Alexander Turnbull’s first book

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 October 1978, Page 73

Alexander Turnbull’s first book

A. G. BAGNALL

Turnbull, when a youngish seventeen, on his second voyage to New Zealand, during December-January 1885-86, in the company of his parents —his second within twelve months —took as shipboard reading a copy of the The King Country, by one J. H. Kerry-Nicholls published seventeen months before. Dr McCormick, in his biography has pointed out that while Turnbull appears to have made no surviving notes of the earlier visit to his country of birth, on the second tour, possibly stimulated by Kerry-Nicholls, he kept a rough diary of his thermal regions and South Island ‘Grand Tour’. 1 The book did even more. After his return to England in May 1886 he became a book collector with a maturing interest in New Zealand to which he was soon to return permanently. Years later he wrote on the fly-leaf of his copy of The King Country: ‘This was the first book of my collection. I bought it to read going out in lonic in Dec. 1885. ’ Dr McCormick has also noted Turnbull’s lapse of memory in naming the vessel as the lonic instead of, more correctly, the Doric. The present commentator accepts the biographer’s reasons that the slip is in the name of the vessel rather than in the date of the voyage for the 1886 diary includes information taken from the book as one but recently scanned. 2

Who was the author and what of his book which marked so important a step in the development of New Zealand’s leading bibliophile? At the moment, paradoxically, we know less about Kerry-Nicholls than we do of the most obscure years of Turnbull. It took an unreasonably long time, with the help of others, to establish that he died in 1888, 3 a mere five years after his New Zealand visit. Where, or under what circumstances, is at the moment unknown although he lived in London after his return from New Zealand until at least July 1887. What information we have is gleaned from references in his only book, The King Country, and from the few surviving letters so far traced. The small engraved portrait on the title-page shows a characteristic Victorian profile of a man possibly in his mid-thirties, dark beard, waxed moustache and hair with centre-part. He probably had sufficient income to indulge his taste for travel and is unlikely to have married. The New Zealand journey, so he claimed, was undertaken purely for scientific purposes in the interest of further geographical and geological knowledge. He had ‘penetrated into some of the wildest parts of Australia, explored the principal islands of the

Coral Sea, been into the interior of China and Japan [and climbed Fujiyama], crossed the United States, visited Mexico, travelled in Canada, voyaged up the Nile, camped with the Beduins in the plains of Arabia, and hunted in the forests of Ceylon.’ 4 In 1876, six years before he came to New Zealand, he had read a paper to the Glasgow meeting of the British Association on his New Hebrides exploration during which he had ascended the ‘volcano of Tanna’. 5 When at Taupo he tried to repeat beneath the Huka Falls his American feat of walking from one side of Niagara to the other between the water and the cliff. A rock rib rising vertically ‘under the centre of the shoot’ defeated him. 6 On his return he wrote to the African explorer, Colonel J. A. Grant, an officer of the Royal Geographical Society, on the strength of earlier acquaintance, advising that he was back after five years of wandering in the southern hemisphere. Grant in a letter to the Secretary of the Society suggested that Kerry-Nicholls be given a ‘night’ to present his New Zealand material. Grant who had met him about 1877 or 1878 when Kerry-Nicholls was putting forward plans for a trans-African telegraph, considered him ‘a very capable man — pleasant and intelligent’. 7 Nicholls in a letter to Bates in July 1887 referred to his ‘many hard days of travel’ in Australia before crossing to New Zealand. 8

He seems to have arrived here before the close of the 1882 Parliamentary session on 12 September and almost immediately approached Sir George Grey for help in his mission. Coincidentally, James Bryce, Minister for Native Affairs, was about to meet Tawhiao at Whatiwhatihoe in yet another round of talks on measures which would ease Waikato bitterness over land confiscation and other grievances. The Amnesty Act, passed at the end of the session, extended an unconditional pardon to all Maoris for ‘offences’ committed during the wars, with a provision to exclude some if necessary. 9 It was most desirable that there should be no exceptions and, with this in mind, Bryce was anxious to receive assurances of good conduct from Te Kooti before the issue of the Proclamation —which he did —to prepare the way for the Main Trunk surveys in the New Year. It would be politic for Kerry-Nicholls to attend if he could, obviously not under the wing of Bryce, but with any other support he could muster to secure permission for his own journey through the King Country. Grey wrote to Tawhiao on his behalf which action Nicholls acknowledged from Finch’s Hotel Alexandra (i.e. Pirongia) on 31 October. 10 The meeting was a valuable introduction to the region’s Maori leaders, to tribal protocol and custom. The King was sympathetic but thought that other business matters should be concluded before the traveller was given formal permission to

explore the interior. In the event he had to leave Waikato without it. How he filled his time before his departure for Tauranga and the thermal regions four months later on 8 March 1883 is unknown. The book gives no hint. During the discussion on his paper to the Geographical Society two years later the President said that he had spent 18 months in New Zealand which accounts for the full period from his arrival in September 1882 until his departure in May 1884. 11 It was possibly at this period that he visited the Auckland Institute and Museum to meet Cheeseman. 12 He also made some agreement with Messrs Wilson & Horton to publish a series of articles about his journey in the New Zealand Herald.

