CAPTAIN R. T. BLAKE. I

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 8145, 17 December 1904, Page 2

CAPTAIN R. T. BLAKE. I

The death press wires from Marton recorded the other day was that of Captain Blake, once so well known in this district. If (writes a correspondent) to have fought for the land, to We assisted in settling the land, to have greatly helped in suppressing the native difficulty when that difficulty was real and acute, if these are services entitling a ,m«n to remembrance by those who dwell in peace on the land, then Captain Blake should not be forgotten. He was the eldest son of an Irish gentleman, a surveyor by profession, who settled at Makotunu near Stoney river, having married a woman of standing of the Ngamahanga tribe. To write the biography of R. T. Blake of the sixtie*, is to write a history of the Maori war. In what is called Titokowaru's war there was no important action at which he was not present. His account of the Ngutu-o-te-manu attack was, to the very fftw who have heard it, singularly clear and comprehensive. This arose from the fact that »t tho time he mi ucrKOftOt of .couts, and thus was in touch with more than one detachment. His history of the seventies is a history of the pacification of the natives, of the teaching them to grow such produce as grass seed and hops ; of the opening up of the Mountain road and. the employment of natives thereon. His home was then at what is now Normanby, and the pines and blue gums which now grow on the right of the railway, just as the station is approached, are trees planted by his hand in a not inconsiderable garden. His private dwel- • ling was a little cot fitted with a small ' but choice library, where a complete edition of Carlyle vouched for- the litorary tastes of the owner and a choice folio of Hogarth spoke of his artistic inclinations. The main building was a well plenj.hed store and a kitchen of lavish proportions devoted to hospitality as generous in extent as the graft of a hospitable Irish stem on an equally generous Maori one would lead us to expect. The Normanby hundred acres was Captain Blake's' military land, and he cut it up into sections. He was reticent in disposition and of rather phlegmatic character. , Once known, his straightforward honest, manly character was not to be disguised, not even in the intrigues of the Native Office. . He ever responded liberally to the claims of friendship. As to his end : If the utter failure of all hopes, hereditary, domestic and professional, if sorrow of every kind can furnish a title to a man to leave the world hurriedly, then the cup of poor Dick Blake was full to the brim, and running over with calamity, long since. He fought a long fight against despair. | R.I.P. "What can we do, o'er whom the unbeholden Hangs in a night with which we can- : not cope \ What but look sunward, and with facet i golden, < , Speak to each other softly of a hope?"