Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1936 WHEN NELSON CITY WAS FOUNDED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIX, 1 February 1936, Page 6

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1936 WHEN NELSON CITY WAS FOUNDED

NINETY-FOUR years ago, on the first of February, 1842, the founders of N elsun City came ashore from the ship 1 ifesliire, the first immigrant to land being a youth, Alfred Saunders, who was destined to become Superintendent of the Nelson Provincial District, and subsequently a member of the New Zealand | Parliament. A great deal bad to be j clone before it could be said that the j settlement of Nelson was definitely sue- j cessiul. The site of the proposed city | was just as nature had made it, covered with manuka and fern, with timber growing northwards of the river, and scrub on the surrounding hills. The New Zealand Company’s depot (which was on the site of the present Cathedral) was a tent, which was immediately filled to overflowing by the passengers, who had come ashore from the Fifeshire, and when, a few days later, there arrived another ship, her passengers were obliged to live in the open, or in temporary shelters of manuka or fern. It is on record that “a few sticks with a blanket stretched over them formed the connubial apartment of one well-known settler and bis wife, and their bedding was thick, close, dry fern, on the night of their arrival; luckily the weather was fine, and they did not fare so badly. The weather was just such as we have been having during the week, and their out-of-doors life was not a hardship to the pioneers. Fortunately they had brought a good number of tents with them, and these were soon erected, and some Maoris who were quickly on the spot showed them how to make huts out of raupo and toetoe. Other vessels, which arrived in quick succession, were the Lloyds, carrying the wives of the expedition-men, who had selected and prepared the site for the settlers who were to follow; the Mary Anne with 196 men, women, and children; the Lord Auckland, with 169 new arrivals. The Fifeshire had brought out 170 passengers. So that the foundations of Nelson City were well and truly laid by the pioneers who came out with Captain Arthur Wakefield and in the vessels which have been named. In all they .appear to have totalled 598 men, women and children. Though surveyors had early been at work marking out the streets and sections of the proposed city, Hie work was not completed when the first ships brought the people who were the true founders of Nelson. Indeed, we read that on their arrival the first settlers found that ‘‘the surveys were in a very backward condition, and vei Y little land was ready for allotment. However, the first distribution of town lots took place on 11th April, and by the 15th of that month the allocations were completed, and from that day the growth of Nelson was assured, and the success of its founders was certain; for, as was sagely remarked by one of their number, “when people buy land in a new settlement, build houses there, and live in them, they have paved the way to success, for others will come to share ■ n their enterprise, and soon the new community’s future will be assured.” And what was thus done in Nelson had been done at Auckland and Wellington and other places in New Zealand, and was to be done at Christchurch and Dunedin. It had been done at Sydney and Adelaide in Australia, and was to be done at such places as Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth. It had been done in Canada, where the British had succeeded the French as the great promoters of immigration; and it had been done at the Cape, where the British superseded the Dutch; and it was to be done at Natal. When the secret of such wonderful success in colonisation is sought, it is discovered primarily in English ships and English sailors, and in the wonderful pioneering spirit of the Einglish. To lie successful it was necessary for these new settlements to be founded conjointly by men and women who brought their children with them, and were capable of -earing their young families in the new and strange surroundings in which they found themselves. They came readily and fearlessly across thousands of miles of «>a in sliips which ranged in size from 303 tons to perhaps 500 tons, to empty or half-empty lands ivliose only other inhabitants were savages; and, with everything to be done for themselves, ■md by themselves, they set to work to i make their homes in the wilderness, j Truly wonderful people, adventurous, j capable, healthy, vigorous, sanguine, j able to laugh at hardships, and ready to I (urn their hands to anything. No one i ■an contemplate the pioneers who founded such a city as Nelson, without feelings of admiration. Their descendants—and there are many of them—have every right to feel proud of such progenitors, but they will find it hard to equal them in fortitude, strength of purpose, capability, and the power to overcome difficulties. Let us quote from a description given of those times by one who went through them: “Our house was part clay and part, manuka, and some were not so well off as that. . . .1 remember a poor sick man was brought in and laid on the mud floor in our house, because the rain streamed in upon him in his own. . . 't was a wet time after we landed, and much sickness.” To add to the new arrivals’ troubles, there was a plague of j "uts. thus described by Mr Alfred Saun- 1 ders, referred to previously, “They ran !

■'bout the house in swarms, walked delihornteJy over our feet, climbed on the ‘aide, and would drop like flies from the 'dialill. . In no part of the world have T seem a plague of rats anything to be "ninnared to that on the banks of the Yaifni for a few weeks after tin? arrival of the Fifeshire.” Those two excerpts ’•vp a rivid impression of the conditions miller which Nelson was founded—the sick man lying on the mud floor, the

heaVy rain (a serious thing to people living in the open) and the plague ol rats !