her combined paddle and screw propulsion proved unsatisfactory. Her gross tonnage, about 24,000 tons, was rather less than half that of the greatest steamers of the present day. Her engine power was, however, only 2000 horse-power. She proved a costly failure, and it was confidently predicted by practical men that so large a ship would never again be built. I remember, as a boy, seeing her in the river Thames, a leviathan as she appeared at the time. Her misadventure broke the heart of her designer, who was taken home from the ship suffering from a paralytic stroke, from which he died a week later.
Among the many achievements of modern times, probably none appeals more to the imagination than the conquest of man over the air. That he should be able to rise from the earth and soar through space at a speed far exceeding that of the swiftest bird, in a vessel propelled by heavy machinery carrying besides a great weight of freight
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—human or otherwise —would have seemed impossible a generation ago. The discovery is so recent and its possibilities are so great and so uncertain, that one is apt to wonder whether man has created a sort of Frankenstein which may result in disaster to the race. Whether, in fact, we may not apply to the bewildering attainments of modern science lines which were suggested for an epitaph on a great naturalist who died in the prime of life:
He courted nature for his mistress, wooed her so He won her till, by love made bold, She showed him more than mortal man should know— Then slew him, lest her secrets should be told.
In early Victorian days the balloon was regarded as an interesting and rather dangerous toy, used chiefly for the amusement of pleasure-seekers at holiday times. It was invented by a Frenchman named Montgolfier. His first ascent was made in June 1783, in a pear shaped balloon of his own construction, when he rose 1500 feet.
In the year 1861 the British Association appointed a committee to pursue meteorological observation from balloons. At this time an Englishman, Henry Coxwell, had achieved distinction by his successful ascents, and he was commissioned to construct a suitable machine. Accompanied by James Glaisher, a well-known astronomer and scientist of the period, he made a number of ascents during 1862 for the purpose of scientific observation.
In September of the same year they planned, and actually accomplished a very ambitious flight. I have a vivid recollection of an account of this adventure I heard given by Mr. Glaisher in London in the year 1863. They were credited with an actual ascent 'of nearly seven miles. They were necessarily at the mercy of the wind. Sand packed in bags was carried for ballast. When they wished to rise these were thrown overboard. Their only way of descent was by releasing some of the hydrogen gas with which
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the balloon was filled. This was done by means of a valve operated by a cord from the car which carried the aeronauts.
Mr. Glaisher related in thrilling language the incidents and sensations of the unparalleled voyage. As they ascended, the difficulty of breathing increased, the extreme rarity of the air caused blood to exude from under the finger nails and from nose and ears. At 29,000 feet he became unconscious. Coxwell then tried to arrest their upward flight, but on attempting to pull the cord which controlled the release valve he found he had lost the use of his hands. Soaring higher and higher into immeasurable space with an insensible, possibly a dead, companion at his feet, the situation was desperate. He knew that soon, he knew not how soon, he must himself succumb to the excessive rarification of the atmosphere.
It had probably never fallen to the lot of any other human being to face a crisis so unique and so unnerving.
At 37,000 feet a happy inspiration occurred to him. He seized the release cord between his teeth, the valve responded, the gas began rapidly to escape and the great balloon descended in safety. I never saw Coxwell, but when I heard Glaisher narrate his experience he showed no sign of any ill-effect from his great ascent. He made many more ascents to a less altitude for scientific purposes, and lived until the year 1903, when he died at the age of 93.
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CHAPTER XVI.
Rotorua and the Journey from Auckland—The Pink and White Terraces before the Eruption—Old Mission at Wairoa— Return to Auckland.
I paid a visit to the Hot Lake district in 1872. It may be of interest to give a short account of the trip to illustrate the changes which have taken place in the country. There were three routes available, e.g., the easiest and the one most generally used, via Tauranga, or that via Ohinemuri. We chose the third, via Cambridge, knowing that it would take us through a part of the island which at the time was not much frequented by white men.
We travelled by coach as far as Cambridge. The country for some distance beyond Drury was mostly in its natural state, covered with light bush. A large area of the Karaka district was owned by the late Wm. Aitken, and was unsaleable at 10/- per acre. It was bought, many years after by Mr. T. C. Williams at or about that price, with the intention of planting it in gorse which, he believed, would carry more sheep than grass. Fortunately for the country he did not carry out his idea, but had it broken up and grassed, and sold in small farms. It is worth now two or three times as many pounds as it was shillings five and twenty years ago.
A few settlers at Drury were clearing and burning off. We halted at Rangiriri to view the graves of the men who fell at the assault on the Maori pah in 1864.
Game at this time was very plentiful in the neighbourhood. We saw a great many ducks and pheasants. Near Taupiri we ran into a cloud of tiny flies, a kind of midge, exceedingly small but very irritating.
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The first night's stop was at Ngaruawahia. The men of the Armed Constabulary were much in evidence. Their labour was being utilised by the Government in the construction of a road through the great Moana tuatua swamp, known at the time as Walker's swamp.
The Waikato at Hamilton was crossed by ferry. The principal improvement on the road to Cambridge, through Tamahere, was the 1000-acre farm of the Reynolds family, who hailed from the English west country. I wrote at the time: "The sight of this gladdens the eye and brings to one's mind a prospective view of what the whole district will one day become." One son, Mr. Henry Reynolds, was a pioneer in the factory butter industry, and eventually settled in the Argentine. Their beautiful farm must have proved an inspiration to many a future settler. It seemed almost magical at the time to see how quickly a dreary waste of manuka and fern could be converted into pleasant pastures, a veritable oasis in the wilderness. The necessary farm implements and manure were probably shipped to Waikato Heads, then by river steamer to Cambridge.
