Page:Charleston • Irwin Faris • (1941).pdf/116

 riding at the head of the procession were dragged from their horses. I being one of them beg to contradict that statement, as I was allowed to pass through the whole body of men several times, and returned to my home unmolested.

By inserting this you will oblige,

Waite’s Pakihi, 5th April, 1868.”

A similar letter, published in the same issue, was signed by Mary McNorton who was the other of the two girls referred to, she asserting that “she hadn’t been dragged, but assisted, from her horse, in kindness, by men who feared that she might receive injury.”

The Warden concerned in this matter was Thomas Alfred Sneyd Kynnersley, Chief Warden or Commissioner of the Nelson South-West Goldfields, a comprehensive title that included a wide range of duties and responsibilities, not the least of which was the control of the Police Force, and carried practically unlimited authority in the matter of law and order. Beginning life as midshipman in the Royal Navy, he reached the rank of Lieutenant, his last service being in H.M.S. Orpheus, a steam corvette which was lost on the South Spit of the Manakau bar on 7th February, 1863, with a loss of 189 lives, including the Commodore’s. Lieutenant Kynnersley had left the vessel before her wreck.

His first position with the Provincial Government was as Warden and Resident Magistrate at Wakamarina; but he was shortly afterwards promoted to be Warden and Commissioner at the Grey, in succession to Mr. Blackett. Later his services were extended to the whole of the South-West Goldfields, where he gained the respect and confidence of men of all classes, creeds, and politics. To mark this respect, the first township of Mokihinui, near the mouth of that river, was named Kynnersley, and the hotel at St. Helen’s nearby was named the Kynnersley Arms. He retired from official life owing to ill-health, and was elected to both the Provincial Council and the House of Representatives, taking his seat in the latter in 1870 as member for Westland North, as the Buller electorate was then called. Later he took a trip to