An Enchanters Wand

ZEAL for home-making was shown in a wealth of ways from the very beginning of settlement. ‘To cultivate their lands and improve their • country,’ as Marsden phrased his hope of Maori advance and adaptation, expresses equally well the determination of the white immigrants also. Not even the fact that some were indolent can hide the certainty that most were remarkably industrious.

Take a few proofs that have outlasted more than a hundred years. In the Bay of Islands is a commodious dwelling-house built of wood 1819 and good for many a year yet. Hard by a stone building, also of two storeys, erected 1833. The wooden church at Russell in which Captain Hobson read his commissions and proclamations stands as when Polack sketched it 1836, save for a reconstructed roof and a few minor repairs. Such survivals tell of a zest for work as well as a sense of sound materials. Of that same fact old mill-wheels and old chimneys are similarly eloquent.

Look at the vestiges of ancient gardens, from Dusky Bay right to the Far North, where Busby’s exotic trees, though not his vines, can be found, and Mrs. Hobson’s rose-bushes identified on their recorded mounds, and the magnificent oak that Richard Davis grew and tended.

Think of Parson Butler turning, in 1820, on mission land at Kerikeri, the first New Zealand furrow; of the little ship Herald launched from Paihia beach in 1826; of Colenso’s printing press landed there in 1835; and of all that delightfully amazed Charles Darwin at Waimate North when that year was ending. ‘An enchanter’s wand!’ he wrote in ecstasy of approval.