THE MUSEUMS OF NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 81, Issue 6, 15 December 1950, Page 579

THE MUSEUMS OF NEW ZEALAND

INCIDENTS concerned with the establishment of the Otago Early x Settlers' Museum and the history of some of its notable exhibits are described in this article, another in this series by Enid B. V. Phillips.

Otago Early Settlers’ Museum ON March 26, 1898, the “Otago Daily Times”, New Zealand’s first daily newspaper, which was established shortly after the gold rush in 1861, with a future premier as editor, published notice of a meeting to be held on the following Monday evening inviting the native-born sons of old identities to form a New Zealand Natives’ Association in Otago, the proposed objects being “to promote social intercourse among sons of the soil, to preserve and strengthen a patriotic spirit, and inspire a feeling of veneration for those heroic pioneers who gave the first shape to our noble institutions”. Inspired by the success of the settlement’s recent golden jubilee celebrations, the citizens concerned responded to this laudable proposal with the utmost cordiality, and a committee was set up to prepare a constitution and rules. (A similar organisation had been started about the time of the silver jubilee, but although a very successful picnic for early settlers and their friends was held on the chief postmaster’s property in Lower Kaikorai Valley, the society itself was short lived.) For Men Only It must have been rather disconcerting to the “daughters of the soil” to learn that the new association was to be for men only, despite the fact that half a century earlier the authorities had predicted the utter failure of the colonising venture without the co-operation and assistance of “the fairest portion of creation” and urged intending immigrants to marry, a wife by reason of her domestic contribution alone, not to mention her other virtues, being “a great saving to her husband”. Apparently the more gallant members of the committee had the grace to realise this, for after “mature consideration” they decided to extend the privilege of membership to the mothers of the settlement, meanwhile comforting themselves with the reflection that, as these were “a fast diminishing quantity”, the association would in a few years time regain its masculine exclusiveness. Moreover, the leading article in the “Otago Daily Times” pointed out that in any case there would be no woman under 38 years present and therefore no frivolity, from which it may be concluded that any attempt to imbue proceedings with a little light-hearted gaiety, which is one of woman’s chief charms, would be severely frowned upon by the sterner sex. It is interesting to note that the president of the newly formed association was Mr. E. B. Cargill, son of Captain William Cargill, who in middle age relinquished a military career which included distinguished service in India and in the Peninsular War to begin civilian life as a banker in London and who later became leader of the Otago settlers. The pioneer women of the settlement, becomingly attired in their best silk gowns and beflowered bonnets, attended the association’s various social functions in full force, as did their female descendants, and thereby contributed immeasurably to the festive atmosphere of these gatherings, picnics being the favourite form of outing at that time. Furthermore, the achievement of a ladies’ committee in raising over £lOOO for a building fund by a bazaar must have done much toward convincing the menfolk that their chivalry in admitting women to membership had not been misguided.

Early Settlers' Hall

This committee held a second sale of, work to provide funds for a piano and other furnishings for the Early Settlers’ Hall which was built adjoining the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and which was completed in time for the opening ceremony to take place on Anniversary Day, 1908, the year the province celebrated its diamond jubilee. Soon after the founding of the association a start had been made to collect photographs of the pioneers, and these, suitably

framed and in company with views of Dunedin and its environs in the early days, formed an appropriate decor for the hall on opening day. That modest picture and portrait gallery has been so supplemented down the years that it has grown to almost overwhelming magnitude and is of the greatest importance historically. Indeed, one gift to the association was of such imposing proportions that a whole room was required to accommodate it; this was the collection made by Mr. Alex. Thomson, comprising 674 pictures, 306 views, 200 photographs, 310 views on glass, and 311 miscellaneous papers pertaining to early Otago. Fortunately, the Donald Reid wing, erected as a memorial to the association’s third president, who held office for 19 years until, the time of his death and left the association a generous bequest, had been finished a few months before, so the necessary display space was available and the Thomson collection was on exhibition when the wing was opened in November, 1922, by the late president’s daughter, Miss Francis Reid, with a gold key especially presented to her for the occasion. , • A . Another impressive gift received in later years was an index consisting of over 15,000 cards dealing with matters of historic interest in early Otago. About half the cards were devoted to shipping and insurance information, and the entire index was compiled by Mr. J. J. Mallard, president of the association for 5 years. Purchase of Buildings By 1928 the association was able to purchase the former art gallery buildings (the 1925-26 exhibition art gallery became the permanent home of the city art collection; it was purchased from the exhibition company by Mr. and Mrs. P. R. Sargood for presentation to the city as a memorial to their son who was killed in the First 'World War), thus making welcome provision for a Pioneers’ Hall and additional room for the constantly increasing collections of historic relics. .. Twenty years later it was found necessary to appropriate this hall as well as the Early Settlers’ Hall to meet the needs of the association’s museum, which had been greatly extended in preparation for the centennial exhibition which was formally opened by the Governor-General, Sir Bernard Freyberg, on February 25, 1948. Anniversary Day celebrations that year were prefaced by the reenactment at Port Chalmers by the Port Chalmers Old Identities’ Association of the landing of the pioneers from the John Wickliffe, the first ship chartered to bring immigrants to Otago. A happy feature of the afternoon festivities, arranged by the Otago Early Settlers’ Association,

