Nelson, New Zealand

“ In passing through the Buller Gorge the traveler bound for Cook Strait abandons the coach at Kohatu and there entrains for Nelson, the popular resort of Blind Bay. In one respect Nelson is the most celebrated town in New Zealand. It has, I was told, "the prettiest girls in the country," and "seven women to every man." ”

“ In the South Island, the yearly fall at Hokitika, on the west, is a hundred and twenty inches; while at Dunedin and Christchurch it is not more than one quarter or one-third of that quantity. The climate of Nelson is described as the 'most pleasant and finest in New Zealand, on account of its calm winter, the protection of its chains of mountains, and its clear sky, which is but rarely covered with clouds.' Yet Nelson is a rainy place: more than nine inches of rain have fallen there in a single day. ”

“ Nelson is the prettiest of towns; it is all hills and dales, and greener even than the rest of this greenest of countries,—if places, like people, have each their own special superlative, greenest is certainly New Zealand’s, and to properly describe it a new list of adjectives expressive of verdancy would have to be coined!
Nelson has some very handsome buildings, especially the boys’ college, but we were so enchanted with the view from the hills, and with the Matai valley, that we had very little time to spend in the town itself. We had only allowed
Photo Tourist Dept. ”

“ We are now in the large open bay of Tasman or Blind Bay. Nelson is regarded as one of the prettiest towns in New Zealand in more senses than one, as a curious circumstance in connection with its population is the reported proportion of thirteen women to each man. The beauty of the situation evidently induced numerous emigrants to settle there; the scarcity of work and business has since compelled the male population to leave it. The town is built on the summit of the magnificent cliffs surrounding the bay. It is a health resort and possesses a fine college for youths. ”

“ However, they professed to welcome the white men; whereupon the agent smiled, the anxious would-be settlers cheered, surveyors were landed, and the town of Nelson was founded on the 1st of February, 1842.
Do you who read remember how, when Hongi pressed him hard, Te Rauparaha of the Ngati-Toa fled headlong with his tribe along a path of blood to the south, and how he crossed the strait, and burned and slew and ate? He is still a force to be reckoned with, this Te Rauparaha. He is getting on in years, and lives with his tribe in the neighbourhood of Otaki on the west, north of Wellington. ”

“ All round Nelson the land is highly cultivated, with hop-gardens and fruit orchards, and though the nearer hills have lost their forest growth and are bare of all but grass, the town itself is lavishly planted with many trees, the berberis hedges were a mass of crimson leaf, and yellow [123] cassias and wattles were flowering, even in mid-winter.
Nelson is known in this land of sunshine as "Sunny Nelson," and now that a private donor has generously given a site, there is presently to be built here a Solar Observatory, from which scientists may study the sun. ”

“ Briefly put, the history of the settlement is this:—As far back as 1867 some of the early Nelson settlers, hearing that the land was good and the river afforded safe approach from seaward, made speculative purchase of sections in the Karamea district, getting the land at about ten shillings per acre, and looking upon their investments as something whereon by and by the “unearned increment” would total up to tangible profit without effort of their own. Years sped, and the profit on their investment seemed long in coming, in fact it is as yet in the dim uncertain distance. ”

“ Having been put up very comfortably at the Empire Hotel, Lyell, we pursue our journey to Nelson along the left-hand side of the Buller River. The road here is cut out of the side of the hill, and immediately below him the traveller beholds the surging waters of the largest river on the West Coast of this island. Our horses instinctively seem to know the result of a false step or a capsize over the side. ”

“ Only a mile from the town is the port and the open sea, and by the sand dunes of a wide bay cottages are being built by the people of Nelson, and here they come and picnic, and enjoy sea bathing and golf and wonderful views across the bay, of snowy mountains and blue hills. The hills have as foreground a wide stretch of open country, neither hilly nor flat, but crumpled into little ridges running in all directions. ”

“ Wellington and Nelson alone are for the continuance of the federation—Wellington because it is already the capital, and Nelson because it is intriguing to supplant its neighbor. Although the difficulties of the moment mainly arise out of the war expenditure, and will terminate with the extinction of the Maori race, her geographical shape almost forbids us to hope that New Zealand will ever form a single country under a strong central government. ”

“ Between Nelson and Wellington lies the maze of waterways known as the Marlborough Sounds. Here, where a ragged peninsula thrusts itself well north of the southern extremity of the North Island, is the most broken part of the Dominion. ”

“ Waiapu and Wellington were next visited. After a pause, the original band, augmented by several North Island clergy, crossed to the South Island and went through Canterbury and Otago. Nelson was the last diocese to be worked, but special farewell visits were made by individual missioners to parishes in which they had laboured in the earlier part of the course. One missioner, at least, gave himself permanently to the New Zealand Church. ”

“ But I have no doubt from its beautiful sheltered position that Nelson must for most of the year enjoy a climate almost ideally perfect, and a strong proof of this is to be found in the establishment there of several higher grade schools or colleges for both sexes, to which I am told parents send their children from all over New [Pg 196] Zealand. It has, however, one eminently undesirable feature, such as I have noticed nowhere else in New Zealand, a vast foreshore of unpleasant mud flats which are laid bare at low water, looking and smelling most unpleasantly. ”

“ Thomas Brunner and Charles Heaphy, who were connected with the New Zealand Land Company, set out to explore the country we now know as Westland, with a view “to report on its resources and potentialities as a field for further settlement.” They left Nelson on March 17th, 1846, with the Arahura River, in the heart of the greenstone country, as their objective. They were accompanied on this important expedition by a Maori named Ekehu who had previously visited the locality, and had been engaged as guide. ”

