THINGS THAT WERE.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2876, 4 May 1878, Page 4

THINGS THAT WERE.

In the time when some of the visitors to New Zealand vainly imagined that New Zealand was ruled by the club law, viz., " that might was right," in the days when the' name King, Government, or Sovereign were not heard in oar thea socalled " Cannibal Land," we could boast

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 intermeddling of mushroom-politicians. In those days (1835) we could boast of a bank. At the time of which we speak the three monied 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 1 Bay of Islands. For some time the bank carried on business for all the then world of Jfew Zea-

land—that is for a small village called JKLororareka (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 that time the Bay of Islands was the resort 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 enquiry it was found that the manager, only clerk, and the cash box, with all the etceteras of the bank had taken a trip unauthorised in an American whaler to the North Pole, in order, as some of the non-shareholders of the bask 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 issued a paper called the Bay of Islands Observer, which for a long time was the only newspaper in these islands. As,we were a people, at that time, each knew the other and all were known to everybody, our local scribblers amused themselves with puns and wit on their friends to the intense amusement of the whole public of the small village; but in 1840 strangers came, into ■ our midst. A captain of one of our English menrofwar was appointed Governor ofNew Zealand. Our only newspaper of course, could not at once get out of the groove of fun and wit and it immediately published a notice of a sale of broken down horses, which was to take place at Okiato (the then seat of Government in the Bay of Islands). Some of the —to us strange beings — Goverment officials imagined that they were lampooned by this notice, and out of their wrath came threats of actions of law, a subject to which we, the ancients of New Zealand, had in our absence from civilisation forgotten. These ominous words sent a thrill of horror into all and sundry others who were concerned in the little newspaper, and from this came a disease which sunk the soul, body, and name of our bantling into oblivion. Thus the first bank eloped, and thus perished the first newspaper of New Zealand.—Te Wa« nanga.