To appreciate fully the faith and courage of these pioneers it must be remembered that they were doubly handicapped. Freight was high on all they required, and prices were low for nearly all they produced. Wool was the only exception. The close of the Franco-Prussian War had produced a favourable reaction in price. The export of meat and butter had not begun, and the local demand was small. But for the help of science New Zealand must have drifted into stagnation.
At Cambridge we spent a quiet week-end arranging with a guide for the services of himself and horses. As we were leaving civilisation for some little time we had to take supplies of preserved food for ourselves and as much corn for our horses as the pack-horse could carry in addition. We started in the afternoon of Monday, our party consisting of four, besides our guide. After leaving Cambridge
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there were no roads and we had to depend on Maori tracks which had been used from time immemorial, and in places were worn so deep that we had to remove our feet from the stirrups.
The Waikato was bridged at Cambridge, the only bridge we met on our journey, and we crossed the river for the Maori village of Maungatautari, where we rested for the night. Although the restriction on pakeha travel from this point onwards had only recently been removed, we received a pleasant reception from the Maoris. They were, however, curious as to our reason for coming and, when told by our guide that we were travelling for pleasure, they looked us up and down with evident amusement, being unable to imagine sane people taking so much unnecessary trouble. They did not know the white man so well as they do now.
They kindled a big fire and, spreading plenty of dry fern on the ground, invited us to join their friendly circle. The evening was cool and clear, and we were glad to accept their invitation. They had no spare whare, but gave us the use of a tarpaulin stretched over a pole as a shelter for the night.
We were astir at daybreak next morning and, after a refreshing wash in the creek, resumed our journey. A ride of half-a-dozen miles brought us again to the Waikato River which we crossed in a canoe. The ride for the rest of the day lay over the Patetere plains, which were covered with stunted tussock grass. The country looked poor enough and the only animals we saw were a few wild horses.
An Auckland syndicate had at this time acquired certain rights over about 200,000 acres of this country, which, I believe, they eventually abandoned. We came across small patches of English grass and white clover, wherever there was a camping place, which seemed to indicate that the land was not so hopeless as it appeared. Later in the day we passed numerous holes of varying and uncertain depth,
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having the appearance of wells and lined with beautiful ferns. They must have been of natural origin, and may have been caused long ago by some thermal activity.
We reached Te Whetu in the afternoon and, as the weather looked threatening and the prospect for camping out not pleasant, decided to go no further that day.
Te Whetu was prettily situated on the edge of the bush. It contained about a dozen whares enclosed by the usual Maori palisade fence, and a large meeting house on an adjoining mound. Its only occupants were a middle-aged man and his wife and an old woman. There were, inside the enclosure, some pigs and fowls and the usual number of ugly ill-bred dogs. The three Maoris received us with every sign of welcome and expressed regret that they had no flag to hoist in our honour on the pole in front of the meeting house, which latter they placed at our disposal for the night. It gave us great pleasure to supply their want by sending them a Union Jack as soon as we got back to Auckland.
They lost no time in killing a couple of young fowls, which they baked and served with potatoes and tea, in a style which seemed to us to leave nothing to be desired.
We had forgotten to carry candles, but our hostess provided a very fair substitute by means of some lard and a piece of twisted fibre.
As the evening advanced the rain came down heavily and we congratulated ourselves that we had decided not to camp out for the night. Our quarters were very comfortable. The whare was built of heavy hewn timber, securely bound together with the native vine called Akatea, and neatly panelled with raupo. On the centre post was a photograph of a well-known Maori, Te Ori Ori, one of the escaped prisoners from Kawau.
Our friends provided us with a good fire and plenty of dry fern and clean mats. As the fire was kindled in the centre of the whare and there was no escape for the smoke,
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the atmosphere became rather trying to the eyes. Our movements were closely watched by our Maori friends and afforded them subject matter for much conversation, evidently of an amusing nature. When we unrolled our blankets they took it as a signal for them to retire and we were left in undisturbed possession of our quarters for the night.
The morning witnessed a repetition of the kindness of the previous evening, and we left Te Whetu after quite an affectionate farewell. I should mention that at each village we visited our wants were supplied with no reference to payment —a detail which was left to ourselves at parting.
Wednesday was a miserable day for travelling, the rain continued, and our route lay through very rough country. A few miles on we entered a narrow gorge, the rocks on either side of which were several hundred feet high and in places had the appearance of being perpendicular. Emerging from this into a grassy valley of limited area, we soon came to a zigzag track, too steep to ascend on horseback. This brought us on to an elevated plateau, where we caught the full force of a keen wind and blinding rain.
This plateau terminated suddenly, some miles further on, at a pass called Painuiorehua, a very risky place to descend on such a day, being exceedingly steep and slippery. The drop was variously estimated by our party at from 750 to 1500 feet.
Our guide led the way with one horse, the rest following in single file. In the worst places they had the sagacity to put their fore-feet forward and slide down on their haunches. The pack horse gave us the greatest concern; he was heavily loaded, and a false step would have brought him precipitately to the bottom. It was useless to think of unloading him as it would have been impossible for us to have carried our kits. We reached the bottom without mishap, although some of the horses had hair-breadth escapes.
