The Settlers Make Their First Homes

THE first days ashore were probably the most exciting and satisfying to the Emigrants. Even if New Zealand was not exactly as they imagined it, it was a fertile country with any amount of work to be done. The Maoris, contrary to the tales told in England, were a sociable, helpful race, building native-style houses in exchange for a few trade goods and even curing the sick with their own outlandish remedies.

The first duty of the emigrants was to get shelter. Even those who were accommodated in the Company’s barracks had to fend for them­selves as soon as possible. These first dwellings, reed huts with thatched roofs, log cabins in the bush, or clay-walled cottages were by no means elegant, but they served their purpose. The gentry housed themselves well. Occasionally they had brought bricks, windows and doors from England; much more frequently they relied on local materials, boards from some local saw-mill, and, failing tiles brought out from England, shingle slabs for roofing. Inside they had all the furniture of an English middle-class home. People arriving at Port Nicholson in 1842 were able to write home remarking that the savagery of the new colonies was a myth and that everybody (of their class) was surrounded with comfort verging on luxury.

This quick development was only one side of the medal. There were difficulties about land between the Government and the Company, which resulted in many people who had bought their land, they thought, in England, finding that there was no land for them to select in the new colony. This caused new arrivals to crowd into the town­ships, especially in the Port Nicholson district, instead of getting on with the development of the country, and was an obstacle also to the construc­tion of roads. There was plenty of work none the less in the settlements, and it may have been an advantage to slow down development in view of the later Maori Wars. In the long run few emigrants failed to do well.