Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/155

 sending over Mr. Malcolm McKinnon, whom they landed with a team of bullocks, a dray, and farming implements at the mouth of Lake Forsyth. Messrs. Abercrombie and Co. sent over another vessel with farm hands, and further implements and supplies, but she was lost with all hands, and Messrs. Abercrombie and Co., being ruined, likewise abandoned the project. What happened to Mr. McKinnon and his family has already been recorded. The others who were connected with the venture, and who were with him, returned to Sydney, and Riccarton for the second time was abandoned.

Now in April, 1843, for the third time, William and John Deans entered into possession, giving it the name it now bears after their old home in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. The river flowing past their homestead they called the Avon (after a stream of similar size in Scotland) some six or seven years before the arrival of the first four ships. It is quite erroneous to suppose, as is generally believed, that the Avon was named by the Canterbury Pilgrims in commemoration of Shakespeare’s Avon at Stratford.

Sir George Grey held so high an opinion of the Deans Brothers that, after the Wairau