NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 14 November 1916, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

MORE DISCOVERIES. HON. DR. McNAB’S RESEARCHES. 1 Ministerial activities make life busy for the Hon, Dr. Me Nab, but he is not altogether dropping his researches into early New Zealand history, and ig able to give the public a number of fresh and interesting sidelights on the eventful days when the whalers were the only Europeans who came to these shores. Dr McNab has of late been following, up some interesting sidelines to his original historical plan, with the result that early Taranaki history can be pieced together in a satisfactory way. On Sunday he will lecture to a New Plymouth audience on the first settlement of New Plymouth, and he will give particulars of the first advertisement of the sale of Taranaki produce, which was in Sydney nearly a hundred years ago, and, as might be |.magined, was not butter. A. lecture will be given by the Minister to the Southland Progressive League shortly on what has become known as the sealers’ slate, found in a cave at Chalky Inlet. It is a broken fragment, but bears the information: "Loud. Richd. Jones, Esq., owner. John Dawson, master,. Be\yare of the natives. Plenty at Preservation.” This was a warning to others who might: visit the cave in search of seals, and it must have been useful to the crew of the brig Elizabeth, for they added to the slate the incomplete announcement: “Visited this place on December 23rd.” Careful examination of. his voluminous notes, gathered in England, Australia and America, enabled Dr McNab

to fill in with certainty the missing year. It was 1823, so that makes the slate of great interest as the first public notice ever put up in Southland. Dawson, who presumably wrote the 'first warning regarding the Maoris, was later, killed by them in Cook ‘Strait.