EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13708, 26 March 1908, Page 6

EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

DR. HOCKEN'S RESEARCHES.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS,

[BY TELKGBAX'H.— OWN CORRKsrONDENT 1

Dc-vedik, Wednesday. .. Dr. Houkkx, who may fairly ."be termed th« ' historian of New Zealand, has recently re-' turned to Dunedin after an extended visit to the North Island in the interests of historical and archaeological research. p ro . fessor J. McMillan Brown, of Canterbury' College, in a, recently-published work < m "The Maori and Polynesian," sought to show thai the earliest peopling of New Ze*. land took place probably many thousands of years before the first Maori migration, and that the first inhabitants of the land were Caucasian in origin, having followed the megalithic track across Northern Europe and Central Asia. For proof of this Professor Brown relied, amongst other things, on certain alleged megalithic (unmortared stone) monuments at Kerikeri i n the Bay of Islands, similar to those which mark the Caucasian route of travel in the Old World. Dr. Hocken, in the course of an inter. view with a representative of the Herald said he went to Kerikeri, and spent some time in looking lor those archaeological remains, and made exhaustive inquiries amongst the oldest inhabitants at the place but could find no traces of them, nor could ho hear of anything to support the statement that such monuments existed. The only things he did see were some remarkable outcrops of basaltic rock on a precipitous hillside, which had been very strangely weather worn. They are not at all what could be called druidical remains. During his visit to the locality l)r Hocken made the whole countryside alive to the importance of the matter, and he has left searchers at work, who will communicate the results of then efforts to him. During his travels in North Auckland Dr. Hocken visited Mr. Webster, at Opononi, a gentleman who is 99 years of age, and put into order for publication the journals of his early life. They begin with Australian reminiscences in 1838, when Mr. Webster was what was then known as an overlander, being engaged in taking cattle overland from Sydney to Adelaide. Mr. Webster came to New Zealand in 1841, and took part in 1845 in Heke's first war at, Ahuabu, near the historic Ohaeawai. Amongst the manuscript treasures acquired by Dr. Hocken on this occasion was ,a large collection of letters from Judge Mariing to Mr. Webster. The doctor also examined and put in order a great many collections of letters and papers of the late Rev. John Hobbs and Di. Purchas, and other old missionaries in the Kaipara district.

A visit was paid to the great Heke's historic battlefields at Ohaeawai, Okaihau, and Ruapekapeka, and it was found that all ' traces of them, were rapidly disappearing, the land becoming' agriculturalised. At Horeke, a very ancient European burialground—probably the oldest cemetery in New Zealandwas discovered, containing the grave of an old sailing captain, who died as far back as 1808. Whilst on the Upper Wairoa Dr. Hocken went to the now long-destroyed mission station at Tangiteroria, where the Rev. Jas. Buller, father oi Sir Walter Ruller, was stationed. At Pahia it was found also that but little trace was ; left of the great Pa.karaka mission, the homestead headquarters of the Williams family in the early missionary days. The sole remnant of the old mission peo- / pie met with was Mrs. Jas. Kemp, at Kerikeri,, who lives in what is probably the oldest house in New Zealand, having been erected in 1828 by the Rev. John Butler, " one of the missionaries sent out by the ' Church Missionary Society in 1819, in re- '• sponse to the appeal made by the Rev. Samuel Marsden. . ■