MANAWATU PIONEERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3712, 3 November 1927, Page 2

MANAWATU PIONEERS.

DARING CANOEIST,

PASSING OF THE GORGE. [Evening Post.] Who was the first European to reach the Manawatu Gorge? According to Mr T. Lindsay Buick, in “Old, Manawatu,” (a book which is surely scarce enough and valuable enough to call for reprinting) a trader named Jack Duff located himself on the banks of the Manawatu late in the ’thirties or early in the ’foi'ties (year not specified) and “was probably the first European to see the Manawatu Gorge. Taking a canoe and some Native guides, he had on one occasion paddled and poled up the river as he supposed for a distance of 50 miles, until he came to this breach in the mountains, through which the party pulled the canoe and navigated the higher reaches of the river which flows through Hawke’s Bay, where the splendid forests and rich level land greatly impressed him. The result of this journey he communicated to Mr Jernyngham Wakefield when that gentleman paid his initial visit to the Manawatu in August, 1840. . . .”

Palmerston N, was founded on what the reporting surveyor termed in 1859 “a fine clear space in the bush,” called Papaioca. Speaking, of this natural clearing in the bush, Mr Buick writes: “This flat was first known to Europeans about the year 1846 when it was discovered by Mr Charles Hartley, who in one of his trading pilgrimages, came up the Manawatu River as far as Hokowhitu, where he learned from the Natives that there was an extensive clearing not far oft. With the instinct of an explorer, lie pushed his way through the thickly-entangled fringe of forest until he broke in upon the wide stretch of open country somewhere near the site of the present Broad St. Methodist Church. Here the Native who accompanied him built a Maori oven and cooked some food, while Mr Hartley explored the farther distances of his new-found land; and it is a singular coincidence that many years afterwards he purchased the section on which that meal was eaten, the singularity of the circumstance being considerably heightened by the fact that one day while digging in his garden he came upon a Maori oven which he believed to be the very one in which the meal had been cooked.” Following on his visit to the Papaioea clearing, “Mr Hartley lost no time in reporting his discovery to the proper officials, but it was not for many years that any practical use could be made of it.” In 1866-67 sections in the Ahuaturanga block, including Papaioea, were offered for selection at an up-

set of £1 an acre, and £2 on Rangitikei road. In 1868 there were 32 settlers. FIRST DRAY. Story of “the first dray” introduced into the Manawatu”: Mr McEwen wished .to cart totara boards from Terrace End flat, then covered with this valuable timber. Mr Sly’s friends in England 'had sent him a pair of wheels but no cart. Mr McEwen offered to put a body on the wheels in return for temporary use of the conveyance. Mr Sly agreed. Contract duly carried out. Result: first dray. The first store in Palmerston N. was built on the western side of what is now the Square, by Mr S. M. Snelson, who arrived in December, 1870. Mr James Linton, who arrived a few weeks after him, built the first dwellinghouse. “He and his wife had ridden from the Wairarapa, the former carrying a few necessaries, and the latter their only child, their constant companions by the way being described in the characteristic language of Mr Linton as ‘mud and misery.’ ” The first walking postman between Wanganui and Wellington was Major Kemp, the afterwards celebrated chief. In 1844 he was succeeded by Mr Thomas Scott, “who week in and week out walked along the beach road from Wanganui to Wellington.” In those days it was nothing wonderful to walk from place to place like that. People waited along the route for the walking postman or (in some cases) the arriving schooner. “On one occasion when Major Kemp was being examined before a Royal Commission, he was twitted by one of the opposing lawyers with having been a postboy; whereupon the chief retaliated by saying that he had carried the mails at a time when the lawyer and the likes of him, would have been afraid to do so.” PRIOR TO COBB. 'When the Provincial Government eventually called tenders for carrying the mails to Foxton the suc- , cessful tenderer was Mr Harry McEwen, who “became the first mail-, man for the Upper Manawatu. This system of mail conveyance did duty until the military road was completed between Wellington and Hawke’s Bay in 1869-70, a work which revolutionised the whole question of inland traffic. Then! ‘Cobb and Co.’ made their advent and the era of the coaches began.” “As late as 1868 Papaioea was simply a shingle bed, studded with rank manuka, and set in a frame of forest which skirted along the terrace, running parallel with Ferguson street as far as Terrace End, then down what is now Featherston street to a line which might be represented by Pascal street.” The only buildings then were two manuka whares.built by surveyors, a hut on the Rangitikei Line, and a “pub:” Early in 1872 there were only three white women'in the town itself. Even towards the end of 1873 business places in Palmerston North numbered only six, and “the site of Feilding was a howling wilderness.”

The first death which took place in the Feilding settlement was that of a child, and the father made a crude coffin for the body and started off with it for the section that had been set apart as a cemetery. On his way he got lost in the bush, and, thinking it would be easier to extricate himself from his difficulty if relieved of his burden, he buried the coffin roughly, intending to return the next day and inter it in the proper burial ground. Blit he was never able to again find the spot where the coffin lay, and his child has therefore ever since occupied an unknown grave.