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was the presentation of a bouquet to Lady Freyberg by the great-great-granddaughter of Mr. John Jones, who owned the whaling station at Waikouaiti and who founded a prosperous agricultural settlement on the large block of land he had bought from the Maoris, the little band of settlers arriving from Sydney on his whaling vessel, Magnet, in 1840, about 3 months before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It was at Mr. Jones’s request that the first mission station was established in the South Island, the Wesleyan Mission Board in Sydney appointing the Rev. James Watkin to the charge. Missionaries' Arrival Mr. and Mrs. Watkin and their young family left Sydney in the Regia on May 1, 1840, the trip taking just over a fortnight and culminating in a terrible storm in - Fouveaux Strait which caused serious danger of shipwreck. Although they had two other hair-breadth escapes from disaster before they finally landed at Waikouaiti, Mr. Watkin held Divine services the following day (Sunday), taking his text from Timothy, “This is a faithful saying”. As the house Mr. Jones had provided was not nearly big enough for the family, they had to make do in a Native whare until a more suitable residence could be built for them. The new, 4-roomed mission house, with its timbered walls and shingle' roof, its pleasant fireplace and sturdy chimney of Sydney fire bricks (the first in the South Island), must have seemed like a palace after the draughty, uncomfortable whare. Some of the chimney bricks survived the rest of the dwelling by many years, and before they, too, disintegrated under the relentless attacks of time and weather one was secured for the

Otago Early Settlers’ Museum, where it is on view today. Despite the toll 7 years’ service in the Tongan mission field had taken of their health before they came to Australia, the “unwearied exertions” of this devoted missionary couple in the vast, isolated parish of the South Island of New Zealand were prodigious. In addition to her family duties, which were further increased by the birth of two sons during her sojourn at Waikouaiti, Mata Wakina, as the Maoris called Mrs. Watkin, taught the Maori women and girls cooking, sewing, and the rudiments of child care. Her classes were so popular that pupils came by the boatload from as far south as Otakou to profit by her instruction. Moreover, the Maoris were particularly eager to learn the pakeha arts of reading and writing, and the Watkins’ parlour was often filled with students of all ages diligently learning their letters or mastering the hymns and prayers which James Watkin had painstakingly penned in their own language. The British and Foreign Bible Society’s gift of New Testaments, printed in Maori was largesse indeed and occasioned widespread rejoicing among the Maori population. Gun Barrel as Church "Bell" Mr. Watkin accomplished his extensive pastoral visits by boat and on foot, both modes of travel being attended by considerable hardship and danger. He established churches at Otakou, Tahakopa, and Ruatitiko, where the Old Testament prophecy anent swords being beaten into ploughshares had its modern equivalent in the form of a gun barrel which, suspended from a rope of flax, was struck with a stick at rhythmical intervals to serve as a bell to call the people to worship. Another preaching