“ The height and regularity of the mountain backbone increase the diversity. Only one pass, the Haast (1716 ft.) , crosses from E. to W. at a less height than 3000 ft. Along the whole west coast the climate resembles nothing in the British Islands so much as Cork and Kerry, for there are the same wet gales from a western ocean, the same clouds gathering on the dripping sides of wild mountains, an equal absence of severe frosts and hot sunshine, and a rich and evergreen vegetation. Elsewhere, sheltered Nelson has a more genial air than the Wellington side of Cook Strait. ”

“ Many of the immigrants came singly from Australia, but from the year 1839 the New Zealand Company sent thousands of settlers in more or less organised fashion to the country on either side of Cook Strait, to Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth. This company was founded by the celebrated Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a man who had read and thought much upon the subject of colonisation. His views reflected fairly the public sentiment of the day. The colonists should be grouped in communities for mutual help and safety ”

“ Napier, a small village on the S. E. coast, is the seat of government for the province of Hawke Bay. Nelson, the capital of the province of the same name, is on Blind bay at the N. end of South island. It enjoys a more equable, serene, and dry climate than any other part of New Zealand, and has a population of 6,000 in its immediate vicinity. ”

“ In the South Island nine-tenths of the colonists live within 40 m. of the east and south-east coasts; in the North Island the eastern and northern parts of Wellington province, and the southern and broadest part of Auckland province are still very scantily peopled. For all that, Auckland and Wellington are the most populous of the larger districts, while Nelson, Westland and Marlborough have for a long time shown the slowest increase.
Males still exceed females in the proportion of nine to eight. About 70% of the population is New Zealand born. The white foreign element is small ”

“ I remember writing a New Zealand story, though why I should have written about a place of which I knew nothing I cannot imagine. Some New Zealand critic pointed out that I had given the exact bearings of the farm mentioned as 90 miles to the east or west of the town of Nelson, and that in that case it was situated 20 miles out on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. These little things will happen. There are times when accuracy is necessary and others where the idea is everything and the place quite immaterial. ”

“ Before this township was formed, what was there to be seen is best described in the following extract from the narrative of exploration, published in 1861, by Dr Julius Haast, who had, in the previous year, been engaged in topographical and geological exploration of the Western District of Nelson Province, following after Messrs Rochfort and Mackay, who had previously penetrated, and in preliminary measure explored, the country. ”

“ Finding a seam of good coal at a place outside their purchase they did not in any way scruple to send a vessel to carry it off, in spite of the protests of the Maoris.
13. Death of Governor Hobson.—These things hinted at troubles which were to come, but in 1842 all things looked promising for the colonies of New Zealand. There were altogether about 12,000 white persons, most of them being men who wore blue shirts and lived on pork and potatoes. Auckland the capital had 3,000 but, Wellington was the largest town with 4,000 people. Next to that came Nelson with 2,500 ”

“ What was written of Sydney may be said to have been true of all the settlements. Everywhere hardships were encountered, and everywhere they were surmounted.
The Lady Nelson's log will show how in 1806 she paid a second and perhaps a more important visit to New Zealand. Her commander was instructed by Governor King to convey Tippahee, a New Zealand Chief of the Bay of Islands on the north-east coast, back from Sydney to his own dominions. At some time previously a son of this Chief had been brought to Port Jackson in a whaling vessel. ”

“ His sole publication, so far as I can learn, is an interesting essay on the Geographical Botany of Nelson and Marlborough, printed in the first volume of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute.
Mr. W. T. L. Travers arrived in Nelson in 1849. About 1854 he took up the study of the alpine flora of the South Island, making many excursions into remote and little-explored districts, and forming copious collections, the whole of which were forwarded to Kew. Among the localities botanized over by him were the upper Buller Valley, including Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa ”

“ The Society shall consist of the Auckland Institute, the Wellington Philosophical Society, the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, the Otago Institute, the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute, and the Nelson Institute as member bodies, and such other bodies as may hereafter, in accordance with rules in that behalf made by the Council of the Society, be declared to be member bodies of the Society, together with the individual members for the time being of all such member bodies. ”

“ The country as far as Timaru was very flat, bounded by the Southern Alps far away on the right and by the sea on the left of the line. Such splendid fields of grain there were, hedged with gorse or hawthorn, mile after mile of them, with plantations of pinus insignis like dark green islands in a sea of verdure, and surrounding some of the houses near the railway were sycamores, limes, poplars, elms, and oaks. And numerous rivers, numberless streams,—no wonder that the isles of New Zealand are emerald with such abundance of water everywhere and such a temperate climate. ”

“ Peerless Sydney has her liege votaries, whose ardent homage naught can quench—and yet, in many respects, Auckland harbour has a beauty of its own, which in some measure exceeds that of any other spot of earth I have yet seen.
Its charm seems to me to lie in its wide diversity, the vastness of its extended embrace. Every charm of landscape blends together into one magnificent whole. ”

“ I can say, moreover, from all I have seen or heard of the different harbours of New Zealand, Port Nicholson is by far the best for the settlement of a new colony, not only from its geographical situation, but because the site of the town is much superior to any other that has yet been found in the country; and there is abundance of excellent land, sufficient for the employment of any amount of population there may be for twenty years to come. ”

“ Like the province of the Netherlands the name of which it bears, New Zealand is a green land where water meets the eye everywhere. There the resemblance ends. The dull grey tones of the atmosphere of old Zealand, the deep, unchanging green of its pastures, the dead level and slow current of its shallow and turbid waters, are conspicuously absent at the Antipodes. When the New Zealander thinks of water his thoughts go naturally to an ocean, blue and restless, and to rivers sometimes swollen and clouded, sometimes clear and shrunken, but always rapid. ”