He was fortunate —lucky—in two vital particulars. Firstly his timing. The arrest of C. W. Hursthouse by Te Mahuki and his followers at Te Uira, south of Otorohanga in March, 1883, when commencing the rail survey, enabled him to get into the field two months before John Rochfort’s parties worked north from the Rangitikei. Rochfort’s own rebuff at Ruakaka on the Manganui-o-te-ao in September when the last instalment of Kerry-Nicholls s narrative of his successful journey was appearing in the Herald heightened the interest in his story. His map of the region, printed in July, with all its imperfections, was far more detailed than anything available to the Crown surveyors who in fact requested copies before setting out. He was equally lucky in his guide, the Whatiwhatihoe-based half-caste John Turner. Turner, whom Nicholls had probably met during his visit, had led a number of distinguished visitors to the Maori King, such as the British colonial administrator A. P. Maudslay, to Te Kopua in 1876. 13 Turner also had an early knowledge of Wairakei, having given many of the ‘quaint names’ to the features of Geyser Valley where he was later employed by Robert Graham. 14 Although Waikato and Maniopoto tended to regard half-castes as potential foci of trouble, Turner appears to have had some personal standing which must have smoothed the Englishman’s path beyond his knowledge of Maori. Their decision at Karioi, south of Ruapehu to enter the King Country without Tawhiao’s explicit permission was something of a gamble which paid off. It could easily have been the contrary.

The journey, and hence the narrative, falls into two parts, the first dealing with the political background, his attempts to secure permission and the visit to the thermal regions. In Rotorua he was in what was even at so early a date a tourist centre, already well-known to hundreds of discerning world travellers. Only his sense of purpose and a shrewd use of exploitable acquaintances lifted him out of the ruck. C. O. B. Davis, the former Wesleyan defender of Maori rights, editor of Maori Mementos and biographer

of Patuone, was most useful. Davis from his comfortable cottage in Lofley’s Glen, Taupo (later the Spa Hotel) and also at Rotorua had an extensive knowledge of the district gained from some years’ work as a land purchase officer for both the Crown and private individuals. He was generous in information but financial difficulties and the frequency of his appearance as an authority in contemporary guide books suggests that he may have supplied some stories and facts for at least a modest fee. Despite Davis’s briefing there is even at this early stage in Kerry-Nicholls’s approach more than a hint of his most vulnerable weakness—apart from his style—which led many of the more knowledgeable to discredit unwarrantably the articles and hence the book —namely his self-deception about the number of Europeans who had preceded him, who even still lived in the country through which he passed. When leaving Ohinemutu for Wairakei and Taupo he wrote of this part of the lake country being ‘but little known’ although it had been on a coach route for a decade.

It was when leaving Taupo for districts south and west by the eastern lake route that he considered his ‘King Country’ travels really commenced, a break represented in the text by the section from Chapter XI (p. 131) to the end. He must have narrowly missed Percy Smith, Assistant Surveyor-General, returning from having made initial arrangements for the construction of the Taupo-Tokaanu road to be completed in the next three years but of this there is no hint —any more than there is of the fact that communication between the two ends of the lake was maintained as a commercial enterprise by the schooner Dauntless. For the two men, horses were the chosen means of travel and here again as a good Englishman, Nicholls was particularly skilful, impressing even Te Kooti. 15 Leaving Tapuaeharuru on 5 April the strenuous ride and walk, with deviations to ascend the volcanoes, was concluded 43 days later at Whatiwhatihoe on 18 May. On only 20 days were they actually travelling, for apart from ten days storm-bound on the Tongariro or Upper Waikato near Te Henga, at the foot of the Puketarata Hill,* there were also halts of from one to four days each at Karioi, Rangataua Lakes, Ruakaka, Ngatokorua (National Park today) and Manga-o-rongo near Te Kuiti.

