FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 5 November 1907, Page 2

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Mr X. C. Schnackenberg, in an interesting contribution to us, writes as follows :-*-As your title page bears tlie statements "established over half a century," it may interest you to know of an incident connected with your paper which happeied exactly fifty yews ago. Apparently the then occupier of your editorial chair had" criticised the dilatoriiioss of the natives in going to the rescue of the schooner ''Harry,' for 1 liiid by my lather's diary that on 3rd Aovember, 1857, he wrote to tlie Editor thus:—"The schooner 'Harry' drove ashore on Sunday, 18th ult., near Xongaporutu, about ten miles south of Mokau. On the 20th at noon 1 received a note from the master. This was the first notice we had of the wreck, and before night 1 was. there, the first man from Mokau. I found that the master and crew of the vessel had not much dilliculiy in getting ashore, as the schooner stranded whilst the tide w-e ebbing, and wits soon left high and dry. 1 object to your report that tne schooner stranded near Mokau, as that implies that our people and ourselves were guilty of jahospitality to shipwrecked mariners, when all of us knew nothing of the wretk until two days after it had occurred."

New Plymouth is justly proud of her early colonists, but it would be interesting to know whether there are any still alive who can recall the incident thus described by my father. The only familiar names that 1 notice in his diary about that time are Dr. ltawson, Mr Rundle, and Mr Humphries, and I shall take au early opportunity of giving their surviving re.atives a copy of my father's reference to those early colonists written fifty years ago.