LITERATURE,

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 36, 12 November 1842, Page 144

LITERATURE,

New Zealand, its Advantages and Prospects as a Bfitish Colony. By Charles Terry, F.R.S., F.S.A. [London : T. 85 W. Boone. Mr. Terry's work presents itself as a book of somewhat less than 400 pages Bvo. remarkably well printed, in large type, bound neatly in cloth ; accompanying it is a map of the harbour and town of Auckland, with the adjacent districts, about sixty or seventy miles north and south. We have also twelve lithograph drawings, three of which are portraits of Maories, and the remaining nine are vie\frs of parts of the Northern Island, five of which include different portions of Auckland. With these pretensions, this book would have been opened on most library tables, had it not possessed far higher claims to attention. It is the best book we have seen on New Zealand : indeed no book, unless of contemporary publication, could have contained much of the information wheih Mr. Terry , gives. We have intended for some time past to take a general review of the state and prospects of these islands : a rather lengthened notice of this book will serve ias a good vehicle. There are five parts, divided into chapters, and an appendix. The first part entitled " History of the Colony of New Zealand ;" the second treating of the land claims ; the third on the sale of crown lands ; the fourth being set apart for the aborigines ; and the fifth being a sort of Q. E. D., under the Tiead " Prospects. 1 ' From Captain Cook's voyage (1769 — 1774), the visits of whalers increased the bad impression, of the character of the natives. The Rev. Mr. Marsden, in 1815, stationed himself at the Bay of Islands. Till 1830 little new was known of New Zealand. The outrages of runaway sailors and convicts induced an application for protection from the European residents ; and in 1833 Mr. Busby was appointed British resident, but with small effect. In 1837 there was a petition to William IV. for protection. In December, 1838, the Under Secretary for the Colonies wrote to the Foreign Office, at the instance of Lord Glenelg, on the same subject, Baron de Thierry having threatened aggression in 1835, when a declaration was adopted by the native chiefs of the north, asserting the independence of their country and their union as a nation, and entrealing*ihe King of England to continue their parent and protector. Mr.. Terry then gives us extracts from official correspondence, stimulated by the formation of the New Zealand Association, on the subject of legitimately colonizing. Considering the history of New Zealand as a British colony to commence in 1840, we have the appointment of a LieutenantGovernor, the first expedition of the New Zealand Company to Port Nicholson, and the accounts (with which our readers are acquainted) of Captain Hobson's and Captain Nias's expeditions, and the establishment of tke Government — in the interviews throughout which attention is repr^.edly called to the acuteness of the Maories ; and thus ends the first chapter.

" On the arrival oj ~tUe Lieutenant-Governor at the Bay of J^fi'ds, he formed the site for a town to be called Russell; but a position more in the cjstflfre of the island, so as to hold ready i*«efrnEfinication with both coasts, was considered *o be more eligible for the seat of the Government." Thus . commences the second chapter ; and with mention of the change to Auckland ends Mr. Terry's notice of a freak which cost the colony £13,000. Here follows a full description of the locale of Auckland, and a considerable portion of the Northern Island surrounding it, with incidental mention of the exterminating effects of previous internal native wars. Chapter 3. Auckland has become a nucleus ; town allotments are preparing for sale, advertised for March, 1841 ; the inconvenience of reference to New South Wales is great, there are hints of becoming a separate colony. In April despatches announce that it is so; the sale of lands, postponed to the 12th of April, will go off the better for this. There is now appointment of all sorts — first session of the Legislative Council — Governor's speech — ordinances passed — everything looking vp — large subscriptions for a church, not equal, however, to the sum required, though doubled by Government ; the trustees, full of anxious hope, will, become responsible for the sum required, £2,500 — the Roman Catholics, too, are getting their church built — a newspaper and printing establishment, and on the 10th of July tire, first number of the New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette. A New Zealand bank also, with branches, very much facilitates commercial transactions.

How, in the mean time, go on the land sales ?