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We passed the settlement of Parekarangi at about 3 o'clock, but as all were drenched to the skin we decided not to halt but to push on to Ohinemutu. Our guide, however, mistook the track and lost his way. Fortunately we met a Maori, an Armed Constabulary man, on horseback, who informed us that our nearest stopping place would be Kaitariria, on the shore of Lake Roto-Kakahi. I think this village has long since been deserted, but at the time of which I write it was a place of some importance, being the headquarters of Captain Gilbert Mair and his company of Arawa Armed Constabulary. The latter were a fine soldierly looking lot of men. Our arrival caused some excitement, and the Maoris came out almost in a body to chant a song of welcome. Captain Mair gave us a hospitable reception, directing his men to place a good dry whare at our disposal and to provide a plentiful supply of firewood so that we might dry our clothes. In the evening he invited us to his own whare and showed us his rare collection of Maori curios, including the famous flute with which Tutanekai charmed Hinemoa, made from the thigh bone of one of the Hawaiki men who, according to tradition, arrived in New Zealand 500 or 600 years ago. This fine collection was eventually purchased from Captain Mair by public subscription, and is now in the Ethnological section of the Auckland Museum.
Our small supply of oats was quite exhausted, and our own kits needed replenishment. There was a store outside the palisade, but it contained very little. We could get no feed for our poor horses, and what we got for ourselves was of a rough and uninviting kind.
It took most of the following day to rest our horses and complete the drying of our clothes. The Maoris furnished us with plenty of amusement. The morning was fine and some of the younger people passed their time bathing in the cold lake. They had a rough spring board off which both girls and men dived. The former wore a loose skirt
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which they threw off on reaching the water and dexterously regained before they came ashore.
It was late in the afternoon when we started for Lake Tarawera, and we were overtaken by darkness and rain. We halted at Wairoa which happened to be deserted at the time, so we lit a fire in one of the whares and made ourselves as comfortable as we could. Our party received the addition at Kaiteriria of an Irishman, a humorous fellow, who gave us many a good laugh on the way.
On Friday morning we left our horses in the old mission paddock and proceeded on foot to Karire, a native village overlooking Lake Tarawera. We found that all the men and the younger women had gone road-making, leaving only the old women and children at home. They gave us the usual welcome, and soon had a meal of hot kumeras and potatoes ready, besides a kit of fine ripe apples, so that with slight additions from our own store we enjoyed an excellent breakfast.
A difficulty now arose with regard to a crew for the canoe to take us to Rotomahana. It was settled by our agreeing to accept a crew of old women, with the addition of an old man left in the settlement who acted as steersman.
We started to cross the lake at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Our canoe looked as though it had seen long service, and was deeply loaded. There were our party of six, eight Maoris, besides several children and a couple of big dogs, in addition to our kits and a plentiful supply of potatoes.
We thought Tarawera a beautiful lake; the hills surrounding it were bold and picturesque, and the graceful pohutukawa overhung the numerous little bays which indent its shores. We reached the opposite shore, a distance of about nine miles, in an hour and a-half; the natives paddling very vigorously to the rhythm of their songs.
We landed near a few old whares at the mouth of the creek which discharged the overflow of Lake Rotomahana
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into Lake Tarawera. Here we saw a small "ngawha" or spring of boiling water, in which some natives were cooking potatoes and parsnips. We walked along the bank of the creek to its junction with Lake Rotomahana, and after waiting a short time the natives arrived with the canoe after a hard pull against the swift current. One of the women obligingly jumped into the creek and carried us, one byone, on her back to the canoe, which they had moored on the opposite shore.
We now crossed Rotomahana and landed in the midst of the wonders for which the locality was so long famous. We were given a whare on a hillside, and perhaps the best idea I can give of our surroundings would be to imagine oneself in the midst of the escape pipes from the boilers of a dozen unseen steam engines. We spent the night there, and next morning started to see the famous terraces. The White Terrace was but a short distance away, and approached by a narrow track which it was not safe to leave. Of this latter fact I had a somewhat painful illustration. Happening to step aside a few inches the ground gave way and my right foot was immediately immersed in hot mud. Fortunately one of my friends was by my side and I was promptly assisted out, but not before I had received a rather severe scald. The old lady who was in charge of me was much troubled and set up a pitiful moan. I was the first pakeha, she said, who had come to grief while under her guidance.
The destruction of the terraces fourteen years later was a national misfortune. There was nothing else to approach them for beauty. The White Terrace in particular eclipsed all the other wonders of this famous thermal region. It consisted of a series of irregular steps or terraces each two or three feet high and several hundred wide. The whole was of a brilliant pearly whiteness. Each terrace was sufficiently concave in formation to hold several feet of water. At the summit there was a deep crater filled with
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boiling water of an exquisite azure tint. This was in a constant state of overflow, and the water thus discharged distributed itself with the nicest regularity over the entire front of the terrace. Boiling at the top, it gradually cooled in its descent, until the water at the bottom was agreeably warm for bathing. One had only to ascend to be able to plunge into water of a higher temperature.
The Pink Terrace—Otukapuarangi—was on the opposite side of the lake, and although of great interest was less beautiful than the one we had just left. It was disfigured by the habit of British tourists, of all degrees, of scrawling their names on any object of interest they happen to visit. The water charged with siliceous matter soon rendered pencil writing indelible, so that a whole terrace, instead of retaining its pristine beauty, was covered with signatures or doggerel rhymes. We noticed with regret that persons of high degree were as great offenders as the ordinary trippers.
We had a pleasant return to Kariri. The attentions of our Maori friends in the evening were a little overpowering. The whare allotted to us was not large, and the combined presence of pakehas, Maoris and dogs made the atmosphere anything but agreeable; whilst the animals infested the place with fleas, so that the night was more lively than pleasant.
