Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/163

 Akaroa 1843; Joseph Rhodes, arrived Akaroa 1842; Peter Rhodes, who returned to England in 1844, arrived in Akaroa in 1843. The three Rhodes Brothers, William Barnard, George, and Robert, were intimately connected with Canterbury since a date many years prior to the first settlement by the colonists, and that connection is as intimate in their descendants at the present day. W. B. Rhodes was the first of them to visit the place that was to become Canterbury. He was a seafaring man, and in 1834 and 1835 he commanded a whaling ship, the Australian, belonging to a Sydney firm, Messrs. Cooper and Holt, afterwards Cooper and Levy, whose names were given to the two adjacent harbours, Port Cooper and Port Levy. The former was later named Lyttelton Harbour. Mr. Rhodes was in the harbour in 1834, when he climbed the hills looking over the Canterbury Plains, which he described as a vast swamp, with two patches of native bush. Trade was carried on with the Natives, and in 1839, a Captain Francis Leathart purchased an area of land from the Natives through Taiaroa, which area Leathart transferred in September, 1839, to the firm which Rhodes had now joined, Cooper, Holt,