Names and Deeds.

Here come in certain matters of nomenclature and tabloid history. It was Alfred Domett, poet and politician, who was responsible for the principal names hereabouts. Napier was named after the great General, and Scinde after his Indian campaign of victory, and the names of poets and other page 31 men of note were given by Domett at the laying-out of the town, an event which occurred comparatively late in the colony's history.

The old Maori name of Scinde Island—a name which few of the Maoris themselves know to-day—was Mataruahou. The site of the town, on its shingly and pumice-stone flat—a most unpromising looking site for a town it must have seemed—was commonly called Ahuriri before Napier was adopted.

It was in 1851 that Donald Maclean—afterwards Sir Donald—acting under instructions from Sir George Grey, began the long series of native land purchases which secured for white settlement all this country of the Heretaunga plains and the land from Ruataniwha northward to the Wairoa. The purchase of Mataruahou, now Scinde Island, was completed in 1856, cost the Government only £50 and a reserve of two sections for the Chief Tareha and his family “when the land has a town.” The site of Napier and an area up to the ranges inland cost only £1000. Other purchases of great areas were made, and cheaply indeed did the Crown acquire a waste country that settlers' industry soon converted into a domain of great beauty and homes of comfort and wealth.