place Was at Omati, the whaling station run by three brothers from Sydney, Joseph, George, and Edward Weller, whose New Zealand-built ship, the Joseph Weller, plied regularly between Otago and Sydney. Two of the trypots from the Wellers’ station are now in the museum, together with one of the last whaleboats in use at Waikouaiti. Mr. Watkin, writing to a friend from Waikouaiti, mentioned that although the whalers went out on the Sabbath in defiance of Mr. Jones’s desire for the proper observance of the. Lord’s Day, it was remarkable that they had not been successful in taking a single whale on a Sunday during the entire season. The year 1844 was a momentous one for the mission household. Bishop Selwyn spent 2 days with the Watkins early in January during his first visit to the South Island, and the Rev. Charles Creed, the pioneer minister in Taranaki, arrived in mid-April to relieve Mr. Watkin, who was then to be transferred to Wellington in accordance with the Wesleyan custom of changing circuits every 3 or 4 years. The brigantine Deborah, 121 tons, brought other passengers beside the Creeds and their baby daughter, who was born on the voyage to Waikouaiti. There were Frederick Tuckett, chief surveyor to the New Zealand Company, Dr. (afterward Sir David) Monro, of Nelson, other members of the survey party, and Rev. J. F. H. Wohlers, newly sent to New Zealand by the North German Missionary Society. Thus came about the meeting between the former missionary to Tonga, whose printed plea for helpers to preach the Gospel to the Fijians was circulated in Germany as well as in England, and the young Lutheran who had become a missionary as a result of that appeal. It must have been a great joy to Watkin to learn that Wohlers intended to begin his ministry in the Fouveaux Strait area, with Ruapuke, the biggest of the islands between Bluff and Stewart Island, as his headquarters, for his own efforts to visit the native settlement at Ruapuke had been frustrated by stormy weather which had made the anchorage unsafe and prevented his landing. Old Chart and Medicine Chest The Deborah stayed several days at Waikouaiti before proceeding south, Frederick Tuckett continuing with his task of exploring the country for a suitable location for the proposed Free Church settlement. He was extremely thorough in his exploration, often going overland through rugged bush terrain and catching up the ship at various points along the coast. After disembarking the Rev. Wohlers at Ruapuke he spent some days in the Bluff and New River localities before sailing for . Paterson’s Inlet, Stewart Island. The chart of the island and the strait drawn by Captain Wing of the Deborah and bearing the acknowledgment: “All the west coast of the island is layed down as directed by Mr. Edward Palmer who has been many years sealing on all the rocks and places adjoining Stewart Island; Mr. Palmer was also pilot on board the brigantine Deborah”, was presented by his descendants to the Otago Early Settlers’ Association, and the medicine chest which Tuckett carried

on that long journey south is also in the association’s possession and displayed among the notable exhibits in the museum;

Dr. Monro’s description of his travels is written in a delightful, smooth style as befits a man destined to represent his district in Parliament and occupy the distinguished position of Speaker in the House of Representatives. Tuckett’s entries, on the other hand, are so succinct as to produce almost a staccato effect, save for occasional passages where his subject compels him to unwonted fluency, such as his difficulty in securing reliable information as to distances and the correct names of rivers and districts, and his indebtedness to petticoat government at one stage when he was unable to obtain a Maori stalwart to carry his baggage, whereupon a Maori woman promptly persuaded her wavering spouse to accompany the pakeha and, more important still, render loyal and able service.

Tuckett’s choice of Otago for the new Presbyterian settlement was a happy one and met with the approval of Colonel W. H. Wakefield, the two representing the New Zealand Company at the big Maori gathering at bputai (the port which was later called after Dr. Thomas Chalmers, a noted churchman) where the sale of the Otago block to the British authorities took place. Tuckett made his home at Koputai in a little brick house he built on the beach, living there the greater part of the time until his return to England in 1847. The Rev. Creed in his diary mentions spending an evening with the chief surveyor after he had been across to the future New Edinburgh (Dunedin) to preach to the few Europeans in the vicinity, the Methodist missionary thus being the first to hold Divine service on the site of the Presbyterian settlement. Tuckett’s successor, Charles Henry Kettle, and his wife, who arrived from England on the

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Mary Katherine in February, 1846, had to s hare the 3-roomed brick cottage with one of the assistant surveyors f or a time, and later the tiny cottage h a j to be turned into a temporary hospital, the forerunner of Otago’s outstanding services in the medical field. ' . The old-style chain, composed of 100 links, which Kettle used when surveying the site for the city of Dunedin has an honoured place in the museum and several weeks before her death

