INTRODUCTION.
Some years ago (that is during the year 1909) a movement was made by a few of the older Colonists to collect letters, documents, photographs, and other articles bearing upon the settlement of Canterbury, with the view of preserving a record, which, at some future time, would furnish valuable and authentic data for the historian.
The writer is one of those Colonists, and a Committee having at once been formed on which he was placed, he lost no time in collecting and verifying information, procuring photographs, and otherwise forwarding the objects of the movement.
Fortunately, having himself been a witness in his childhood of the advent of the pioneers in the South Island of New Zealand, and being blessed with a very retentive memory, he is enabled, within his
