BEFORE THE PIONEERS.

Evening Star, Issue 20311, 21 October 1929, Page 8

BEFORE THE PIONEERS.

The earliest days of New Zealand settlement are recalled by the death of Mrs Woolsey. Eight years before the arrival of the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing she came to Otago with her parents to “ Johnny ” Jones’s settlement at Wrfikouaiti, That was in March, 1840, three months before the prodlamation of British sovereignty. Living till the great age of ninety-three years, she was the last survivor of the passengers by the Magnet, the “ grey lone company before the pioneers.” She was thus not only the oldest living inhabitant. of Otago by residence;' it seems extremely probable that she was, in the same sense, the oldest living inhabitant of the South Island. The French settlers did not arrive at Akaroa until five months after the Magnet, with her eleven families brought from Sydney to form Mr Jones’s agricultural settlement, dropped her anchor at Waikouaiti. The last of the original French colbnists, Joseph Libau, died ten years ago at the age of eighty-six. The Nelson settlement was not founded till 1842, that of Canterbury in 1850. There were Canterbury settlers—the Deans brothers at Riccarton, the Hays and Sinclairs and others on Banks Peninsula—before the first four ships arrived, but they all—or all whos- after history might be in doubt—came later than 1840, and we cannot remember that any of them is still alive. There must be very few veterans remaining, oven in the North Island, who were there in 1840.

Mrs Woolsey was recorded as having said that the hardships that had to be faced in 1848 were nothing when compared with those which had to be endured by the Magnet’s passengers. That can be believed, because the Waikouaiti adventure, in no small measure, prepared the way for the official settlement. “Johnny” Jones was a far-seeing man. His primary purpose in bringing agriculturists to Waikouaiti, no doubt, was that supplies of food should always be available for the whaling stations he controlled, but he doubtless foresaw also a future for New ■Zealand which would 'have room for many other industries besides whaling. The settlers whom he wanted—thirtytwo persons in all—he found in Sydney, the members of English families who, having made one shift to improve their fortunes by a long removal from home, and finding the heat of New South Wales uncongenial to them, were easily persuaded to make a further migration. Each family was promised sixty acres of land, after two years’ service for the proprietor. Mrs Woolsey’s parents did not stay longer than that period. Mr Alfred Eccles has written: “It was at Waikouaiti that the first cereal crops [in Otago] were grown and harvested, that the first sheep were shorn, and that the first horses and other cattle were bred. There, too, was built the first house in Otago having any claim to pretensions—Jones’s residence, * Matanaka.’ It was completed and occupied probably in 1844, and may .still be seen, though with subsequent additions, a short distance beyond the northern head of the bay. There is little difficulty in estimating the extent of the boon which the success of this early venture conferred on arrivals in Otago in later years. As a source of supply Waikouaiti was invaluable to them.” The early settlers of New Zealand endured stern privations with a cheerfulness not easy of imitation that our lines might bo cast in pleasant places. Their women were not less brave than their men. It is certain that too much honour can never be paid to them.