A RARE OLD JOURNAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3041, 27 May 1926, Page 2

A RARE OLD JOURNAL.

The Iloekcn Library lias received a valuable and very interesting addition, in the form of a small book by G. S. Cooper, entitled “Journal of an Expedition Overland from Auckland to Taranaki by Way of Rotorua, Taupo, and the West Coast, Undertaken in the Summer of 1849-50 by Ilis Excellency the Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand.” Those were tlie days of long titles, remarks “The Post’s” Dunedin correspondent. The hook, which has been presented'to the library by Mr. C. W. Chamberlai,n, was printed in Auckland in 1851, and contains the English account, with a Maori translation on alternate pages. It is possible that the rarity of the volume is due to a large part of the issue being purchased by Maori renders, and afterwards converted into cartridges by Native patriots in the war of the 'sixties. At any rate the book is excessively rare, and eluded the efforts of so keen a hunter as Dr. Iloekcn himself. Owing to the■ destruction of the original journal, the book ends abruptly when the party was on tlie northern borders of Taranaki. The story is completed, however, by the manuscript journal of Captain J. J. Syraonds, now in the Iloekcn Library.