As well as some obvious errors in place names there are discrepancies between the narrative and the mapped record for which Nicholls is less blameworthy. It is difficult for present day readers to understand the frustrations facing the most experienced travellers unfamiliar with local conditions. Even with the services * Today, the northern or Rangipo end of the Desert Road, and Nicholls, of course, made no reference to the sheep grazing there.

of a competent interpreter the dual challenge of finding one’s way and recording accurately where one has been is a test which in the centre of the North Island few other than Hochstetter secure an ‘A’ pass. If Kerry-Nicholls made mistakes he was still better than men ot the calibre of Donald McLean (whose diaries of his 1845 journeys are geographically worthless), G. F. Angas, and James Hector who on his first expedition in 1867 was very much a North Island new chum. Nicholls’s itinerary and dates, can, however, balance by the substitution on p. 258 of the date, April 27th for 24th, an understandable misinterpretation of a pencil figure. Being neither surveyor, gold prospector nor land purchase officer, but simply a genuinely disinterested English traveller he was not only acceptable to the Maoris but quickly achieved a high degree of rapport with leaders such as Pehi and Topia Turoa, and Tawhiao with whom understanding deepened during their second meeting. What Tawhiao told him of his life and participation in the Waikato War, particularly the Rangiriri battle, is still a valued, independent record. 16 Back in Auckland by the end of May he sent Grey a seven page summary of the journey l7 giving his views on the Main Trunk

route (wisely they were not followed) and proposing that a national park be established north of Tongariro on what he called the Pakaru plains, to include the Ketetahi springs and the Okahukura and Ruamata plains south west and west of Kakaramea, but, strangely, excluding the volcanoes themselves.

The first instalment of the narrative appeared in the New Zealand Herald on 2 June under the title ‘Explorations in the King Country’, the last, no. 19, being in the issue for 22 September. With minor textual changes and some rearrangement of material the narrative is substantially that of the book itself. His map of the journey was lithographed by the Herald and distributed as a supplement to the issue of 14July. He also sent a copy to Grey showing the boundaries of the proposed park. 18 The map prompted a friendly but firm public letter from Davis correcting the spelling of some 17 names; ‘as Mr Nicholls is a personal friend, I know sufficient of him to warrant the belief that he will not resent the liberty I take in making the necessary corrections . . . many of the Maori names are extremely euphonious and worthy of being retained, consequently it is most desirable that they should be rightly spelt and pronounced.’ 19 Davis’s was very much a novel viewpoint in the English orientation of mid-Victorian immigrant society. Apart from this letter the articles seem to have provoked little public response. When Rochfort’s party was turned back at Ruakaka, Kerry-Nicholls could not resist a complacent letter to the Herald. Anyone who understood the feelings of the Maoris ‘of that wild region’ could not be surprised. The last words of the men who had put Nicholls and Turner on the track were: ‘Look Out that they . . . don’t take you for land speculators, surveyors or prospectors. If they do, there is no telling what harm may come . . .’ 20

What does a balance sheet of Kerry-Nicholls’s achievements in the region and in the narrative look like? To his credit was the completion of the journey with Maori accord, an understanding with Tawhiao which provided information, slight in quantity but important in substance, his advocacy of a national park around Tongariro three years before the first steps towards one by L. M. Grace and Te Heuheu IV and, geographically, his discovery of the Whangaehu ice caves. 21 He climbed only one of the three major peaks on Ruapehu’s summit plateau and hence did nothing to relieve the Survey Department’s own uncertainties about their relative heights; he did not see the crater lake although a number of his predecessors had but the limited publicity given to these ascents meant that the Department, again, was ignorant of the lake’s existence although one of its contract surveyors, William Cussen, must have seen it when he climbed Paretetaitonga a month before Kerry-Nicholls was on Te Heuheu. A. H. Murray, the Marton

surveyor, the man who always claimed to have been the first to see it, on his second Ruapehu climb in March 1882, did not publish his account until September 1886 some weeks after the less belated but equally secondary sighting of William Cussen’s brother Lawrence earlier in the year, 22 when checking William’s observations of three years earlier. The lake was seen by Messrs G. Beetham and J. P. Maxwell on their first ascent of Ruapehu Peak in March, 1879, although the brief contemporary reports of the climb did not mention it. It was clearly described by the second party to reach the true summit in March 1881 comprising Messrs W. J. Birch, H. R. and A. E. Russell and Mrs. Ethel Birch, the first woman to climb the mountain. Arthur Russell’s account of the expedition, of which manuscript copies exist today, was certainly published, probably in the March or April issues of the Hawke’s Bay Herald, which thanks to earthquake and fire, are no longer in existence.

Kerry-Nicholls learned of the crater lake after the publication of his Herald articles and before his departure from New Zealand, probably from Percy Smith who gave him corrected altitudes for some features in his map table. A footnote in the book (p. 249, Ist ed.) to his description of the ice caves states that ‘Near to this point, on the summit of the mountain, there is a lake formed by an extinct crater, filled by subterranean springs, and it is likely that the Whangaehu may in some way be connected with it.’ Despite the absurdities in his exaggerated description of the river gorge approach to the point where it emerges from the ice barrier his visit has significance. It would be too much to say, ‘discovery’ for it is now fairly clear that geothermal interaction with snow fall and ice formation tends to breed a recurring cycle of such caves which are successively destroyed in the lahar floods following the collapse of the ice barrier behind them as happened in 1861, 1889, 1895 and, of course, in 1953 as the immediate cause of the Tangiwai disaster. It is clear that Kerry-Nicholls was able to enter the ice caves above the upper fall as others have done since, to describe this spectacular and recurring feature of the crater lake’s principal escape route. It is only a pity that the over-statements in the text are matched by the chapter title, ‘Second ascent of Ruapehu’. An ascent, as distinct from a climb is only to a recognised summit and the caves are a good 1000 ft below the lake and 1500 ft under its guardian peaks.

