adventure in new zealand,

Te Ao Hou, December 1956, Page 53

adventure in new zealand, by Edward Jerningham Wakefield. An abridgement edited by Joan Stevens. Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. 1955. Edward Jerningham Wakefield was the only son of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, prime mover and organiser of the New Zealand Company which set out to colonise New Zealand, consequently founding settlements at Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth, and also Canterbury and Otago. In 1839, Jerningham, who was then nineteen, came out to New Zealand on the ‘Tory’ with his uncle, Colonel Wakefield, in search of a suitable site for a colony. He stayed in New Zealand four years, travelling up and down the country between Nelson and Wanganui in the interests of the Company, but in 1844 he was rebuked publicly and privately by Governor Fitzroy for ‘indiscreet behaviour’ following the Wairau massacre, when relations between Maori and pakeha were particularly strained. He returned angrily to London, and in 1845, working from his diaries, wrote and published his book which ran to over a thousand pages in two volumes. In 1850 he returned to New Zealand and took part in local and national politics, but he ‘did not fulfil the promise of his youth.’ He died at Ashburton in 1879. One cannot help being amused at his account of the landing of the Petone pioneers. He describes a scene of utter confusion of people and baggage (no accommodation awaited them), and then says lightheartedly that the camp had ‘the air of a picnic on a large scale, rather than a specimen of the first hardships of a colony’, and goes on to call a near disastrous flooding of the Hutt river, ‘a picnic casualty’. It is not hard to imagine what some of the bewildered and bedraggled immigrants must have thought of ‘the picnic’. But the price paid for the Wellington land is not amusing—goods worth approximately four hundred pounds. And for the Wanganui land, seven hundred pounds. The reader is assured repeatedly, however, that the Maoris welcomed the colonists as heavensent Protectors against all evils, and rightly so! Jerningham's adventure included canoeing up the Wanganui river, a race-meeting at Petone, wild-pig hunting, social life in Wellington, visits to Nelson, New Plymouth and Taupo, and last but not least, several encounters with Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. In his vivid and exciting descriptions of the whaler's work, living conditions, personal habits and make-up, Jerningham reveals himself as a first-class writer. This is the only chapter free from accusations and indignant protests against the missionaries and the British government, who both opposed the Company's plans from the beginning, and it is the only portion of the book which can be accepted without reservation. In editing this abridged edition, Miss Stevens says ‘the intention has been to select what will interest the general reader today and present a coherent picture of the men of the times’. The result is certainly interesting and very readable, but a coherent picture need not be accurate or even honest. It is to be hoped that some historian in the very near future will offset Jerningham's book of adventure and prejudice with a more objective account of the New Zealand Company and the important part it played in our early history. —J. C. Sturm.