OLD TARANAKI

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1665, 27 January 1904, Page 32

OLD TARANAKI

(ANi INTERESTING REMINISCENCE. ' The visit to New Zealand pf Mr A. 0 » after whofe father, ColonelMiuin.ers, one of Wellington’® busiest .thoroughfares takes its name, revives an interesting page of the early history of Taranaki.. This, as will be seen, is of epeoial interest at present, when promises of definite steps are being made as to the development of the ironsand , deposits'in that district, opening the way to an industry that will surely play an important part in the future commercial progress of New Zealand. Mr Manners, on his mother’s side, is a grandson of the late Mr Frederic Alonzo Carrington, who was selected by the Plymouth Company to proceed to

New iefalaud as its chief surveyor to ohoolse a site for the Settlement proposed to be formed in Now Zealand. He arrived off Taranaki on February 12th, 1841-, with liis family and a survey party. After felling bush under great difficulties "tlio^township--of-New Plymouth was j - laid •’ ou.tLiindm* Mr Carrington’s su per- - -vision. In 1843, he returned to Eng- / land, and found that the Plymouth : Company had been absorbed in the New. Zealand Company. He took back with _ ; r ; him - a quantity of Taranaki ironsand j (the first which left the colony), and after an analysis had a bar of cast-iron / made tberefroitir'^,He entered into alengthy; correspondence with the Colo- . trial Office,, endeavouring to obtain a V grant'of ,the beach along the shores of '; a/refusal. Lord . JKreyi offered to give Mr Carrington a letter to the Governor of New Zea- , . land, which on his arrival there would ensure a grant of the beach being given him. | As it would have taken foo long in those days to. have visited New Zea--again with the

desired information, the matter was for the time abandoned. The .bar of iron and some of the ironsand were exhibited by Mr Carrington at the exhibition, in London in 1851, when he called the attention of the Master-General of the Ordnance Department (SirNTL do la Beolie) to it. Fourteen years later Mr Carrington revisited New Zealand, his object being the utilisation of the ironsand and other matters in connection with the district, but the North Island was then in a very unsettled state owing to hostilities with the natives. In 1862 ho was appointed Government Engineering Surveyor for Taranaki, and in that connection joined with the military authorities in reading the district. He was elected Superintendent of the district in 1869, and held that position until 1876, when Provincial Governments were abolished. He was then

elected to the House of Representatives, but retired from polities in 1880. He crowned his work as. the greatest man ever connected with Taranaki by laying the first-stone of the present breakwater on February 7th, 1881.