FORTY YEARS AGO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2146, 11 April 1895, Page 13

FORTY YEARS AGO.

(Southern Standard, April 5.)

In the course of his address at the entertainment in aid of lha Temperance Hall on Tuesday eveniDg, Mr R. M'Nab gave a very interesting description of life ia the Otago district some 40 years ago. He said that before those pionesrs who afterwards came Bciiih, and were the first to reclaim from the wilderness the country we see around ns, landed in Dunedin, Otago, with Dunedin as i's capital, had made considerable progies'. By January 1854 — the earliest date of which he had records — the Otago WitDes',

OUR FAMILIAR FRIEND,

had already been published 140 times — indicating a life of tome two year*. It consisted of four or fiva tided, according to ihe amount available, of c!o3ely-priDted matter, and ia amount would equal little more than two sides of any of our local productions. The Ot*go Witness had never cried down Otago, and even at this early date assumed an air of importance which showed the staunch material of which it was composed. Listen to its notice to the advertisers of the young province : " The Witness having a numerous circulation in New Zealand and Australian colonies, also in Great 'Britain, render j ils co'.utnns of value to advertiser*, who may rely on the greatest publicity b^ing given to their advertisements." A line of "splendid ships," we are told, traded between London and New Zealand at th ; 8 time. E'ghtare mentioned ps belonging to the fie<.t, and ttiey rarjge from 800 to 900 tons. Tn the fiiso ispue of tl»a n^i iv Ji hut y Jonei hfisfctis to inform us that !.*• is 1 c uurchpsc ')f w<>f'l, •rtliich tbe scUki-. have already bc^uu io grew !'i r'c ustderable qu sii Uio^. p >ift J^ »_;• 11.'i!"?'..*, . Torn ~Bi itj-tij 5"" ■' Old^ X 11/ of IV ir Otngo/'tha.t l.c a sjnsi cccoUc^ p. iv jee lui^i'ii' i'on-.ijjumtL't ol "ii ar, brandy, \\h sVy. <■ tin,i n , rice, I»I uitlin ciijai'<. a-d r en boot.".'" Tli' i'.»t,'Hf - iioss ot Ui^ dat ■ of thu .-.r.ival a 1 i! dtp 'rture of vf j^eJi ii r ' amu .u^, nicuttuuied i.o v.o >iow aie to tr/e day and hour beiug given. A brigintiae of 200 tor s is eipi e'ed daily from Scotland, and, we are told, ia a few days after arrival will Bsil " for all the ports in New Zaaland." At thn early date small settlements of whalers had been established along the coast, and procured their supplies from Dutieiin. The Endeavour, a schoouer of 16 tons, kept the trade ali/e between Danedin and the settlements at the mouths cf the Matanra and tbe Clutha,

DR JIE.NZIES, afterwards oar Supeiii.t, ndunt, and Southland's best-kaown pioneer, inhere recorded as landing from Sydney in the Despatch, a sm^ll vessel of 158 tons. Mr Hugh Cameron, the well-known Mataura resident, accompanied him. TLe 3?ro\ineial C.uncil, in parsing a bill for formiDg, altering, and maintaining public roads, was paving the way for future loan', and the farmers ol ths new se%lem»nt recrived 10a per bushel for their wheat and 53 for their oats. Not a bad record for one i«ue of the paper. Scotchmen, of coarse, are proTerbial for the importance th«-y attach to education, aud t v .e annual examination of Mr M D, .well's school iv theliMle town of Duoedin holds the fi-s 1 ; 1 laco smoi'g tho educational lvcards of April 1851. The lumber of children attending tbe. two schools in operation in Dunedia at this time was alout 100, and the Wi'nets feels it incumbent to call attention to the fact that about 5q more are running about idle, " to their own eertouß loss, »s well as to tbe great reproach of their parents." Tho educational sjllabus differs v<ry much from that of tc-day. Pupils are examined ou the interesting subject of " E'u-'cises in the English Dictionary,' 1 snd A SCHOLAR AFTERWARDS WELL-KNOWN IN GORE had things pretty well his own way. L*tin roots, another vary interesting subji c v , saw a present Pine Bush settler run rings rouud a now Dune^iu seedsman and fruiterer. "When, however, it cmie to " regular attendance at echoi'l £nd general gocd behaviour" the Pine Bu*h m&u waß out of it, tn,d young Guorge Matthews came in an e*sy winner. Tli <ugh ifap name of the nunager of the Union Steun Snip Cimpany did not figure in spelling or in good behaviour, the name of James Mills takts a good position iv English, g ography, and arUhrce'ie. Land sal s were of fivqusnt ccDurrcnce, and choice sections were competed for eagerly. At the sale of tome nniccupicd section?, belonging to the New Zealand C< mpany, in April 185<1, in one inst ante there no fey. er than 189 applicants. Th.3 successful mm wai sslec.ed by ballot, and it w&s one cf iha coniilions of Eale that the moLcy must be forthcoming within O'ie minute of the name b-ing declared. Think cf that,

