“CITY OF THE STRAIT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 January 1940, Page 3

“CITY OF THE STRAIT”

HISTORY OF WELLINGTON PROVINCE IN COLONiSING AND LATER DAYS. CENTENNIAL PUBLICATION. In “The City of the Strait,” which is an official centennial history, published for the Wellington. Centennial Council by Messrs A. I-I. and A. W. Reed, of Dunedin and Wellington, Mr Alan Mulgan tells the story of the founding and later development of Wellington and of the settlements in the Wellington provincial district, and does it in a manner which should gain him a host of attentive readers in this country and abroad. Mr Mulgan is to be congratulated upon the production of a compact. well constructed and coherent narrative, in which full justice is done to the larger facts and salient aspects of an epic of colonisation. In a book of this size—some 300 pages of narrative, to which are added another fifty pages of appendices—the author of necessity has had to select with discrimination from an immense mass of material at disposal. It would be a captious critic, however, who would find this survey of the colonisation and development of Wellington and its province in any vital respect deficient or incomplete. An avoidance by the author of any attempt to reanimate the dead controversies of the past, has in itself done much to make his book compact and readable. While he is very far from having been content merely to catalogue the indisputable and the obvious, Mr Mulgan’s approach to even the most controversial details of his subject matter is at all times objective and dispassionate. He is content to leave in the state to which they have been reduced by the healing hand of time many controversies over which colonists, officials and others once battled fiercely. In his opening chapters, Mr Mulgan touches on the physical characteristics of these islands and on the geographical situation which left them well outside the orbit of early European navigators. He gives, too, an impressivelywritten description of Cook Strait and Port Nicholson and of the mountains and plains of the inland country. Due attention is paid also to some leading facts of Maori history, of European discovery and of the establishment in this country of a scattered population of European Adventurers before the day of official settlement had dawned.

Having thus filled in the background of his story, Mr Mulgan proceeds to an orderly survey of the great colonising enterprise that was set on foot by the New Zealand Company, of which the moving spirit was Edward Gibbon Wakefield and of all that followed' in the development of provincial and national government. Viewed in retrospect, much of our early colonial history, in itself and apart from the disturbing factors of Maori wars and events like the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855. is suggestive rather of a crazy quilt pattern than of orderly advance from point to point. The advance was made, however, and Mr Mulgan gives an always clear and informative account of the circumstances in which it was accomplished, as well as of the difficulties and controversies which so agitated the colonists in one decade after another.

Without minimising the difficulties in which the New Zealand Company found itself involved. Mr Mulgan gives that organisation credit, where it is due. "The New Zealand Company," he says, "did more than any other nonofficial agency to found New Zealand." Not least interesting in what Mr Mulgan has to say about the company is his reminder that its answer to the charge of buying a great tract of land with trifles was that it was the reservation to the Native owners of onetenth of all the land purchased that reallly mattered. In part the company's good intentions were defeated by its own ignorance of the complexities of Native land titles and by later developments of the period of colonisation, but Mr Mulgan points out that some of the Native reserves set aside by the company remain in the heart of Wellington today. "For instance,” _he asks, “do the thousands who watch football matches m Athletic Park realise that this property, which if placed on the market would fetch many thousands. is such a reserve, and that its vent goes to Maori purposes?” At present, Mr Mulgan mentions, there are some thirty-six acres of Maori reserves in Wellington.

Many famous figures, pakeha and Maori,'live again in Mr Mulgan’s pages, but good grounds perhaps may be found for considering that the most remarkable of them all was Edward Gibbon Wakefield, of whom the author says: —"Edward Gibbon Wakefield lies beside his brother in the old Wellington cemetery. Both died poor men; according to Miss O'Connor, his son’s affidavit stated that Edward Gibbon’s entire fortune did not amount to £5OO. In the l shadow of private fault and public controversy Edward Gibbon Wakefield lies unhonoured, and by many forgotten. But he was a great man, and neither his faults nor the neglect of after generations can dim the worth of his contribution to our national development and to the whole field of colonisation.”

In his later chapters. Mr Mulgan describes the settlement of the out-dis-tricts. of which the Wairarapa is not the least notable, and the modern development of Wellington City and its Harbour Board. The final verdict on this book must be that ils author has handled an exacting task well and ably. He has given living shape to events that perhaps should be regarded as great nol merely in the unfolding national life of New Zealand, but in British and world history. His book at least will pleasantly refresh the memory of those to whom the story is familiar. It. will be enlightening and stimulating to those to whom a great part of the story is known only imperfectly. “The City of the Strait" is well produced and profusely illustrated. It may be expected to take and hold an established place as a standard history of Wellington. The published price is 15s.