Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/23



AVING related a few circumstances respecting the earliest days of the Coast, before its lands were trodden by any white man, we purpose here devoting a chapter to some of the earliest explorers, of whose plucky adventures, and of the hardships they endured in the primitive days of the Coast, but little has as yet been published.

The country commencing at Jacob’s River on the south, and extending to Milford Haven on the north, was first visited and explored by whalers and sealers from Otago Bluff and Jacob’s River. Amongst these Reid stands prominent, and Howell has also been mentioned. The country between Milford Sound and Cape Foulwind does not appear to have been visited by these early voyagers. From Cape Foulwind to Cape Farewell, the sealing parties under Green and Toms in 1836 visited several places, and were for some time living on the Steeples or Black Reefs near Westport, where they killed several seals. Toms was on one occasion caught and thrown down by a very large seal, which bit him most severely on the thigh. He escaped death by killing it with a few hard blows from his fist on the nose.

After the advent of the New Zealand Company, Messrs Heaphy (the late Major Heaphy, V.C.) and the late Thomas Brunner, two of the Company’s surveyors in 1845, visited the West Coast, and travelled along it on foot from West Wanganui, near Cape Farewell, to the Grey River. At West Wanganui an old cannibal chief named Niho refused to allow them to proceed down the Coast, unless he received payment for trespass on a country hitherto unexplored by Europeans. They had nothing with which to meet his demand, but they managed to decoy him across the harbour in a canoe, where they left him alone on the beach bewailing his fate and cursing the perfidious Pakehas. They suffered severe privation, having to live on the natural productions of the country. On their return to Nelson they reported unfavourably of the West Coast districts as a field for settlement, and pronounced the rivers as not being fit for coasting vessels to enter. Subsequently Messrs Heaphy, Brunner, and Fox (now Sir William Fox, K.C.M.G., and at that time agent for the New Zealand Company at Nelson) made some trips to the head waters of the river Buller, and the country adjacent to the lakes Rotoiti and Rotorua, and river Tiramuea or Marylea. On one of these trips Mr Fox in crossing a river was washed off his feet, but managed to swim ashore with much difficulty, having been burdened with a swag.

Mr Thomas Brunner shortly after took in hand one of the most difficult tasks which any New Zealand explorer ever essayed to accomplish. He started from Foxhill, Nelson,