EMBRYO NATION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20929, 7 January 1938, Page 9

EMBRYO NATION

EVENTS 190 YEARS AGO “At the close of the year 1837 New Zealand remained a land of potentialities,’’ states an article released by the National Historical Committee. “Its interior was still for the most part unexplored, its resources were practically untouched, while European settlemerit was confined to the Mission stations and to coastal resorts of traders and whalers.’’ The year 1837 was a decisive one. added the article, and it was fitting that Samuel Marsden, founder of the first New Zealand Mission should have had his part in the events of that year, On February 7 he left Sydney in the Pyramus on his seventh and last voyage to New Zealand, arriving at Hokianga sixteen days later. There he met again many of the chiefs whom he had formerly known and had important conversation with them on the subject of religion and civil Government. He made a report, transmitted to the Church Missionary Society, and thence to the Colonial Office, and that document had its share in determining New Zealand’s ultimate destiny. During the course of that visit tc New Zealand Marsden met the man who later became New Zealand’s first Governor, Captain William Hobson Early in the same year the New Zealand Association was formed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Writing to his brother-in-law, Wakefield announced that he had set foot on a new measure of colonisation. “The country,” he explained, “is New Zealand—one of the finest countries in the world, if not the finest, for British settlement.” On November 4. Charles. Baron de Thierry, landed at Hokianga seeking possession of 40.090 acres which he claimed to have purchased in 1822. In this domain de Thierry aspired to reign as “Sovereign Chief.”