Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury/Introduction
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 own experience, to supply a great many interesting and important incidents connected with those early days. In many instances he can fix those events with accurate dates and figures, and in practically all of them he can approximate those details, as will be found in perusing the records he has made.
In this introduction it is his object to set out, in a general way, his impressions of what transpired, from his earliest recollections down to the period of the arrival at Lyttelton of the first four ships on December 16th, 1850, making those impressions and experiences prefatory to the more explicit and more personal references to the pioneers, which follow.
As the pathway of reminiscences is tortuous and confusing, and is side-tracked at frequent intervals with trails of iteration and reiteration, the author has deemed it expedient to abandon any attempt at a chronological record of his recollections, and has chosen instead, at the risk of an occasional anachronism, to differentiate and classify those recollections in accordance with their bearing on the following subjects:—
(a) The Maoris, the aborigines of New Zealand.
(b) The Whalers, who preceded the pioneers.
(c) The French Pioneers.
(d) The British Pioneers.
(e) Personal and Sundry Reminiscences.
Following this classification then, something falls to be said of the Maoris, and it will be more convenient and more intelligible if, in the first place, the author, drawing upon a long and intimate experience with the Natives, sets down some general impressions concerning them, and afterwards specifies such incidents as throw some light on those impressions. He will conclude with a few personal reminiscences of one or two of the notorious chiefs who have left their mark for good or ill on the early pages of New Zealand history.