Victorian readers, however, could accept a literary style common to the period but if they had spent months or years of their lives within smelling distance of Ngauruhoe could not tolerate Kerry-Nicholls’s bland omission of any reference to their own climbs. Most readers would simply infer that he was making the first ascents of the volcanoes. True, he did not make this claim, but

nor did he give the slightest hint that anyone had preceded him. By 1883 there had been at least a dozen ascents of Ngauruhoe, two of the high peak of Ruapehu and at least four of Te Heuheu which he ascended and named Point Victoria! His ignorance of this alpine prehistory during his journey can be accepted in view of the communication difficulties already mentioned but it is equally certain that he must have been fully enlightened on some ol these points by the time he was preparing the text for the book. The assumption that the Ruapehu summit he surmounted was the highest point is a pardonable error; his passing over of the work of others anywhere in the three volcanoes through three editions was a degree of public deception which was not ignored, when compounded by stylistic extravagance.

His climb on Te Heuheu was clearly made after the first winter snow flurries when there would have been icing on the upper rocks but the route by any standard is easy. References to ‘cutting away the enormous icicles that impeded our progress’, the summit view where ‘peak rose above peak in colossal proportions’—surely an implicit doubt about his own bump—led on to ecstatic raptures about‘This wondrous Elysium . . .Nature. . . awful in grandeur’, tailing offinto dutiful references to the omnipotence of the Creator, did little to advance geography. Certainly it was five years before the next known climber, T. Thatcher of Wanganui, found a quite substantial cairn of stones from which emerged the pole to which a flag had been attached. Buried beneath it was a bottle with a damp-stained note enclosed: ‘This mountain was ascended on the 20th April, 1883, by James Henry Kerry Nicholls and John Turner—altitude by aneroid barometer, 10,000 [ft.]. This point is named Point Victoria. Finder please forward this with relics to the Auckland Museum. “God save the Queen’”. 23 Thatcher duly obliged but Mr Cheeseman’s successors could be pardoned it they could not produce the evidence today.

His last eight months were spent in working up the articles for the book. In February 1884 he told Grey that he had arranged publication with Messrs Sampson, Low and Marston. 24 On the advice of F. J. Moss, member for Parnell, with whom he had climbed Pirongia, he submitted a copy of the manuscript to Government and was pleased to tell Grey that on the recommendation of the Minister of Lands, William Rolleston, and the Surveyor-General, the Ministry had agreed to purchase copies. Before looking more closely at this decision and its consequences the relationship between the two texts may be noted. Apart from a number of minor changes the Herald series, as already stated, was essentially the book. A significant omission from the first version were the paragraphs describing the descent of Ruapehu, (Instal-

mcnt IX, August 4). As the climb had been made without the permission of the local Maoris the men were most anxious to avoid being seen. Opposition to European ascents of the volcanoes, in contrast to the situation in the 1840 s, no from the Heuheu or Herekiekie families but from the lesser dissidents of Rotoaira. Ngauruhoe had been climbed several times between 1870 and 1873 after the defeat of Te Kooti at Te Porere and during the last years of Haare Tauteka, a staunch friend of the pakeha. The chief Topia Turoa, a Wanganui man with Tuwharetoa connections, then lived intermittently at Poutu and strongly opposed these activities, denying among others the Swedish botanist Berggren permission to go high on Ruapehu in 1875. The Maoris, two years later, robbed the American artist F. P. Connelly of his chattels and sketches, to our national loss, after his descent of

Ngauruhoe. Particularly feared was the Ngatitama chief Te Hau Paimarire of Moawhango (again with Tuwharetoa ties) ‘a bellicose Hauhau chief whom Nicholls had been told to avoid at all costs, although in later life a valued friend and informant of R. T. Batley. Another American, David Manson, in March 1882, only twelve months before Nicholls’s incursion, claimed to have been the first to have ascended Ngauruhoe with Maori permission, which statement if not strictly correct did mark the easing of restrictions which disappeared after the acceptance of the Amnesty. Such authority meant that he had to pay the chiefs £lO for the privilege and take five Maori guides who also needed their reward. More importantly, his European companions were Ernest Lys who years earlier had accompanied William Collie, Ngauruhoe’s first summit photographer, and John Turner. Turner knew the mountain and something of its European history but little about Ruapehu their present problem. Nicholls describes in the Herald how he and Turner made their way cautiously down to where their horses were tethered, quickly mounted and swung south in a wide arc but still within gunshot of Te Hau’s camp fires. The almost certain reason for the omission of this section from the book comes from a story by R. B. Maunsell, one time stock-manager for Grace Brothers and with Roderick Gray one of a number of other self-appointed guides to the region. Maunsell’s first ascent of Ngauruhoe was in 1879 —he was to make 13 or 14 in the next eleven years and had accompanied Cussen up Paretetaitonga in March 1883. As he delighted to recount later, when Nicholls thought he was being pursued by Maoris over the Onetapu desert and saw the gleam of the moonlight on Te Hau’s muskets and was even sniffed about the ankles by their dogs, what he really saw was the camp fire, of Cussen his partner Simms (and Maunsell) while the moonlight could only have gleamed from the brass bands on their tripods. 25

