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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 2 (June 1, 1933)

An Inland Journey in 1859

An Inland Journey in 1859.

One of the 65th officers stationed at Napier at this period was a young lieutenant named H. S. Bates. He liked the Maoris and learned their language, and he married a young chieftainess, daughter of Manihera, of the Atiawa tribe (of Taranaki), in Wellington. In 1863 he was made interpreter and A.D.C. to the page 28 Governor, Sir George Grey. When he returned to England with his regiment, of which he became Colonel, he left a young son to be educated with a missionary family (the mother had died), and to this son in later years he left all his large property in England. The son was the late Mr. H. S. Bates, of Wanganui who gave me some of the sketches and manuscript narratives left by his father. This account of a ride through Hawke's Bay, in 1859, is of value as a picture of the primitive condition of this now well-settled and wealthy province. Lieutenant Bates had been invited by two acquaintances, young sheep farmers on the Ruataniwha Plains, to visit them at their new station at shearing time.

“It was a hot summer morning, at the end of 1859,” he wrote. “I had started from my little hut in the One-poto Valley, a narrow gorge on Scinde Island, surrounded by fern-clad hills, a spot in which fate and the service of my country compelled me to while away two and a half years of life. It was pleasant to climb up the steep roadway which led from the confined valley, and inhale the cool sea breeze which was borne to the plateau where the recently erected wooden barracks stood, surrounded by an earth parapet. Descending a steep and newly-cut bridle track, we left the fern-clad hills of Scinde Island and came on to a flat, or wide sterile expanse of pumice stone, the debris of some far-off volcano. This was the site of the future town of Napier, and though there were at present only two or three small weather-boarded and shingled shanties on it, the map which hung in the Provincial Survey Office showed it parcelled out into streets, squares, and corner lots, with here and there a church or school house reserve. Vain dreams they seemed then; but the performance has been greater than the anticipation. Years afterwards I sold the quarter of an acre which I owned in the pumice-stone desert for £300, or at the rate of £1200 per acre.

“Passing over this scene of desolation, we came to a long strip of hard shingle, over which we made good progress. On our left were low sandhills, which separated us from the sea beach, on which the little waves were breaking in melodious rhythm. Oyster-catchers and other sea-birds stood here and there, perched on stones, gazing seaward, or now and again picking up some mussel or other shellfish, bearing the bivalve aloft and letting it drop on some hard piece of rock below, a process which was repeated again and again till the shell cracked and gave up its contents. On our right were mudflats and swamps fringed with raupo reeds.