Sunday morning turned out a glorious autumn day. Our quarters rendered a state of rest out of the question, and our horses, we knew, were faring indifferently, so we bade an early adieu to these unprotected women and children and started for Ohinemutu on our homeward track.
Resting for breakfast at the old mission settlement of Wairoa, we had time to study its points of interest. There was a water-driven flour mill in a fair state of preservation, showing that wheat had at one time been grown nearby, and in close proximity an oven, built of stone, large enough to bake bread for a regiment.
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The old mission house (Te Mu) was still in good preservation. The Rev. S. M. Spencer had lived there for many years. His family were all born there. The Maori War had driven them from their home, but the house was still cared for by an old Maori servant who had spent most of her life in their service. She was polite and obliging to visitors and took pride in producing the visitors' book and inviting the signatures of anyone calling at the house. There were the remains of a fine orchard, and Mary gave us a supply of apples. The orchard itself was the centre from which all kinds of fruit trees and plants had been supplied to the various Maori settlements in the neighbourhood.
One saw on all sides the sad remains of a vanished faith. There were in the mission enclosure besides the old home a school building capable of holding a hundred or more children, and a pretty little church whose stained glass windows diffused a pleasant restful light throughout the interior. Yet everything indicated drift and decay. One felt that the future of the Maori race was a perplexing problem. There was evidence on all sides of the beneficial influence of the missionaries. Churches and schools, orchards, and flour mills, the growth of all kinds of edible vegetables and fruits, disused agricultural implements: everything had promised well for a satisfactory solution of the question: "Can a dark-skinned race flourish side by side with a white race?" One asked oneself why the scene around seemed to give so definite a reply in the negative.
Many of the early missionaries we knew were spending their latter years in sorrow at the seeming failure of their life's work.
Looking at the question retrospectively one recalled to mind the somewhat pessimistic conclusion of the Rev. Wm. Colenso in the concluding lines of his essay on "The Maori Races of New Zealand." He "has no hesitation in expressing his settled conviction that (apart from any spiritual Christian benefit, a subject he has generally, throughout this
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essay, avoided), taking all things into consideration, and viewing the matter from a philanthropic, as well as a New Zealand point of view, it would have been far better for the New Zealanders, as a people, if they had never seen an European."
I wrote at the time: "It is Sunday; we are travelling slowly, so I hope this digression may be pardoned; for a man of ordinary powers of observation can hardly visit this old settlement without falling into a half melancholy train of thought." I can only offer the same apology after the lapse of so many years. I may add that Mr. Spencer was a singularly self-effacing and humble minded man. On the occasion of a tour of his district with his Bishop—Williams of Waiapu—they arrived at a place where the only accommodation house was full. The owner, however, after some consideration, said he might put them up if they were willing to share a room together. To this the Bishop readily agreed. Spencer, however, could not think of presuming upon the dignity of his Bishop by sleeping in the same room, and assured him that he could find other sleeping quarters. Early next morning when the Bishop went to search for his friend he found him peacefully asleep under the shelter of a flax bush, his inverted saddle for a pillow, and his horse tethered close by.
It will be remembered that in 1886 the whole district was enveloped in hot mud by the eruption of Mt. Tarawera, and the village of Wairoa disappeared, with nearly all its inhabitants, Maori and European.
To resume our journey: We next visited Lake Rotorua the first sight of which was disappointing. The shores looked flat and uninteresting, its waters seemed turbid, a strong odour of burning sulphur permeated the air. The present town was non-existent. The site of the gardens, which contained many unguarded and therefore dangerous boiling springs and steam holes hidden in the scrub, was known as Sulphur Point. The native village Ohinemutu was approached by a narrow track through manuka and fern.
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At Ohinemutu the carvings for the large meeting house now known as Tamatekapua were being executed. We met a very remarkable looking Maori, a hunchback, who was said to be the best craftsman at this kind of work in New Zealand.
We put up at a so-called accommodation house, a whare, kept by a pakeha-Maori, but the food was execrable and the so-called accommodation inferior to that of a clean Maori hut.
Another of these whares, kept by a, Maori, had a spirit license, and a pretty scene was being enacted! There were a number of natives of both sexes in various stages of drunkenness, and although they behaved themselves much less offensively than white people would have done under the same circumstances, the effect was not such as to impress one with the benefits of civilisation.
We were not sorry to leave Rotorua on our homeward journey. It was after dark when we reached Te Whetu. The natives had returned, and one of them had died. A tangi was going on over his remains, and the customary piteous moaning and weeping on the part of the women went on for the rest of the evening and far into the night.
Our hostess of the previous visit was hospitable as before. Amongst the men now present was a determined looking man whom we learnt was one of those who had seized a mob of cattle which Messrs. Firth and Buckland attempted to drive through native country from Hawke's Bay to Matamata a short time before.
The bird snarer had returned, and although he had met with scant success we were feasted with hot pigeons and potatoes. Their own meal consisted of potatoes only, but they finished eagerly what we left of the pigeons.
Bidding these kind people a final farewell, we started on Tuesday for Cambridge, whence we had planned to travel across country to the Waihou River where Major Drummond Hay had kindly promised to have a canoe ready to take us down the river to Shortland. We had, however,
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
TE NGAE, LAKE ROTORUA
BOWEN FALLS, MILFORD SOUND
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
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to abandon this part of the journey as the heavy rain had swollen the river, and the natives were unable to bring up the canoe.
