"THE HISTORY OF OTAGO"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27080, 14 May 1949, Page 8

"THE HISTORY OF OTAGO"

v Dr McLmtock's Masterly Story of the Province

This is a history both of a land and its people. It begins with the discovery of the land, introducing at once a glamorous name, the name of Captain James Cook, which immediately relates the story of a remote island area with a great tradition, and sets the level of the reader's adventure on a lofty plane. There is a pattern in this book which those who have a feeling for the collective drama of man in his impact upon new soil, and of the land upon the shaping of man's fate, may well study, by reference to the chapter headings and text, before they start reading. For it is in the realisation of this theme that the masterful purpose of the conscious historian is illustrated.

Dr McLintock comprehends his forms of its founding; which, the prostory in the mass. But such know- duct of rough whalers, of a fighting, ledge, such a grand and dignified shiftless horde of gold-seekers, and of vision derives not from massive the drifting sands of the later immiggeneralisation but from a perceptive rants and the .transfer classes of our analysis of the minutiae of men and modern system, has retained its Scotevents—the polyps which, in their tish mores almost intact? strivings and death, make the land The answer lies, surely, in the firm and give it historical meaning. character of these men who, with So m this book Cook is seen briefly shrewdness, single-mindedness, and a as, m weather as capricious and narrow but lively idealism fathered boisterous as we have had in the the settlement scheme, fought with present month, he sighted through a constancy and Scottish cunning when haze the bastion of the Peninsula, its fate was in the balance, mustered which rears its head majestically the emigrants, stocked the .ships, laid +u om 1 smother of foam and kelp ou t the land according to a plan in the phrase is Dr McLintock s—and which piety was more evident than passed by, as the navigator himself practicality. Their watchword was records, a land green and woody, but “ Concentration and Contiguity,” a without any sign of inhabitants, hopeless slogan to pit against the exThis is the first episode in the pre- pansive dreams of an expanding popuC T?Pj er ’ author j a tion; their vision was clear but concalls ' The Lifting of the Veil.” There fined. when McGlashan inveighs follows, m this chapter and that sue- against the Little Enemy, who sought ceeding, The Spoliation of the to cheapen the land and throw out the South, an account of the Maori ad- boundaries of the settlement beyond venturers m this rugged, unknown the coastal belt, he expresses the territory; of the tapestry of fact and limitations of the founding fathers, legend which was accumulated here but a i so the faith that was in them, before the white man came; then of the defending the class settlement as advent of the spoilers themselves, the <« sma ll indeed, but all the more sturdy sealers and whalers, hard and ignor- an( j vigorous, perhaps because of the ant for the most part, and a few far- blasts to which it has been exposed.” seeing and resourceful withal, who Tb j s W as the guiding faith of those ruthlessly exploited the coastal land who, men of inexperience in any adand its Native people; and then the venture remotely resembling that upon advance guards, who impinge with a which they* set foot so steadfastly, profresh dream upon the nightmare of cee ded to plant a new community in destruction, to mark out this strange, an aben so n. xt is little wonder'that inhospitable land for living in. The their deepest aspirations were, by the lament of old Tuhawaiki, protesting f orce 0 f the movement they had to officials of the New Zealand Com- thought to instruct, frustrated. The pany when Tuckett seeks to lay his wonder is that so much remains, palsurvey lines across the resting places pab i e to.the merest visitor to the Cenof his ancestors, rings down the cur- tennial of 1948. "The crushing force tain with the starkness of Greek 0 f inevitability,” as McLintock says, tragedy upon these chapters and upon made impossible the maintenance of an historical era few of us to-day can the zeal and strict observance of Free realise until it is so dramatically church principles among the settlers: evoked. But with it all, the redeeming rue wAITINfe I AND idealism was never lost sight of. inc Vr /Ml I I'll? L/MHU if, therefore, from a spiritual point The scene changes and with it the of view the scheme failed to dramatis personae. They are adven- achieve the goal of its founders, turers still who now descend in their morally and socially it left upon small craft upon the closed land of the infant settlement a powerful Otago. Yet frail as are their ships and and beneficial imprint which, with insubstantial as is their hold upon the the passing of the years, remained indifferent plains and peaks, they are an imperishable heritage, a legacy the tough, imaginative vanguard of from the turmoil of strife and what we call civilisation. Watkin stress, so that not even the shatterand “Johnny” Jones, Pompallier ing cataclysm of the gold-rushes and Tuckett, Shortland and Selwyn, was able to erase all traces of its and the rest, a diversified assortment lofty origin. of men -of God and of commerce. jf otago is not to-day what the of science and of settlement, take original geniuses of the class settleoyer the story. Otago is traversed by me^t contrived at, it remains in a men of adventurous purpose—but too mysterious sense their creation; what purpose predominates. And while was bu ii ded was not toe god-fearing the rich green coastline shows up little Free K irk colony of their dour its first scars of ordered occupation, dreams; but the roots of their humble