in 1932, his daughter unveiled a memorial plate in the pavement in Water Street where she had been carried by her mother 84 years before to watch the landing of the first of the John Wickliffe’s passengers, the vessel having left Greenwich on November 24, 1847, with 94 immigrants for the new settlement under the leadership of Captain William Cargill. Incidentally, Frederick Tuckett took advantage of the ship’s sailing to send tools and books to his friend Johann Wohlers to help him in his lonely labours on Ruapuke. Model Ship The museum has a very fine model of the Philip Laing, which brought 247 passengers to Otago in charge of the Rev. Thomas Burns. This second ship left Greenock only 3 days after the John Wickliffe, but arrived in New Zealand more than 3 weeks after the John Wickliffe. Some of the more censorious . passengers attributed its tardiness to the fact that the captain preferred to promenade the deck in the starlight with the Rev. Burns’s pretty daughter Clementina instead of devoting his energies to achieving a record run. Perhaps they would not have begrudged him those brief halcyon hours could they have foreseen that this romance which led to the couple’s marriage, the first recorded in Dunedin, would be cut short by the death of his wife at the early age of 30. Pioneer Housing

The lot of the settlers who arrived in 1848 was a hard one, the sole accommodation for most of them being long, windowless, shed-like shelters fashioned from rough wooden frameworks with only grass and rushes for lining and somewhat euphemistically

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termed barracks. Winter came. early to Otago that year and the picturesque grass thatch was not proof against the incessant rain and there was no cheerful open fireplace or stove of any kind to offset the chill winds which penetrated the flimsy walls. Umbrellas were de rigueur indoors and the puddles underfoot changed the clay floors' into miniature ponds and patches of bog which were at times “mid-leg deep”. No wonder the womenfolk, whenever possible, set to work to help their husbands to build their homes, tackling such unaccustomed tasks as lugging newly sawn timber from the bush, gathering materials for thatching, and mixing clay, chopped tussock, and water to form a crude plaster to fill in the narrow, grass-laced interstices between the walls of wattles and saplings. Wattle-and-daub construction was most generally used, though sods, tree ferns, and sun-dried bricks also had a place in this primitive housing programme. A model house of this kind can be inspected in the museum, entrance being effected through a door in an appropriate mural, one of a striking series depicting pioneer life in Otago painted for the centennial exhibition by J. W. Brock and C. V. Wheeler. Household Equipment The museum also has a full complement of pioneer household equipment: Candle moulds, charcoal irons, and an antiquated coffee mill; a portable camp oven like a gargantuan preserving pan with a circular lid on which to heap the hot embers; its more elaborate counterpart, a colonial oven resembling a small coffin with a door in the side and conveniently fitting into a fireplace so that a fire could be kindled both on top and beneath according to the degree of heat required; a hook and sweigh with a heavy iron kettle attached; and a choice selection of churns, including the settlement’s

premier model, contrived with characteristic Scottish thrift and ingenuity in making the best use of available materiala water cask from the Philip Laing. Sawn-down barrels also did duty for seats as did vertebrae of whales brought from the Heads. Packing cases, too, were pressed into service as furniture until there was opportunity to try cabinet-making with native timbers. The museum possesses many examples of the early work of the amateur craftsmen, also 3 carved chairs used by the Otago Provincial Council, which held its first meeting in the Mechanics’ Institute on December 30, 1853. Chair for First Judge Another interesting item is the chair made by Mr. John Hill for the first

Judge of the Supreme Court of Otago, Mr. Sidney Stephen, whose appointment by Governor Grey was far from popular with the Scots for his salary of £BOO a year was considered a severe and unnecessary drain on the limited finances of the young province. A more law-abiding community would have been hard to find. Indeed, the local lock-up- was so little used that it often served as a meeting place for the Methodists when the Rev. Creed held church services when visiting Dunedin. Moreover, the Anglicans, having neither church nor cathedral, gathered for worship in the Supreme Court building, now the site of the present gaol, the services being brightened by the acquisition of a barrel organ which played 36 hymn tunes and had been brought to New Zealand by Dr. Frederick Hall Richardson, who arrived in Otago in 1851. (This was the instrument which greatly interested our present King when, as Duke of York, he inspected the museum on his New Zealand tour in 1927, the joyous strains of “O Come All Ye Faithful” reverberating through the museum as he vigorously turned the handle.) Nevertheless, the half-yearly sittings of the Supreme Court were conducted with the utmost ceremony, many of the jurors travelling long distances to attend, even though there was a complete absence of crime on the calendar. These farcical proceedings came to an end in 1850 when the Judge himself brought an action against a popular Dunedin belle, with whom he had been conspicuously friendly, for '‘wilfully and wickedly conspiring” with two well-known citizens to damage his reputation. One of the lady’s champions immediately retaliated by beginning proceedings against the Judge for threatened assault in a public thoroughfare.. Both charge and countercharge held that element of drollery which would have delighted the British dramatist W. S. Gilbert, and the legal comedy concluded on an unexpectedly sensational note when His Honour, after having been exonerated by the Bench, which comprised no fewer than 11 Justices of the Peace, was roundly