To Kerry-Nicholls this discovery was doubtless only a trifle in his preoccupation to assure the success of the book. In September 1883 he visited Wellington to press his case in person. 26 He had doubtless come south by the then tedious indirect link with Auckland by sea from Onehunga to New Plymouth and thence by rail and coach to the capital and was lucky enough to share the tedium of the journey with a friendly Parliamentarian James P. Joyce, Member for Awarua. Joyce introduced him to Atkinson and probably Rolleston, 27 to whom he wrote formally asking for assistance. The reply a fortnight later, was a little cool: the Government ‘after looking carefully into the printed matter which you forwarded’ (not, it will be noted, a manuscript as he told Grey, but clearly Herald clippings) did not think they could accept any responsibility, although ‘when it has undergone the revision

contemplated by you’ and the size and cost of the book had been decided Government ‘will be prepared to take a certain number of copies for distribution’. 28 The manuscript, clearly without the due measure of revision which even a preoccupied Minister of the Crown saw to be necessary, must have been sent off in the new year and KerryNicholls’s last Auckland weeks before his departure in May were concerned with a visit to Kawau and his participation in the steps leading to the signing of the Blue Ribbon prohibition pledge by Tawhiao and other chiefs before the Maoris’ own departure for England a little before that of Nicholls. 29

Back in London by the end of June he reported to Grey on the activities of the Maori party who had kept their temperance pledges. He could not give them his undivided attention ‘being greatly occupied by the revision of my book which should be out in about a week’. One can only marvel at the productivity achievements of author, printers and publishers in a less complicated age. He enquired through the Agent-General, Dillon Bell, about the number of copies required. The prospectus enclosed, a glossy four page folder, showed that this ‘New and Important Work on New Zealand and the Maoris’, at a guinea would not be cheap, although the high quality of the three illustrations selected was a little out of keeping with the selected prose extracts. It was hardly a year since his Wellington interviews but three ministries since the one by whom he had been given a promise had come and gone. Bell’s enquiry duly arrived on the desk of the Colonial Secretary, one (Sir) Patrick Buckley, a shrewd Irish solicitor who had married well. 30 Mr Buckley naturally wanted to see the book before making any recommendation and it was unfortunate that one allegedly given to the Agent-General did not reach its target. Sir Robert Stout, as Premier, in reply to a question in the House by Mr Joyce who had kindly raised the matter on the author’s behalf, said that he had heard the book ‘well spoken of but that was it. 31 Whether Stout looked at it after making his own King Country journey six months later is unknown.

Whatever the New Zealand reception English expectations were fulfilled. The first edition sold out on publication and a ‘reprint’ (‘second edition’) was undertaken immediately, 32 and as the author reported a month later was also successful, the work being well reviewed. There was sufficient interest to warrant a third edition which was reset with an additional preface dated 3November. New material was confined to a longish note at the end of the Karioi chapter on how he and Turner managed to live on the journey (p. 257), a new chapter on Maori physical characteristics and customs, and in the appendices, short notes on the canoes of the Maori

migration, a Maori pharmacopoeia and the text of the Treaty of Waitangi (in English). There were additional illustrations one depicting the two men on Te Heuheu with the caption, ‘Summit of the’lce Crown “Point Victoria’” and the other of the Whangaehu ice caves. The months went by. Three days before his talk to the Royal Geographical Society on 23 February, 1885, he wrote to Bell again reminding New Zealand of the promises made by the ‘Whitaker Ministry’. ‘I am about bringing out in a few weeks a Fourth edition, and I am anxious therefore to know the number of copies the New Zealand Government would be likely to take.’ A suggestion from Bell to Wellington that the reply be cabled would be appreciated. In his covering letter Bell said that ‘some 3000 copies have already been sold’ 33 presumably a thousand in each printing. Bell did not himself cable but sent the letter by sea. It is unlikely that the fourth edition was anything other than a talking point to goad New Zealand into a reply. A minor post-mortem in Wellington disclosed that the Minister of Lands had already authorised the Agent-General to spend £SO on copies for distribution in the U.K. 34