We returned via Matamata and rode over part of Mr. J. C. Firth's newly acquired run, which at the time was said to carry about 1000 head of cattle. He also tried wheat growing, and had at the time the produce of about 250 acres in stack. His idea was to produce a sufficient supply for his Queen Street flour mills, but the scheme was not successful and was abandoned. The great tract of country eventually fell into the hands of the Bank of New Zealand and was afterwards acquired by the Government at about £3 per acre and thrown open for close settlement.
The rest of our journey to Cambridge via Tirau lay through unimproved Maori land which was traversed only by native tracks. The trip had provided a very agreeable holiday and one looks back with interest to the improvement which has been effected over the country by the labour of industrious settlers, backed by the resources of science which alone have made it possible to profitably occupy and reclaim the comparatively poor waste lands of this part of the country.
I may add that one of our party was Mr. John Ernest Tinne, a young Oxford man, brother of Mr. T. F. S. Tinne.
On his return to England he published, through Samson Low, an account of our travels under the title of "The Wonderland of the Antipodes." I had not heard the district so described before his book appeared, and I think he is entitled to the credit of giving a name to the district which has been very generally used ever since.
Mr. Tinne, in his preface, refers to a remark of Anthony Trollope in his then recently published work, that 400 books on this country had already appeared, and describes his own as the 402nd, which "he feels is far from exhausting what may be said in praise of the coming country." L
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CHAPTER XVII.
Milford Sound—The Trip from Nelson—Scenic Wonders.
The suggestion to use the Bowen Falls in Milford Sound for the purpose of extracting nitrogen from the air calls to mind a visit I paid to the Sounds in the year 1876. It was the first excursion of the kind, and the Union Company sent a small steamer called Wanaka for the trip. She was overcrowded, and met with persistent rough weather. Among the passengers were the late Capt. Hutton, New Zealand Government geologist, Professor MacMillan Brown of ethnological fame, and the late Mr. Bell, proprietor of the Dunedin Star. There were also several agents for European collectors in search of kiwis, kakapos, crested penguins, wekas and any other specimens of native birds they could get. There was apparently no protection for native birds at the time and these persons had dogs on board with which they ran them to earth.
I have since visited the Norwegian fiords and consider those of New Zealand do not suffer by comparison. They represent what should be a very valuable scenic asset; on the whole certainly one of the most beautiful of New Zealand's many scenic charms.
It is indeed a matter for regret and surprise that they are not accessible to visitors. The Norwegian fiords attract thousands of people from all parts of the world every year. Their human and historic interest is undoubtedly a considerable factor in their attractiveness, one of which we cannot boast, but for grandeur of scenery our New Zealand sounds do not suffer by comparison, whilst for beauty and variety of flora the comparison is entirely in favour of New Zealand.
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The trip of the Wanaka started at Nelson, which was a mistake, as it meant visiting Milford first. The other sounds are all beautiful and well worth seeing, but none equal Milford in grandeur. They should be seen first. I may quote from an account of the trip which I furnished to the N.Z. Herald at the time.
"Leaving Martin's Bay at midday we started for Milford Sound. At this time the rain, which has been coming down steadily all the morning, ceased, and the sky showed indications of improvement. A short run down the coast, and we approach Milford Sound. The sun shines brightly from a clear blue sky, not a cloud is to be seen, save here and there a fleecy wreath encircling the highest peaks of the mountains before us. The steamer heads straight for the precipitous cliffs, and is within a few hundred yards of the shore. We are overshadowed by them; they appear to be within a stone's throw of us, and yet no opening appears. At last we see a rent in the rocks like a vast chasm; the vessel turns sharply, and we steam between the mighty portals that mark the entrance to the Sound. As we proceed the noisest are hushed, and, for a time, all stand silent in the midst of a scene of wild grandeur. We appear to be steaming in a tranquil lake, surrounded on every side by high snow-capped mountains. Numerous cascades are seen rushing over perpendicular precipices, and yet they seem to flow leisurely, almost sluggishly, over the mountains' sides. Everything in this wondrous museum of nature is on too grand a scale to appear hurried. An air of profound tranquility and stillness reigns supreme. On our right the mountains are clothed in gloom, and the cascades flow majestically down the black rocks like streaks of purest snow. On our left the sun is shining brightly, and every cascade scattered into spray becomes a beauteous mass of colour. We have steamed a mile and a half up the Sound, and are now in the "Narrows," where the distance from side to side is little more than a quarter of a mile. The grandeur of the
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scene is overpowering. The Mitre Peak rises on our right, almost perpendicularly from the water, a bare precipice, 5,560 feet high. On all sides of us, with the exception of that wonderful Mitre Peak, the mountains are covered with dense foliage down to the water's edge. The trees struggle out of crevices and ledges on the straight hard rocks. A cannon is now fired and twenty cannons reply from the echoing hills. The steamer's whistle is blown, and the shrill shriek is repeated, loudly at first and then more softly, until the distant mountains reply with only a gentle murmur. We proceed a little further, the haven widens to three-quarters of a mile, and Mount Pembroke appears on our left, a snow-capped mountain 6,700 feet high. Its summit is flat, and slightly inclined towards us. The surface of the snow is rough and confused, as though a giant struggle had taken place on the mountain top. A little lower down is a glacier glittering in the sunshine, from which a pretty cascade is formed by the melting ice. In front of us one mountain rises behind another until the snowy top of Mount Christina, over 8,000 feet high, is seen in the background. We are now passing the Stirling Cascade, which falls perpendicularly 600 feet. As the sun shines upon the clouds of spray that are formed by every breath of wind a glorious colour effect is produced which baffles any attempt at description. At the bottom of this waterfall the spray, as it rises from the foamy water, reflecting the colours of the rainbow, resembles the vapour arising from a grand display of coloured fires. A little further on and we are within sight and sound of the Bowen Falls, a small river falling over the side of a cliff 700 feet high. It first falls into a cavity in a ledge of the rock and then, forced up to a considerable height by its own weight, descends with a dizzy noise, a circular body of water white as snow. Near this the Wanaka anchors for the night. No one regrets having made the trip, in spite of past discomforts. Voyagers who have travelled the world over admit that they have
ON THE TRACK, LAKE TE ANAU TO MILFORD SOUND
COURTESY GOVERNMENT PUBLICITY DEPT.
