FIRST FRUITS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 18

FIRST FRUITS

NEW .ZEALAND’S FIRST CAPITAL. By Ruth M. Ross. (Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington) ‘

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

book is an important event. Although it is. not the first book brought out by the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs (successor to the Centennial Branch, whose historical researches it is carrying on and extending) it is the first bulletin of the Branch as an organisation, and, appropriately enough, it is the study of a limited but fascinating historical problem. Most students of New Zealand history are aware that the Russell where Hobson planted his first capital in the Bay of Islands was not the same place as the modern Russell. Hobson’s Russell was at Okiato, three or four miles distant from the Kororareka of the whalers’ taverns, the site of the present town, But few had more than fragmentary knowledge of the story. Russell might well be dubbed Hobson’s Folly. The most puzzling thing is why the purchase was undertaken at all (continued on next page) publication of this short

(continued from previous page) when it was practically decided to make the permanent capital on the shores of the Waitemata. However, Okiato was bought. It was much in the pattern of early New Zealand, buyer and seller equally sanguine that they had the best of the bargain. It was in accord with that pattern too that it is in the spirit of history (if one may personalise any such abstraction) which has had the laugh of them both. Smart Captain Clendon, the seller, was never paid in full, government or no government. Hobson’s dream of a town in which sections could be sold. off to pay Clendon and make a profit for Treasury was dashed by the sour pedantry of Governor Gipps, of New South Wales. However, OkiatoRussell was our capital from May, 1840, roughly, until February, 1841. The aerial: photographs which, together with some excellent maps, illustrate this. buHetin show some traces of the limited settlement which was begun there. After Hobson’s departure for Auckland it did not take Okiato long to sink back into what it remains to-day, a picturesque corner of the Bay of Islands, or as Mrs, Ross describes it, "a place of peace, having about it a definite air of its own personal character, derived more from the magnificence of its setting and the kindliness and care of its owners than from any transient glory of the past." Mrs. Ross tells this tangled story well. What she says about Hobson’s’ officials (except Shortland) helps to confirm a suspicion that good Governor Gipps, of New South Wales, must have fourid the New Zealand venture a golden opportunity to get rid of men whose services he did not particularly value. I am not quite clear that Mrs. Ross has made up her mind about the character of Hobson. Was he, as Major Bunbury said, muddle-headed, lacking "the necessary grasp of thought to seize the main pgint of a question," possibly as the resulfof illness? The fire-eating smoker-out of West Indies pirates who yet contrived to look like a strangely perennial Shelley, Hobson was, no doubt, only a simple sailor; but just how simple a sailor was he?

The author has dispersed so many of the mists of romanticism which enhalo everybody associated with early New Zealand that it is a matter for regret that she could not turn aside for a moment to sketch Hobson more fully with the firmness and vigour she has shown in her estimates of character throughout this book. The footnotes in this book should not be ignored. They contain some cautionary tales concerning the treatment of historical records even in this present age of grace and enlightenment. The reader is delighted throughout these 70 pages by the sharpness and intelligence of Mrs. Ross’s criticisms of men and events. She has set a standard. both in scholarship and literary ease for succeeding bulletins of the Historical Branch.