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rebuked by that eminent personage, Dr. Henry Manning. Although Dr. Manning habitually wore his raven curls shoulder length he was anything but effeminate and challenged the Judge to a duel. However, Judge Stephen was spared this unpleasantness, as he sought the protection of the Court, which ordered the doctor to keep the peace. The Judge was recalled to the North Island soon afterward and fully 7 years elapsed before another Judge was appointed to the Supreme Court of Otago. Surgical Instruments The box of surgical instruments which Dr. Manning brought with him on board the John Wickliffe is now in the museum, together with the diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons, dated 1833, belonging to Dr. Joseph Crocombe who arrived at Otakou in 1836 and was thus the first doctor to practise in Otago. At Waikouaiti, where he settled a couple of years later, he undertook the task of tutor to the Jones children, and in later life he carried out the duties of postmaster and registrar of births, deaths, and marriages for the little settlement, which played such a valuable part in producing foodstuffs for the Free Church pioneers until they could grow their own crops. The piano (the first in Otago), on which the Jones family demonstrated their musical prowess during their residence at Waikouaiti, is now a museum piece. Dr. Edward Shortland, in the diary he kept on his memorable journey through the South Island in 1843, records pianoforte items as part of the evening’s entertainment when he visited the Joneses in October of that year. Another exhibit linked with Waikouaiti’s early history is the bell used at the mission station before the arrival of the John Wickliffe and transferred not long afterward to the Church reserve at Dunedin which was

subsequently known as Bell Hill. This bell originally belonged to one of the Botany Bay convict vessels and was purchased by Mr. Jones for his whaling vessel Magnet. He later presented it to the mission station. Cannon Timepiece The cannon which preceded the much-travelled mission bell as Dunedin’s first public timepiece and which was fired at noon each day and incidentally served as the lunch-hour signal for the roadmaking gangs employed by the New Zealand Company on the construction of Princes Street, is also housed in the museum. (Mud of varying depth and tenacity was the bane of Dunedin’s roadworks for many years, several of the town’s principal streets being in such a parlous condition in wet weather that the chivalrously inclined escort frequently found himself cast in the role of St. Christopher instead of following the example set by Sir Walter Raleigh. Further, the elaborate fashions of the period, with their voluminous skirts and fanciful forms of . trimming, as typified by the museum’s showcase of frocks worn in the first 30 years of the settlement, must have made pedestrian excursions along these primitive thoroughfares particularly trying for women.) The foundation stone of First Church, a Gothic gem in grey Oamaru stone, was laid by the Rev. Thomas Burns toward the close of his ministry; his Bible is used in . the church on Commemoration Day every year and then ceremoniously returned to the Early Settlers’ Association, which is also in charge of the Bible inherited by the co-founder of the settlement,. Captain Cargill, from his heroic forebear, the Rev. Donald Cargill, the Covenanter who suffered a martyr’s fate at. the Edinburgh Grassmarket in 1681.

Robert Burns's Snuff-mull The museum is indebted to the first minister of Knox Church, the Rev. Dr. D. M. Stuart, for the snuff-mull which belonged to the Rev. Burns’s famous uncle, the ploughman-poet Robert Burns. The mull, which is inscribed, “Craigdarrochßobert Burns, ‘The Bard of the Whistle,’ October 16, 1790”, was brought by an Englishman named Robertson with the happy intention of presenting it to the Scottish settlement in the far-off Antipodes. Dr. Stuart, whose tragic misfortune in the loss of his young wife only 2 years after their arrival in New Zealand in 1860, leaving him to be father and mother both to 3 little boys, gave him a special insight and compassion in ministering to the sufferings of others, was the chosen recipient of Robertson’s generous gift. A lock of hair is another prized relic of the great ploughman-poet, and an exhibit equally likely to rouse the Scottish visitor to patriotic fervour is a set of bagpipes played at the relief of Lucknow. Relics of Gold Rush Days The museum has a comprehensive collection of mining and sluicing implements used during the gold rush era which followed the discovery of gold by the Australian miner Gabriel Read, who unselfishly made the news public through the Press so that others might share his good fortune. The two panels flanking a doorway in the Pioneers’ Hall formerly graced the hall opened as a meeting place for the Chinese community in the Lawrence district some 70 years ago, there being a large percentage of Chinese among the influx of overseas diggers who flocked to the Otago goldfields. The exquisite calligraphy is interpreted as follows: “May this hall enjoy the guiding and protecting care of heaven shining in this distant land”, and “May