YE KNIGHTS OF THE HAMMER IN GORE !—! —

the eolid gold within 60 seconds, and men crowding for the very chance ! This app* ars t j be tho date of the lirst systematic seit'em^nt of the south. In May 1854 came cub eev-ral applicitions for depasturing licenses ever the almost unknown country Irom tho Mataura westward — those of W. and G. Stevens, S. WatsoD, J. Paulin, and J. Howcll, all for laud at the .Apar'ma. The old whaling psrties appear to have supplied the first who took up the ruuc, and they supplied us with those piou°ers of land settlement whom I have mined. Captain W. Stevens i« still with u<>, hale and hearty as ever ; Captain Howell died in 1847 ; Mr Paul'n was a brother-in-law of Captain Steven?, and Mr Stephen Watson, who belonged to the same party, is, he was informed, still resident at the Narrows, Riverton. Dr Merizics, also, about this time, had secured Dunalister, and his application for a depasturing license appears side by 6ide with the first pnblic reference to the now famous SPoroahaka ps a sheep run, the application for the latter being made by Mr D. Stevens, a relative of Captain M'Kenzie, afterwards M.H.R for lh»t district. Coming events casb their shadows before. Up to this time

KO EARLY CLOSING SOCIETY

or chop and shop assistants legislation had disturbed the quietude of the relations between master, servant, and customer. There

appears, however, now to have been one touched with the gift of divining tb.3 future, and the shopkeepers had to meet to suppress the " new iniquity."' Aud they did so, as the following advertisement ou August 5, 185*, intimates:— "The undersigned storekeepers of Dunedin having met to take into consideration the propriety of shutting their places of business at an earlier hour than heretofore, have agresd to continue to closs their pla n es of bus-ness at 7 o'clock pm. after Monday, the 7th in-st., (Saturday exocpted)." Hero follows a lisb of shopkeepers. It was in 1851 that the State of Maine decided to prohibit tha manufacture and sale of liquor aud intoxicating bsverages, and the result was being closely watched in the young province. Early in 1855 a society called the Oiago Maine Law L^Bgue was started, and sought, to educate the people up to an introduction of the American law into New Zealand. Among the committee was Mr John Logan (recently dead) and Mr W. S. Troltsr (then of Moerahi). A meeting WA3 held on the 19 oh of January 1855, at which a Mr Bell delivered &a address on the

MAINE LIQUOR LAW. How little it is that men change as the years roll by, may be gathered from the following account of the meeting: — "Mrßarr, Halfway Bush, asked if the members of the league were teetotallers. Being answered in the negative, he remarkt d that it such were not the case they were i_c insistent ; that they wereendeavouriag to force habits upon others which they did not practise themselveß. It was only in last week's paper that he had observed that some members of the league were resommendiog their own kartell's brandy as the bast in the colony." This plain speaking rather dieroncM-ted the lup-l.!';;, t<ii w,- rp u d s f • - Z.lr Barr being >n'e «',i;iii(i, :uni iijtwrined sha*; the meeting were not c. niined to one pulicular Ri l iOU oi ii" cr>uiniuni*y. /U ap,; ;,u to ii iVi -S-Uc.'4-l'.vi o .d to have i \ _n pl»oa in >^hab <i«--e)w.siou _£ Slowed.. Iv api,< ira <n.miii);, r tw .'i do re-id that b-!<,i\Ti.Jiri }UJ. p tuig '■ l i-i,, i .;a " Air G. ?■ a*' c.ioiol-uued of i . -• ( .In i,t- ituirn's vi.i I. i^ ftfi Bel! ii hip '« ure riilu.Tii.jg UfjOii the maiiagem-nb ot ths Itoy&l Hotel, and called upon him to give big authority, which Mr Bell declined to do." The Chairman (Captain Cargill, whom Dr Stuart ussd to call the "Moses of the settlement") said "he waa glad to have the opportunity of publicly complimunting Mr Smith on the managtment of tha hotel, which waa marked by a most ealisfxc'ory improvement since bis occupation of it." Nearly two pages of the Witness are devoted to temperance maters and the Maine Liquor Law on that occasion. Tha article was moderate in tone, and the movemaut appeared to have had the sunport of the influential citizen 1 ? of Dunedin. That

THE COMMITTEE MEANT BUSINESS

is shown from th ; following advertisement : " Notice is hereby given that the committee of tbe Ob&go Miiue Liquor Law League will meet every Monday evening at 6 o'clock, in the Mechanics' Institute.

