EARLY COLONIAL DAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

EARLY COLONIAL DAYS.

A PIONEER FAMILY. THE STORY OF THE MAIRS.

Memoirs of old Now Zealand families should be more numerous. There are So many among the descendants of the pioneer builders of the colony who could furnish tho material for true stories of great adventure and of strange and stressful experiences in the course of home-making. An example of what could be done has now been published, "Annals of a New Zealand Family: The Household of Gilbert Mair, Early Pioneer." The author is Mrs. J. Howard

Jackson (nee Lavinia Laura Mair). The book is published by A. IT. and A. W. Reed, of Dunedin. The Hon. W. Downie Stewart has written a preface to the family story. Mrs. Jackson is tho last survivor of the children of Mr. Gilbert Mair, who was born at Peterhead, Scotland, in 1709. She is 815 years old and her vigour and literary ability arc well attested by this memoir, which covers considerably more than a century of family associations with this country.

Tho old homo name of Deveron, at Peterhead, is stili preserved; it is the name of the property of the late Mr. Robert Mair (part of it now a people's park, a gift from the generous owner) at Whangarei.

In 1821 Gilbert Mair first visited the Bay of Islands, where he settled in 1824, and his Jiamo is associated with the trading and missionary history of the North. Some of the children were born at Paihia and Wahapu, Bay of Islands, the others at Whangarei. The 7nost notable of the eons were Major William Gilbert Mair and Captain Gilbert Mair, N.Z.C., whose careers of distinguished- courage in war and skilful and distinguished public services in peace are well known to New Zca-

landers. But in this book the chief interest is in Mis. Jackson's own recollections of tho old colonial ways—tho simple and often primitive, yet always happy days—and her travels through the country at a time when most of the Maori and pakeha residents of the interior were under arms, and her memories of the many great figures she and her family met.

The Bishop's Breakfast. Lavinia Laura Mair was born at Dovcron, Whangarei, in 1852. There are innumerable , little stories of wit and charm in her reminiscences of childhood. "When Bishop Selwyn visited Whangarei," she writes, "lie always stayed at our house. It was impressed upon me that I must address him as 'My Lord.' I was sent to call liiin to breakfast one morning and 1 shyly tapped at his door and said, 'My God, will you conic to breakfast?'" Being tho youngest of a family of twelve she was allowed more latitude than her sisters. "I was a constant companion of my brothers, who never seemed to find me in their way." They taught her to shoot; she became a crack shot with riile and a mighty pothunter with the shotgun, for pigeon and kaka and duck in those days often supplied an important part of the family's food. It was a self-reliant life. Mrs. Jackson recounts many of the homemade expedients in a place far from shops. There were visits to Auckland by cutter or schooner, sometimes with cattle for company. "I can recollect seeing two of my sisters dressed for an archery party at Government House, and very dainty they looked in their big crinolines, organdie muslin dresses, Paisley shawls, white straw poke bonnets trimmed with pink roses, white mittens and elastic-sided boots." Two of tho brothers, William and Henry, tried their luck on the gold diggings, in Victoria at the time of the great rushes. Henry (afterwards killed at Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, when in the labour tra&j) had a rough, luckless time on the gold fields. "He was glad to return home, bringing enough gold to make wedding rings for two Bisters as the result of his labours."

Then came the war days, and Lavinia Laura Mair saw a great deal of the military life in Auckland and Wanganui. There was "the usual crop of impecunious admirers." L. L. Mair was an extremely sensible girl. A cousin fell in love with her picture and offered his heart and hand. "I knew he had nothing else, so I replied that I looked for something better than 'an umbrella and a flax busli.'"

After the Hauhau Wars. There arc excellent descriptions of life in camp and in the mission houses in the Rotorua country in the 'seventies, just after the close of the Hauliau wars. In 1573 she and two sisters, escorted by their brother, Captain Gilbert Mair, and others, made long horseback and camping tours through the lakes country and tho Waikato. There was some risk in tho latter part ,of the long, leisurely expeditions, for the girls and their two soldier brothers rode _ through part of tho Ngati-Raukaua country, on their way from Rotorua to Alexanora (now Pirongia), Svia Cambridge, just after the killing of Sullivan, tho farm worker, by Purukutu and his fellow-Hauhaus, near Roto-o-rangi. The party were armed and the Mail's were always on the alert, but they met no Purukutu. This book is an excellent series of pictures of life in the old colonial days, when people were of necessity more reliant on themselves for their requirements and their amusements than tlioy are to-day and were ready to meet any emergency.