MT. SEFTON, SHOWING THE OLD MT. COOK ACCOMMODATION HOUSE ON LEFT
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
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seen nothing to equal Milford Sound in wild picturesqueness and grandeur.
Most of the Sounds were visited, and each had its particular beauty. The one spot of historic interest is at Pickersgill Cove. It was here that Captain Cook made a prolonged stay, nearly 100 years before, whilst he careened and cleaned the Resolution. We pulled up to the sheltered little bay which he chose for the purpose and thought reverently of the great navigator. Some of the more imaginative of the party even identified the spot where he tells us he grew vegetables for his crew, to counteract an attack of scurvy, and as the little patch of ground they pointed out appeared to be the only spot in the neighbourhood sufficiently level for a man to stand upright upon their identification may not be very wide of the mark.
In Pickersgill Cove we had one of the loveliest views obtained during the trip. Miniature coves, low, densely wooded islands and reaches of deep blue water, set off by hills of fantastic shape, piled as it were one behind the other, as far as the eye could reach, formed a scene of fascinating beauty. The sunset effect on the hills was a sight never to be forgotten; they were literally bathed in a soft rose tint. I fear that our artists on board will be accused of exaggeration when they attempt to reproduce this memorable scene.
Preservation is the most southerly of the Sounds. It is about 25 miles in length. The Wanaka anchored at the head of this Sound in practically fresh water. There is probably no other part of New Zealand where more beautiful or varied vegetation is to be seen than here. In a diminutive semi-circular bay, almost hidden by overhanging cliffs, at the extreme end of the Sound, is a beautiful waterfall. It is not of great height, probably about 200 feet, but it represents the discharge of a considerable volume of water, and keeps the surface of the little bay in a state of unrest. The atmosphere, as may be inferred, is charged with spray,
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which keeps the luxuriant vegetation around this fairy-like spot in a state of bright and perpetual verdure. As the last of the Sounds, Preservation has left pleasant memories. Less grand and awe-inspiring than Milford, it possesses a subdued beauty which is scarcely less fascinating, and it was with a feeling of regret that we realised our trip had practically come to an end.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
Retrospective: Looking Backward at a Lifetime's Changes.
Looking back one is startled at the changes that have taken place in a single lifetime.
We came to New Zealand to mingle with a race which had not learned the use of metals. Their weapons of war and their implements of peace, their tools and their ornaments were all fashioned out of stone, hardwood or bone. They had no written language. Their spoken language was musical and expansive. Such natural knowledge or poetical composition as they had could only be transmitted orally. Think of the extent and variety of that knowledge. It would be hard to find a spot from end to end of their country without a name, and the name had nearly always some reference to a natural feature, or to some incident, trivial or otherwise, which had happened in its vicinity. They had national and family and mythological traditions of uncertain antiquity. They were acquainted with the medicinal properties of various plants, or their value in making articles of clothing or ornament. Every tree and plant and shrub had its name. All this varied and multitudinous information had to be handed on from one generation to another by oral teaching.
I have already quoted the adverse opinion of Mr. Colenso as to the effect of the contact of European and Maori. This was written sixty years ago. To-day we have a better perspective. Does the same view hold good? We have given the Maoris equal political rights with ourselves. They have entered Parliament and are responsible for laws controlling the actions of both races. One of their race is a Cabinet Minister. Some have entered the learned professions—law, medicine and the Church. They are still owners of large tracts of country, some of which they have im-
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proved on our own methods and are utilising as sheep and dairy farms. Other portions of their landed estates are leased to and worked by Englishmen. Would Mr. Colenzo, had he written his essay in the light of modern conditions, still have expressed the opinion I have quoted? I venture to think he would.
Great as have been the changes in regard to the Maori race, the advance in knowledge of our own civilisation causes the former to fade into insignificance. Could we summon from the past of eighty years ago a man whose knowledge had remained stagnant he would not have seen the electric light, except as a scientific experiment. He would regard electric telegraphy as a new and expensive luxury. The telephone would be a mystery to him. The incandescent gas mantle would be unknown to him. His knowledge of airships would be limited to balloons dependent on the caprice of wind and weather. Street tramways he would look upon as a dangerous and impracticable interference with horse traffic. He would smile incredulously at the idea of a motor car, driven by an engine so small as to appear like a toy, at 100 miles or more per hour. What would he say when told that he on one side of the globe could hold instantaneous discourse, by means of an unseen medium, with persons on the other side? He would hear with amazement that the heavens were being mapped out by means of photography; that Newton's law of gravitation was not free from qualification, and that there was believed to be latent energy in a pebble which, could it be released, would supply an unknown reserve of power.
In every department of human investigation one is bewildered at the advance made in a couple of generations, and the question suggests itself whether man can ever reach the limits of his penetration with the secrets of Nature.
