Page:Municipal Handbook of Auckland 1922.djvu/23



A little more than eighty years ago the site of the City of Auckland was covered with ti-tree, fern and bush. In the year 1840 Captain William Hobson, Lieutenant-Governor, selected a site on the shores of the Waitemata Harbour as the capital of the young colony, and on the 18th September of that year a flagstaff was erected on Point Britomart (since demolished) and the Union Jack unfurled. This was Auckland's official birthday. The seat of government remained here until 1865, when it was removed to Wellington. Auckland's appearance at that time was tersely described by the late Sir John Logan Campbell, one of Auckland's great pioneers. "The capital!" he wrote, "a few boats and canoes on the beach, a few tents and break-wind huts along the margin of the bay, and then—a sea of fern stretching away as far as the eye could reach."

What a transformation has taken place in this short period of little more than the normal span of a man's life. The ti-tree and the fern have given place to a city with a population (1921 census) of 81,712 inhabitants, or, if the suburbs are included, of 157,757.

The young city did not grow without experiencing difficulties. In the first two decades the Maoris caused