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the people act with kindness and righteousness -in return for kindness and righteousness received with congratulations on the opening of this public hall”. (The latter statement probably referred to the Church’s friendly gesture in appointing, a special missioner to serve among the Chinese, that minister having first proceeded to Canton to study the Chinese language so that he would be better fitted for his charge.) The stagecoach with its handsome upholstery and gleaming' headlamps and the proud legend “Royal Mail” emblazoned on the side of the driver’s seat also belongs to the days of the gold boom, the coaching service in Otago being an offshoot of the enterprising American firm of Cobb and Company, founders of a similar service between Melbourne and the goldfields of Victoria in 1853. The bullock . wagon which appears so cumbersome in comparison with Cobb and Company’s magnificent coach was used to transport supplies to the Otago miners. Another relic of this romantic period is the whip belonging to Ned Devine, the outstanding coach-driver of his

day, his most important passenger being New Zealand’s first Royal visitor, the Duke of Edinburgh, who landed from the Galatea at Port Chalmers on April 26, 1869, and was driven to Dunedin in a state carriage drawn by eight greys. Ned Devine’s handling o f hj s team on that memorable occa- • „ « revelation tn the Duke” slor ) .™ a j a relation to We Duke , a skilled whip himself. During the address of welcome and the tumultuous cheering which preceded the Duke’s triumphal procession through the town the redoubtable Ned is said to have “sat upright on the box seat at the end of the rigid ribbons immovable as a graven image”. The Duke of Edinburgh Stakes, the . chief event of the two-day race meeting held on the Silverstream course in honour of His Royal Highness, was won by Ned Devine’s Captain Scott. (Incidentally, the Duke’s headquarters in Dunedin were at Fernhill, the beautiful home built by Mr. John Jones when he left Waikouaiti to go into business in Dunedin; after his death the house was acquired by the Fernhill Club.)

First Locomotive

Some 3| years after the Duke’s visit Dunedin was again en fete, this time in honour of the Governor, Sir George Bowen, who had come south specially to open the Dunedin-Port Chalmers railway. The trim little engine which drew the official train was the first one used in Otago and had been built in Great Britain and was named Josephine. This pioneer locomotive played a prominent part in rail communication between the city and the port for many years and later came into the possession of the Public Works Department for a period before being bought by the Otago Iron Rolling Mills. Later it was presented to the Early Settlers’ Association, being placed on the grassy plot outside the museum at the north end of the Donald Reid wing within sight and sound of the tracks it ' had travelled so often in the pioneering days. In recent months this engine has been joined by a contemporary, the 75-year-old locomotive from the Dunedin gasworks. Dunedin’s first fire engine, a primitive manual apparatus, known as Alice, served the city from 1863 to 1910 and had a lengthy term of military duty, being employed by the army for 7 years at Dunedin and for 5 years at Trentham. Alice returned to her home town and for some years now the “pride of Dunedin” has queened it over the old-time ploughs and chaffcutters, the pennyfarthings and velocipedes, the lithographic press on which the first block maps of Otago were printed, a typewriter dating back to the 1860’s, the first telephones in use a decade later, one of the first New Zealand-built wireless sets, and other interesting evidences of the settlement’s progress exhibited in the museum. Vintage Whisky Perhaps the most surprising item of all to find in a museum is a flask of whisky. This particular bottle was given to Mr. J. C. W. Gilmore by his mother to cheer him on his way when he left for New Zealand in 1862. With remarkable strength of will he determined to keep the gift intact until he became a centenarian, when he proposed to broach the bottle during his hundredth birthday celebrations, but he did not live quite long enough, his death occurring at 95. Hence his carefully cherished whisky remains unopened to this day. A great deal of the success of any society usually depends largely on the efforts of the secretary and the Otago Early Settlers’ Association is no. exception in this respect, being singularly fortunate in having only five changes in this important office in the 52 years of its existence. For the past 7 years the activities of the organisation, which was once intended to consist of male members only, have been ably administered by Miss M. M. Pryde, the museum, too, being under her supervision.