In surgery, mechanics, implements of war and peace, electricity, wireless telegraphy and telephony; in the domain of thought, a wider and more benevolent aspect of
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theology; a general license to discuss problems of sex; a wider humanitarianism; the emancipation of women; the triumph of democracy: these and many other advances have been made within my own memory.
I recall a successful surgical operation in Auckland fifty years ago which was considered so great an achievement that a description of it appeared in the Transactions of the N.Z. Institute. It was, at the time, one of the most dangerous feats of surgery. It is related that in 1863 ten women in succession were similarly operated upon in Paris, in a house specially selected for its healthy surroundings. A short time afterwards the neighbours saw their ten coffins taken away. The operation is now not an uncommon one and the chances are about nineteen to one in favour of the patient.
The discoveries of the great investigator M. Pasteur applied to surgery by Lister and improved by later research have taken away much of the dread of the surgeon's knife and operations have almost become fashionable.
In the period of which I have set down these recollections, the old-fashioned method of lighting by crude gas has been superseded, first by the Argand burner, and later by the incandescent mantle. The latter was introduced into England about the year 1879, and I remember the interest and surprise with which I saw the new invention exhibited in London during that year. It gave many times the light of the original gas burner, and enabled a cheaper gas to be used, since great heating power only is required to produce incandescence.
The telephone has become a necessity of business and social life. We were astounded at the power it gave of instantaneous communication of the human voice over limited distances, at its first introduction. This, however, becomes almost commonplace when aerial waves seem destined to enable the human voice to be heard over the length and breadth of our planet.
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The great reserve of energy in the numerous rivers and lakes of New Zealand is being utilised in the production of power for manufactures, for lighting and heating, and notably to reduce the drudgery inseparable from dairy farming. It will almost certainly be employed in the near future in the production from the air of the fertilising material so necessary to prevent exhaustion of the soil. We shall thus be enabled to conserve our coal supply, the consumption of which can only be regarded as an expenditure of a capital resource which can never be replaced.
The privileges of governing families have been swept away. Peer and ploughman have equal political rights. The manual workers have shown that they can produce men of ability and clarity of vision and can rally to their cause supporters from the former governing class. The thirteenth Duke of Norfolk is said, in 1845, to have advised his distressed tenants to try a pinch of curry powder in hot water to allay their hunger. Where is the man who would venture, or wish, to give the same advice to-day?
In the domain of thought the advance has been no less remarkable than in that of physics. I am not competent to discuss the achievements of science or the bewildering change the investigations of Darwin and Wallace have made in Anthropology and in men's outlook on religious belief. I remember the horror and "wild excitement" with which Bishop Colenso's book on the Pentateuch was received. His Metropolitan (Bishop Gray, of Capetown), claimed the right of trying him in the ecclesiastical courts, and if necessary of excommunicating him. The famous "Essays and Reviews" appeared shortly afterwards, and caused scarcely less turmoil. One or more of the essayists was prosecuted for heresy. To-day high dignitaries of the Church acknowledge opinions quite as far removed from the orthodoxy of sixty years ago as any of those in the works referred to.
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CHAPTER XIX.
Conclusion of My Recollections—Remarks on the Finances of New Zealand—A General Résumé.
In bringing my recollections to a close, not for want of material to continue them, but rather for fear of exhausting the patience of those who may have read them so far, I will venture to add a few remarks with reference to the present and the future.
The high prices of our produce for some years past have produced a condition of wealth and general prosperity undreamt of a generation ago. It may seem ungracious and unnecessary to ask: "Is all well with the country?" and yet the persistent and unheeded warnings of bankers, politicians and others for some years past may well give reason for misgivings.
A large annual, external loan is now accepted as part of the settled policy of the country. One of £7,000,000 for the current year (1925) has recently been floated in London, under circumstances that do not appear encouraging for the future. The expenses connected with such loans, viz., discount off par value, commission to underwriters, exchange, etc., absorb an appreciable proportion of the entire loan, so that the country really gets, year by year, a large sum less than it will eventually have to repay.
Our national debt on 30th June, 1924, is officiallystated as 208½ millions. That of local bodies at the end of 1923, exclusive of loans made from State funds, at over 38 millions. The sum required to pay interest on the State loans, to lenders outside the Dominion, is about 5 millions. The trade balance in our favour, excess of exports over im-
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ports, for the past statistical year, was somewhat under this amount. These figures do not take into account the sum required to pay interest on loans contracted by local bodies.
It is important to remember that the value of our exports to 31st March, 1925, nearly 48 millions, would at pre-war (1914) values have been only about 29 millions. Moreover, the volume of exports is not increasing to the extent it should. The great increase in value is mainly due to abnormal prices. I remember, at the inception of the export trade of food products, farmers saying that their position was assured if they could depend on 9d per Ib. for butter. To-day with butter at double that price it is disquieting to see that farmers head the list of bankruptcies.
Our exports are yielding higher prices than the most optimistic would have ventured to predict a few years ago. Can we reasonably expect such prices to continue? Should values of colonial produce, always liable to sudden and violent fluctuations, revert to what may be termed normal, may we not be faced with embarrassing conditions?
The effects of the return to a gold standard have yet to be ascertained. It would seem probable that deflation of our monetary system will tend to increase the purchasing power of money and correspondingly reduce the price of goods. However this may be, it is certain that we must accept the world's prices for our produce, be they much or little, whilst the payments for interest on our borrowed money remain inflexible. The huge sum required to keep faith with the public creditor must be won from the soil. New Zealand is not primarily an industrial country. In the nature of things it can hardly be expected ever to do more than supply its own requirements of manufactured goods.
