OLD NEW ZEALAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 47, 1 July 1913, Page 2

OLD NEW ZEALAND.

A FORGOTTEN SETTLEMENT. There are soma interesting refer.•neea to old New Zaland in the reminiscences of the lute Mr J. E. Richter, published in the "Sydney Mail." Mr Richter, who arrived in Sydney 71 years ago, had an adventurous and varied cereer in Australia and New Zealand. He relates that extraordin ary inducements were held out to settlers in Australia in the thirties to make their homes in New Zealand because its fate as an English or a French colony was at that time trembling in the balance, but settlers offered themselves very tardily on account of the attitude of the Maoris.

"I was," the narrative proceeds, 'well acquainted with one purchase made in Sydney from the chief Teivaiki, better known as "Bloody rack,'" of a block of 20 miles square 400 square miles) for a few whale-

boats, guns, fishing tackle, flour, etc., in value about £7O. This block was ■old to Thomas Jones, who was then ,i wine and spirit merchant in Bathurst street, Sydney, and a brother of David Jones, the founder of a large drapery business still carried on in George street. Owing to various rauses ho was unable to carry out the improvement and residence conditions of the purchase, and eventually lost it—the Government of New Zealand repudiating the purchase in 1867—with but slight compensation. Sub-purchasers iu the samo block fared similarly. That particular land is now regarded as one of the driest parts in New Zealand, the river Molyneux running' through the centre of it. It included the present town of Balclutha, as well as the Fvaitangata coal mines, with a seam thirty feet in thickness. Its value now would amount to over two millions. Money was hard to obtain from financial institutions in the forties to carry out the conditions of a speculation of this kind, when the existence of New Zealand as a British colmny was still in doub't, and when it was by no means certain that the new settlers would hot be driven out by the Maoris. Previous to tho establishment of a Government in New 'Zealand land purchases and other matters had to be ratified by the Government at Sydney. "The history of New Zealand does not mention the settlement in connection with Thomas Jones's purchase, and this' is probably the first record of the event, which was really the .first attempted settlement. Mr Jones' equipped' a vessel, tho Portenia, with provisions' ; and material,' and .rath three, others, who were sub-purchasers of 7000 acres each of the block, and 30 head of cattle and a few goats, left Sydney about the beginning of May, 1840. The party landed at Molyneux Bay on June Ist, 18J.Q r a date at which the Waitango Treaty had not yet been fully signed by all the consenting Maori chiefs. The writer some years ago saw the arch-stone of a chimney still standing, inscribed, •July, 1840,' that had been built by Mr Russell, one of the Jones party. It may still be in evidence. It was the chimney of the original dwelling erected at Molyneux Bay within a month after landing. The sub-pur-chasers from Jones were Conning, Bes-

sant, and Russell. They at once set to work building; a house on their respective portions, and prepared land for cultivation. Nine or ten months thus passed, when Conning and Bessant, who had been in a state of semi-

starvation for some time in . conse quence of the non-return of the ves sel with provisions, etc., took the opportunity of proceeding to Sydney ir a whaling vessel that had called ir at Molynoux Bay. Neither of then over returned.

"Owing to rough weather during the four weeks' voyage of the Portenia all the cattle died except one cow. Shortly after landing her she gave birth to a calf. It was a bull calf, and, no other cattle being imported into that - locality for many years, these two formed the nucleus of what became a herd of 500 head in 1863. These were then taken by Wilshire to the newly-discovered goldfields of Gabriel's Cully and the Dunstan, and sold as fat cattle at £lO per head. The first sheep in the South Island were landed at the Bluff for Mr McNab, the father of the ex-Min-ister for Lands in New Zealand, in about the year 1855, for his station on the Mataura river, near the prosent town of Gore; and a few months later also for Captain Raymond, who settled on the Jacobs river, north Riverton. These sheep were shipped from Twofold Bay, New South Wales.

"Hud it not been for the effects of the battle of Trafalgar and the battle of Waterloo in deadening the Frenchmen's colonising ardour, Xew Zealand would doubtless have become a French colony."