Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1936 A FEW EARLY NELSONIANS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIX, 8 February 1936, Page 6

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1936 A FEW EARLY NELSONIANS

SOME of the able men who were responsible for the foundation and construction of Nelson City—such as John Tinline, and Alfred Saunders, and J. W. Barnicoat—were well known to people who to-day can speak of them familiarly. Alfred Saunders, who was the first of the Nelson settlers to come ashore from, the Fifeshire, which was the first ship to bring emigrants to Nelson, was a man who played many parts in life. He built and worked the first water-driven mill in the settlement of Nelson. He was the third Superintendent of Nelson Province, and he. represented a southern constituency in Parliament. When Nelson celebrated its Jubilee, in 1892, Alfred Saunders visited the city which lie had helped to found, and besides renewing acquaintanceship with many of his fellowpioneers, he eloquently described bis leeollections of the founding and settlement of Nelson. John Tinline, who arrived iu New Zealand in 1839, and helped to found Wellington, may also be considered to have been one of the foundeis of Nelson, for he visited this settlement soon after it was founded, and remained associated with Nelson during the remainder of his long life. He was a great wanderer, he travelled widely, in Australia, in America (both North and South), in South Africa, in Europe, and in parts of Asia. He always said that when he had brought his travels to an end, he would spend his last days in Nelson. And that was what he did. His memory was very clear, and in his old age lie loved to talk of the early days when the pioneers were founding Wellington and Nelson. He erected one of the first masonry buildings in Wellington, and it was destroyed by earthquake. He then took up land in the Wairau and the Cheviot districts, and became a sheepfarmer. He was fond of dwelling upon tlie hardness and difficulty of the pioneer’s life, and of the uncertainty of the lot of the man who “took up land.” The whole situation, he said, was changed when the transportation of refrigerated meat was successfully effected. Until that time, the New Zealand sheepfarmer had to depend almost entirely upon the sole of his wool. “That would not have been so bad,” said Mr Tinline, "if wool were not so durable. But the wretched stuff won’t wear out. First it is made into cloth, which' is made into suits which last for years ; and when (hey wear out they are made into shoddy and goodness knows what else, and so the same wool is used over and over again, and the market suffers accordingly. But with the sheep’s carcase it is different. It is frozen. It is sent home to England. It is cut up and sold by the butcher. It is cooked and eaten. And, by Jupiter! that’s the last of it! And next day the eater wants some more !” A good portrait of Mr John Tinline hangs in the Nelson City Council Chamber. Contemporary with John Tinline was John Barnicoat, who came tc, New Zealand as one of the N.Z. Company’s surveyors, and was at the Wairau at the time when Rauparaha massacred Captain Wakefield and his companions at Tuamarina. He was not fond of talking of that tragedy, but it was mainly from his account that Judge Broad, in 1892, wrote in his history of Nelson the details of that terrible affair. With nine others John Barnicoat found his way to tlie sea —though how they managed to do so, he never clearly explained -and there they found a whaleboat, in which they escaped to a Government brig which was lying in the hay. William Hodgson, scholar and schoolinspector, will probably he remembered hv posterity as a skilful versifier, if not as a poet. He learned the rudiments of Latin and Greek at the Manchester Grammar School, but lie left England for New Zealand when he was in his early ’teens, and after that he had no more school education. He taught himself the. two great classical languages so thoroughly that he could translate them at sight with the greatest ease. It was not strange, therefore, that lie left behind him written translations of

‘CEdipus Coloneus,” “Antigone,” “Pliiioctetes,’’ “CEdipus Tyrannus,” and of Valerius Catullus’ works. After his death a collection of his own poems was printed by subscription. At the end of this small volume are the verses which lie wrote to his wife, and of them it may be said that they reach a standard of poetry which has been reached but seldom by those who in this country have essayed to express their sentiments in verse.