OBITUARY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 23 August 1907, Page 4

OBITUARY.

The death occurred on Tuesday afternoon at Normauby of Mr E. K.Thompson, lie had been ill for a considerable time past. Mr Thompson came to New Zealand when very young, and in the South Island had brief experience in farming and gold-mining and the usual I ups and downs incidental to early colonial life. But very soon he became associated with the native race, and the North Island became his home, most of his life beinglivcd in Taranaki. He had resided at Normanby for many years. He was for some time in the service of the (■overnmeiit as native interpreter, and occupied that position in the diiiicult limes of the seventies. He was associated with the survey of the Waimnte Plains land, and was at Parihakn on the

sth November, 1881, when Mr Brycc had 1c Whili and Tohu arrested. Concerning the native people, their ancestry, their history, their customs, their rights and their wrongs, he was a student and an authority. Well educated, wielding a facile pen, touched with enthusiasm, few men could write more charmingly nor yet more trenchantly about native affairs, as those who have read the Maori Record can vouch. But this was not his only field in literature. He

wrote on all sorts of subjects, on sociology for magazines, stories and sketches of the Bulletin order, and news, views raid opinions for the daily press. He was at various times a contributor to papers in different parts of New Zealand. Had he entertained political ambitions and been able to woiay through the strenuous fighting of party there was hardly any position that his abili-

ties would not have entitled him to aim at. But he had no longings in that way. He liked to be quiet, to read, to write. What he might have beni had he chosen is another matter. Those who knew

him most intimately most highly appreciated his abilities. Mr Thompson leaves a widow, and a daughter by a former vn"fe, to whom sympathy will be cordially extended.—Hawcra Star.