EARLY NEW ZEALAND HISTORY. The First Bank and the First Newspaper.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 131, 5 December 1885, Page 5

EARLY NEW ZEALAND HISTORY. The First Bank and the First Newspaper.

Wherever Mr Sala is getting his information from, it would seem that he has been wrongly supplied with regard to the date of events In his articles on the " Land of the Cxolden Fleece," he says :—"Colonel: — "Colonel William Wakefield purchased land from the natives, and selected the site for the first settlement. He fixed upon Port Nicholson, now Wellington, at the eastern entrance to Cook's Strait, and near the southern extremity of the North Island. After Wellington were successfully founded the settlements of Auckland, New Plymouth, Nelson, Otago, Canterbury, Bawke's Bay, and Marlborough " Now Auckland was settled years before Colonel Wakefield came out, by persons who came from Sydney. The firet whare or house, we believe, was erected in Auckland about the year 1836, and was built somewhere near the site where the New Zealand Insuranco Company's new buildiug now stands. The settlement at the Bay of Islands was formed as far back as 1814, and the late Rev. John Hobbs, writing to a paper some years back, stated that in 1823, when he first landed, there were a large number of Europeans, male and female, living at the different settlements along the coast between the North Cape and the Waitemata. The late Mr Benjamin Turner, who deHghtei in styling himself "The First Governor of New Zealand," has stated many times in print that in 1835 there ware a thousand white people living in what is known as the Provincial District of Auckland. At that time the settlement at the Bay of Islands could boaat of a Bank and a newspaper. It was not until January 22, 1840, that the first shipload of settlers arrived at Wellington. There wera none there before that date, because the late Rev. Mr Hobba writes:— "ln 1839, when the Rev. John Bumby and I visited Cook* Straits, in a small vessel called the Heriette Leethart, we anchored between the mainland and the island called Mana, from whence we visited Kapiti, and the small harbour of Porirua. Mr Bumby said that he had been told that no white people were living on Mana, except one white woman, who had been bedridden for years, and that she was wholly dependent on the natives for food and everything else. We also visitei. Port Nicholson (Wellington city), whero we found only one while man, at the mouth of the river now called the Hutt. We little thought then that Wellington would become an "Empire city." It will thus bo seen that Wellington has no claim whatever to being the first settlement founded in this colony, and it was not until January 29th, 1840, that Governor Hobson formally took possession of the island in the name of Her Majesty, and proclaimed Auckland the capital of New Zealand. As tho following account of the first Bank and first newspaper in New Zealand may be interesting to our readers, we republish ib:— "ln the time when some of the visitors to New Zealand were ruled by club law, viz : ' that might was right :' in the days when the names of lung, Government, and Soveriegn were not heard in our then so-called ' cannibal land,' we could b^ast of a British Resident. We could then speak of our 'confederation of chiefs,' who assumed the right to hold New Zealand as intact against the intermoddling of mushroom politicians. In those day? (1535) we could boast of a Bank. At the time of which we speak the tbreo moneyed men, and the only men in New Zealand then who had any cash, formed themselves into a firm, and under their auspices they opened a bank in the Bay of Islands. For some time the Hank carried on business for all the then world of New Zealand— that is, for a small village called Kororaeka (the sweet penguin). The manager was a subject of the Stars and Stripes, who, with one clerk, were the only members of the so-called ' Bank of New Zealand.' At the time the Bay of Islands was the report of the whalers which plied for oil for the American people in these seas. One fine morning the doors of the bank were not opened at the usual hour, and on inquiry it was found that the manager, tho only clerk, and the cashbox, with all tho et ceteras of the bank, had takon a trip unauthorised in an American whaler to the North Pole, in order, as some of the non-shareholders of the bank surmised, to open a branch with the Esquimaux. About the same time, some of our literary men of that day put a few shillings together and bought a printing press, and isaued a paper called the ' Bay of Islands Observer,' which for a long time was the only newspaper in these islands. As we were a fow people at the time, each knew the other, and all were known toeverybody, and our local scribblers amus&d themselves with puns and wit on their friends, to the intense amusement of tho whole public of Lhe small village ; but in 1840 strangora camo into our midst. A captain of one of Diir English men-of-war was appointed Governor of New Zealand. Our only newspaper of course could not at once get out of the groove of tun and wit, and it immediately published a notice of a sale of broken-down horses, which was to take placo at Okiato (the seat of Government in the Bay of Islands). Some of the — to^ us strange beings -Government officials imagined they were lampooned by this notice, and out of their wrath came threats af actions of law, a subject which we, the ancients of ]Sew Zealand, had, in our absence of civilisation, forgotten. These Dminous words sent & thrill of horror into ill and sundry others who were concerned in the little nowspaper, and from this came i disease which sank the soul, body, and aame of our bantling into oblivion. Thus ihe first bank eloped, and thus perished ihe first newspaper in New Zealand."

Thero are 336 lunatics and 135 criminals, in Auckland institutions at present. Dion Boueicoult was a famous dramatist 44 years ago ; be is now 63 years of age. Some samples of silver oro from Melrosei New South Wales, which have been ana ' lysed by groat authorities in London, return 136 ounces of silver to the ton There is, the " Engineer" says, every prospect of New South Wales becoming a great silver producing country.