AREA AT BLUFF SOLD

Southland Times, Issue 24055, 20 February 1940, Page 4

AREA AT BLUFF SOLD

Deed Discovered In Dunedin TRANSACTION MADE IN 1838 (Special to The Times) DUNEDIN, February, 19. An announcement from Sydney that a deed of indenture recording the sale of the South Island in 1840 for £lOO had been discovered there reminded a Dunedin resident that she had in her possession a copy of a deed drawn up two years earlier, recording the sale of an area of about 2000 acres at Bluff. The parties were Edwin Palmer and John Towack, chief of the tribe of Kito. Edwin Palmer made his first visit to New Zealand as early as 1826 and for some years after 1835 was partner in a whaling venture with John Jones, who was mentioned in a message from Sydney as one of the parties to the 1840 transaction. The deed recording Palmer’s transaction is now in the Hocken Library. It was drawn up in Sydney and was signed by the Maori chief with his tattoo mark. “One sealing boat, the sum of £2O sterling, one dozen of axes and adzes, and a quantity of slips in hand, well and truly delivered,” constituted the purchase price of the land, which remained in the hands of the Palmer family for 60 years, though Edwin Palmer in 1851 settled on another property at Otokia.