THE ISTHMIAN CITY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 152, 24 December 1926, Page 17

THE ISTHMIAN CITY

MARSDEN THE PIONEER OF THE WAITEMATA.

"The Ports of Auckland." A history of the Waitemata and Manukau by i John Barr, published as a souvenir by the Auckland Harbour Board. Auckland: Unity Press, Ltd. Several New Zealand harbour boards publish year-books; some have published historical sketches of their ports; but for historical ° completeness and interest this "souvenir" jssue of the Auckland Board has few equals. It will be appreciated by any good New Zealander—apart from all local "boost"—because of its well-told story of the early beginnings of the Waitemata, with Maraden's part therein, and of the early ships, shipbuilders, and shipping companies. Cook, who tarried at Botany Bay, missed Sydney harbour; so, also, didJie miss Auckland (Waitemata) harbour, though he explored the Firth of Thames. His diary shows that he thought good harbours might be found in or behind i the islands masking the mouth of the Waitemata, but his course did not lie that way; and it ia not known with certainty that any white man explored the Waitemata till the Eov. Samuel Marsden traversed it by launch and canoe in 1820, about fifty years after Cook, and 178 years after Tasman. Mr. Barr remarks that "few people, oven citizens of Auckland, know that Marsden was the first white man to voyage on the waters of the Waitemata and the Manakau."

It was in 1820 that Marsden discovered the remarkable proximity #f the waters of the Waitemata and Taina&i (running to the East Coast) and of the Manakau (West Coast), and he also remarks on the approximation of Manakau and Waikato. In fact, he solved the riddle of the isthmus and put the site of Auckland "on the map"— though the French navigator D'Urville in 1827 was unaware of Marsden 'a exploration seven yeais earlier, and he rediscovered the isthmus with, much enthusiasm and with a fine appreciation of its importance to the nation-builders of the future: "This discovery (D'Urville writes) may become of great interest for any settlements which may take place in the Bay of Shouraki (Hauraki Gulf), and still more so if later reconnaissance demonstrates that the port of Manou-Kao (Manukau) can take ships of a certain size. Such w a settlement would thus be within reach of the two seas both east and west." Did D'Urville suspect the presence of the Manukau bar? Did he envisage the canals scheme?

DTTrville, who aid not navigate the harbour, though he went in a whaloboat from North Shore to Judge's Bay, writes that he was "unable to assign the real extent of the Waitemata." Thirteen years later, in 1840, when Captain Hobson selected the Waitemata as the site of the capital, in his first guide to mariners navigating the approaches to the harbour, he referred them to D'TJrville's chart. Why theie was no Cook chart of those approaches hag already been explained. Cook's charts were, of course, a model of excellence, and Marion dv Fresno (the French navigator who visited New Zealand in 1772 and was murdered by Natives at the Bay of Islands) wrote of Cook's chart of New Zealand: "I found it of an exactitude and thoroughness of detail which astonished me beyond all powers of expression, and I doubt much whether the charts of our own French coasts are laid down with greater precision." Mr. Barr points out that at the narrowest part of the isthmus the Waitemata and Mamikau harbours are separated by less than a mile. To the Maori the importance of the isthmus, with its natural strategic position, was obvious, and the native name for it was Ta-maki-Makau-Bau, which means "the spouse contested for by a hundred lovere." Uiiewwiing: tribal conflicts marked Ms enMsw Ms*orjs In the

eighteenth century the Maoris abandoned the isthmus, "as no tribe was able to remain strong enough permanently to withstand the attacks which were made upon this much-fought-for piece of land. Ami so, when the British pioneers appear on the scene, the land for which untold members of the Maori race had fought and died was unpopulated and neglected." At the founding of Auckland in 1840 "only a few isolated tribes were to bo fouud on tho isthmus." Picturing it as it then was, Sir John Logan Campbell writes: "Tho capital! A few boats and canoes on tho beach, a few tents and breakwind huts along the margin of the bay,, and then—a, sea of fern stretching away as far as the eye could reach.".

Those fern gullies and ridges, and the wider undulating lands that unroll behind them, dotted with volcanic cones, now carry the largest city population in New Zealand.