Chapter XIV.

When Messrs. Park & Davison first planted the theodolite on the wild hills of Otepoti—future Dunedin—the best mode of taming them and making them subservient to the foot of man must have given anxious thought. Let the reader go back in imagination to that bright February morning, fifty-two years ago, when the splash of the surveyor's oars first broke the primeval stillness of the harbour. The sloping hillsides lie in all the loveliness of evergreen forest, which clothes them from summit to waterside. As the boat speeds round the various points, flocks of seagulls and cormorants rise, startled at the unwonted intrusion. At last a sharp bend rapidly discloses a panoramic view of the approaching haven. To the left lies a long range of sandhills, shining in the sun, and giving a glimpse of the blue ocean beyond. Directly in front is the high range of the Whakari or Flagstaff, descending by many a spur, and with many an intervening gully, to the upper waters of the harbour. A nearer approach shows that extensive mud-flats, and indented low-lying shores, rocky and steep, forbid landing excepting at one place, where a little creek—the Kaituna—finds its outlet amidst high flax and fern and swampy ground. Two or three hundred yards beyond begins an irregular fringe of native bush, broadleaf, veronica, fuchsia, pittosporum, and tangled supplejack; beyond these rise the lofty pines and other forest giants. Leaving the low hollow through which the creek meanders, and climbing the steepish ascent to the right, of perhaps 150 feet, a magnificent view unfolds itself. Trending N. and N.E., a widespread level lies below, covered with flax and cabbage trees, toe-toe grass, and Maori-heads, intersected by sinuous, sluggish watercourses. Into this flat, the matau-kareao, descends a great semicircle of forestclad spurs, all sloping from the high summit of the Whakari, or the triple-crowned Kapukataumahaka— page 80Mount Cargill. From amongst the most distant of these emerges the pretty, winding river Owheo—Water of Leith. Away to the south and the east is another extensive swamp, whose stretch is only limited by other great spurs, the sandhills, the blue sea, and that little bay at Puketai where John Anderson and his family, sole occupants of these wastes, saw with wonder and delight the long-expected surveyor's boat. The whole scene is one of solemn grandeur and silent beauty, presently to be defaced by the noise and smoke of human habitations. To the work of preparation for this change the surveyor now addressed himself, and completed it by the middle of 1847.

Here will conveniently follow an account of the nomenclature of the streets and of other parts of the settlement. For many years the little creek, with landing-place, ran its course unmolested; this was down Maclaggan Street towards the Arcade, the back of Rattray Street to the Grand Hotel, and then across Princes Street, where it ran into the harbour close by the north side of Water Street. Otago—strictly Otakou—was appropriated to the whole block, but really relates to a small district within the Heads, where there was a Maori village and a whaling station. The word means red earth, signifying the ochre used as paint by the natives, and which was plentiful in the neighbourhood. To remedy the inconvenience caused by the promiscuous use of both appellations, the Directors ordered a return to the old whalers' one of Otago. Portobello—Hereweka of the Maoris—owes its name to Christie, a Scotchman, a draper from Sydney, who came down in 1840 and settled there, giving to it the name of his birthplace. It was called by the whalers Limeburners' Bay, for here they burnt shells wherewith to whitewash their cottages. About 1825 a boat's crew under one Kelly, a well-known Hobart Town pilot, was engaged in taking off potatoes to their vessel. Kelly quarrelled with the chief Boginna—Pokeno is correct—whereupon the natives fell upon the crew, who, impeded by their heavy loads, were all tomahawked. Then followed a fierce retaliation at the hands of their comrades who had witnessed the tragedy from the vessel's deck. The bloodstained sands are known as Murdering Beach. Sawyers' Bay was named by the early whalers who there procured their best timber for huts or boats. Deborah Bay derives its name from Mr. Tuckett's Deborah, which anchored there in 1844. Below is Hamilton's Bay, called so by Mr. page 81Kettle after the Rev. J. Vesey Hamilton, a clergyman in Kent, whose ministrations he attended. Mr. Hamilton's son afterwards came to New Zealand and was Private Secretary to Governor Fitzroy. He died some years ago in Canterbury. Still below is Dowling Bay, after a nephew of Mr. Rennie, whose acquaintance Mr. Kettle made whilst visiting Edinburgh.

