MEMORIALS OF THE EARLY DAYS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13475, 15 July 1909, Page 6

MEMORIALS OF THE EARLY DAYS.

A week or two ago the Board of Governors of Canterbury College decided to establish at the Museum a department to contain exhibits illustrating the history of the city and provincial district and also, if possible, to form a collection of manuscripts relating to New Zealand in general. A •meeting is to be held in the College Hall for the purpose of enlisting public sympathy for the proposal. The idea is one which should command the support of all who are interested in the history and development of New Zealand, and particularly of this province. The men of the early days are passing away, and with them is going much of the knowledge of those days. Canterbury's "tales of long ago" do not yet cover two generations, but 6hort though that period is in the. history of a country, it is a large part of the average human life, and in tne course of Nature the time is approaching when the actors in the foundation of Canterbury will be with us .no longer. For our knowledge of the times in which they lived, the conditions £hey had to meet, their etruggles and adventures in the winning of the wilderness, we shall then have to depend on the information gathered at second-hand by their descendants and upon the printed and written records which the latter have left behind them. It is, therefore, most desirable that wo shall secure, before it is too late, as many as possible of the annals of the past, so that future generations, desirous of learning something of the beginnings of Canterbury's history, may be able to turn to the collection in the Museum for all they require. A century hence the manuscripts which tell of pioneer life, the old diaries in which are noted the events, great and small, of the forties and fifties, will be of inestimable value in throwing light on the early days, which will then be shrouded in the mists even now gathering around them. The Museum already contains the rudiments of an "Early Colonists' Department,"' in the shape of portraits of the "pilgrims" and a few relics of the period when Canterbury was in the making, and the institution, itself the noble monument of one of our noblest pioneers, is the natural home of such a collection as it is now proposed to establish. It is strange that the present idea was not mooted long ago; dt is fortunate that it has been brought forward before it is too late.