We skip, for the present, to the first chapter of the third part. Auckland is full — from various parts of. the islands — <I rom Sydney, Van Diemen's Land, South Australia, — waiting many months anxiously to buy. There is a provoking regulation about three months' notice in the Sydney Government Gazette, which requires a further postponement till the 19th of April, a week previously to which date come the despatches announcing independence. We shall make our fortunes. — Monday, the 19th of April, arrives. There are to be only 1 16 allotments sold, varying in size fram 32 perches to 2 roods eleven perches, altogether 35 acres 1 rood 7 perches. All have been forbidden up to this time to land and locate anywhere but in Commercial Bay, the site of these allotments. The land-jobbers will buy at any price ; the others must, or leave, having nowhere to lire but in Commercial Bay. The upset price is 12s. 6d. per perch, it may bring possibly from 15s. to 18s., that is from £120 to £150. The sale begins. First lot, £7 per perch ; second lot, ditto : thus for two days we go on selling, getting in one case as much as £10 Is. per perch, being at the rate of £1,608 per acre. Mr. Terry gives a perfect table of the sales. We find Willoughby Shortland down for four lots ; also Felton Mathew for three. The sum total produced U £21,499. The Government congratulate themselves ; landjobbers do likewise ; and the innocent victims look upon it as ft earnest of the rapid progress and success of Auckland and its \icinity." Mr. Terry suspects, however, that it is not all quite so flourishing as it looks ; he is inclined to think that the landjobbers have got the best of it ; those of our readers who occasionally see the Auckland papers will, we think, be inclined to agree with him. " The primary cause of this fallacious state of things in Auckland was tbe neglect of the Local Government in not submitting more allotments for public competition. It is the bounden duty of Government to counteract to the utmost the schemes and operations of landjobbers, the baneful effects of whose proceedings are notorious and apparent in the youthful settlements of Adelaide, Port Phillip, and in the mushroom townships and villages daily advertised in the Sydney papers for sale, in various parts of New South Wales. The wants of emigrants and settlers, for land of any description, should be promptly met, or rather anticipated, by Government. By not offering sufficient land for sale, either for public competition or at a fixed price, they become auxiliaries to these land-jobbers, and thus capital is abstracted from the colony, at the expense of the real settler and loss to the Government, for, as the active capital of the colonist is lessened or abstracted, so will be the diminution of the revenue. " Far better for the colony and for the Government, ultimately, if double the quantity of land had been sold for the same sum. The original cost of the land from the natives to Government, only a few weeks previously, was, comparatively, nothing ; therefore it was immaterial what quantity they distributed to the public, provided it realized more than the upset price, which is always understood to be its fair value, as well as their expectation of its proceeds. The future prosperity and wealth of a colony will not arise, or be produced, from a high price primarily paid for the land, either in the towns or in the country. Common sense and experience, through all time, prove the reverse to be the truth." Further on, there is mention of a great and irremediable evil resulting from injudicious areas, offering to experienced landjobbers the opportunity of buying two adjoining allotments,' and bisecting them with a lane. No sale of suburban land took place till the Ist of September. *At this sale there were twenty-five allotments, upset price £20 per acre, varying from .1 acre 3 roods 8 perches to 7 acres 1 rood ; ten cultivation allotments, about a mile from the town, upset price £10 per acre, all of 3 acres ; and fifty-four small farms, upset price £3, from 23 acres 16 perches to 4 acres 2 roods 22 perche3 — sixty-two farms of most excellent land, situated in the centre of the others, consisting of 23 acres each, being reserved. Twelve farms of 50 acres each, upset prioe £2 per acre, found no purchasers, being poor land. First fetched from £103 19s. to £20 per acre ; second from £21 to £10 10s ; third from £8 9s. to £2 Is. In these allotments Mr. Terry discovers the same impolicy and want of judgment, both with regard to their size and the number submitted. The position of many between two roads, and the upset price £20, for bad soil, unfit for agricultural purposes, placed the competition and purchase entirely with land-jobbers, and precluded bona fide settlers of moderate capital from buying. " The conseqaenee and real effect of this j impolitic system was evident within three days subsequent to the sale, when there were no less than four suburban sections advertised for sale as villages, terraces, &c. What the Government conceived Jo be only sufficient for one,

was divided into thirty-six allotments, which was thus metamorphosed into the village of f Parnell.' Another suburban allotment formed ( Windsor Terrace,' and. others formed into lanes, and all put up for .resale at a price per' foot according to frontage. Some of the small farms were simultaneously appropriated to similar purposes, with all the charlatanerie of New South Wales. The towns of ' Anna,' ' Epsom,' &c, with reserves for churches, market-places, hippodromes, with crescents, terraces, and streets, named after heroes and statesmen, were then advertised, with all the technical jargon with which colonial advertisements a.*e characterized. " The town of Anna comprised about fortytwo acres ; had reserve for two churches, ' St. Anna ' and ' St. Paul's,' a hippodrome in the centre of the town, reservoirs, market-place, and a multitude of terraces, streets, and places, at right angles, the whole divided into above two hundred allotments. " This colonial system of land-jobbing cannot be better described than by an extract from a letter of a resident in New South Wales : — " ' We have seen in too many instances the fate of mushroom townships. These itinerant speculators, which many of them are, appear very plausible, and gulling many enrich a few, and really, when hung up in an auctioneer's room, the plans look quite beautiful, everything is so complete. There is* the green marketplace, and the parish church reserve, with a miniature of St. Paul's upon it, and the Roman Catholic reserve, with a neat crowquill likeness of St. Peter's, and the delicately-tinted squares, &c. All this combination of colouring makes a very handsome thriving town ; and when we see some hundred acres already occupied in magnificent business streets, crescents, and squares, we are tempted to part with a few pounds, a mere bagatelle, to secure a valuable "corner allotment," in so extensive a place; and, delighted with our bargains, as we are paying down the money the auctioneer consummates our happiness, by whispering to us in a condfiential manner — " You have got the best bargain sold to-day; why that corner allotment is invaluable for an inn."

