Page:Guide to Wellington & district with a complete map of the city - Walter K. Bishop.pdf/18



part from the natural beauty of its situation, its splendid harbour, and the fact that it is the seat of Government, Wellington will possess a special interest to the tourist from the fact that it was the first settlement founded in New Zealand. During the forty-two years which may be taken as the age of this colony, New Zealand, so justly termed “The Britain of the South,” has made such rapid strides in all that tends to the building up of a great and prosperous country, that almost the first questions that naturally come to the mind of a new arrival are “From what did all this spring. When was the colony founded, and who were the hardy pioneer’s who faced so much danger and discomfort to colonize a land which should offer a new home to the teeming thousands of the Mother country.” We propose to commence our , by answering these questions, and by so doing we shall not only gratify the laudable curiosity of the “new chum” and brother colonist from Australia, but at the same time help to confer honor where honor is due by assisting to hand down to posterity the names of the brave men who founded the first settlement in a country unpromising at first sight, and then peopled by a savage and warlike race. The New Zealand Company were the first systematic colonists of New Zealand, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield being the main spring; and whose preliminary expedition reached Cook's Strait on September 20th, 1839, in the ship “Tory,” Capt. Chaffers. At the time of Colonel Wakefield’s arrival, the British settlers in the colony, scarcely amounted to 1000 in all, of whom about 500 were settled in the Northern Peninsula, and about as many in Cook’s Strait, at Bank’s Peninsula (Canterbury) or further South.