Kerry-Nicholls, meanwhile, gave Bell 20 copies of his Geographical Society address to send out for library distribution 35 but there was nothing more about a fourth edition or local support for it. Sales were slowing up and in February 1886 it became clear that if Sampson, Low had got rid 0f3,000 copies, some of their agents had not. The publishers, in a letter to the Agent-General, confessed that they had sent a considerable number of copies to New Zealand booksellers but had recently learned that owing to the high price of 21s. ‘the sale has been limited to a few’. Would the Government take them off their hands at 7s. 6d. each? They could supply up to at least 150. A most interesting table appended to the letter, prepared for the author’s information, listed the copies ‘unaccounted for’, that is unsold and the booksellers concerned. A total of 223 unsold copies was made up as follows: Wilkie (Dunedin) 49, Wise & Caffin (Dunedin) 26, Lyon & Blair (Wellington) 48, Champtaloup & Cooper (Auckland) 13, Lennox (Auckland) 74 —a rash investment here —and Jackson (Nelson) 13. 36

The first response to the Agent-General’s letter was a small sum on the cover-sheet of the file proving the obvious, namely that 150 copies would cost the Crown £56.5s. —and it had kept faith by the Lands Department’s authority to spend £SO on copies for overseas. Mr Buckley was still adamant that he had to see the book. Five days later when one was procured, doubtless from the General Assembly Library, he noted: ‘I do not recommend purchase.’ And that was it. 37

Kerry-Nicholls, meanwhile, outwardly polite and unruffled, was still trying to be helpful. On the same day as his publishers put up their proposition he sent off a lengthy four-page letter about the probability of gold and coal -discoveries in the King Country and Kaimanawa ranges. As an earnest of his wish to give every possible assistance he sent 155 copies of the map published with his Geographical Society paper on which he had lithographed encouraging information about where exactly prospectors should search. The maps could prove useful to prospecting parties and to committees in the towns from which they set out. He was sure that extensive deposits of gold would be found in Kaimanawa.

If, as implied earlier, it is difficult to accept that he did not find out something of the work of his predecessors in exploration and survey before printing the first edition of The King Country the innocent disingenuousness of his action is at first quite staggering. Fourteen years before Kerry-Nicholls made his ‘Kaimanawa’ camp at Mamoenui on the Mangaio stream, not far from the present Desert Road, and completed his assessment from a hill a few hundred feet higher, as many as eight parties at one time had been in the heart of the range for months at a time. James Hector, director of the Geological Survey and by then no mean traveller, again fourteen years before in 1869, had climbed Umukarikari and inspected the Wanganui El Dorado, Bracken’s Reef. Nicholls probably never met him as he perhaps had never spoken to any of the numerous old diggers from Wanganui and Hawke’s Bay who made up the central North Island prospecting parties at this time. True, it was only when he was leaving New Zealand that reluctant permission was being given to these men to enter the King Country around which they had been poised for some time. His well-meaning hints about gold being found east of Taumarunui in the head of the Pungapunga was by February 1886 about as valuable to the twenty or so men who had glided through it 20 months before as telling them to suck eggs. 38

At home, he continued to develop his role as the leading English authority on the thermal regions, his London address for the few years remaining to him being 5, Suffolk Place, by a minor quirk of history just across the road from the Haymarket where the New Zealand House of the future was to rise eighty years later. In January 1887, six months after the Tarawera eruption he addressed the Foreign and Colonial section of the Society of Arts on the event. 39 In July 1887, with his last known letter so far traced, he sent to Bates of the Royal Geographical Society a copy of the British-Australasian in which was published a poetic effusion Australia’s ode to the Queen. 40 He may have been no more entitled to speak for Australia than for New Zealand but his request to Bates to

give publicity in the Proceedings to the acquisition of the ‘splendid National Park from the Maoris’ news of which wasjust to hand, is a singularly fitting note on which to close for the moment his book of life. His was the first voice for the proposal. And Bates’s Proceedings for the following year 1888 simply listed among the numerous deceased fellows ‘Mr. J. H. Kerry-Nicholls, known as a traveller, and the author of the “King Country”.’ 41

The editions and the maps: bibliographical note

The King Country; | or, | Explorations in New Zealand. | A narrative of 600 miles of travel through) Maoriland. |By |j. H. Kerry-Nicholls. | [port., the author] | With numerous illustrations and a map. | London: | Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, | Crown Buildings, 188, fleet Street. 11884) <All rights reserved. > xx, 379, [l]p. inch front, (port.) illus., 6 plates, fold. map. 32p. ofadvts. 22cm. illus. red cloth boards.

[Reissue] . . . Second edition. | London: . . . 1884.) . . . xx, 379,[1]p. inch front, (port.) illus., 6 plates, 1 fold. map. 32p. ofadvts. 22cm. illus. red cloth boards.