and the rough hinterland receives the planting are almost as deeply inifirst imprint of European feet, at be dded in. the soil of Dunedin as the Otago’s very antipodes, .in Scotland, spires of First church and of Knox a small body of men, associated m rear above the busy life of our cosmoan extravagant ideal, lay plans to be- po iitan citizens to-day. come the leaders in a new Odyssey with Dunedin—a dreary settlement of well AND MOVEMENTS five rude houses—as its goal. , , When, in chapter IV, the scene The clatter of events, the clash of again shifts, it is to the Old World— stalwart personalities, which takes us to to London and to Scotland, where ‘.the this point in Otago’s story occupies colonial secretary, the directors of the only slightly less than 400 pages of the New Zealand Company, and George 800 in this book. It is significant that m Rennie, sculptor, politician, and friend our history nearly half the space of Hume, argued out then* conflicting should be devoted by the complete hisconcepts of what the new settlement torian to an era which closed in 1853, should be. The reader may have a less than a decade from the real start moment of frustration as he finds him- of things! In this fact, as in the imself here so arbitrarily translated ponderables mentioned above, is a from the waiting country he has seen sufficient, testimony to the hard-bitten, emerging from the veil, to the cramped, earnest men who Drought the first unrealistic atmosphere of early Vic- shiploads of poor emigrants into Otago torian England and grim, poverty- Harbour. One might be permitted ridden and ecclesiastically-riven Scot- bere a pause in one’s reading, to reland. Yet this is a part of the story g ec t on the future of Otago had the of Otago, a part as essential as the fulfilment of Burns’s concept been posnobler epic of James Cook's discovery, s j b i e . bu t the thematic insistance of Dr and more important than the bloody McLintock’s narrative allows no pause, tribal struggles of the Maoris and4he As the class settlement vision fades, debauchery of the whalers. new figures strut into the light. As Burns and Cargill enter, toe pic- it i s impossible in the course of a ture of Otago, which has been one rev ie.w. nor is it necessary, to define of episodic and almost accidental eacb newcomer. Dr McLintock has forms, falls into shape;. the abstract re -created these men, against the turbucomposilion of man and Nature in j en t history of their little epochs, random conflict hardens and integ- some are memorable in toe keenest rates. Before the “ genesis ” chapter sense that history allows. The figure closes, Rennie, the gifted but irreso- of Macandrew may, for many a reader, lute dreamer, has been shouldered out overshadow those of more stable pioby the men of action, devout and neers His is a presence that can devoutly narrow, purposeful to a be felt his part wa s so original and fault, able to grasp and weld with in t e nse in the small life of Dunedin resolute hands the less substantial that it ove rflowed its natural limitaplannings of those with less practi-, y ons . remains a visionary who cality. The hand of Providence has reminds ug of the lack of such ample brought matters so round, wrote adventurers in our provincial enterBurns to Cargill in 1844, when Rennie ise to _ day . Donald Reid, for whom was finally dispossessed, that instead no memorials have been erected, reof an irreligious man, we have now in emerges in these pages, in many reyou obtained as the nead of our Colony spect f « the outstanding representative a sound Presbyterian who m heart and the early pioneers.” A centenary hissed will co-operate in working out pro/ides the proper place for the well-being—the health and life of " evaluation of those who, in our Presbyterian institutions in the their time> shap ed our destinies, and Colony- To an understanding of this McLintock's appraisal is always turbulent, religio-political phase in fa^cinating( frequently illuminating, Otago s founding the letters of Burns n j « which his review natuto Cargill,, which no earlier researcher takes Us piaceabove other h^Ssa e bTe m Ttls rSSffi?*mfrft Sal* is fully McLintock’s book that, having the evidence of this bitter struggle for power laid before him, he writes it into the f ™und of r^tefsta ture others record without more comment than Tn «The P?o! that a tribute to Rennie’s dignity and become and the £ e Sh e e ld WhiCh DUnedin haS to ° Sess scrambled fought and bickered long withheld. £. th a yigour Dunedin has not see n TUP Alff'HITF/'TS in politics for half a century; in the Inc /\K\*nilCLtl o melee of contending parties, toe rich, ' But “ The Years of Endurance ” uninhibited flow of inventive, the which follow; when Burns, Cargill, strong and forthright championship and latdr, the dimly-personalised of vital controversial issues, the .men McGlashan, are become practically the of the past reveal themselves again in absolute architects of the Free Church their full vigour. And. measured Settlement, continue toe theme of a against their achievements assessed new community born of discord fifty years later, they fall into their determination This chapter, and that correct niches in the pioneering cavaltelling of “The Years of Strife,” are cade, the key to the dilemma which, even to-day, confronts the inquiring new- ASSESSMENTS comer to Dunedin. How is it, he will . ask himself, that this lovely town and The later pages of The History of province, so far from the Scottish Otago provide all toe colour ■ that cradle, retain the clear imprint of their any student of men and environment genesis; how is fixed the characteristic could desire. Dr McLintock s task is, stubborn sectarian spirit in a land perhaps, at its most difficult when he which has discarded so many of the turns from the crystallised past, the