At first it was intended to christen the port town New Leith, or New Musselburgh; but taste again prevailed, and the Lay Association, when taking up the scheme in final earnest, desired that it might be called after the great leader of the secession, Port Chalmers. The survey of Port Chalmers, difficult enough owing to its irregular features, was first undertaken, and was completed by the middle of May, 1846. The streets enshrine the names of the first emigrant vessels. Hence Wickliffe, Laing, Victory, Bernicia, Mary, Ajax, and Scotia Streets; the last after Mr. John Jones' favourite little schooner, which was always trading up and down the coast. Harington Street is after the well-known secretary of the New Zealand Company; this gentleman is also remembered in Harington Point near the Heads. Currie after one of the Directors who took a special interest in the scheme; Burns after the Rev. Thomas Burns, the minister of the settlement; George and Grey after the Governor, Sir George Grey.

The Association, rightly attaching considerable importance to the furthest district in the block, containing as it did splendid agricultural and pastoral land and a large navigable river, gave it a name which they hoped would always prove an attraction to Scotchmen. The Maoris called this river Matau or Waimatau; Captain Cook called it Molyneux after his sailing master; and now the Association decided to call it the Clutha, being the Gaelic for Glasgow's great river the Clyde. And when the town sprang up adjacent it was to be Balclutha, meaning the town on the Clutha. Inch Clutha, that fertile island embraced by the Koau and Matau, branches of the Molyneux, means the island of Clutha. Its native name was Tauhinu; the whalers in their pleasant way called it Bloody Jack's Island, after Tuawhaiki, who was born there, and who claimed it.

The etymology of Dunedin has already been given; it is the Gaelic form of Edinburgh. When laying out this, its southern namesake, Mr. Kettle was instructed to reproduce as far as lay within the surveyor's province the page 82features of the great northern sister. And thus it is that with few exceptions the names of the Dunedin streets are the same as those of Edinburgh or Leith. There are twenty-one which form exceptions; twelve relate to old settlers—Cargill, Jones, Macandrew, Filleul, Lee, and Vogel; in Lee Stream, Lee appears again. Dowling, Smith, and Russell, after Mr. Kettle's friends; the first in Edinburgh, the second under whom he served as a surveyor in Wellington, and the third his companion whilst exploring the Wairarapa and Ruamahanga. Grant, after an old settler who lived on the site; Graham, after Malcolm Graham, who had property in the neighbourhood; and Rattray, probably after a lady of that name, who was a friend of Mr. Cargill's and of Mr. Pillans of Inch Clutha, a relative near whom she resided. Vire Street, in compliment to the French man-of-war which, commanded by Captain Jacquemart, aided the passengers of the Surat, wrecked at Catlin's River in December, 1673. Bond, Belt, Gaol, Jetty, Police, and Harbour Place carry their own derivation. The surveys of the town were completed by the end of December, 1846. The highest point of the Whakari range formed one of the earliest trig stations, and since then has been known as Flagstaff; fortunately it escaped the name originally given—Mount Kettle. The "Water of Leith" is, of course, Edinburgh's little river. Pelichet Bay derives its name from the surveyor who dwelt on its margin on a spot now below the railway-crossing at Hanover Street. It was afterwards occupied by Mr. Strode, the magistrate, and then by the Rev. J. A. Fenton, the first Anglican clergyman in Dunedin. Half-way Bush is an old name, and relates to its being at half the distance between town and the head of the Taieri Plain; wild pigs abounded in the district, driven back by the advance of settlement. Trivial though these details are, it is as well to record them, as otherwise they are rapidly obliterated.

Towards the end of 1846 Mr. Kettle left Port Chalmers to take up his permanent abode at Dunedin. Snail-like, he towed the wooden portion of his house behind him, and erected it with additions on the spot shown in the illustrations. Here it remained until crushed out by the great brick growth of the general Government buildings. By the middle of 1847 the staff of surveyors had completed their labours, and most of them returned to their homes, in the more civilized parts of New Zealand.

Everything was ready for the advent of the pioneers; page break

C. H. Kettle.]
[Custom House.
View of Port Chalmers, 1848.
[To face p. 83.

page 83but such was the irregularity and the protracted intervals of communication between the two countries, that the vessels were almost off the coast of New Zealand before Colonel Wakefield was notified of their departure from England. The insecure and harassing relations of the Company with the Government added also to the uncertainty.

In a letter to Colonel Wakefield, dated the 4th of July, Mr. Kettle says:—"Dunedin is now almost deserted, there being only five houses in the town inhabited, and we have for the present almost given up hopes of the arrival of the settlers." The earth was not then girdled in forty minutes, and Colonel Wakefield, wondering what new misfortune had happened, was obliged to await the slow solution of his difficulty for nine months or more.