EARLY AUCKLAND.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 168, 21 October 1892, Page 2

EARLY AUCKLAND.

One of the oldest colonists at the Old Colonists’ Jubilee Demonstration on Monday was Mr E. M. Williams, who has been in New Zealand since 1823. He translated the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, at the Bay of Islands, and was present when it was signed in Februauv, 1840. In April. 1840, he was appointed by Governor Hobson to accompany Major Bunbury, in H.M.s. Herald, among the several islands, to obtain the signatures of natives to the Treaty. The mission occupied three months. Mr Williams has in his possession the Blue Book, with facsimiles of the draft treaty, and documents. In September, 1840, be accompanied the first Government party to Auckland, and was appointed by the Governor interpreter, clerk of couit, postmaster, and assistant to the manager of Public Works, Mr William YJ ason who, be states, was the first Mayor of Auckland, but now resident in Dunedin. Mr Mason put his wooden house—brought up in sections from the Bay of Islands—in Official Bay, and they were the two first men to sleep in a wooden house in Auckland. The next to live in Official Bay was captain D. Rough, harbourmaster; Mr Felton Matthews, Sur-veyor-General ; and Dr. Johnson, Colonial Surgeon—hence the name Official Bay— Mechanics’ Bay, from the workmen being quartered there ; and Commercial (or Town) Bay, as being the place where (fee stores were put; George’s Bay and FreenSi’s Bay were so called after Mr George Cooper, senr., and Mr Freeman, who pitched their tents there. Mr Williams was one‘ ; of the crew who pnlle'A in the Surveyor-General’s gig at the regatta of Sept. 18, 1840, commemorative of the founding of Auckland. The Maories at that time had plantations of potatoes on the pre sent site of Government House and grounds, an I Mr Williams purchased the crops on behalf of the Government, in case some of ifc° Europeans might make free with the potatoes and thus bring on strife between the two races. Government House was brought out from England in sections, and the timber stacked on the bank about where the N. Z. Insurance Buildings now stand. A fire broke out in the vicinity, and extended to the stack of timber, but by great exertions, carrying baskets of water from the sea, the progress of the fire was arrested, and only the ends of the timbers were scorched or charred, N t Z. Herald.