period of acts completed, to the later years, when centralisation of Government, the shifting balance of population and, it is to be feared, the waning vitality of provincial leadership, reduce the proportions of the Otago canvas. But in these chapters the theme persists, amplifying and interpreting the shifting passage of the years. And we have, in the chapter “The Golden Decade,” some of the finest writing in the book, a masterly recapitulation of a climacteric in Otago’s growth which gives 9ur provincial history a dramatic intensity that sets it apart from the more gradual evolution of northern settlements. Yet, it is interesting and salutary to discover, Dr McLintock judges the era of the gold 1 rushes by no means the most significant in his story. It brought a new prosperity, which served the material interests of the Province; it curbed somewhat the growing power of the pastoralists as a political force; it failed to effect any sweeping change in the provincial institutions. In this respect, the author concludes *■ it is probably true to assert that the character of Otago politics for many years to come was shaped not so much by the transient population of the goldfields as by those hundreds of labourers and artisans who, drawn from liberal and even racial groups in the Homeland, followed in the wake of the miners. The chapter on “The Social Ferment,” which provides the most explicit commentary yet made upon the revolution in the minds of New Zealanders at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, illustrates this important conclusion. It is interesting to be reminded, in a study from which the bias of partisanship is absent, that in this revolution Dunedin was again a pioneering com.munity. Among the later figures of this history, those of Rutherford Waddell, of Dr Stuart, perhaps of Stout, stand out. It is perhaps permissible to observe that in this period the personality of the Otago Daily Times, which earlier had been largely shaped by factional strife, also assumes under Fenwick’s guidance a new liberality of spirit, as this newspaper’s interests became identified with the progressive social and humanitarian movements of this century. In r his epilogue, a 40-page summingup of the ' years still within the memory of those who live in Otago, Dr McLintock has written a distinguished essay upon the later achievements and failures of our community; upon the labourers in the fields of culture, require much till-,-' ing. The growing cleavage between town and country is here observed, an ominous development whigh requires the formulation of a new concent in inter-dependence to correct; ana we are able to count the loss to Otago in both the physical and material senses of centralism which, by reducing the province to vassalage in the political sphere, has altered the approach and affected the calibre of the people’s representatives. This epilogue, which so perfectly completes the circle of the hundred years, makes disturbing reading. One would not say that “The History of Otago” is a record of the rise and decline of our province; but the portents are in these latter pages, ana the warning is implicit. If our next hundred years are to repeat the boisterous, strong and progressive pattern of the first century, then there must be a revolution in the minds of Otago men and women. The mellow, lambent spirit of town and province to-day .is infinitely fascinating to the stranger, but it does not provide the atmosphere in which a culture may flourish. THE AUTHOR'S ACHIEVEMENT

A few more words are needed upon this brilliant work. It is not setting too high a valuation upon Dr McLintock’s three years’ labour to say that no history on its scale had before been attempted in New Zealand, let alone carried through. The role of the historian, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary on the bookshelves of New Zealand literature, is not merely to record and expound, but to discover and portray the very ethos of a people. He must approach his task not only with judgment, an unswerving diligence, and an inquiring mind, but with the perception of a philosopher.' This work is complete because its guiding theme is complete in the author’s mind; the story develops without artificiality or forcing from the material of history in the ample local historical libraries, in the newspaper files, and in the understanding of an author born and bred in the province he celebrates; yet the story must be given its form and colour by the conscious philosopher-historian. Dr McLintock’s scholarship, his capacity for hard work, and his original gift as historian are attested in this work. It takes its place—the opinion is offered deliberately—among the most notable contributions to the history of settlement. It remains to be said that the volume, in its format, is of a very high standard. The care taken in the choice of the illustrations, from an amazing wealth in Otago archives, in the selection of paper and of type faces, in the handsome binding and lay-out of the pages, reflects the determination of the author, the printer, and the Historical Committee ip make this lasting centennial monument one eloquent of the pride of the generation in the story of its forebears. ’ J. M.

The History of Otago: . the Origins and Growth of a Wakefield Class Settlement. By A. H. McLintock, M.A., Hons. (NZ), Ph.D. (London), Dip. Ed. (NZ). Illustrated, with Maps. Dunedin: Otago Centennial Historical Publications.