" By order of the Cooimiltea.

" Charles H. Kicttle, Hon. Sec." Mr M'Nab woudercd when the time was or wi!l be whui such an iustiution placed in our m dsb would consider it necessary to summon its committee once a week to tranpact the budness vthich it was or will be conducting. The report of the Ofcago Maine Law League ciused some notice to be taken of it in the pavers in other disbiict), and the Witness, proud of its . fli'cient means of printing, is very rough on the atteropb of ths Cro<s to give* decent reprint of the article : " The Cross professes to give a reprint from the Witness of our remarks on the Maine livw question ; and unless we have received a spoiled copy our contemporary has given a most; singular couglomerutiou of thn Maine law and the eiith'jiiake at Wellington which certainly never appealed in our columns " Every centre for i s?lf in tracing oub its own history. The visit of Dr (afterwards the H<>n. Dr) Menzies early iv 1851 is among the first, it not actually the first, explorations of the cun^ry Ijing in ths Mataura Valley. H s site at Duv.alistf r, neir Wynd.iaia, would be determined doubtless by its apparent position in th« linn of traffic, cs it was at thtt time, and the d cV>r, until h ; s de.th in icceut years, was a well known figiro in the identical co intry which fir-t rece'ved him to his home. Auotber explorer of the wilds at tLat time was of a very difftroijl siainp A Scotchini.n f-xplor ■ d all fcb w coun' ry t xh'i u s l i vely either iv ICSI or very eaily iv 1355. Mr iti'N.tb hud no rcjorJ of fae exact (U(c, l.u 1 ; on Mj.rch 1 he was in Canterbury stealinsj sheep bolonging to the Mfs»rs Ilbodep, at'eerwarda tbe wcllkuown Canteibury squatters. The Messrs Rhodes oif<-red in different p*rts of tho colony a reward of £250 for the man's arrest, and in May he was secured in Canterbury. An UTisucce .( f ul attempt to escape resulted in his bei'ig wounded by a rifle bullat, and ended in his recapture. He served his senleuc3 in Nelson gaol, if the speaker's memory served him right. While this Scotchman wa« in prison a man just past the prime of life came over fivm Australia for the benefit of his health, and heird that tho prisoner was well acquainted with

THIS ALMOST UNKKOWN LAND

in the far Eouth. To get the consent of the superintendent to speak to tho convict was no easy matter, but it was arranged, and the two Scotchmen met eaoh other in the presence of a warder and on the work upon which the prisoners were engaged. To break into the language Highlanders assert was spoken in Paradise was the work of a moment— much to the consternation of the warder, whoso education hid been sadly neglected iv thio direction. Tbe warder insist* d upon English beiug spoken, but the prisoner professed to tpeak it with difficulty, and the Australian asserted he mast answer a man in the language he was p.ddivssed in, but was quite willing to speak in English if his friend would. The matter was referred to th» superintendent and settled, the two men being al'owed to converse in their mother tongue. Ab that interview the prisoner described the country along the banks of the Mataura and what is no-v Croydon, Wainiea, and Chatton, and country below Gore, as well watered and fitted i<x slieep-srowiofi. Ho ad-

vised his Gaelic-speaking friend to proceed south aud secure the country beforo another should step in. By appoiutmsnt tho interviewer met Mr M'Kellar iv Duuedin, and the two explortr3 came south to provo the Mataura Plain what i!; was represented to bs, aud in September 1855 the advjrtisemant of tha application of Alexander M'Nab for the cast bsn'-c of the Matsira, where E*st Gare now stands, to tho PyramiJ, and on the west bank from Charlton to the Ofcamste, Run 112, appeared in the paper. In the following year Gaptiin Raymond landed tho sheep for thia ran at tho Bluff, when tho Grst stt'.leruent to 5k place.