The enormous increase in the price of land within the last few years is a matter for serious consideration. The best land of the country has passed into private ownership, and in naming selling prices little or no regard is paid to its real economic value.
YOUNG MAORI MOTHERS
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
THE THREE IMPS
H. B. MORTON PHOTO
AUCKLAND IN 1925
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The land in the possession of the State, or of Maori owners is, speaking generally, poor —a great deal of it worthless for agriculture. True, much of the poor land is capable of improvement by scientific treatment. This, however, assumes the possession of substantial capital, and it becomes a question whether it is worth while to take up virgin land which must be properly manured before it produces, and manured continually if it is to remain productive. Whether, in fact, the holder of such land can ultimately compete with countries whose virgin soil is naturally productive.
We are thus brought face to face with a serious problem in connection with the rising generation. Young men in search of a career find the professions overcrowded. Rigid trade union rules limit the opportunities for learning a trade. When they turn to the country they find that to attempt to pay the price demanded for good land spells bankruptcy and to break in poor land successfully requires substantial capital. In many cases they have given up the attempt and so some of our best young men have gone to other countries. The Straits Settlements, the Argentine, Canada, Australia, India—all have their quota of young New Zealanders, and New Zealand is the poorer for their loss.
Our population is rapidly becoming more and more urban. To quote the words of the Official Year Book for 1925: "The increasing proportion of urban population in recent years is plainfuly manifest. It is noteworthy that the 'urban drift' either non-existent or quiescent up to 1906, in that year commenced a swift rise, which is apparently gaining in momentum." The cities and towns are becoming more and more congested. Our newspapers record with jubilation their rapid growth. They should rather regard it as an unhealthy sign of the times. How half the people live is a mystery. It is a matter of surprise, even to those well acquainted with local conditions, to see the number of well-
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dressed men who throng the street corners of the large towns and who apparently, to use a homely phrase, "live by their wits." Land jobbing and betting on horse-races offer part of the solution.
The evils of overcrowding are already apparent. People are living in conditions favourable neither to morality, health, nor self-respect. Children are too often regarded as an incubus. Many landlords refuse to let their rooms or houses to persons having families. It would naturally be inferred that the population of the Dominion was increasing rapidly. Such, however, is not the case. As I have already remarked, the natural increase is little more than half the ratio of a generation ago. The congestion is mainly due to exodus from the country to the towns, and to immigration.
There are two undisclosed sources of income which must not be ignored. A considerable number of persons who have acquired wealth, or become entitled to pensions, in other countries, come to New Zealand to pass the evening of their lives. The tourist traffic, a steadily growing one, is also a source of income to the country. Both are satisfactory up to a certain point. But valetudinarians and trippers do not add to the virility of a young nation. They tend rather to the growth of a servile class to minister to their wants and cannot compensate for the loss of our young manhood.
It is common knowledge that a large area of the improved land of the country has for various reasons gone out of cultivation and been allowed to revert to native scrub and fern, or, worse still, to blackberry.
The Minister for Lands recently appointed special committees to visit certain districts in the southern part of the Auckland Province. Their report has been published, and is of great interest. They estimate that nearly a quarter of a million acres have so reverted within the districts on which they report. They give in detail the causes to which
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they consider the trouble is due. These may be reduced to two main reasons, viz., lack of capital and the want of roads.
Unfortunately the evil is not confined to the North Island. The moist climate of the West Coast of the South Island especially favours the spread of the blackberry. I have observed large tracts of cleared forest land in that locality of which it has taken complete possession. The same remark applies to large areas of pumice land owned by the Crown or by Maoris in the thermal district of this island. One Auckland firm of fruit preservers purchased no less than 30 tons of blackberries gathered last autumn in the neighbourhood of Ngongotaha and a similar quantity in the Nelson province. The pest has taken possession of the country, and appears ineradicable. The large reward offered by the Government for its destruction has so far produced no result. It is one of the most serious problems which the country has to face.
In spite of the variety and complexity of the problems which the country has to meet, we may approach them in no spirit of pessimism. Our economic position generally is a reflection of the Great War. War expenditure, necessarily lavish and often reckless, has left in its trail a spirit of profiteering—if I may be allowed the use of a clumsy but expressive word. The scale of commercial and banking profits has risen, and the standard of expenditure, public and private, has reached a dangerously high level. Should reaction overtake us I have, however, no fear for the ultimate prosperity of New Zealand.
If it results in a simpler standard of living, a general spirit of thrift and the use of fewer imported luxuries, the effect, although it may entail considerable individual inconvenience and even suffering, will certainly be for the eventual benefit of the country. Work and thrift made New Zealand what it is. The same qualities will insure its future prosperity.
176
Recollections of Early New Zealand
We are privileged to possess one of the pleasantest and most desirable lands on the surface of our planet, a land possessing every variety of scenery, considerable mineral resources, and a salubrious climate suitable for the growth of a healthy race of men and for the abundant production of man's primary wants.
May the coming generation prove worthy of so splendid a heritage. May they realise that the Ancient Book which, though old-fashioned, can never be out-of-date, since it deals with eternal verities, has declared that "Righteousness exalteth a nation."
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Bibliographic details
APA: Morton, H. B. (1925). Recollections of early New Zealand. Whitcombe & Tombs.
Chicago: Morton, H. B. Recollections of early New Zealand. Auckland, N.Z.: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1925.
MLA: Morton, H. B. Recollections of early New Zealand. Whitcombe & Tombs, 1925.
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Recollections of early New Zealand Morton, H. B., Whitcombe & Tombs, Auckland, N.Z., 1925
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