The King Country; | or, | Explorations in New Zealand. | A narrative of6oo miles of travel through] Maoriland. | With a treatise on the origin, physical characteristics, | and manners and customs of the Maori race. | . . . With fifty-two illustrations and a map. | Third edition, enlarged.) . . . 1884.) . . . xx, 412 p., viiip. incl. front, (port.) illus., 10 plates, fold. map. 22cm. illus. red cloth boards. Final viiip.: Some opinions of the press.

Kerry-Nicholls published, in all, three maps of his journey, the differences between them being of some cartographic and historical interest. Although the basic data, his route and the numbered key to the names on it, is common to the three, the changes and the reasons for them have relevance. A summary of the main points is as follows:

I Sketch map j of| Explorations made in the King Country |by |j. H. Kerry Nicholls, | Special Commissioner for the New Zealand Herald. J 1883. | [double rule] | Scale of miles . . . [lO miles to 25 mm] | Wilsons & Horton Lith. Auckland. Size (to outer rule) 43.5 X 52cm. At head of map: Supplement to “The New Zealand Herald,” Saturday, July 14, 1883. Insets: (upper) Altitudes above Sea Level of Camping Places [and principal Stations of Observations] along route traversed: (lower) Islands of] New Zealand.

II Sketch map | of| Explorations | made in the | King Country |by J. H. Kerry Nicholls| 18831 Scale of miles .. . [lO miles to 23 mm] | ... F. S. Weller, lith., Red Lion Square. London; S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. [August, 1884] Size (to outer rule) 43 X 58.5 cm. Obvious differences are the setting of the table of altitudes in three columns instead of two as in the Herald issue, and a larger and more detailed inset map of New Zealand, presumably a reduction of one he obtained from the Surveyor-General. Examination shows that most but not all the corrections supplied by C. O. Davis have been followed, although more glaring errors such as ‘Haurungatahi’ persist to the third issue. Altitude corrections supplied by Percy Smith to the few listed features surveyed at that time include Rotorua (860 ft in Ist issue; Rotorua Lake 961 ft in second); Ngauruhoe crater (7800 ft in Ist issue; 7376 ft) and Ruapehu, Northern summit, Point Victoria (9850 ft in Ist issue and 9000 ft in the second).

11l Map of the | King Country | and | Neighbouring Districts |in | New Zealand| from Explorations made by |J. H. KerryNicholls| April-May, 1883. | [double rule] | Scale of miles . . . [lO miles to 23mm] | . . . E. Weller, lith., Red Lion Square. Published for the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1885. [April, 18851 Size (to outer rule) 43 X 58.5 cm. The table of altitudes and inset map is as in II but there are significant additions. The route from Tauranga to Alexandra is now lined in red and an interesting, putative King Country boundary is also shown in shaded red. Between Hawke Bay and the Rangitaiki-Kaimanawa boundary of maps I and II new mountain ranges and forested areas have been hachured or stippled in with the uncertainties ofboth topography and nomenclature, characteristic ofthe period. And to meet the renewed interest in the mineral possibilities ofthe region helpful detail has been added such as ‘probable gold-fields’ parallel to ‘Kaimanawa Mountains’, and between the Mokau and ‘the Great Central Plain’ the words ‘Coal deposits’ and between Titiraupenga and Hurakia the enticing phrase ‘probably auriferous’.

REFERENCES 1 E. H. McCormick, Alexander Turnbull (Wellington, 1974) p. 63; A. H. Turnbull ‘Logs and Notes’. 2 Ibid., p. 62. A minor point is that one would expect only the third edition to be available towards the end of 1885 but the note is on the first. 3 Royal Geographical Society, Proceedings (n.s.) 11 (1889), 422. I am indebted to the Society’s archivist, Mrs C. Kelly, for this reference and for copies of letters from Kerry-Nicholls to officers of the Society. 4 The King Country, p. 132. 5 Ibid., footnote to p. 195. 6 Ibid., p. 128. 7 J. A. Grant to H. W. Bates, Asst. Secretary, Royal Geographical Society, 20 Sep. 1884. 8 J. H. Kerry-Nicholls to Bates, 17 July 1887.

