Alexander Bathgate

“ Fair though the surroundings of Dunedin be, and always must be, they owe little of their beauty to the hand of man, who has rather hitherto played the part of a destroyer. Five and twenty years ago the hills surrounding the harbour were densely clothed from their summits to the water's edge, by an almost unbroken forest, which has largely disappeared before the axe of the hardy settler. ”

“ No traditions of any incidents which occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunedin are now obtainable, but as showing what manner of men were the original inhabitants of the site of this now fair city, the story of the fight of Purakanui may be cited, and we may feel assured that similar scenes were enacted where many a peaceful home now stands. Very trivial grounds were sufficient to give rise to a bloody fight, and though the Maori proverb says that "land and women are the causes of all evil," yet even childish differences at times gave rise to bloodshed. ”

“ Round the coast at Purakanui there was another settlement, numbering some 500 souls; and Mr. Haberfield says he has seen as many as a dozen large double canoes at one time off Otago Heads. Contact with the white man quickly proved disastrous to the Maori, who succumbed to the influences of incipient civilization and the diseases which followed in its train. Measles proved the most deadly scourge, and carried off the natives by hundreds. It must have been a stirring life that of these old whalers, full of excitement and adventure. ”

“ It is a matter of regret that some of the earliest settlers did not obtain and leave on record some of the Maori traditions connected with Dunedin and its neighbourhood, which might have been procured in the early days of the settlement from the older chiefs, for few of those now alive can give much information, while the younger natives, like young colonials generally, seem to have little love or veneration for antiquity. ”

“ Churches abound, of all denominations, some of them of no mean order of beauty. We see from the spacious district schools dotted over the city, the picturesquely situated Boys' High School and substantial University buildings, that education is not neglected. Our Art Society, with its annual exhibitions, our Flower Shows, our Athenæum, our musical societies, and our scientific and literary institute, all tell that opportunities of culture and refinement are not wholly lacking. ”

“ After having murdered his victim, Te Wera put to sea with a number of his tribe, and paddling close to the shore whereon Taonga was camped, he showed the latter the body, and after taunting him in Maori fashion, shaped his course to Oamaru, where many of Taonga's people lay. There Te Wera landed, and falling suddenly on Taonga's tribe, took them by surprise, and after slaughtering several of them he returned to Purakanui. ”

“ The telephone wires forming a network overhead, the cable trams conveying their loaded cars up the steepest gradients, and other recent triumphs of human ingenuity, all speak of the activity and capacity of its inhabitants. ”

“ When one looks along the well formed streets, with their substantial buildings, filled with shops replete with all the requirements and luxuries of civilized life, and notes the evidences on every side of the energy of the Anglo-Saxon race, it is hard to realise that its site has so recently been wrested from the wilderness. ”

“ The "lay" might appear a fair one, but as it was calculated on the value of the oil at the station, and not on the market value at Sydney, the owners fared much better in the distribution of the proceeds than did the whalers who risked their lives in their procurement of them. In order to lessen their dangers from the natives, who might have been tempted to kill the goose for the sake of its golden egg, and rifle the store-house of its treasures, it was the practice to enlist a number of the most important young men in their enterprise ”

“ A mere handful of white men surrounded by a large population of such stalwart and warlike savages as the Maoris then were, must have had plenty of food for anxiety, if at all of an anxious turn of mind. ”

“ The young chiefs took kindly to the exciting sport, and proved expert boatmen in the chase of the sea monsters, and were, without their knowledge, hostages for the good conduct of their kindred on shore. ”

“ For instance, Waitati, which should be Waitete, is a prettier name than Blueskin, though the latter name is not devoid of association, for it owes its origin to the fact that the chief of the district, Te Hikutu, who was a chief of the Ngatiwairua and Ngaiterangaamoa hapus, was at the advent of the whalers, an old man very much tatooed, which does not appear to have been at all a universal custom amongst the natives of this district, and from this circumstance the British whalers irreverently dubbed the old gentleman old Blueskin, and the name was subsequently transferred to the locality. ”