Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/64



In the section dealing with whalers, and as a partner in the firm of Messrs. Cooper and Levy, it will be remembered that the name of Captain W. B. Rhodes was mentioned in connection with land purchases in Canterbury. Mr. Rhodes came on to Canterbury, and negotiating with one Captain Leathart purchased from him for the sum of £800 his claim to a large block of land which he had bought from the Natives in 1838 at Akaroa. He then acquired a barque called the Eleanor, and having purchased at the Hunter River, New South Wales, fifty cows and two bulls at £16 per head, he landed them at Akaroa in November, 1839, and placed them in charge of one William Green. Those were the first cattle landed in Canterbury, and by Mr. Rhodes’s courage and enterprise this was the first attempt at stock-farming in the Province. At an earlier period, when Mr. Rhodes was in command of one of Messrs. Cooper and Levy’s whaling