" ' But those who are not easily gulled know very well that this comforting intelligence is given to each purchaser in tarn, and is, probably, the most valuable return he gets, or ever will get, for his money. " ' I was riding the other day through a part of the bush with another gentleman, who, when he came to the top of a stony, barren range, pointed out to me the boundaries of several one hundred acre farms, which had been sold a short time previously, in an auctioneer's room, as suburban farms to a township, to which we should soon come. At the bottom of the range we found the ground dotted in all directions, by painted little pegs, lettered, which constituted the town, and by which we soon discovered the various streets and crescents which had been cutting so grand a figure in the advertisements and plans. This was the only indication of a township which we saw, and, from the locality, I should be decidedly of opinion that no other was ever likely to be seen, as nothing more than a few occasional drays to a few stations upon a bare brook (which in the advertisements was stated to be likely to become one day a navigable river) at present traffic along the bush road. This township and these suburban allotments were marked off from part of an estate, because it was not fit for any other purpose. It could not grow grass for cattle or sheep, and cultivation was out of the question ■ so what could the proprietor do else with it than sell it as a township ?' " Precisely so was it at Auckland*. In the auctioneer's room, whatever inequalities, swamps, and scrub might be on the land itself, all was smooth and beautiful on the plans, which plans were not made from actual measurement and survey of the ground, for the few days that had passed quite prevented any such proceeding; but merely the boundaries and limits taken from the Surveyor-General's plan, and then, on an enlarged scale, the area divided into as many portions as could just be sufficient for small houses and cottages, and thus creating an immense extent of frontages, which is the great secret of land-jobbing in the re-selling of allotments." [To be continued.]

The I)ead Sea. — Lieutenant Symonds, Royal Engineers, has triangulated the country between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea,<-and finds this latter extraordinary basin to be 1,587 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. s s> show the importance of this discovery, and the fallacious results of previous experiments, take a few words from Robinson : — " One of the most singular circumstances in the character of the Dead Sea is the deep depression of its level below that of the Mediterranean. This has been detected only within the last few years. Messrs. More and Beke were the first to notice it in March, 1837, by nteans of the boiling point of water; in this way tHey found the depression to be about 500 English feet. A month or two later the careful barometrical measurements of Schuber gave the depression of the sea at 568-5 Paris feet ; that of Jericho being 527*7 feet. The very great descent which we found from Carmel to the cliffs over Am Jidy, and the immense depth of the sea below, point to a like result ; but so great is the uncertainty in all such partial measurements and observations (as evinced in the like case of the Caspian Sea), that the question can never be decided with exactness until the intervening country shall have been surveyed and the relative level of the two seas trigonometrically ascertained.

The French Cabinet has at length officially made known its intention as to the "right of search" treaty. France will not ratify it

The Rev. Mr. Tomlinson, one of the secretaries of the Christian Knowledge Society, has been appointed Bishop of Gibralter.

Latest Chinese News. — By the Sydney papers we have news from Canton to the 7th of June. Most of the troopships had arrived, and preparations were making for proceeding toJPekin. Th« city of Chapoo, the mart of the Chinese trade witti* Japan, had been captured. Three hundred Tartars retired to a small fort, and defended themselves with great bravery. Colonel Tomlinson, of the 18th Royal Irish, and seven men were killed. Colonel Mountain, the deputy-adjutant, three officers, and forty-five men, were wounded.

We are happy to learn that the result of the late cruise of H. M. sloop Beagle has been an accurate survey, upon a large scale, of the whole of the eastern entrance of Bass's Straits; and it is the'opinion of the officers of the Beagle that the south-eastern part of Kent's Large Group is the most eligible site for a lighthouse. By thc.Bea-. gle we also learn that there are not so many fcan - gers in that part of the Straits as is generally supposed. Captain Stokes found safe passage to the southward of Craggy Island. In collecting this valuable information, the Beagle had to contend with a continuance of very bad weather, but great assistance was rendered from the vessel lent by his Excellency Sir John Franklin. There are now two vessels left behind in Bass's Straits, in the surveying department.—Geelong Advertiser.