9 Amnesty Act (no. 70) 1882, (N.Z. Statutes 1882, p. 824). The Amnesty Regulations were promulgated by special Gazette notice on 13 Feb. 1883, the day after Bryce had met Te Kooti at Manga-o-rongo near Te Kuiti; (N.Z. Gazette 1883 no. 15, p. 197, 13 Feb.). See also AJHR 1883, A.B ‘Native affairs and the Amnesty’. 10 Kerry-Nicholls to Grey, 31 Oct. 1883; Grey MS, Auckland Public Library, GL:NZ K10(l). 11 R.G.S., Proceedings 7 (1885), 223. 12 There are two letters from Kerry-Nicholls to Cheeseman in the Auckland Institute and Museum on minor matters. Nicholls presented Cheeseman with a copy of the book. 13 A. P. Maudslay, Life in the Pacific Fifty Years Ago (1930), p. 169. 14 Thorpe Talbot, The New Guide to the Lakes and Hot Springs . . . (1882), p. 77. 15 The King Country, p. 337. 16 Ibid., p. [345]-347; P. A. Adams ‘Rangiriri’ in Records of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, no. 2, (April 1978). 17 Kerry-Nicholls to Grey, 30 May 1883; Grey MS K10(3). 18 Kerry-Nicholls to Grey, 16 July 1883; Grey MS K 10(6). Copies of the map have so far been found only in the Auckland Public Library. 19 New Zealand Herald, 23 July, 1883. 20 Ibid., 1 Sep., 1883. 21 The King Country, pp. 247-250. D. R. Gregg in Geology of the Tongariro Subdivision (1960) p. 54, ignores Nicholls’s discovery of the ice caves and dates the first published reference as 1925. They were, however, wellknown by 1902 (e.g. Auckland Weekly News, Supp. 8 May, 1902). 22 The somewhat involved questions of priorities and who ascended what peaks are fully discussed in the writer’s Tongariro and the Way Thither, fascicle I, ‘The Mountains’ (in press).

23 Wanganui Herald, 6 March 1888. 24 Kerry-Nicholls to Grey, 28 Feb. 1884; Grey MS K10(8). The same letter sought permission to dedicate the work to him. 25 Manson’s account with additional private information is in the Australasian Sketcher, 30 Dec. 1886. Maunsell’s story as told to Hill and others is in R. T. Walker: ‘Up Ruapehu and How to Get There’, instalment VI, ‘About Ruapehu and Between the Mountains’ in Hawke’s Bay Herald, 4 April 1890. 26 New Zealand Times, 24 Sep. 1883. 27 NZPD, 50 (7 Nov. 1884) 475. 28 H. J. H. Elliott, General Crown Lands Office, to Kerry-Nicholls, 6 Oct. 1883, (copy on I.A. 86/1255), National Archives. The Lands file has not survived.

29 This interesting event in Tawhiao’s life can only be touched upon, although Kerry-Nicholls was involved. Tawhiao and other chiefs, before their departure for England on an unofficial mission in March 1883, were prevailed upon to take this step. An important deputation was appointed on 17 March to discuss the matter with the King and the following day the chiefs went over to Kawau to see Grey, in company with Nicholls and C. O. Davis who took a leading part in the affair. Grey persuaded the men to sign the pledge for a year, he first appending his own signature. As mentioned above Nicholls kept Grey informed from London re the party’s strict adherence to the declaration. See New Zealand Herald 18 March-2 April for steps leading up to the Maori King’s departure, and Grey MS K10(10-12) for Nicholls’s reports. A. H. McLintock’s Liquor and the King Country (AJHR, H-25, 1953), surprisingly, begins the story with the signing of the pledge by Wahanui and others in 1884, omitting Tawhiao’s step the year before.

30 Minute 19.9.84 on file I. A. 86/1255. Tawhiao’s portraits in the Prospectus with those in the book, the author states in the Preface, were printed by the Meisenbach process. Ms Penny Griffith reminds me that Georg Meisenbach’s London company to establish the introduction of the half-tone block was formed in 1884. The King Country must therefore be one of the first English printed books to use the process. 31 NZPD, op cit. 32 Kerry-Nicholls to Grey, 11 Aug. and 10 Sep. 1884, Grey MS. K10(l 1 & 12). 33 Bell to Col. Sec., 25 Feb. 1885, on 1.A.86/1255. 34 Note on cover-sheet 85/1093, on 86/1255. 35 Bell to Col. Sec., 23 April 1885, on 86/1255. 36 ‘Memo for Mr. Kerry-Nicholls’ Feb. 11/86, ibid. 37 Minutes 8 & 13 April 1886 on coversheet 86/918 (1.A.86/1255). 38 Some of the frustrations of the central North Island search for gold are outlined in ‘The Elusive Goldfields’ fascicle of Tongariro, cited above. 39 ‘The Volcanic Eruption in New Zealand’, Journal of the Society of Arts, Jan. 28, 1887, p. 174-192. Mr N. A. Morris, New Zealand House, confirms that No. 5 Suffolk Place, now housing the American Express Co., is, outwardly, as erected in 1826. 40 Mrs June Starke kindly obtained a copy of the poem from the only surviving file of the paper in the Public Library of New South Wales. In fairness to the author it is not reprinted. 41 Proceedings, as in note 3 above. Until his elusive death certificate is found, uncertainty will remain about the correct form of surname. Contemporaries used both Nicholls (more frequently) and Kerry Nicholls which is hyphenated only in his last years, such as in his third map, although the hyphen is used on the title-page of all three editions. One of the more unrewarding exercises in the pursuit of information was a search through ten feet of English telephone directories for any subscribers calling themselves Kerry-Nicholls. There were none.