THE FIRST NEW ZEALAND BANK AND NEWSPAPER.

Kumara Times, Issue 508, 14 May 1878, Page 2

THE FIRST NEW ZEALAND BANK AND NEWSPAPER.

The Maori newspaper, tlie TVanahga, ' publishes tho foUowlrighistorieS' of the bank and first newspaper ih. ; NeW Zealand “In the time when soraeof the visitors to New Zealand vainly im- ' agined that New Zealand was ruled - by club law, viz., ‘ that might Waa /, right’; in the days when the names of J King, Government, and Sovereign were : not heard in oiir then so-called * cannibal land/ we could boast of a - 'British. Resident. We could then speak of our ‘ confederation of chiefs/ who assumed the right to hold New Zealand as intact , against the intermeddling of politicians. In those days (1835) we couJd boast of a bank. At the time of which we speak tlie three moneyed men, * and the only men in New Zealand then who had any cash, formed themselves, into a firm, and under their they opened a bank in.the Bay,of' J s - V : lands. For some lime the bank carried ‘ on business for all the then world of New Zealand—that is, for a small village called Kororareka (the sweet penguin). The manager was a subject of the Stars and Stripes, who with one clerk were the only members of-the socalled Bank of New Zealand,’ . .Ac that time the Bay of Islands Was’ ’the resort of the whalers which plied for oil for the American people in these ' seas. One fine morning the doors of the bank were hot opened at tfie usual’" hour, and on inquiry it was found that t‘ie manager, only clerk/and .the cas& box, with all the etceteras of the bank, had taken a trip; unauthorised, in an American whaler to the North Pole in - order, as some of the nomsharehblders'. ' ot the batik surmised, to open a branch with the Esquimaux.* same *• time some of mir literal y men of- that day put- a few shillings together add bought a printing press, attdVissued a • paper called the Bay of Islands Ob- ■ ■ server; which-fop a loa : g.time -, was the «

only new?paper ift these islands. As we were a peoplb at that to re, each , knew the other,' 5 and all v ere known to everybody, ' our local scribblers | amused themselves with puns and ' wit on their friehds, to the intense amusement of the whole public of the small village ; but in 18-10 strangers came ifito our midst. A captain of one of bur English men-of-war was appointed 1 Governor of New Zealand. Our only newspaper of course could not at once get out of the groove of fun and wit, and it immediately published a notice of a. sale of broken-down horses, which was to take place at Okiato (the seat of Government in the Bay of Islands). Some of the-—to us strange beings—Government officials imagined they were lampooned by this notice, and out of their wrath came threats of actions of law, a subject which we, the ancients of New Zealand, had, in our absence from civilisation forgotten. These ominous words sent a thrill of horror into all and sundry others who were concerned in the little newspaper, and from this came a disease which snnk the soul, body and name of our bantling in oblivion. Thus the 'first bank eloped, and thus perished the first newspaper in New Zealand.”